Wow. Those are your words of wisdom?

“I’m not old enough to be wise, so yeah. Pretty much.” I can sense his smile fade. “Also, this isn’t the only bloodstone in the world. It’s the easiest to get our hands on, but it’s not the only one. So whatever happens in this game, it’s going to be okay. Okay?”

The tightness in my chest eases. Thank you.

“Good. Now go kick that smug werewolf’s ass, will you, please?”

I grit my teeth. I’ll do my best.

I take a deep breath and stare back across the line at Cole’s team. They still look like the biggest assholes in the school, so that hasn’t changed.

But the knot in my stomach is a lot looser, and Hudson’s words keep playing in my head. No matter what happens here, everything is going to be okay. I can work with that.

“Ready?” Flint asks from where he and Jaxon are lined up in the center of our team.

When we all nod, he grins and says, “Okay, then. Let’s kick some alpha werewolf ass.”

Two seconds later, the whistle blows.

Cyrus definitely has the same strength his sons do, because the ball goes up, up, up until it nearly touches the stadium’s ceiling. Still, the second it starts to fall, all hell breaks loose.

Or at least, that’s what it feels like when you’re in the middle of a vampire, a werewolf, a dragon, and a witch all racing for the same ball.

Flint lets out a billow of ice straight at Cole and his teammate, a witch by the name of Jacqueline. The ice hits her, and she freezes for ten seconds, but Cole jumps over the blast as he dives for the ball. Jaxon’s there before him, though, his telekinesis knocking the ball out of Cole’s range. But he blasts it so hard that he sends it spinning straight up at the roof again.

The crowd groans at the mistake, and so do I as I send him a little “you’ve got this” vibe down the mating bond. He sends a laugh back, and that’s when I realize it wasn’t a mistake at all. Because Flint’s partially shifted, and he’s already up there waiting to snatch the ball right out of the air.

Cole bellows in rage as Flint snags the ball and fully shifts in midair, now flying straight toward the goal line as fast as he can go. He’s been air-bound about ten seconds, and he likely can make it to the goal in the twenty seconds of flight he has left, but the ball has started burning red in his hands. And by the time he’s halfway to the goal, he can’t disguise the ripples of pain echoing through him. He has to toss the ball to Eden, who’s launched herself into the air after him.

She reaches for the ball, a huge smile on her face as she realizes just how close to the goal line they are. Even I hold my breath, wondering if this match is really going to be over this easily.

But out of nowhere, one of the vamps on Cole’s team jumps and intercepts the ball.

It’s Flint’s turn to shout as the vamp hits the ground with a solid thud and starts fading toward the opposite goal line. He’s almost there, and now I’ve gone from excited to totally freaking out, thinking there’s no way we’re going to catch him. But then Mekhi pops out of a portal a few feet from the goal line and charges straight into him.

Yay!

I’m so excited that I start clapping, even as the ensuing crash makes a deep crater in the field. The crowd gasps, thinking one of them might be hurt, but Mekhi just rolls through it, picking the ball up from under the other vampire as he does. And disappears straight into another portal.

This one lets him out at center field, but the ball is already starting to glow red-hot. Mekhi’s grimacing as he looks around—for Jaxon or Flint, I assume—but they’ve both fallen through portals in their race to get to the other vampire.

Xavier races up behind him, though—Cole hot on his ass—and grabs the ball before somersaulting through the air and literally diving into the closest portal, one hand holding the ball tucked up close to his side.

“Where is he; where is he?” Macy shouts as she looks wildly around the field, but none of us has an answer for her because he’s not out yet. The seconds tick by, and I start to panic, because if someone isn’t close to him when he finally makes it out of the portal, we are totally and completely screwed.

I glance at the clock on the side of the field. It reads twenty-seven seconds when Xavier finally emerges from the portal, which means he has three seconds to give the ball away before it starts to burn him. And I’m standing exactly three feet away from him.

Shit.

He throws the ball at me and I fumble it, nearly drop it as nerves race through me. The crowd goes nuts, but I’m beyond listening as I struggle to hold on to the edge of the ball as Cole comes barreling straight at me.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

After several hours of playing, I’m not ashamed to admit I’m feeling the strain. I need to get the ball and shift fast, but I hesitate, worried it’ll take the last of my strength and Cole will finally get his revenge. But I clench my jaw and narrow my eyes on the ball. I’ve got this.

I manage to get a grip on it at the exact same time Cole launches himself at me, and I shift on the run, shoot straight into the air the second I’ve got my wings. Cole manages to grab on to my foot, though, and he’s so strong that I can’t shake him off.

Which means I’m basically flying through the stadium with Cole hanging off me. Which, okay, except the ball is really starting to vibrate, and I’m going to have to land soon, something I won’t be able to do with a werewolf attached to my damn foot.

Thankfully, Eden is racing toward me, her purple dragon wings catching huge air, but the ball is starting to vibrate so hard that I don’t think I can hold on much longer. Plus, I’m a little afraid I’m going to lose a finger. But this is for the bloodstone. This is to get Hudson out of my head. So I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing that will get Cole off me. I lift my other foot up and kick Cole straight in the face as hard as I can.

He screams, but he lets go, falling about fifteen feet to the ground below, and I turn around and throw the ball straight at Eden.

She catches it with a dragon’s roar and a thumbs-up, and then she’s racing toward the finish line. She’s almost there and the crowd is on their feet, chanting for her—and so are we—when one of the witches from Cole’s team hits her with a spell that has her spinning wildly toward the ground.

Shit!

Fear grips me by the throat as I worry about her getting hurt—dragon or not, that’s a really long fall, and if it’s a nearly fatal one, she’ll be disqualified and magically removed from the game—but Jaxon blasts out with his telekinesis and keeps her from slamming into the ground. Before one of us can get the ball from her, though, the other werewolf on Cole’s team swoops in and grabs it.

Macy and I race toward him, but he dives into a portal right before one of us gets there. To my surprise, Macy dives in after him. Twenty-five seconds later, they finally emerge, but he’s lying stunned on the ground and she’s got the ball. It’s burning red-hot, though, so she throws it to Xavier, who catches it on the fly.

The only problem? They’re all the way at the other end of the field again, and Cole’s entire team is between them and the goal line. Then again, so are we.

Xavier runs for twenty seconds, dodging hexes and dragon fire and even a vampire bite to the shoulder as Mekhi and Jaxon try to fight off a witch and a dragon so one of them can fade to him.

Gwen and I race forward, happy that everyone else is occupied, but before either of us can get to Xavier, Cole brings him down with a body slam about halfway up the field. Xavier’s not going out with a fight, however, and he rolls away, clutching the ball to his chest as it burns hotter and vibrates so hard, I can hear it halfway across the field.

Just then, Cole slices a massive claw straight toward Xavier’s arm. I wince in anticipation of how much it’s going to hurt, even if Xavier’s magically protected from the claw piercing skin. But at the last second, Cole flicks his wrist and the claw misses Xavier’s arm entirely.

But it turns out Cole wasn’t aiming for the arm at all. Everyone in the stadium gasps as, instead, he slices the magical bracelet on Xavier’s wrist clean off. We watch it fall to the ground as if in slow motion. Xavier’s eyes widen when he finally realizes what the rest of us have already caught on to. Cole’s next blow, his clawed hand already arcing above Xavier, is headed straight for Xavier’s unprotected throat.

My heart stutters in my chest. Gwen is pretty close, but not close enough to help Xavier. And neither am I. No one is.

The whole stadium is on their feet as Cole’s razor-sharp claws close the distance with Xavier’s neck in the blink of an eye. There is a collective gasp. It’s a death blow. There’s no way—

There’s a huge roar from the crowd because… I blink… Blink again… Wow. Not a death blow after all, because Cole is now…a fluffy white chicken. His soft feathers gently caress Xavier’s neck as his small chicken body falls the three feet to the ground to squawk angrily.

My gaze darts around the arena until I connect with Macy, who obviously popped up through another portal about thirty feet from Xavier in the middle of all the drama. She looks as white as a sheet. Also hella pissed. And deeply satisfied at humiliating Cole for such a cowardly, and almost deadly, move.

But we don’t have time to savor the image of Cole clucking, because the spell won’t last much longer and Xavier is on his feet in a split second, the comet still burning bright in his hands. The stadium erupts in cheering and foot stomping.

Quickly looking around, he spies Eden and tosses her the comet as she swoops in from behind. She’s climbing now, her powerful wings taking her fifty feet in the air in seconds. But Cole’s team isn’t out, and one of the witches slams Eden with a lightning bolt and Eden is tumbling from the sky, the comet no longer in her hands and falling as well.

I launch myself into the air after it. The only problem is that one of their dragons has done the same thing, so we race each other to the ball. My heart is pounding faster and faster the closer we get, and I’m determined to win the race as another burst of energy from Jaxon via the mating bond sizzles along my skin.