Echoes of our boots on the gym floor squeaking became a familiar sound. Every day Bruna would insist on basketball with me, and with little else to do we often played for hours. I never knew I would love playing basketball, or it was probably just because it was with Bruna, and she loved basketball. Her appetite for basketball was insatiable.

"It's an achievement to score a point with you." I told her as I sat down and placed a towel over my neck, daubing at the sweat on my face with it.

"Well, I don't let you score. You're getting better." Bruna grinned.

"So are you." I pointed out. "It just keeps getting harder and harder. No matter how hard I try, it's like you're just toying with me."

"I am. I've held back this whole time while you learned the basics. Every time you score, I hold back a little less." Her grin looked wolfish and hungry for praise.

"This is why nobody will play with you." I pointed out.

"Oopsies." She tossed the ball over her shoulder without even looking and made a basket. The ball bounced and then rolled and stopped next to her and she picked it up.

"Like that. That's just ridiculous." I shook my head. Bruna giggled.

"You play with me." She sounded very pleased with herself. "You'll always play with me, and I will always win."

"Not always. Someday I am going to get really good at this and then you will have a real match on your hands."

"Oh?" Bruna seemed amused by my promise, but she was reading into it. "You think you are a match for me?"

"Perhaps not yet. But someday." I decided. "I'm learning from the best. It is inevitable that I'll get really good at this. It's like I'm in basketball camp or something, with an NBA star teaching me how."

"I think you're already a match for me and..." Bruna stopped and looked up at someone. I hadn't heard anyone come into the gym behind me, but I caught the scent of carbon and the look in Bruna's eyes was the closest thing to fear that she had. I slowly turned and looked and saw someone there, a kind of gray blur.

I stared at her, recognizing her from my renaming ceremony. I hadn't seen her since then, but she was the other female soldier in our unit, besides Bruna. She had a strange and slow and methodical way she was stopping and looking at the exercise equipment, as though she'd never seen it before.

"Can I help you with something, McRaze?"

"Yes Major, I actually wanted to talk to you about some things. I apologize for interrupting while you are spending time with Atanarjuat." McRaze had a very quiet voice, but we could hear her from across the gym, listening to her.

"Come here, please." Bruna gestured to the seat next to me on the bench.

I noticed McRaze was the source of the smell, something almost like smoke, or some kind of depletion in the air. My hair stood up and I felt nervous being close to her. My instincts were telling me to get up and run.

We waited for her to speak. She began by telling me: "Atanarjuat, that's a pretty cool name. They named me McRaze. It is not the name I left behind."

I looked up at Bruna as I recalled Slate telling me nobody else had a naming ceremony. Bruna asked me: "What?" as she saw my questioning look.

"Nothing." I said.

"I'm sorry if I am making you nervous. I understand how sensitive lycans are around me. I assure you I am not a threat to you." McRaze seemed so quiet and harmless when she spoke, contrasting my nerves that were telling me I was about to die if I didn't run away.

"Atanarjuat, what are you thinking?" Bruna asked me. I sighed and mentioned that Slate had told me I was the only one to get the renaming ceremony.

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"I was initially brought here from The Farm, along with Doctor Imbrium. My codename 'McRaze' was given to me there. I left my old name, my old life, behind in the ashes." McRaze explained.

"Does that answer your question?" Bruna teased me. McRaze stared at me, some kind of light in her eyes. Her expression was unreadable, she could be thinking or feeling anything behind that poker face.

"I'm sorry." I stammered, feeling awkward and intimidated and unsure of what else I could say.

"For what?" McRaze seemed to be forcing herself to smile.

"I didn't mean to pry into your backstory." I shrugged.

"Why not? Aren't you curious?" McRaze seemed to be trying to emulate the way other pack members spoke. I realized she spent too much time alone, was reclusive, and couldn't really tell how to talk about whatever it was that she wanted to say.

"Tell me what happened to you. Who were you before you were McRaze and what happened to her?" I requested.

"Very well." McRaze let her plastered smile vanish. Bruna sat down on the other side of her. McRaze seemed to be both uncomfortable and satisfied at the same time.

My guess was that she just couldn't take any more of her self-imposed isolation. She just wanted to make friends and didn't really know how. It made sense she would start with Bruna, since it would be easiest to befriend another female, especially Bruna.

"I used to be Beth. Beth was a good girl, very well-mannered. Her mother and father had both deserted The Farm, but only after they were known to be telepaths. That means they can communicate with their thoughts, and sometimes they can even read people's minds."

"That's real?" I asked.

"Yes. And Beth was very good at it. She could have made friends, but she could hear people's suspicions and plans to embarrass her, in their thoughts."

"If you can read minds what am I thinking? I'll be your friend if you promise not to read my mind." I thought loudly in my head. McRaze stopped talking for a second and said:

"I promise I won't try to read your mind. Sometimes it's a reflex, especially when men are looking at me." McRaze responded. "I'd like to know what he is thinking, does he think I am pretty, are his intentions good, does he call his mother? I can't help it."

"I would do the same thing." Bruna said and then she wasn't sure she'd said what she meant to say and McRaze responded to whatever she was thinking too:

"Except you are so focused on Atanarjuat that you have almost forgotten there are other men. He preoccupies you and sometimes when you are alone you think of him too much and..."

"Okay." Bruna stopped her. She was leaning forward, and she looked at me for my reaction to McRaze's revelation. I'm sure I looked like I already knew all about Bruna's thoughts and feelings for me. I'd known since day one and so had everyone else. What I found strange was that she had become self-conscious about it.

"Time will make sense of you two. Just give it time." McRaze told us.

"We interrupted you." I said. McRaze shook her head.

"I'm stalling. I'm not sure I am ready to share."

"I won't judge you. What I did before I came here was worse. If you can see into my head, then you'd know." Bruna offered.

"I see. And you have told Atanarjuat about this, but he does not know the whole story. You think he wouldn't be able to love you if he knew all about you. You're wrong though, he just needs time to heal. He loved someone, her name was..."

"Please no." I said. I didn't want her name said that way. I hadn't thought about her recently, and I wasn't in my secure little private cell to cry when the pain of remembering her took me.

"About Beth." McRaze offered.

"Yes, what happened to Beth?" I asked.

"Her parents died in a fire. You see, Beth had all their powers and so much more. Beth had what is called pyrokinesis, and she could cause fires to burst out everywhere with just her mind. It was activated when little Beth felt threatened, and on the day her parents died, she was angry with them. It was an accident, Beth couldn't control it. She still blamed herself, and it took a long time for her to accept that she needed to stop holding herself responsible. Her parents had known about her powers and didn't teach her how to control them. Instead, they just taught her to hide her powers and hoped she would learn to suppress them. She was in the system only for a moment when The Farm came and took her away. And they experimented on her and found out how her powers worked. Doctor Imbrium taught her how to control herself. One day Beth accepted that she was McRaze, and that whoever she was before had died in that same fire with her parents. Then she was transferred to Ravenrock and accepted by the pack, although the lycans are terrified of her, and they don't know why. Maybe it is some ancient fear of fire in all beasts, or maybe it is because she knows their thoughts."

"I'll be your friend, McRaze." I promised her. "But I am gonna have my own thoughts and feelings, even if they say I am tired of you for the day or your uniform looks baggy. It's just my brain saying words, I am choosing to be your friend, so never mind my thoughts."

"That's sweet of you, but Bruna isn't comfortable with that. She'd rather be my friend, she won't judge my attire or have random thoughts or get tired of me. She doesn't see any reason why you and I should be friends. Sorry." McRaze told me Bruna's thoughts.

"See? I wouldn't have said anything. But now I am happy that's out there like that. I'll be McRaze's friend. You're my friend, Atanarjuat. Mine." Bruna snapped just a little bit.

"I'm hitting the shower. You two have fun." I growled in annoyance. As I left, I heard them both giggling.