Page 1 of Starlight

PROLOGUE

SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

His cousins were late picking him up from practice. They were often late, and they never gave a shit. They told him they had better things to do than babysit their sixteen-year-old cousin. Those better things usually involved drinking, girls, and hunting, even on a weeknight.

“Next time I’m going to catch a lift.” Cole Denny dropped his bag on the back seat and slid in, slamming the door as Chuck accelerated. If he got a lift with a friend, his aunt and uncle would be pissed at his cousins, and then his cousins would be pissed with him and would make his life more difficult.

They resented the amount of time he spent playing football, not understanding it was his only way out of town. His whole future hinged on getting a scholarship to play football. Even if he was never drafted, he’d at least get a degree, which would give him a chance.

He’d seen how hard his father and uncle worked in the construction business, and over the summer vacation, he’d gotten to experience it firsthand. Honestly, he’d rather be tackled by the biggest guy on the opposition than put in a ten-hour day onsite in the sun.

Patrick turned around from the passenger seat and pointed at him. “Don’t you fucking dare. Dad will skin us.”

His breath was laced with beer. He was six years older and had been working in construction since he finished school. Both of his cousins seemed quite happy to graduate with a guaranteed job.

“You think you’re so much better than us. You got your Mom wasting all that money on football. Do you know how many people make it?”

“I know the stats.” And Cole knew he needed to keep his grades up. That was the other reason they hated him—because he got out of weekend work. Between homework and games, he barely had any free time.

The thing that really got to them, though, was that their dad fully supported him. He figured that if a Denny got famous, it would be good for business. Cole didn’t care about the business, even with as much as he wanted his parents to be able to stop working. Or at least stop working so hard.

He’d buy a big house with a pool, and they could look after it for him while he was all over the place playing football, and he’d buy them both fancy cars that didn’t break down. A smile curved his lips as he stared out the window and imagined a life where he didn’t have to deal with his cousins, and there were no arguments about work and dishes, and he didn’t need to think about assignments for school. There were assignments at college, of course, but he figured that would be different as he wouldn’t be living at home.

It was a little under two years until he graduated. He could bite his tongue and keep his head down a little longer. He hadn’t pushed this far to fail at the last yard.

“You don’t even care why we’re late?” Chuck asked.

Cole dragged his attention back to his cousins. This was a trick question. If he said yes, they’d demand he go with them next time so he didn’t miss out, and if he said no, they would launch into a rant about how he was actually a piece of shit for using family resources to play football and was no better than them and that he didn’t deserve to know.

They had both played, but neither of them had been good enough to play for a better school team. Which was why he needed to be picked up after practice—his school was over an hour away. It was the one thing that was asked of them.

“I don’t know. Do you want to tell me or not?”

Patrick turned and sneered. “Do you want to tell me or not?”

“We went hunting,” Chuck said with a smirk.

It had been raining today, so his uncle had probably told him there was no work. They never wasted a day off by helping around the house. Their mother had been battling cancer for as long as Cole could remember. It was why they’d moved in. His parents had taken the granny flat out the back, and he’d got a room near his cousins. Mom helped out a lot, both with his aunt and with his cousins when they were small. She usually worked nights, so she was home during the day.

“Yeah…did you catch anything this time?” Cole didn’t care what they killed.

“I thought I shot a wolf, but I couldn’t find it. Then we found something better.”

Cole kept his gaze out the window, hoping that the wolf had survived and was out there licking its wounds, calling its friends, and vowing revenge. That wasn’t a charitable thought, but it did make him smile. How would his cousins feel if they were suddenly the hunted? Because he was expected to ask and he needed to play the game, he did. “What’s better than a wolf?”

Were there bears in West Virginia?

“We found an old mine,” Chuck said.

That did sound cool, but he remembered his father’s warnings about how dangerous they were. “Did you go in?”

“Yeah, of course we did. It was like the wolf was protecting it, so we thought her cubs might be in there or something.”

Oh my God, they were hoping to kill the wolf’s cubs? They were actual monsters. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. How the fuck was he related to these people? Maybe he’d been switched at birth or something?

“But it was better than cubs…we found a stash of gold and gemstones.”

Cole tore his gaze off the window and stared at his cousins. “What?”