Chapter 1 #2
Amaia mirrored my action, pushing her reading glasses up her nose. Her life revolved around two things: studying 24/7 to become the greatest oncologist in history, and working overtime to pay for the education that would make her into the ultimate warrior against cancer.
Someone was tossed into the seat next to me. His head hit the iron, hard; he spat blood near my conveniently not-white clogs.
“Here you go.” I handed him a couple of disinfectant wipes, knowing what germs could work their way into his system with all that bleeding.
If modernity imposed rules upon civilization, wereball allowed none. It was a tool to get back to one’s origin, to be wild, to unleash yourself. It was an excuse to destroy the future Beta of a pack or to yell at an Alpha.
Shortly after, a whole watermelon detonated against Amaia’s shoulder in a showering waste of vitamins and black seeds.
She shut her book with a sharp snap, and off came the circular reading glasses.
She shook them, splattering sticky sludge onto my sleeve before dropping them neatly into my waiting hand.
And then she hurled her precious book, smacking a rival girl square in the forehead.
I covered my mouth, eyes widening. A broken laugh slipped through my fingers.
Amaia. Throwing. A book. Her one true love.
Unthinkable. That was like a priest drop-kicking a Bible.
“Rickettsia bores me anyway.” She popped her knuckles. “I’m going in.”
With a giggle, I picked up where I’d left off. Every few minutes, I ducked left or right to avoid flying debris—rocks, cans, and at one point, an umbrella depicting a pink cat waving its paw.
“Poor kitty.”
“Her Alpha Highness! Too superior to join us peasants?” Some rival wolves were mocking me from down on the field. “Or are you just a coward, Alpha Daddy’s girl?”
First of all, why not Mommy’s girl? My mom was just as Alpha as my dad. My jaw twitched as the same group snickered like hens that had too-often escaped broken necks and feather plucking.
“Don’t gloat too much!” they shouted.
I wasn’t. At all.
“You might’ve beaten us, but the Terminator is going to decimate your high Comety asses!”
My eyes zeroed in on their T-shirts, each proudly declaring Terminate Me!, before they performed a full roll inside my sockets. Though they were Golden Furs, they still fawned over the silver eyes and smirking mouth of another team’s captain.
The ‘Terminator’ was the captain of our greatest rival college, my pack’s most hated werewolf, and my twin’s biggest enemy. His nickname was self-explanatory. I’d never met him, but apparently, all he ever did was smirk, cheat, and beat up rival players during the game.
And that, right there, was something I’d never understood—even though I specialized in neurology.
Why would any functioning brain allow fairly-intelligent-looking women, women who were in their prime, to idolize some dude whose only merit was breaking every bone and tearing through every muscle in front of him?
But I’d already wasted enough study time; I wasn’t wasting my voice as well. Without a second glance, I flipped a page. Then another.
Until a yellow garden chair flew toward me.
I bolted up and caught the seat with both hands, shock reverberating through my arms. At least it shook my blood into circulation.
Baring my elongating fangs, my wolf, Zelda, glared through me. With the blue in our eyes glowing from our unwavering stare, I flung the seat straight back at them. Gasps and a whimper broke out of their surprised mouths as one werewolf plummeted to the ground, the seat crushing her.
When I sat back down, I poured some antiseptic into my hands. I call that self-defense.
I glanced back down at the pit and noticed that Dad had also made it there, one silver-ringed hand clamped around my brother’s arm, the other slicing the air. The two of them were all grins and spit, chatting like they weren’t standing in the middle of a post-game apocalypse.
Blood had begun dripping into Lachlan’s left eye from a slash across his forehead. He merely gave his head a sharp shake, spraying crimson like it was sweat, and grinned wider.
I sighed, closing my book. Time to go patch up my twin and his seventeen wounds.
Yes, I’d counted them.
Like I said, I’d had time.
But first, sunscreen.
I squeezed the 50 SPF lotion into my hand, the sound resembling the intestinal issues a patient had subjected me to just yesterday.
“You forgot your ears,” came a familiar voice.
Sarcastic, but correct nonetheless. I squeezed some onto my index finger and dabbed the tips of my ears, then smeared downward over their entire length.
“I don’t take melanoma lightly.” I offered some to him.
And there he was, an almost-naked player sporting ripped shorts.
They didn’t need to leave anything to the imagination; I’d seen everything already.
Scratches crisscrossed a wide chest shaped not just by genetics but also years of training, a swollen eye was turning black, and a crooked nose desperately needed fixing.
Sillas waved his hand. “I don’t need it.”
Typical male attitude. They thought themselves invincible. I saw too many wives and daughters back at the hospital with stubborn men refusing to do their check-ups.
“Great game, Sillas.” I smiled up at him. “You were like a wall.”
“Thanks, Yvaine…” He trailed off, gazing at the book. His dimple popped. “Good read?”
He squatted down, a medium-sized rock swooshing right past his head, and took a seat in the empty spot behind me.
“I just can’t get enough of bubonic plague and leprosy.” I showed him the cover.
Sillas cleared his throat. “I loved them, too—the way the virus is persistent with the host. Um, I mean, not that I’m rooting for them to, you know… spread everywhere.”
I flashed him another smile, standing. “See you on Sunday?”
“Actually, there’s this new book café.” He scratched his left pec, arm bulging. “Want to check it out? Like, together?”
Sillas was a sweet guy, if you looked past the ferocious werewolf player. He had good hygiene and a promising future ahead of him as a professor in the Anesthesia and Resuscitation Department.
The only issue?
Not my fated mate. And we both knew it; we could recognize them by scent or eye contact.
In our world, it didn’t matter if you loved someone else.
Working behind the scenes, Ms. Moon Goddess would always get in your way and impose upon us a certain someone of her choice.
I’d heard that meeting your mate was like consuming a spiked drink with irreversible effects and suddenly finding yourself in an arranged marriage, all braided into one.
Mates were still a big deal in our culture, but no one was in a hurry to find theirs anymore. Nowadays, werewolves didn’t stumble into their mates as teens, like used to happen for past generations, when big mate hunts and meetups between packs were seasonal events.
My own mate had better be tucked away somewhere in Europe, so I could find him when I took a vacation—after six more years of med school.
Alternatively, he could be a professor or an attending surgeon in whatever hospital would hire me…
A soulmate should fit my schedule, and anyone outside my field simply wouldn’t.
I only have one real rule, though. A sacred, non-negotiable rule.
For the love of Stephen, he’d better not be a wereball player.
But maybe that was too simple, because obviously, my ideal mate would never like all that violence.
“Um…” I dropped my bag onto my lifted knee, shoved my book inside, and zipped it closed. As my eyes wandered, they met those of a coffee-brown wolf below. Tiziano.
Did that animal just wink at me?
“Not sure they have oat milk. They should, right?”
I grabbed my agenda, flipping through the pages. A date would take longer than our usual Sunday meet-ups. “I’ll have to get back to you. This week’s impossible.”
After we hugged goodbye, I watched him dodge the fans and leave the field in his wolf form, a blur of sugar-brown, mid-length fur, just like his hair.
Sillas and I were NMWB.
Non-fated mates with benefits.
We didn’t date. Just had a sex agreement. Before Sillas, my luck in the phallic department had been about as promising as a defib with a dead battery.
We’d learned about each other’s bodies the way I had once memorized the periodic table, using either Lunex or HowlSafe—condoms for were-swimmers.
Physical contact helped my body deal with the constant stress of medical school and my personal grief.
In fact, it all started with him being my cuddle friend.
Long hugs after long shifts. Hard coffees after harder nights.
But today? He’d asked me on a real date.
Alarm bells clanged in my head.
Was this actually smart? We both knew this agreement between us had an expiration date.
Ultimately, what harm could dating your NMWB do, since we both knew not to have expectations?
But what if I said yes, and then my actual mate showed up tomorrow?