“What did he do this time?” asked Henrietta, a girl from our pack, from her place at Sillas’s side. She clasped his arm, and I smiled at them every time they looked my way. He didn’t seem happy with my encouragement.
“He kidnapped the mate of the Golden Furs’ captain to distract him during the game against Hymanakan.” There was a solemn pause. “They got destroyed.”
I shoved more fries into Lachlan’s mouth. “But is she okay? Did they find her?”
“She’s alive,” Lachlan said while munching, “but I really hope they catch this Matenapper and give him what he deserves. Hey, these fries didn’t come with extra salt!”
“Extra salt is bad for you.”Extrameant buckets of salt to him.
The Matenapper. That was the nickname the media gave him. At first, everyone thought it was just an urban legend. Drunk werewolves swapping ghost stories.Lock your mate up before the Matenapper comes!But then a pattern emerged—same method, same timing, same signature—and the authorities finally admitted it was real. Turned out, the Matenapper was like a hitman for hire, only instead of ending lives, he temporarily ‘borrowed’ soulmates to turn the tide of wereball games. All for the right price. The victims were always returned alive, shaken but intact…except for one. Broken neck.
After the wereball committee threatened to ban entire teams for four years if they were found to be involved with the Matenapper, slapping them with fines big enough to bankrupt the whole pack, the kidnappings stopped. Everyone relaxed, assuming the creep had retired.
No one ever found out who they were. No witnesses, no scent trails, no digital traces.
“This time, she’d been abused. Cigarette burns on her arms. But she was returned a few weeks after the game.”
“Horrible,” Amaia scoffed. “But you know what that means, don’t you?”
She nudged me in the hip, and I answered, “What?”
She pierced me with a look.
“We’ll play the Dark Diamonds instead. Next game.” My brother shrugged.
Oh, Stephen.
My heart leapt.
“Yva? I’m waiting!” Lachlan pinched my under-trained calf as a reminder.
I was holding a container of garlic cheese fries and wings while he carried me, for I was his feeder. Distracted by the news, however, I ended up stuffing too many French fries in his mouth, and he almost choked.
My twin was going to play against my mate.
The most feared game in the history of wereball was happening too soon for my mental preparation.
“Thank the goddess that I don’t have a mate for the Matenapper to get his dirty hands on!” someone exclaimed.
“Too bad the Terminator doesn’t have one. We could pay the guy to get her,” Gaius said, sipping from the bottle of mineral water in his hand.
If they hadn’t laughed at his joke, they would have heard my heartbeat stop. Amaia glanced at me, brows pinching.
“I don’t needhisinvolvement to win against some Dark Diamond buffoons,” my twin grunted before taking a bite of the burger I placed next to his mouth, basically eating half of it in one go.
When I slid into my bed that night, my exhausted mind was too worried to sleep. Instead, I took out my phone, logged onto Instagram, and checked a specific profile.
After some time, I finally managed to fall asleep with my mate smiling at me from a photo showing off his big grin.
The last thought before darkness enveloped me was wondering if he, too, had a picture of me.
CHAPTER 25
YVAINE
The first kiss.
How many poets had squeezed their artistic brains dry to produce a love haiku worth reading? How many times had minstrels chanted the joy of a first kiss to ease the harshness of medieval courts? How many rogues had climbed balconies to steal a kiss from their forbidden love, risking their lives for an exchange of softness?
