Chapter 11 #3
Pleasure that Viper hadn’t taken off to see what the guys were doing and had waited for him to wake up warmed him from the inside out. “Sure.”
After quickly getting dressed, they stepped out of the crannóg. The early light poured across the water and cast long reflections that shimmered against the rope-bridged walkways. The air tasted richer, damp with dew and edged in the weight of too many stories breathing through the trees.
They walked side by side as they followed voices toward a ridge overlooking a wide, trampled clearing.
Warriors moved below like restless storm clouds, their bare arms painted in slashes of blue and ochre, voices raised in challenge.
It looked like they were preparing for battle, but none of them wore armor.
Just kilts, belts, and reckless grins that usually preceded chaos.
Then someone pulled a stick from a nearby weapons rack and tossed it to another warrior, who caught it mid-spin and slammed a fist to his chest like he’d claimed a sword.
“What the hell are they doing?” Ward asked, frowning.
“Looks like sparring,” Viper muttered, squinting. “But that’s not a sword.”
They both watched as a second warrior—taller, broader, and grinning like he wanted someone’s spleen—stomped forward and jabbed the curved end of his wooden stick at the first man’s chest. A third warrior tossed something into the air.
A small ball. The moment it left his hand, the clearing exploded.
The two men lunged, sticks clashing in a blur of movement.
The ball launched like a comet through the air before it was snatched mid-run and hurled toward a crude wooden post staked in the ground.
A loud crash split the morning air as two of the sticks clashed together when two warriors fought over the ball. “That sounded painful.” Ward’s head turned from side to side as he tracked the play in the clearing.
“And that looked like someone’s ribcage just got cracked,” Viper replied as a warrior hooked the stick around the man who now had the ball and jabbed him hard.
“They aren’t wearing helmets or protection.”
“Definitely not OSHA approved.”
Ward’s laugh was startled, low, and rough in his throat, but it uncoiled some of the tension buried deep inside him.
Then he stilled, blinking hard as something flickered just at the edge of his vision.
He turned his arm slowly, heart stumbling.
The markings—the ones he was trying so hard not to think about—were growing, curling further up his forearm in slow, glowing lines of blue ink.
A second later, Viper swore under his breath and yanked up the sleeve of his own shirt. His marks pulsed too, synchronized in a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat… or a call.
They both stared. “Okay,” Ward said faintly. “That’s not normal.”
“I think it kinda might be.” Viper shrugged. “We’ll have to ask Juice and Trace, as they dealt with his shit already.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Should it?”
“I don’t know. You know more about it than me.”
“Doesn’t mean I like it.”
The battle with the small ball forgotten, he lifted his gaze slowly to meet Viper’s.
Whatever smartass remark he’d meant to say next evaporated.
Because for the first time, Viper wasn’t wearing that carefully constructed mask.
His expression was… open, vulnerable even, and behind it was something sharp, bright, and hungry.
It made his pulse stutter and his fingers itch to stroke over the markings on Viper’s arm.
He swallowed hard to keep the request for permission to do it from passing his lips.
He heaved a silent breath of relief when someone in the clearing below shouted, and he turned back to see what was happening.
“Setanta.”
He blinked in confusion when the entire field came to a screeching halt and scanned around to see who they were calling to.
“Setanta.”
The name cracked through the air like a lightning strike. Every warrior on the field turned as one. There didn’t appear to be any confusion or hesitation… just… awe.
Ward recognized the men standing at the edge of the playing field and tilted his head to one side. “Did they just?—?”
“They did,” Viper cut him off. “They called Trace that yesterday, too. I thought it was a title. Like a nickname or something.”
“Setanta is Cú Chulainn’s birth name,” Ward murmured, half to himself. His mouth had gone dry. “Before he earned the title by killing the hound of Culinan with a sliotar.”
“A what now?”
“That thing.” He pointed to the small leather ball. “I think it’s a sliotar. Used in one of Ireland’s national sports, hurling. I think that’s what they’re playing… only more brutal.”
Down in the field, Trace stepped onto the field with Juice trailing behind him. The crowd parted to let him through, and two warriors immediately held out a curved stick between them.
“Wait,” Ward said slowly. “He’s going to play?”
Viper’s arms folded tighter across his chest. “Apparently.”
Trace took the stick, tested its weight in his hand, then nodded. Ward felt a ripple pass through the crowd as if every man and woman on that field had recognized him not as Trace, but as Setanta. “Am I the only one getting chills?”
Viper didn’t answer, and when Ward glanced at him, his jaw was tight, and his eyes were locked on Trace like he was trying to calculate the threat level joining the field of play would cause for his man.
Ward didn’t miss the twitch in his fingers where they brushed against the hilt of the knife strapped to his thigh.
The game exploded again. But this time it wasn’t chaos.
It was poetry written in bruises and speed.
Trace moved like something that had been built for this—fluid and fast, his hurl a blur.
He ducked, dodged, and launched the sliotar so fast it whistled past the other players and flew dead center through the upright posts.
The warriors roared and two dove at Trace, trying to tackle him to the ground.
He vaulted between them, flipped the stick in one hand, and used the curved end to hook the sliotar out of the air again before it even hit the ground.
“Oh my God,” Ward breathed. “He’s… that’s… awesome.”
“It’s just a game,” Viper said, but his voice was rougher than usual.
He didn’t understand the slight tinge of anger in Viper’s voice. “No. It’s more than that. I think they’re honoring him, or maybe they’re proving themselves. Maybe even both.”
Trace slammed a goal home into the net under the crossbar between the uprights.
He spun, laughing, smeared with dirt and glory.
Ward nudged Viper and nodded toward where Juice was standing on the sidelines with his arms folded, watching the game.
“He looks like a proud momma bear watching her cub climb a tree for the first time.”
“Yeah.” Viper grinned at him. “Remind me to tease the shit out of him later, ‘kay?”
“You got it.” His breath hitched as the wind shifted and something curled under his skin again. He looked down, and the mating mark had reached his bicep.
Stop growing, damn it.
When he glanced sideways at Viper again, the same blue light glowed at the edge of the other man’s collar.
Something is coming.
This is only the beginning.
The internal warning sent a shiver down his spine.
He tucked his shoulders in as if to shield himself from it as the wind off the lake stirred his hair and brought with it the smell of smoke, wet grass, and wild magic.
His eyes tracked the players as they converged near the end of the field, a roar going up from one side of the crowd as the sliotar—a small, leather-covered ball that might as well have been shot from a cannon—shot through the air from midfield.
“Boss. Yo, Viper.”
Ward turned to see who was calling Viper, and the world shifted as a shriek went up from the crowd.
Move. Move.
Instinct screamed at him, and he whirled around. The ball—no, missile—was headed straight for his face. He didn’t have time to react, but Viper did.
He spun without warning, his body snapping toward Ward like something had yanked an invisible leash at the base of his spine.
One hand whipped up, and he caught the flying ball mid-air.
It sounded like a crack like thunder as Viper’s bare fingers snapped shut around it like it was nothing more than a soft toss.
Ward stumbled back in shock, his heart slamming painfully into his ribs.
Viper’s eyes—when they met his—were glowing. Lit from within like something ancient had cracked open behind his pupils.
They are silver.
How are his eyes silver?
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Ward couldn’t have if he’d wanted to because his throat had locked tight with the cold clutch of adrenaline.
Viper stared down at the ball in his hand, his fingers flexed like he wasn’t sure how it had ended up there. “I wasn’t even facing you,” Viper muttered under his breath. “How?”
Ward nodded slowly, gaze flicking from the ball back to the strange silver light in his eyes. “You weren’t.”
The silver in Viper’s eyes faded slowly, as if whatever had sparked behind them was settling back down again to embers instead of flames.
He threw the ball back toward the players on the field who were calling for it, and kept his eyes forward, watching the game closely as if he was waiting for another ball to come flying their way.
Ward didn’t miss the way the tattoos on Viper’s forearm had pulsed faintly during the whole thing—or how his own marks burned just a little in answer.