Kresley Cole - MacRieve

He lifted Mam’s hand to his face. When it did not lovingly stroke his cheek, as it had thousands of times before, Da roared once more, then whimpered with grief.

Mam had come to this cursed place for Will, to save her son. He didn’t know what disgusted him more, his part in all this—or the fact that he grieved Ruelle’s death nearly as much as Mam’s.

At the thought, he bashed his fists against his head, face twisting. What is wrong with me? Sick, sick! His beast kept trying to rise, to shield Will from pain. But Will wanted the agony, needed it.

Because of him, all was lost. Their family broken.

Ah, no, the wee babe. Little Isla. He pulled at his hair, falling to his knees beside Munro. All my fault.

He wished to every god in the heavens that he could die bloody, die on the spot, could trade his life for his mother’s.

Munro turned to him—but instead of the hatred Will expected, Munro’s watering eyes flickered over his face with what looked like pity. I don’t deserve pity! He wished his father had struck him harder, and more. He wished Munro would hit him.

As Will’s own tears fell, he and Munro stared at each other. Hate me, brother! As I hate myself!

After what felt like hours, Da turned to his sons, emotion burning in his eyes. But it was not the grief Will had expected.

It was resolve.

And Will knew his father would be dead within a week. Where your mate goes, you follow. . . .

“Fire comes in all intensities. A hotter tongue of flame can devour another. Surely the hottest can sear a man clean.”

—UILLEAM ANDRIU MACRIEVE, CHIEFTAIN OF THE NOVA SCOTIA SETTLEMENT OF CLAN MACRIEVE

“The right place at the right time never comes to people standing still.”

Starfire Stadium, Seattle, Women’s Soccer League Finals

PRESENT DAY

Yank my jersey again, Todd, and I’ll shove my cleat up your vaj,” number eleven said.

Wide-eyed, Chloe gasped. “Who told you I like that?” Chloe and her teammates on the Seattle Reign called this player Handbagger, because she hit like a little old lady. “Your cleat should be so lucky, Handbagger.” For good measure, Chloe yanked on eleven’s jersey again as she jockeyed for position against the much larger girl.

Trash-talking and rough play were all a part of professional soccer. Chloe had the scars—and foul mouth—to prove it.

On the other side of the field, the ball went out of bounds. She took a breather, pulling up the hem of her jersey to wipe her face, rolling her eyes when camera flashes multiplied. She gazed over the stands, saw the line of shirtless fanboys painted with the Reign’s colors: royal blue and midnight black. At halftime, they’d sung “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” to her, and yelled, “Marry me, T-Rex,” her soccer nickname.

Despite being the league’s smallest center striker—traditionally a tall, burly player’s position—Chloe was arguably the best and a crowd favorite. Fans liked that she was ferocious on the field, liked that she still had attitude off it.

She ran her fingers through her short hair, analyzing earlier plays. Tonight she’d been unstoppable, seeing openings and lanes as if other players were moving in slo-mo. She’d already scored a brace—two goals—against the Boston Breakers, tying the game. One more goal would earn Chloe a hat trick, not bad for the championships.

Somewhere in the stands, the assistant coach for the Olympic team watched this nail-biter keenly. Even Chloe’s dad had carved out time from his constant work travel to be here. He stood off by himself in the corridor beside the VIP seats, giving her hand signals. Her part-time trainer and biggest fan.

Yes, she’d been on fire this game. But she was also seriously on edge. Over the last few days, she’d been going through some . . . changes, as if all her senses were becoming supercharged.

Or, she was going crazy.

She’d see tracers in her vision and hear sounds from much too far away. Even now she swore she could smell the roll of Tums in Coach’s pocket.

And the cherry ChapStick one of the fanboys wore.

Each night, she’d been waking up drenched in sweat, fresh from bizarre dreams that left her shaken. . . .

The ref blew the whistle. Ball in play. Uneasiness forgotten. She and Handbagger jockeyed.

“Here comes the boom, bitch,” Chloe said as she spun, evading her. She secured a flying pass, did an inside hook turn, and readied the ball for the launch—

Suddenly she stumbled. Above all the noise in the stadium, she’d heard a single cell phone ring, a pinging so loud she winced. Handbagger capitalized, almost snaring the ball, but Chloe passed it behind her with a heel kick; luckily a teammate was right there to collect. It would all look planned.

Only her team would know something was off. Whenever Chloe got the ball within this proximity to the goal, she was lethal—and selfish. As a finisher, she’d been trained to ball-hog in the strike zone.

As Dad liked to say, “You don’t hand off to a weaker player, and they’re all weaker players. They feed the ball to you. ”

So why had she botched her shot? Why had she heard one phone above all the rest of the sounds? She glanced at her dad, saw he’d taken a call, pacing the corridor. What the hell was more important than his only daughter’s championship game? Sure, he often had work concerns, but if he managed to get to a game, he was here.

Across the field, the Breakers’ right wing snagged the ball with a clean tackle. Chloe could only wait and hope as the player ran it down the field. The crowd was now deafening, the other team’s momentum building.

Yet Chloe could somehow hear her father’s voice as if he were just beside her.

“Is the Lykae capture complete?” he asked.

Lykae? Capture? Even weirder than hearing her father was that she could make out bits and pieces—from the caller. She detected tons of background noise, like you’d hear from a war zone on CNN, and a man’s voice: “In progress, sir . . . not going down without a fight . . . tranqued him . . . matter of time now, Commander.”

Had he just called Dad “Commander”? Of freaking what?

“How much damage?” Dad asked.

“. . . threw our own tank at us, sir.”

Dad scrubbed his hand over his salt-and-pepper buzz cut. “I warned you against targeting a wolf without Magister Chase present.”

Magister. Wolf. Lykae. Tank-throwing. What the hell?

Her dad was ex-army, now sold computer systems to military installations. Dustin Todd was, in essence, a tech guy. The driest, most un fanciful man ever to live. He simply didn’t talk about paranormal stuff, much less riff with some guy like they were Dungeons and Dragons fanatics.

She grew light-headed, the moment surreal. How could this be possible?

“I still don’t understand the soothsayer’s insistence with this one,” Dad said. “What’s the tactical value of one werewolf? Did she say?”

Dear God, her dad was talking about a mythological monster and a psychic.

“No, sir . . . left as soon as we’d laid the . . . wolf’s going down at last. They’re moving in . . . I’ll confirm the capture.”

Apparently, her dad was having some kind of psychotic break.

Maybe she was too. She couldn’t actually be hearing him. She was losing her sanity and—equally important—this game.