Me: No more okra for you. And how come we never play on days it snows?
FriesWithThat: Because the half inch of sleet we get twice a year was totally going to conceal you?
Me: I should get a camo flak jacket. Or Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.
FriesWithThat: Believe me, River and August have been geeking out like crazy for years trying to reverse engineer that particular tech.
Dropping my phone and rifle in the grass, I tore through the trees towards the nearest locator beacon. We weren’t allowed to remove our target vests without forfeiting the game. If I failed to reconstruct it shifting back, I’d be eliminated.
Branches tore at my face and hair as I descended down a steep hillside, sharp-tongued wild grasses clawing at my fatigues. At least a minute had passed. Maybe more. Then I spotted it. Just across a shallow creek was a black mesh collar.
“Score,” I murmured, and let the change tear me from my human form.
Anything could go down in a lightning round. Didn’t make it to a collar before the counter ticked down? Automatic out. Beacons weren’t assigned, so if two people went for the same one, shit got real fast. The collars were August’s custom design, fitted with sensors to register hits for a half-meter radius. He’d come up with a trigger that was bite-activated with a firing laser located at shoulder height. My little brother? Freaking. Genius.
Wriggling my head into the collar, I got my paws back under me just in time to see a dark figure crashing through the trees, still in human form. Topher. And if I could see him—
Snatching up the trigger in my teeth, I fired. The laser sighting seared my visual field, streaking the night sky like this was eighties night in a club from hell.
Snarls sounded as I splashed my way back through the creek daintily on my toes, trying to keep the electronics from getting wet. Ethan learned that lesson the hard way last year and fried his way out of the game. A red laser sight passed just over my ears.
Fracking. White. Fur.
Growling, I hit the dirt. My collar vibrated with a hit anyway. I growled again. No more barbeque for these people. Three hits and you were out in a lightning round. And as West had smugly reminded me, I was about as conspicuous as a polar bear on newly poured asphalt. Next year, I was rolling in the dirt even if it made me smell like roadkill for a week. It took me ten minutes of backtracking and firing over my shoulder for cover to get clear. Snarls sounded out in the dark. Slinking behind a tree, I scanned the gully below me. My collar buzzed again. One more hit and I was out. I whipped my head to the north, trying to decide which way to bolt—
—when the electronics powering the collar went dead. A high-pitched whistle sounded. Relief flooded me. And then I inwardly swore. Right now, all across the tournament field, River and my mom, and everyone else who could easily shift with weapons in hand would be transforming back. And my phone and rifle were off in the grass where I’d dropped them.
Run.
Half an hour later, I’d decided my brothers were either full on evil geniuses or just plain evil. West’s official game app had popped up, notifying us that Topher had been eliminated. Brody had used a burner phone to lure River out, then sniped him from the high ground, taking him down to four life bars. Our kid brother was way too reliant on his powers, accustomed to being able to passively overhear the thoughts of anyone within a certain radius of his position unless he actively suppressed his abilities. All neural manipulators could extract thoughts to one degree or another. It was how they rewrote memory. But most had to work at it. The raw power that my brother had manifested with at puberty had pretty much freaked all of us out.
Down on my stomach, I scanned the steep limestone ravine below me for movement. Light flickered somewhere far off in the trees. A branch snapped and my hackles rose. The lights from the house shone several miles off in the distance. My phone buzzed in my pocket. Carefully testing the air (after Brody’s killer move, everyone was on edge), I used one hand to slide it out.
BabyGotBake: Where are you?
Me: This another ambush? Because remember who took your turn on cat poop duty this morning…
BabyGotBake: OMG. Must we talk about the litter box from hell? Permanently scarred here.
An image came through. Lacey stood reflected in the mirror of the upstairs bathroom in nothing but a bra and black lacy panties, possibly the smallest pair of black lacy panties ever made.
A growl vibrated deep in my chest, the moon’s call singing in my blood like a drug. The bond flared, the connection between us sharpening like a rope pulling taut.
Me: If this is an ambush…
BabyGotBake: We both know I don’t do coy.
Lacey’s heartbeat fluttered like a caged moth, wild and heady. She wanted me to chase?
Hell yeah.
Charging through the trees, I sent Lacey the mental image of what I planned to do to her once I caught up. My lips slowly tasting every inch of her body. One inch in particular—
She stumbled. I growled, feeling myself thicken. You want to play, baby? Moonlight streamed down through the high craggy branches overhead, casting the wild Texas grassland beyond in a patchwork of starlight and shadow. I emerged out into an open field, pulse roaring higher every second. Something darted off to my right. I turned. A shot nailed me dead on in the center of the chest.
The hair rose at the back of my neck, adrenaline coursing through me like wildfire.
She. Did. Not.
Growling, I shifted direction. I was running on raw animal power, the wolf in the driver’s seat. Feral desire roared in my blood, the beast’s base instinct to hunt fraying what little remained of my control. I leaped a fallen log. Lacey whipped around, peeling off a string of shots that nearly laid me out flat on my back. Heat flared through the bond. I sent an image of her down on her knees, lowering my fly as I fisted her hair—
Lacey gasped, pulse racing. I stroked the claiming mark she’d left on my biceps, feeling the instant her breathing synched with mine. Chasing her out into the meadow, I took one shot to the vest before yanking the rifle from her hands. I threw it to the ground, growling. Her pupils dilated.
“So you lured me out here.” He bit my bottom lip. “Shot me down to four life bars.” There went my target vest. “And now you think you’re going to have your way with me?”
“Consider it payback for the four cases of pineapple that showed up at Blair’s just before I left to come here.”
“Um, yeah. Not me.”
“Stupid North Austin pack—"
I captured her face in my hands, cutting her off with a kiss.
I read once that the average person falls in love five times before they meet their soulmate. Human or shifter, we’re fractured beings with fragile hearts, each of us wandering through life in search of that singular connection, that one person who can make our heart race from the moment they enter a room. The person for whom you’d go out at 2 a.m. in the rain just to find Ben and Jerry’s and a bottle of painkillers on nights when being a girl sucked. The person who would spend four hours hunting down the biggest spider ever in your kitchen. And never tell your brothers when it turned out to be dryer lint.
The first time I knew I loved Lacey Blair, it was on a warm April night sitting out on the back tailgate of my truck. Her hair was pulled up into one of the high ponytails I loved twirling my fingers through, and we were eating chocolate dipped cones from the Dairy Queen in the next town over because I couldn’t afford for us to be seen together. Thousands of stars blanketed the sky overhead. The air smelled of dewy spring wildflowers. Like hope. And if ever I’d believed wishes might be granted, even impossible ones, my sixteen-year-old self believed it there under that canopy of stars.