Page 40 of Chaos At Second Sight

A perfect spiral. The ball dropped into Clyde’s waiting palms, and…touchdown.

Pamela threw both fists into the air. “Nice one, guys!”

A girl from my team patted my arm, her nails scratching my tattoos. “You’re so talented! Play a lot?”

I gave her a brief nod as we jogged back to our lines.

“That wasn’t nice, Rudolph.” The familiar, melodic voice slid over my skin like warm honey.

I skidded to a stop and turned, grinning. “Come on. She was just congratulating me.”

“I wasn’t talking about Nikita touching you.”

I breathed in her scent like an addict and fought back a moan. “Jealousy isn’t a good trait, Bunny Doc.”

Her nose crumpled in that adorable way of hers. “You shoved poor Raul!”

“The Mop? Allegedly.”

“And we aren’t even in a relat—” Before she could finish that sentence and ruin my good mood, I reached up and stole the elastic holding her bun. I looped the band around my wrist and bolted, the image of her hair cascading and fluttering all around her flustered, beautiful face, the last thing in my mind.

“Hey!” she yelled after me. “Give it back!”

I looked over my shoulder. Big mistake.

Fuck, she was even more lethal all windswept and irritated.

“Your bun looked like an onion anyway!” I teased, running backward.

“And you’re a cheap magpie, Rudolph!”

I chuckled, dodging two players who charged me for a tackle. Her cousins. So I generously chose not to flatten them.

I glanced down at the purple trophy around my wrist. From now on, this was mine. Just like her.

Oh yeah. This is gonna be fun.

YVAINE

Nope. This isn’t fun at all.

And not because it was raining from every direction. But because Logan was so hotly infuriating. Or infuriatingly hot, depending on the perspective.

After an hour of wereball, I was soaked and panting, my hair sticking to my face, neck, and shoulders thanks to a certain hair tie thief. And across the field, only in shorts, as if the lashing weather was decorative, said thief hadn’t sweated a drop!

Watching him move was distracting. The speed. The power. The way he changed direction. I was fairly sure he was holding back, too. A wave of pride washed through me.

“Mate is incredible!” Zelda gushed. “Look at how his fingers grip the toy!”

“It’s a football, not a toy.”

So far, he had scored twice and, entirely by coincidence (not), injured three guys on my team. Yet he behaved flawlessly with my family members, he and Uncle Clyde already acting like lifelong buddies. Figures.

Down by five points, my team had just regained the ball. The only one who really cared was Lachlan, barking orders left and right. Even though I was the captain, I let him, since my motto was participation is the important thing.

Lachlan launched the ball in my direction, from approximately another postcode, and I sprinted toward the end zone. A girl lunged for me but I dodged her—Anna, who had spent the last hour watching my mate more than the ball. Zelda supplied an image of her being swallowed by a sinkhole.

The wereball field was enormous, and with only twenty-four players spread across it, finding open space wasn’t hard. At that moment, I was alone, kudos to Lachlan’s perfect throw.