Copper said, and he truly meant it. He had needed to hear that message all his life, and now he finally had. Now at least one dog didn’t just like him because he was Balto’s son. He could be his own dog without any help from his father. His heart, for one small fraction of a second, soared.

“Bye, kid,” Storm whispered, and Copper looked up to see the gray husky’s eyes close and the life leave his face. The blood stopped bubbling up from the husky’s chest. Nothing dramatic or magical happened. Storm just…died.

The full force of what had happened hit Copper in a swift, sweeping wave of hot, volcanic, erupting rage. He lowered his head and swiveled his eyes to catch a blurry image of Hawk waiting behind him. Copper growled deeply and spun around to confront him. Hawk eyed him coolly with those unbelievably cold, ice blue eyes. Copper felt little explosions go off all over his brain, and he felt like something in him would erupt if he didn’t say anything.

“You’ve hurt my sister and made her run away. And now you’ve killed Storm. I’ve got a question for you. Do you like your head being ripped off, and then your legs being torn off one at a time, and then your legs put where your head was and your head attached to your rear? If so, you’ll immensely enjoy what I’m going to do to you in the next ten seconds.” Copper hardly knew what he was saying. Words shot out of him like sparks flying from the fire slowly building up inside his chest.

Hawk grinned wickedly. “We never finished our fight that day in the back street, did we, COPPER? I’d say it’s high time we finished it, wouldn’t you, WOLF-DOG?”

Quite a stir was rising among the dogs outside the ring, and the thunderclap of a thought sounded in the stormy atmosphere of Copper’s mind. Jenna had told him to let Kaila solve her own problems, and she had told him not to get into any more fights. And here he was, facing Hawk, Kaila’s tormentor, off in a fight. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. Despite letting his mom down, Copper felt a driving passion to get back at Hawk after all this time for torturing so many dogs and still managing to get the good breaks. Hawk needed to be fought off. Hawk needed to get his butt kicked in vengeance for all the great dogs he had hurt.

Carson’s voice shouted something in the background, but Copper wasn’t registering much. His brain automatically shut off any thoughts or emotions inside him except for the hot, burning coals of anger that flamed his heart. His red-brown eyes hooked on to Hawk’s, and it all came together as they leaped toward each other and met in the air…to tumble to the ground with spitting and clawing and ripping and snarling. Everything seemed in a red haze to Copper. In his mind Hawk’s fur and skin turned to a map, and he slashed into it as many rivers of red as he could. Copper could tell Hawk was also wounding him in return, but oddly enough the pain seemed to be in a fog someplace far, far away. He didn’t realize until a few minutes into the fight: he was ENJOYING himself. The feeling was just as Storm had described it; like a rapid fire it consumed him, and for a second he felt real happiness. He was free from burdens, free from the secret he had kept so long about his hatred for racing. Unbidden, a part of a familiar song entered his mind:

‘Somewhere in time, the truth shines through,

And the spirit knows what it has to do,

Somewhere in you, there’s a power with no name,

It can rise to meet the moment and burn like a flame,

And you can be stronger than anything you know,

Hold on to what you see,

Don’t let it go, don’t you let it go…’

Now he knew the exhilaration Balto and other sled dogs felt when they raced. Storm had felt it when he fought, and Copper felt it while fighting, too. It was like wildfire, spreading throughout him until he felt like he was flaming with happiness. Suddenly he thought, ‘Could it be the wolf coming alive in me, that isn’t in my features, but in me all the same? The wolf part of me that hasn’t appeared…until now? Only a wolf could fight like I’m fighting now!’ The chorus of the lullaby came to his mind.

‘Reach for the light,

You might touch the sky,

Stand on the mountaintop, and see yourself flying,

Reach for the light,

To capture a star,

Come out of the darkness, and find out who you are.’

For that one second in time, Copper’s soul felt free.

Suddenly the red haze around Copper’s mind disappeared, and he saw, as if in slow motion, his paw, nails sharp, slicing into Hawk’s neck. Hawk skidded across the ring on his side and stopped, head slumping. Five long claw marks slashed across the side of his neck. Copper froze, as did everyone else in the room. There wasn’t enough light for anyone to see if Hawk was breathing or not.

‘That’ll teach you,’ was the first thought that came into Copper’s head. He had gotten revenge for Storm. But then, ‘I just KILLED somebody. Sure, it was Hawk, Kaila’s tormentor, Storm’s murderer, maybe even Steele’s son…but…I just KILLED somebody.’ He looked down at himself, then started looking himself over. He was in bad shape. Wounds dribbled blood through his fur, and he felt a white-hot knifing pain whenever he moved his left front leg. It might be fractured.

One man in the front of the crowd whispered to the man beside him, “Is it just me, or do the huskies seem to be getting better every year?”

“I don’t think that dog is all husky,” the other man said suspiciously, “He fights like a wild animal!” He turned to Johnson, who was at the front of the crowd, staring at Copper with his eyes bugging out and his mouth hanging open. “Do you know what kind of breed your dog is, Mundy?”

Before Johnson could think up a quick answer, a gunshot rocketed through the room and a small hole appeared in the roof.

“FREEZE!” a voice shouted, and everyone looked over to see a tall man with a shining badge underneath his coat and a gun in his hand filling the doorway. Behind him were all of the extra people who had just come to the Borealis Fights that night, most of them holding guns and all wearing badges. They had their dogs too, and Copper spotted the two German shepherds that had been in his sleigh sitting still and erect beside the police officers that owned them amidst all the other officers.

“You are all under arrest!” the presumed leader of the police cried icily, “For engaging in dog fighting, which is illegal here in Alaska!”

There was a moment of tense silence.

“WHAT?!” Carson screamed, and before Copper could take a breath there was absolute chaos among the men to try and get out of the building with at least their skins and maybe their dogs. Not wanting to stay a moment longer beside the two dead dogs that lay on either side of him, Copper took a running jump and sailed over the metal fence to land on all fours…only to crumple to the ground in agony as his hurt leg gave way. The fire he had felt fighting Hawk seemed to have drained out of his heart and filtered into his hurt leg with not such a pleasant feeling. Copper gritted his teeth and pulled himself up and began to run gingerly on three legs across the room, dodging feet and legs as best as he could, trying to get out. But someone knocked him to the ground, and he seemed to roll back the way he came as he was bumped and jostled and almost hammered into the floorboards by the crowd of stampeding people and dogs. His injuries started to throb even more fiercely, and he became dizzy as he was banged around. Police shouted at the crowd and at other police officers trying to arrest people, or at least get their identities, while the betters hitched up dogs as fast as they could and literally piled themselves into sleighs and raced off with as many men as they could carry (and more). Copper could hear all this from where he lay, and when the footfalls around his head subsided a bit he got up, trembling and stumbling along out the door.

He searched the area for Johnson, but couldn’t see him. He hoped his owner hadn’t abandoned him and already gone off on one of the sleighs, but his search concluded that the flighty man might’ve done just that.

What did catch Copper’s eye, though, was Carson’s bent form in the shadows. The police were too flustered to see him in his dark little corner, and he was also hidden by a pile of wooden crates, but Copper limped closer to find Carson’s fumbling hands securing the lock on a cage. It was nothing fancy, just wire and metal…but inside the cage was Taya.

“Police,” Carson muttered, swearing almost inaudibly, and pressed a gloved hand against the wire. “Alright, dog, these bozos are bound to catch me and file charges and stuff, but I’ll get out of there quick and come back to get you. I’ve done it before. I’m just gonna get away from here for awhile until there aren’t as many police around, and if I don’t get caught and arrested I’ll come back and free you, and then we’ll get the heck outta here. I can’t take you with me now, because if I do get caught and I’m with you at the same time, they’ll take you away, and there goes my fast money in the fighting ring! Ha! So you’re staying here.” He slipped something into a pocket inside his coat, and Copper had a hunch it was the key to the lock on the cage. “Better lock it tight,” Carson mumbled to himself, “Or else somebody will come along and steal you, dog, and again there goes my big bucks.” Carson