by Jayme Morse
“And you,” he began as he shot me an angry glare. He took a step forward, and it looked like he wanted to yell in my face, but then he remembered Riley was there. He didn’t want to look even worse in front of her. “You don’t get to decide when to use our magic.”
“Someone had to do something,” I said simply, pointing out the fact that he had done nothing.
I didn’t care that he was my Alpha. Alpha or not, I didn’t appreciate the way he was talking to her. I didn’t like that he was trying to frighten her.
At least when I drank from her, it had been after a year of having no blood.
Slade had no excuse for losing his temper so badly over something so stupid.
He was just being an asshole.
And the best part of it was, he made me look like less of an asshole. Riley was hiding behind me. I could have been wrong, but I took that to mean that she trusted me the most.
Maybe she was starting to forgive me for what I’d done.
Chapter 13
Riley
“Where’s Jordan?” Drew asked sleepily from the back of the car. Moments later, he was snoring again.
“She was just here,” Noah said.
I whirled around, searching for her. The rest of the parking lot, aside from the six of us, was empty.
Drew was right. Jordan was gone.
“Jordan?!” I called.
I took a few steps away from the car as I scanned the parking lot for her.
There.
I saw a patch of her gray fur in the woods.
Why had she run off?
Was she hiding because she was afraid the guys would take her to jail?
She wouldn’t ditch me and Drew, would she?
We hadn’t found a way out through the main entrance, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t another way out. We just had to search for it.
I started walking towards her, convinced that she wouldn’t hide from me.
I picked up my speed when her tail disappeared from sight. Running towards her, I stepped foot on the grassy edge of the lawn, near the trees.
My sudden change in pace made one of the gargoyles let out a wail.
A strong pair of arms wrapped around my stomach. I wasn’t sure which one of the guys it was. It was probably Noah.
“No, let me go!” I struggled against his arms. “I need to find Jordan!”
He pulled me back, away from the lawn, just as the gargoyle breathed fire in our direction.
I would have been fine, anyway. The fire hadn’t even come close to reaching us.
I was surprised when it was Tristan that answered me. “Jordan’s fine. Don’t worry about her. She’ll be fine,” he told me.
“You don’t know that,” I screamed back at him. “She won’t be fine! We don’t even know where we are. We don’t know how to get home from here. You can’t let us get split up from each other.”
Tears trickled down my cheeks. I was angry. So angry.
“Why are you keeping me away from her?!” I shouted.
Instead of letting me go, his arms tightened around my waist as he dragged me back to the others.
“The woods aren’t safe for vampires. It’s not just the gargoyles that you have to worry about. There’s lots of things in the woods,” Julius replied.
“So then she isn’t safe!” I insisted. “I have to go after her.”
“If she didn’t want to go running off into the woods, then she wouldn’t have gone off running into the woods,” Julius said.
His face was so uncaring. He was probably happy that she was gone. Now they wouldn’t have to figure out what to do with her.
“Yeah. She ran off into the woods because she heard you saying that she had to go to Nightshade Vampire Penitentiary,” I shot back.
Crap. I was the one that had heard them say that. Not her.
“I know that you can hear our thoughts,” Slade told me. He glanced around, shooting untrusting glances at all of the guys. “I also know that one of you broke our rules. One of you allowed her to hear our private conversation, even though the rest of us had blocked her out of our minds. There’s no other way that she would have known about Nightshade Vampire Penitentiary unless someone let her hear. Which one of you was it?”
As his voice rose, I started to struggle against Tristan again.
I couldn’t have even answered Slade if I wanted to. I wasn’t sure which one of them had let me listen in on their conversations.
It had sounded like I was receiving thoughts from all of them.
It didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t care who had broken one of their little rules. All I wanted was to get away from whoever it was. I wanted to get away from all of them.
I dug my nails hard into Tristan’s skin and dragged them down.
He didn’t break his hold on me. Instead, I felt his fangs puncture my neck. As the numbing sensation took over, all I could do was slump back against his strong chest.
I hated him. I hated him even more for using his vampire venom on me.
“I’ll make you regret biting me,” I thought to him, to all of them.
“Sorry, Kiddo. We’re doing what’s best for you. This will help you calm down. You’ll feel less stressed out about Jordan,” Julius said.
His voice felt harsh and uncaring. Maybe even a little condescending, too. I hated when people called me Kiddo. It was one of my biggest pet peeves.
“If you were doing what was best for me, you’d let me leave. You’d let me get away, the same way you’re letting Jordan get away,” I argued. “Are you okay with letting her go because she might die out there?”
“I don’t believe for a second that Jordan will die out there,” Noah replied, reassuring me.
“Jordan is a badass vampire hybrid. I promise you she will be okay. She can take care of herself a lot better than you can. You saw her kick that cage open,” Slade told me. “But, even if we did go after her, she wouldn’t be allowed to stay here. Unfortunately, vampire hybrids aren’t welcome at Nightshade Vampire Academy,” Slade explained, placing emphasis on the word ‘vampire.’
“I’m a vampire hybrid, too! I’m not welcome here, either, in that case. I’m part faerie. I don’t belong with the vampires.” I protested. I wasn’t sure why I was even trying to plead with them anymore. Obviously they weren’t going to cave. “Let me go. Let me escape with her.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Julius said, his dark brown eyes studying me.
“Our blood will mask yours. No one will ever be able to tell that you’re a faerie. You’re one of us now. Your blood is linked to us,” Slade explained.
“Your blood will always be linked to us,” Noah said.
I noticed then, for the first time, how his eyes had changed. They were no longer maroon. There were only a few specks of red left within them. His eyes were now mostly a shade of dark blue, which popped against his tan skin.
“What do you mean my blood will always be linked to you? I don’t understand,” I admitted.
“The four of us,” Noah started to say as he pointed to himself and each of the guys, “are a vampire coven. You’re our fifth, and final, member.”
“That’s why we can all hear each other,” Tristan added, answering my next question.
Sort of.
It was still so confusing how it worked and why it worked.
“Is there a way to stop you from hearing what I’m thinking? Is there a way to get you all out of my head?” I asked.
“Of course there’s a way,” Slade replied, staring at me with an amused look in his bright blue eyes.
“How do I do it?” I asked.
I couldn’t wait to do it.
“That’s not something we want you to know how to do, yet,” Slade said.
“You can only hear me because I’m a part of your coven?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But why am I the last member of your coven? Why not Jordan and Drew?” I questioned.
I needed answe
rs. Why was I any different from them?
Why was I the unlucky one?
“That ring you have… each of us has one,” Noah started to say. “Ours are magical, just like yours.”
“You said something like that when we were in the graveyard,” I recalled.
Noah nodded.
“And you were the one wearing the ring. That’s why it’s you. Jordan and Drew weren’t wearing the ring. If one of them had been wearing it, instead, they would have been our new coven member,” Noah said simply.
So the ring was important.
The ring had caused everything, I thought to myself bitterly.
All of this was freaking Dylan’s fault. All of it could have been avoided if he’d just never given me the ring at all.
“Dylan chose you for us. Not Jordan. Not Drew. Not anyone else in the world. He chose you,” Noah said.
It annoyed me that he was trying to make that sound like a good thing.
My stomach flip-flopped when I realized something.
“Wait. You knew Dylan?” I questioned.
Slade came to stand in front of me. He put one of his hands on either side of my cheeks as he kissed my forehead.
“That’s enough questions. Sleep now,” he instructed.
“I don’t want to go to sleep! I want you to answer me, damn you!” I thought angrily back to him.
I didn’t get an answer to my question. My eyes closed, forcing me into a deep sleep.
*
My head and arms swung roughly against one of the guy’s backs with every step he took as he carried me over his shoulder.
I was too tired to do anything. I couldn’t prop myself any better than that. It felt like I was paralyzed. I just laid there, hoping we would reach our destination soon so that his movements would stop.
It felt like he was climbing a staircase.
His bumpy, unsteady footsteps were rocking me into a wave of nausea.
“Sleep, Princess. It would be a lot easier on you if you slept,” Slade said.
“It would be a lot easier on me if you would carry me differently,” I thought back to him.
“Let me take her,” Slade told whoever was carrying me.
I’d thought I had already been in Slade’s arms.
“Okay,” Tristan replied as he slowly lowered me back off of his shoulder.
My tiptoes hit the ground, but I found that I couldn’t support my own bodyweight.
I couldn’t even get my eyes to open. I slowly started to slump down to the ground.
I felt drunk, even though I hadn’t had anything else to drink all night.
“Why can’t I move?” I thought to myself.
My heart pounded at the realization that this was permanent—that whatever was going on with my body was going to stay that way forever.
“Sorry. Vampire venom has a paralyzing effect sometimes. It’ll wear off,” Tristan said as he rubbed my back reassuringly.
“It’s not supposed to have that effect. You used too much venom,” Slade replied, his voice sharp. He sounded so angry.
“How is she even awake after that?” I heard Noah ask.
“She’s a fighter,” Julius replied.
“From now on, I’m the only one allowed to use venom. It’s not a toy. We can’t have room for errors,” Slade said. He sounded just as pissed as before.
“I’d rather none of you use venom on me, personally,” I thought to myself.
“Fair enough,” Slade replied.
His choice of words told me that they probably would be using it again on me at some point.
“No. It should always be a last resort,” Slade told me.
I felt my arm being wrapped around Slade’s shoulders. Then he lifted me, effortlessly, into his arms and started to climb the steps again.
“Is that better?” he whispered against my lips.
My head was resting against his.
I tried to nod, but found that I couldn’t even do that.
“So much better,” I thought to him instead.
Tristan wasn’t a weakling—that much I could tell by the way he had walked so quickly, so surely, with me thrown over his shoulder.
There was just something so different about being in Slade’s arms. I felt safer, for one. I was no longer worried that I would go plummeting, headfirst, to the floor.
But there was something so considerate about the way Slade carried me.
I could tell that he was more worried about my own comfort than his.
His arm held my upper back up, so that I was in more of a sitting position.
My thigh closest to his body sat on his forearm, while my other leg was crossed over it. His hand was holding me up by my ass.
I realized then that there was a breeze on the back of my legs. The back of my dress was hanging down towards the floor.
He was touching my bare ass.
“Not true,” he said in my mind. “I’m touching your panties, not your bare ass.”
“Because that’s so much better,” I thought to him.
We reached a hallway and then a door was opened. Slade carried me through it.
Setting me down onto something soft, he pulled his hands away.
It didn’t feel like a bed.
It might have been a couch.
“Where are we?” I thought to Slade.
“Nightshade Vampire Academy,” he replied, keeping his voice low.
“You never answered my question about Dylan,” I reminded him, hoping that he would decide to answer this time since he was being so nice now.
“That’s because you need to sleep,” Slade said.
As my eyes fluttered shut, I heard him whisper, “Welcome to your new home.”
Chapter 14
Riley
Being a vampire felt a lot like being the real-life version of Sleeping Beauty.
That had always been my least favorite fairy tale.
I didn’t like that the guys—my coven—could force me to fall asleep.
And as much as I didn’t like that they could make me fall asleep, I wondered when I would learn that little trick so that I could use it on other people, the same way they had used it on me.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever actually need, or want, to make someone fall asleep. I just wanted the ability to do it.
I hated that they had forced me to fall asleep just to avoid answering my questions. It made me not want to ask them anything anymore.
There. It was decided. I wasn’t sure how, but I was going to figure things out on my own. Me, Jordan, and Drew. We were all in this together. We would help each other.
Jordan. My eyes flew open as I remembered that she was gone. I was greeted with nothing but darkness. Wherever I was, there wasn’t even a speck of light.
“Slade?” I worked up the nerve to call out, remembering the last face that I’d seen before I’d fallen asleep—a face that I seriously wouldn’t have minded punching right about now.
I needed to find Jordan. Me and Drew would get away from my coven. We’d go after her.
I didn’t believe the woods were as “dangerous” as the guys had made them out to be. Those gargoyles had been scary, though if they had really wanted to burn us to a crisp, they would have.
In the off-chance that they—and whatever else was out there—were dangerous, at least Me and Drew would be together, looking out for one another. I believed in us. I knew we would be fine.
I yawned and sat up.
Or, I tried to sit up, anyway.
When my head connected with the padded ceiling, my heart started to race.
What. The. Fuck?
“Am I in a coffin?” I asked the guys as I started to panic.
My answer from Noah was immediate. “Yes.”
I let out a frustrated groan and started pushing on the coffin’s lid.
“Did you bury me alive?” I asked next.
I remembered Slade carrying me into a room the night before. He must have laid me down inside a coffin. I�
��d thought it was a couch.
Then I remembered nothing else. I couldn’t remember if I felt the coffin move once I was inside it. I didn’t remember the lid closing on me.
When the lid didn’t budge, I felt around for a latch, or a handle, or my phone, so that I could at least see what I was doing.
“No, silly. You’re in your dorm room,” Slade said, and I could hear the laughter in his voice.
My dorm room?
I’d always dreamed about what my future dorm room would look like. I hadn’t had too many expectations. I’d figured it would have plain white walls, cheaply carpeted floors, boring light-colored wooden bunk beds or single beds, and maybe a cute floral comforter from Target.
But I sure as hell hadn’t expected that I’d have to sleep in a coffin.
I hadn’t even attended a single class, and already I could tell that I hated Nightshade Vampire Academy.
I couldn’t wait to transfer out of here.
There was no place for me at Nightshade Vampire Academy. That much I knew for sure, because I didn’t want there to be a place for me. I wanted to get the hell out of here ASAP.
I wanted to go to Fae Academy. That was where I was supposed to end up. That was where my grandmother went to school, and her parents before her. It was the school that she’d hoped I would go to one day.
I just wasn’t sure if they’d take me. Now that I was part vampire, they’d have to worry about me trying to suck the blood out of all the other faeries.
It felt like I didn’t belong anywhere anymore.
“Riley? Are you here?” I heard Drew call out. He sounded so muffled, so far away.
“Drew! Thank god! I need you to get me out of here. I’m stuck in a coffin. I can’t figure out how to open it,” I told him, my voice cracking as tears started to build up in my eyes.
“I would, but… I’m stuck in a coffin, too.”
His voice sounded so defeated.
“Let us out!” I screamed at Noah and Slade through mind-speak.
“It’ll open soon. Be patient,” Noah said.
“Be patient?! Wow, Noah. I will remember you said that the next time you’re stuck in a coffin. I never should have helped you get out of there. I should have let you rot away for another hundred years.”
