Chapter 33
YVAINE
During the break before the last quarter—by which point I’d been reduced to a human stress ball wrapped in tense flesh—my phone buzzed.
“Hello, Bunny Doc.” That voice. Half cheerful, half annoyed. My sigh must’ve been extra depressing, because he paused. “What’s wrong now? Did your pineapple candies fall on the floor when you gaped at your mate, or what?”
“I can’t stand my twin being targeted like that.” There was silence, then a weird sound. A curse or a shaky cough, or a mix of the two.
“He doesn’t even feel pain. Stop worrying.” He huffed so comically that I cracked a smile.
“But—”
“No buts!” he snapped. “He’s the captain for a reason. Even if it is of a pathetic team. The lad can fend for himself without you hovering.” His voice softened mockingly. “You know where your worry should go, don’t you?”
“Here we go,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.
“To. Your. Soulmate.”
I laughed, warmth curling in my chest, but still raised a brow at that scolding tone. “Well, nobody hit him seriously. He’s basically like a tractor.”
“A tractor, huh?” Amusement leaked into his voice. “Perfect. I’m telling him you called him that.”
“Don’t you dare, Lucien!” I yelped.
Rudolph snickered. “So, we’re meeting after the game, right?”
“I want to…but I also have to take care of Lachlan, and…”
“And…?” He stretched the word like a rubber band.
I took a deep breath. The vise in my heart was getting unbearable.
“And I…I kind of want to talk to Logan.” My face heated instantly. The thought of being in the vicinity of his lack of clothes and his muscles that seemed to have their own consciousness was too much.
“Bet he can’t wait to spread himself all over your cheating scent.”
Of course he had to reference me wearing Sillas’s sweater again. But wait, did Rudolph just…purr?
“You are so creepy!” I squawked. “I’ve never cheated!”
“Not as creepy as you are, bunny perv.” I could hear the smirk in his voice. “Your mate won’t be thrilled if this game ends in a draw. It’d be your fault, by the way.”
I was perplexed and slightly anxious. “My fault? How?”
“Weeeell, because you couldn’t stop ogling him the entire game! He could feel you switching between his ass and abs.”
My mouth opened. How did Rudolph catch me?
“Oh, and don’t even get me started on your calf fetish. Dang, I could almost feel you looking at mine!”
I did have a tiny obsession with muscular calves…but only ever since I’d seen Logan’s! And how the hell did Rudolph know? Was I that obvious?
How mortifying, to think that Logan could sense my gaze on his body parts…
“Shut up! You’re just a crazy, nosy reindeer!”
“Sure am. Nobody denied that. But you be careful, Yvaine.” His voice dropped an octave. “Because after feeling your eyes glued to him the whole fucking game, do you know what your mate’s gonna do the second it’s over?”
“I-I don’t think he felt—”
“He will hunt you down.”
After the awkward chat with Rudy—which had left me down one lung and with a thin film of sweat slicking my skin—I forced myself to focus on the game rather than him.
Thank Stephen, Lachlan wasn’t getting pummeled as much in the last quarter, but by then, his face was all swollen geometry, with puffed cheeks and shoulders blotching purple. Even worse, he’d slathered himself with that cursed Lorea, so the cuts just sat there, refusing to close.
The game stretched thin, tension unbearable on and off the field. The score swung back and forth like a pendulum, never settling. Each exclamation from the stands shifted further from a cheer and into something sharper, more bestial.
Everyone knew what was coming.
A draw in wereball? Suicide.
Nobody would tolerate it.
At least a win would make half the stadium happy. With a tie, not a single beast would leave satisfied. Some wouldn’t leave at all.
On the field, both sides were unraveling, slamming harder and hitting faster, every play hungrier for a snap or a scream.
The crowd’s noise blurred into one thick animal roar, but underneath it all, I could still hear the tick-tock-tick-tock of the game approaching its end.
My pulse spiked when I saw Lachlan gesturing his teammates close, heads bowing into a tight circle.
He was speaking fast, voice firm, his bloodied hands carving through the air with sharp gestures.
And they listened. Every single one of them.
Shoulders straightened and eyes lit back up like he’d just pumped fresh fire into their veins.
When the players broke the huddle, they weren’t limping anymore.
They charged the field with teeth bared and rage ready.
And just when I dared to breathe again, thinking we might actually limp to the finish line, the inevitable happened.
My twin and my mate. Face to face. Radiating enough testosterone to choke.
Highlander vs. Terminator. Only a strip of defenseless grass separated them.
Every muscle in my body went rigid as Logan sized up Lachlan, studying him with narrowing eyes, slow and surgical. I wondered if he was measuring the lines of Lachlan’s face against mine, mapping our shared bones, if he recognized my own eyes in Lachlan’s…
A slow grin crept up on one side.
Then his lips moved, the words lost in the riot of the crowd.
Despite their smiles, something told me there was nothing pleasant about what they were saying. I wanted to grab Tiziano’s megaphone and shout at the crowd to pipe down so I could hear.
Abruptly, Logan turned—straight at me. His hooded stare hit like a fist, drilling into my chest, causing seismic disturbances around my heart.
Lachlan’s gaze followed.
I was pinned between them, my skin crawling under the magnitude of their joined stares.
I had the sinister feeling Logan had dropped my name. The fake smile on my twin’s face faded as the one on Logan’s grew, turning downright feral.
Whatever he’d said must have been horrible.
Lachlan lunged at Logan with the same monstrous growl that had sent pigeons flying away from the rafters of our old house.
Before I could even blink—I didn’t dare—my twin gripped his rival’s neck and flung his fist forward, nailing him square in the jaw.
Logan simply let himself get hit, almost on purpose.
But only once.
Spitting blood, Logan shoved Lachlan away, snarling with a distorted grin and fixing his detached jaw back in place. My eyes widened as I caught a flash of his—
Crimson red eyes.
It looked like Logan’s wolf had eyes the same color as the liquid he’d just spat. The tip of his tongue flicked over the blood-stained split resting in the center of his lower lip.
The two of them closed the distance again, chest to chest, shoulders squared. Logan hissed words right into Lachlan’s face, while Lachlan jabbed a finger into his chest hard enough to leave a dent, snarling right back.
Meanwhile, the teams were lost without their captains. Player fought player, punching, biting, beating whoever they could. Who knew when the next chance to pummel their favorite rival would arise again?
The crowd was restless, waiting…
The gong hit like a death knell.
The arena was swept by blinding light. Rows upon rows of werewolves were caught in the lightning flash, their eyes reflecting the glow, fangs baring, lips curling.
A second later, a thunderclap split the belly of the sky. The stormy semi-darkness swallowed them up again, but the image stuck. It was fitting.
After all, it was the end of the game.
And there were no winners.
Boos turned to roars, roars to howls. Skin sprouted fur, ears turned pointy. Glass cracked, seats were ripped loose, and Molotov cocktails flew like shrapnel.
Tiziano, his barbed bat in hand, was already invading the arena with his gang, like an infestation rising from a crack in hell’s ceiling.
Across the way, the Dark Diamonds’ Ultras did the same.
The two masses collided in the middle, two avalanches from two enemy mountains.
The stadium went nuclear.
Delirious.
It was war.
“I’m out of here.” Amaia staggered up, bumping into the seat behind her, the same off edge in her voice as her hand rubbed her chest counterclockwise.
Makena had already vanished, five pineapple candy wrappers left scattered across her empty seat.
My mother charged down, long hair streaming behind her, before she vaulted the railing like a Nordic queen, while Dad eradicated his entire seat and stalked down, claws still sunk into the plastic.
I bolted.
Out among the battles.
Chaotic blurs of fur and fangs were everywhere. Wolves fighting wolves, bits of fur and flesh flying around as they mauled each other, striking across the legs and shoulders. Some remained humans, others merely pretended to be. Most had unleashed.
I heard Tiziano’s maniacal laughter and caught him twirling the barbed bat for momentum before slamming it into the back of the Dark Diamonds’ Ultras’ boss while he was busy pummeling one of ours.
“Medicine lesson one,” Tiziano crooned. “Break a werewolf’s bones, and they’ll heal back all wrong if you don’t reset them first.” The man’s left arm was cracked, as was his right wrist. “This is for targeting my boy, Lachlan, you inferior slug.”
I saw a flash of Makena arguing with Gaius and a girl from biology. Makena slapped Gaius, and…was that Amaia in a staring contest with one of the Dark Diamonds’ players? He was a huge, shirtless beast of a guy who looked like he’d forgotten all about the game, where he was, and even his own name.
Mate alert.
The wereball lay forgotten in a puddle of sadness and mud. A raindrop ran down the side like a tear. The ball everyone had wanted was now useless, purposeless.
I warred between three orders—one from my heart to find my twin; one from my brain to go home; one from my wolf, the loudest of the three, to find my mate.
Mark him.
Claim him.
Scent him.
And she won when I came across a certain sight.
Logan. Wet, wind-blown hair, caged in a ring of fans, a whole pack of she-wolves orbiting him like hungry satellites.
My sanity, my strong morality, were impaled upon possessiveness, pure and raw.
Weeks of uncertainty, my lack of sleep, my lack of my mate, and my need for him got the better of me.
All I wanted was to rip their eyes out and squish them between my fingers, so I would be the last thing their offensive eyes saw.
One girl dared to press an ice pack against his left pec, a sweet smile tilted up at him.
And when he smiled back? Said something I couldn’t hear?
Red. That was all I saw.
I stormed toward them, every step fuming.
Something hot burned between my shoulder blades—eyes tracking me. Don’t care.
My pocket buzzed—Rudy, no doubt. Don’t care.
My vision blurred with the color shift, fangs and claws joining the festivities.
Some of the girls felt it, my Alpha legacy rolling off me, thick and suffocating, ready to finally be used. They scattered, but others stayed, either too stupid or too cocky.
In retrospect, I knew I was acting immature, like some sort of teenage animal. I wasn’t myself at all. Calm and rational Yvaine had been swept away, possessed by a furry creature starving for her mate.
In my defense, he was my unmarked mate. I had a strong desire for him trapped inside me, and now it was leaking out like a noxious gas.
The first she-wolf to suffer my fury was the one who had just touched his arm, grabbing his attention. My hand snapped to her throat, and I shoved her into the dirt. She fell like a tree struck by lightning.
The second came at me with a kick. Wrong move. My claws caught her outstretched leg mid-air and plunged into her calf muscle.
My wolf had taken over completely. Blood bloomed hot over my knuckles as the girl screamed, folding down onto herself. I was so mad that I didn’t even care about the waste of time I would cause to whichever fellow doctor would have to reset her leg.
The third she-wolf—the ice pack one—ducked behind Logan, hugging his waist and clinging to him like a leech. I barely heard the scared “I’m his cousin!” before she bolted.
I lunged after her, but hands caught me by the waist.
Sparks.
I slapped them away, panting. They let go a moment later, almost saying, “Fine. Go. But we could trap you if we wanted to.”
I focused on my infuriating mate and those beautifully shocked eyes that hadn’t wavered from me since my appearance. My gaze roamed his face, from the bruise beneath his left eye to the spider-web-like crack in the corner of his mouth. His lips twitched, but he didn’t smile.
My breath caught, then shuddered free, as if unwilling to part with his scent.
A heartbeat later, the steel gray in his eyes shifted, melting into liquid metal. Bright, glinting with a message that my heart readily understood.
That awakened something ferocious in me.
It didn’t matter who was watching, whose eyes were burning holes in my back, whose voice was bellowing my name from the chaos. Didn’t matter that my phone was buzzing.
I grabbed the nape of his neck, a fist tangling in the fluffy hair that my fingers recalled from our first kiss, claws scraping his scalp, and I yanked his face to mine.
My mouth crashed against his like a meteor hitting Earth.
Rudolph had been wrong, so very wrong. I was the one who had gone hunting.
Our teeth bumped, lips fused, tongues dueled. Our own sort of post-game war.
His moan—low, deep—brittled me.
My claws pierced the flesh meant for my teeth (and mark) to keep him in place. Blood salted my tongue.
We broke only when breath became survival.
Our noses and foreheads continued to kiss, still pressed together, while the sparks electrocuted the tiny space we allowed between us. He tipped my head up, making me look into his fiery gaze. My face caught fire in turn, and he leaned down to kiss the tip of my nose.
That was when I heard it.
“Hello, Bunny Doc.”