Wereball: Hate At First Text (Wereball #1)

Chapter 1

YVAINE

Whoever said werewolves had gone civil—pursuing college degrees and nine-to-five jobs, leaving blood feuds and kidnappings to the history books—had clearly never been to a wereball game.

The goal was to score, but how you actually did it? Irrelevant.

No referees. No penalties.

Shielding my eyes, I lifted my chin toward the big, flashy screen. The score was 32–21. The Comets, my pack’s team, was smashing it.

Werewolf universities like ours played against each other over the course of a season, and the competition was beyond intense. Rabid. Almost ridiculous. Honor and pack pride, marinated in years of grudges, all collided in one muddy field.

Drumming, shouting, death threats, throats clearing to better hurl spit, animal snarls, air horns—the cacophony drowned the space, a typical wereball game soundtrack.

The arena transported you back to the days of the gladiators.

Of course, the Romans had had the excuse of not knowing any better, having happened before the Middle Ages.

But we did. Some tried to argue that we had improved.

Evolved. I supposed they were right; we didn’t mount our enemies’ heads on spikes anymore. Progress!

The rabid crowd roared, half-possessed by the spirits of wolves who’d died in old wars and needed more entertainment postmortem.

The classic “High-land-er! Go smash them!” chant rattled our section as we all watched our captain—my very own twin brother—pull off yet another dazzling display of athleticism.

Sitting in the Comets tribune with my friends, staring down at his frame, I could very well see how Lachlan was on fire that afternoon. And not just because of his flaming red hair, or because the sun seemed to hit him like a spotlight, as if it, too, were cheering for him.

He weaved through four midfielders and sprang up, his overtrained arm cocking back and catapulting the ball. His teammate, Gaius, caught it mid-sprint. Elbows out, he plowed through two rivals before slamming a touchdown that made the stands quake.

Everyone erupted.

Everyone except me.

I was too busy flinching as two rivals tackled Lachlan. No protective gear stood between his milky skin and the angry punches raining down upon him.

I clutched the emergency kit resting on my knees. I’d snatched one when I left the hospital lockers earlier, but I had only now noticed that I was still in my blue clogs from the clinic.

In one motion, Lachlan twisted free. Shattering two noses with synchronized elbows, he drove his knee into another’s gut. He finished with a right hook that launched the fourth guy into orbit—and probably left him seeing stars, a few planets, and maybe a comet or two.

I clasped my hands together, the tips of my index and middle fingers pushing against my mouth.

“Don’t hurt yourself, don’t hurt yourself, don’t hurt yourself,” I whispered.

That was my stadium chant. My knees bounced, my feet tapping the floor as if possessed by a crazed foot-spirit.

“Yvaine. Research shows that a tic such as this…” Amaia—my roommate, sometimes best friend, sometimes necessary buzzkill—tipped her chin toward my legs. “…can be indicative of Tourette syndrome.”

I pouted at her. “Is that supposed to help?”

Amaia’s shoulders shook with repressed laughter. “It’s supposed to be informative.”

We were right at the back of the Comets wing, which led me to a question: Why were my shoes sticking to everything?

“They’d better win, or I’m demanding a refund.”

Losing at wereball was a disgrace. The whole pack would mourn for days. My parents once wore black for an entire month.

“We don’t pay for tickets,” Amaia reminded me. It was a rarity she even showed up to the games, free or not. Her black hair absorbed 98% of the visible light, her makeup-less, dark eyes took in 97% of surrounding details, and her lips spilled 100% words of mild disdain.

“No, but they’ll need to pay me an inconvenience fee for my anxiety.” I took a sip of my Irn-Bru, my beer substitute during a game. “Apart from the eardrum damage.”

I watched two shirtless players crouch down, their partially shifted claws stabbing into the remaining grass.

They were so gigantic that they might as well have been classified as a different species.

Walking steroids in tight shorts and bare feet.

Every position required some degree of beastliness, with the captain at the very peak of the beast pyramid.

Just looking at them, it seemed clear they were the strongest members of their pack.

The Shooting Stars—a fan club led by another one of my roommates, Tiziano—started up their chants again, with drums banging and enough energy drinks in their fandom bloodstreams to power a small town.

Shouting into his megaphone, Tiziano stepped around a sack of bricks that were ready to be emptied, then picked up a barbed bat.

Random car parts were laid out next to them in organized rows for maximum post-game carnage.

Humans called it hooliganism. I called it primitiveness.

At least most wereball players were gifted with hard skulls, thank Stephen. Stephen Hawking, that is—the only man deserving of thanks on a daily basis, certainly more than any wolf deity.

Amaia patted my hand where it was drumming over my knee. “He’s looking at you again. I’ve counted five.”

Following her gaze, I understood. When I met the moss-green eyes of the defender—our tutor, Sillas Wilder—he turned away. Was that a blush, a rash, or a bloodstain on his cheeks? Hard to tell from here.

I pressed my lips into a tight line, hiding a grin. “Well, five is a quarter of the times Lachlan has looked at you.”

Her quiet gasp was loud enough for my werewolf ears. Despite herself, her attention flickered over to Lachlan. He was barking orders, the skin around his mouth rippling with the strength of his shouts.

The rival captain charged forward, slicing through our defense, only to meet Sillas head-on. The impact was like a car crash.

“That’ll need at least a dozen sutures.” I bit my thumb nail.

Amaia squinted. “Tibia?”

I leaned forward, narrowing my eyes. “No. Femur and sacrum. Possible comminuted fracture.”

“Hard to know without palpation or imaging,” Amaia hummed, nibbling the banh chung she got from her last visit home to Vietnam.

I never got into playing wereball. To me, the field looked more like an anatomy lesson than a sport.

Another rival came up behind Sillas and sunk his fangs into his left bicep, right above his tattoo—an island with a now-bleeding little palm tree. With a grunt, Sillas kicked the ball to my brother, who was trying to free himself from two opponents.

My hand clamped over my mouth as I took in the new scratches and bite marks decorating my twin. With all that constant worry about him taking up space in my brain like some freeloading tick, I glanced down at my green wristwatch. Six more minutes left on the clock.

I dove into my bag and resurfaced with my emotional support friend—an almond apple muffin.

While I peeled the wrapper, the field saw fangs peeling past mouths, fur bursting through skin, and bodies twisting as they rearranged.

Rival players were getting more desperate, shifting into their wolves mid-field.

A Comet wrapped his arms around a freshly shifted, sandy-brown wolf—and squeezed.

A crack, a wet sound, and a whimper tore from his muzzle.

Amaia elbowed me. “Hear that?”

I looked up and popped a chunk of muffin into my mouth. The wolf was convulsing now, furry chest heaving all wrong.

“Tension pneumothorax.” Brown crumbs spewed out of my mouth before I covered it. “Probably a punctured lung.”

Amaia clapped her hands once with a grin. “Well done!”

Our little guess-the-diagnosis game went on.

Years of watching wereball had at least turned us into decent field diagnosticians.

Not that it was too hard; before each game, players smeared themselves in Pure Lorea—a gel that burns like acid and blocks werewolf healing properties—just to prove they were tougher, to mock the rival team.

It certainly gave us enough time to tally up the compound fractures.

I sighed. We doctors couldn’t save people from their own stupidity just because white coats hang from our shoulders and Dr. sits before our names.

The gong banged.

The Comets won. My lungs deflated as tension released. Another game survived for Lachy.

Down on the field, my brother’s teammates hoisted him up onto their shoulders. The stands erupted. Our pack howled victory.

Across the arena, the Golden Furs and their losing fans began their petty, post-game ritual—throwing things at us. Rocks. Chairs. Fire bottles.

Welcome to wereball.

The biggest waste of medical supplies I’ve ever witnessed.

The floor buzzed under my soles, the arena quaking with a thousand footsteps pounding the ground.

Both teams’ Ultras—the crazy, obsessive fan clubs—descended toward the field, jumping the railings and sprinting straight at each other.

The space between them shrank like a fuse burning down until they clashed, two furious tectonic plates that wanted to remove each other from the map.

Tiziano, leading the charge for the Shooting Stars, let out a growl that would likely vibrate through the unlucky skulls of those in his vicinity for a good few seconds.

With a leap, he shifted—bones snapping, shirt ripping, fur bursting—and launched at a rival Ultra who’d spent the entire game heckling my twin.

Tiziano never forgave and never forgot, especially when it came to us or Lachlan. Pack loyalty was everything.

With one last glance at the war zone below, I pulled a book out of my bag.

Since I was stuck here, waiting for Dad, Lachlan, and Tiziano to be done with all the wereball-ness, I might as well be productive. I started re-reading chapter five, reminding myself that the exam was only a month away.