Sidney’s wedding day doesn’t go quite as he’d planned. When he’d bothered to imagine it at all, he’d thought of a nice June wedding in Nova Scotia, outdoors with the sun streaming down. He hadn’t imagined this hurried affair on the tarmac on a rainy and unseasonably cool day in early September, a month after his twenty-fifth birthday.

It’s actually his father who suggests it. “Take the rest of the summer for yourself,” he says. “Do something fun.” “Fun,” Sidney repeats blankly.

Sid is smitten. He was smitten from the start, he thinks. The first time he saw Zhenya's dark eyes and hair and smooth skin. The way his cheeks flush the same color as his mouth with exertion, or passion. Sid knows that people make comments about his own mouth, the way it would be more suited on a childbearing male, but he thinks that they can’t possibly have seen Zhenya's. The perfect, sweet cupid's bow of his upper lip and the plush, fat pout of the bottom one.

It's not like Phil goes around telling people that his old team bought him his best friend like some people buy hookers. He can't really talk about it with Bozie, either, because Bozie will just say something like, "Come on, I provide the full girlfriend experience," which is so much worse than actually being offended.

They make a point of it, always, telling Zhenya how beautiful Sidney is.

"The lawyers have found a pretty good loophole," Pat said. "It's not a loophole, it's a long-standing cultural tradition," Mario said, glancing at Sidney. "It's a fucking loophole," Pat reiterated. "But it's a great one."

Sidney always knew his family would pick who he ended up with. It was how things were done, and no matter what the outside world thought, he'd never questioned it before because it was just the reality: ice was frozen, getting checked against the boards knocked the wind out of you, one day Sid would be matched to someone his parents and the matchmaker and his aunts and uncles and his community thought was the best fit for him. And best of all, Sidney wouldn't have to worry about it. He would just focus on hockey. He'd deal with it one day. Eventually. 'One day' had seemed so much farther away when he was younger.

A wolfborn on an airplane was either unbearably reckless or a hockey player. Most of the time, both.

In which alternate universe Boston had 4th pick and Washington had 5th pick in the 2006 draft, and in which alternate universe the NHL is kind enough make accommodations for players’ personal circumstances. For instance, to allow Washington to pick Alex Ovechkin’s absolutely true, definitely not fake, 100% not-made-up fiancé to come play for the Caps. “You what,” Alex says. “Alex Ovechkin’s who?” —and its aftermath, through the years.