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