They both watched as a second warrior—taller, broader, and grinning like he wanted someone’s spleen—stomped forward and jabbed the curved end of his wooden stick at the first man’s chest. A third warrior tossed something into the air. A small ball. The moment it left his hand, the clearing exploded. The two men lunged, sticks clashing in a blur of movement. The ball launched like a comet through the air before it was snatched mid-run and hurled toward a crude wooden post staked in the ground.
A loud crash split the morning air as two of the sticks clashed together when two warriors fought over the ball. “That sounded painful.” Ward’s head turned from side to side as he tracked the play in the clearing.
“And that looked like someone’s ribcage just got cracked,” Viper replied as a warrior hooked the stick around the man who now had the ball and jabbed him hard.
“They aren’t wearing helmets or protection.”
“Definitely not OSHA approved.”
Ward’s laugh was startled, low, and rough in his throat, but it uncoiled some of the tension buried deep inside him. Then he stilled, blinking hard as something flickered just at the edge of his vision. He turned his arm slowly, heart stumbling. The markings—the ones he was trying so hard not to think about—were growing, curling further up his forearm in slow, glowing lines of blue ink.
A second later, Viper swore under his breath and yanked up the sleeve of his own shirt. His marks pulsed too, synchronized in a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat… or a call.
They both stared. “Okay,” Ward said faintly. “That’s not normal.”
“I think it kinda might be.” Viper shrugged. “We’ll have to ask Juice and Trace, as they dealt with his shit already.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Should it?”
“I don’t know. You know more about it than me.”
“Doesn’t mean I like it.”
The battle with the small ball forgotten, he lifted his gaze slowly to meet Viper’s. Whatever smartass remark he’d meant to say next evaporated. Because for the first time, Viper wasn’t wearing that carefully constructed mask. His expression was… open, vulnerable even, and behind it was something sharp, bright, and hungry. It made his pulse stutter and his fingers itch to stroke over the markings on Viper’s arm. He swallowed hard to keep the request for permission to do it from passing his lips. Heheaved a silent breath of relief when someone in the clearing below shouted, and he turned back to see what was happening.
“Setanta.”
He blinked in confusion when the entire field came to a screeching halt and scanned around to see who they were calling to.
“Setanta.”
The name cracked through the air like a lightning strike. Every warrior on the field turned as one. There didn’t appear to be any confusion or hesitation… just… awe.
Ward recognized the men standing at the edge of the playing field and tilted his head to one side. “Did they just?—?”
“They did,” Viper cut him off. “They called Trace that yesterday, too. I thought it was a title. Like a nickname or something.”
“Setanta is Cú Chulainn’s birth name,” Ward murmured, half to himself. His mouth had gone dry. “Before he earned the title by killing the hound of Culinan with a sliotar.”
“A what now?”
“That thing.” He pointed to the small leather ball. “I think it’s a sliotar. Used in one of Ireland’s national sports, hurling. I think that’s what they’re playing… only more brutal.”
Down in the field, Trace stepped onto the field with Juice trailing behind him. The crowd parted to let him through, and two warriors immediately held out a curved stick between them.
“Wait,” Ward said slowly. “He’s going to play?”
Viper’s arms folded tighter across his chest. “Apparently.”
Trace took the stick, tested its weight in his hand, then nodded. Ward felt a ripple pass through the crowd as if every man and woman on that field had recognized him not as Trace, but as Setanta. “Am I the only one getting chills?”
Viper didn’t answer, and when Ward glanced at him, his jaw was tight, and his eyes were locked on Trace like he was trying to calculate the threat level joining the field of play would cause for his man. Ward didn’t miss the twitch in his fingers where they brushed against the hilt of the knife strapped to his thigh.
The game exploded again. But this time it wasn’t chaos. It was poetry written in bruises and speed. Trace moved like something that had been built for this—fluid and fast, his hurl a blur. He ducked, dodged, and launched the sliotar so fast it whistled past the other players and flew dead center through the upright posts. The warriors roared and two dove at Trace, trying to tackle him to the ground. He vaulted between them, flipped the stick in one hand, and used the curved end to hook the sliotar out of the air again before it even hit the ground.
“Oh my God,” Ward breathed. “He’s… that’s… awesome.”
