by Kim Faulks
“Morwenna,” Chuck growled, and I jerked my head up to find him marching toward me, furious and pumped up.
What now?
“Where have you been?” he barked, eyeing me head to toe, his gaze settling on my shoes smeared with mud, and then cut Nero a glare that could’ve frozen Hell itself.
“I think you should be good for the rest of the way now.” Nero muttered and glanced at Chuck before turning and leaving.
I didn’t want to watch him leave…not when my heart was aching. Instead, I shrugged. “I’m just tired, Chuck.”
I dragged my feet over the lawn to get rid of the mud.
“What happened?” He was at my side. “Someone hurt you?”
Hurt. Interesting word, no matter how honest this day started. I didn’t mean for it to end like it did.
“Crazy day with the demon attack and all.” I thought of Ava, realizing I hadn’t spoken to her since she gobbled up one of the fiends to protect her love interest here. “You know Ava saved your ass back with the demons.”
He cut me a hard stare and if I wasn’t feeling so heartbroken, I might have laughed at him. “I could have taken them both on. But she’s got incredible strength.” And I studied the way the corners of his mouth twitched as he fought not to smile when he talked about Ava.
“If you shatter her heart, I’m gonna have to break your knees.”
“She’s too young for me,” he muttered, but the icy tone didn’t sound convincing.
“Yeah right.” I marched ahead, neither of us saying a word at first.
Salome hurried past us, glaring my way, before she shoved through the dorm doors and disappeared inside.
“Come back with me,” Chuck offered. “I’ve got tea.”
“That’s a first. A big bad Vamp who drinks tea. No thanks,” I muttered stepping inside the dorm’s front door. ‘I’m all tea’ed out.”
I shoved open the door to the dorm building and stepped inside, ready to shut it behind me, when Chuck’s hulking form followed on my heels.
“You can’t come in here.”
One brow rose. “Wrong. I’m now permitted as long as I only enter your room or stand outside your door.”
I sighed. Of course Dad would insist on stronger protection and Ms. Stone would cave to his demands.
“Fine.” I had no energy for arguing.
I turned, pushed the door wide and made for the stairs. I shoved the key into my lock, and stumbled inside. Chuck never followed, instead he stood sentry outside my room. I collapsed onto my bed, feelings of loneliness and pain ravaged what little control I had. All I wanted to do was curl up on my bed and never leave my room again.
The Demons. Nero’s first kiss.
Judas.
Why did everything have to always spin so out of control?
Strands of my hair tangled with the breeze and I turned my face towards the coolness. “Mmm, that feels nice.” I opened my eyes.
Something sparkled through the curtains...I slid my feet from the bed. Diamond trees littered the campus grounds like elegant brooches. Just a dream, I tried to tell myself.
“It sure is,” Mr. Leathers’ sultry voice came from behind me.
I wanted to back away from the dream...wanted to rise to the surface of my consciousness.
“Not again,” I warned. “I’m not here for you.”
“Do you feel it?” he whispered moving closer. “It’s so strong.”
He chuckled softly behind me, enjoying himself. His hands fell to my waist, and I flinched at the unexpected touch. “They took them you know? They took them but they didn’t understand...they didn’t understand the power that lay inside. But they will, won’t they, Morwenna? We’ll show them.”
I didn’t understand anything he said. “I don’t think we should do this.”
His arousal pressed against my ass, driving deeper as he rocked his hips forward. “This is who you were meant to be.”
The tips of his fingers skimmed my breasts. I squeezed my thighs together and shut my eyes. Blood thrummed through me with the heavy thud of my heart. I fell backward into his arms.
Needing him.
Desperate to have his hands all over me.
“Embrace what you are,” a female’s voice insisted.
Startled, I snapped open my eyes and found myself wrapped in feminine arms.
I pushed against her limbs which were looped around my stomach. Where was Nefarious? “What are you doing?”
“This is the only way,” she insisted and lifted her hand, but this time instead of touching my body she gripped something in her fist. Light speared through the gaps of her fingers, and as she unfurled one finger at a time I saw it was the brightest diamond I’d ever seen.
“They used it to summon me...but I was already here, already inside them. Until they took them...and gave them to you.”
She shoved the stone against my chest. Electricity jolted through me, stronger than ever before.
I glanced down to a sparkle against my skin, and watched as it slipped inside.
“No, no, please no.”
“It has to be,” she murmured. “God like...transcendence. Like, calls to like.”
I woke with a scream on my lips, my body vibrating until the quakes rattled the bed. I shoved the dream aside, and slapped my hand to my chest.
There was nothing, no mark...no goddamn diamond, no Nefarious and the strange woman.
I’m so sick of these damn dreams.
Outside, the morning sun was climbing over the horizon. “What they Hell?” Chuck must have left me after I dozed off. I’d never slept this long before either.
The dream felt so real, so damn terrifying. Nothing made sense. Not a single thing.
Shaking my head, I marched toward the bathroom when I toed something hard. I howled, the pain shuddering through me like broken glass.
“What the...!” I fell to my ass and held my throbbing toes, then spotted the purple near the bed.
The bag of fucking diamonds was back.
And I screamed with utter frustration, with fury because I was stuck in Groundhog’s Day.
Before I could reach over to grab the culprit that might have crippled my toes, Ava tore into the room, her sleepy eyes wide, her blonde hair sticking in every direction, wearing her pajamas with tiny mermaids on them.
“You screamed?” She stared down at me, her fear morphing into sarcasm. “Did you just stub your toe?”
Then her gaze shifted to the bag and her mouth dropped open. “For the love of all things Poseidon. Fuck me!”
“We need to get rid of the diamonds. They’re making me dream all kinds of shit.” I hugged myself, trying to wipe the last one from my mind.
Ava marched over and snatched them off the ground, then stormed into the bathroom. “We should have done this the first morning you found them.” The plonking of lots of stones hitting water sounded, then the toilet flushed.
Ava stood in the doorway holding an empty purple bag, smug, proud of herself. “These damn things have woken me way too early lately. Thank Hell they’re now gone.”
She flung the bag across the room, aiming for the trash can near my desk, but it missed completely and hit the desk with a heavy thud.
We both exchanged glances and rushed over. I snatched the bag with stones clinging inside.
“No way!”
“They’re fucking cursed,” she bellowed.
I fell onto the seat and poured the jewels onto the table, the diamonds rolling around, catching the sun. They had this gorgeous hypnotizing gleam to them, but they were so much more than pretty. “We should count them. Maybe there’s some significance there. See if any have markings.” I picked one up, rolling it between two fingers, studying how perfectly clear the stone was… not a blemish in sight.
Ava leaned over, poking the stones with a finger before picking one up, studying it. I started to count them. There was a total of thirteen stones, including the one Ava stuck between her teeth and bit down on, testing it
for hell knows what.
A sudden knock at the door had us both flinching so abruptly, I broke out laughing, but Ava wasn’t chuckling. She was cracking her chest, her mouth eyes bulging out.
“I swallowed it. I fucking swallowed a diamond.” She was pacing in a tight circle, and I leaped to my feet and rushed to her side.
“Can you cough it up?”
She gawked at me. “It’s in my stomach, not jammed in my throat.”
The knock came at the door again. “Morwenna,” Chuck called out.
Crap. “Give me a sec, I’m naked.”
“Is Ava naked too?” he asked.
“Eww.”
Ava called out, “Wouldn’t you like to know, big boy!”
I slapped her arm gently. “Not sure this is a flirting moment.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s where you’re so wrong.”
“I can hear you,” Chuck called from behind the door.
Ava moved closer and whispered, “Look, one stone’s gone. It hasn’t come back, so maybe this is a good thing.”
Her belly rumbled loudly and we both glanced down at her stomach.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
But she didn’t respond, and her face seemed to turn green. “Oh, shit!” She ran into the bathroom. “Stand the Hell back.” The heaving sound of throwing up followed.
I cringed. “Are you okay?”
Chuck burst into the room, and I jumped. His gaze skimmed over me as if I didn’t exist. “Where is she?”
I pointed to the bathroom, and went in there with him to find her gurgling water from the sink before spitting it out and wiping her mouth with my towel. Then she turned and opened her fist. In the middle sat a diamond. “This sucker isn’t leaving your side.”
“Eww, I’m not touching that.” I stepped back as she glanced over at Chuck, both of them googly eyed, and I shook my head before retreating into the room.
“You okay?” He seemed genuinely concerned.
Hell, he was so smitten with her.
“Sorry, Mor.” She slapped the stone onto my desk. “They’re attached to you.”
“I can take them to your father?” Chuck stared at the diamond.
“Won’t do any good, they’ll be back here in the morning.” I pooled all the diamonds into the bag and left them there. Not as if they were going anywhere.
When no one responded and I suddenly felt like the third wheel in my own room, I waved at the duo. “Okay, out, if you’re only going to gawk at each other. I’m getting changed and need... Hell, I don’t know what I need. But it’s not looking at you two.”
Ava glanced at Chuck and then made for the door. “Meet you in fifteen.” She darted from the room in her mermaid printed shorts and tank top pyjamas.
Chuck took a step toward the door and said, “I’ll be waiting downstairs.”
And then I was alone.
With the diamonds….
I reached up and rubbed my chest without thinking...and deep inside...under flesh and bone, something vibrated with energy.
Something pressing into the middle of my chest.
Something that made me feel alive.
Chapter Twelve
Yielding To The Alpha
I could feel it...that twinge inside my chest. I washed and scrubbed, lathered my hair and then rinsed, and every time I touched the middle of my chest I felt that buzz....
Something was in there...something that wasn’t just a remnant of a dream. I dried, ran a comb through my hair and dressed. When I stepped out of my room I spotted Ava talking to Chuck, murmuring in a low voice, standing way too close.
“You ready.” I glanced toward Nesrin’s door out of habit.
“Good to go.” Ava turned and then winced. She raised a hand and shoved a fist against her chest and let out the biggest belch I’d ever head. Chuck’s eyes widened before his hand slipped into his coat pocket.
“Sorry,” Ava muttered. “Demon.” As though that one world explained everything.
“Here.” Chuck peeled off two small white tablets from a roll. “These will settle your stomach.”
Ava smiled and looked up at him like he’d just goddamn proposed.
I rolled my eyes and headed for the stairs, taking two at a time before I pushed through the dorm doors.
“Hey,” Ava called, crunching on whatever Chuck had given her. “What’s got you all riled up?”
I stopped dead in the middle of the pathway. Other students walked past, some turned and stared. I wanted to bare my fangs and hiss at them. I wanted to be the kind of primitive Vampire they expected with a name like Livingstone. But I did none of that. I sucked in a hard breath, feeling that burn inside my chest and tried to find the words. “I fucked up.”
She picked at something her teeth and cocked her head. “What did you do?”
Tell her. The need raged inside me. I had to tell someone. I had to get this...burden out of my damn chest. “I kissed Nero.”
“So?” She shook her head.
“No, you don’t understand. I kissed Nero and Judas saw, and now he’s upset ‘cause I broke some stupid pack rule, and I feel like shit about it.”
“Did you want to kiss him?” she asked.
I thought about it for a second, and I thought about him. I hadn’t really given him much thought before, or Bond for that matter. It’s just been the Wolves. The three of them went everywhere together. The three of them were always inside my head. But yesterday they weren’t. Yesterday it was just Nero, and we’d laughed together, we’d been horrified together, we’d protected each other. Did I like him? “Yes, yes I did.”
“Then I fail to see the problem here. If there’s a pack law that’s been broken then that’s not your concern. You’re not part of the pack.”
But I want to be. The words raced through my head.
“Then if you want to be, make it work. Mend whatever hearts need mending, kiss whoever needs kissing and be done with it.”
“Wait...you heard me say that? That I wanted to be?” I stared at her in disbelief.
“Ah, yeah.” She raised both brows. “You said it plain as day.”
I’d thought it. But I hadn’t said the words out loud.
“So, you going to sort it out, or are you going to stand there with your mouth open all damn day?”
My teeth gnashed as I slammed my mouth closed when out of the corner of my eye something scurried from the bushes and headed toward us. The demonic bunny was red-eyed and rabid, bounding across the grass until it lunged and with a hiss buried its tiny chomper-fangs into Ava’s leg.
She squealed and kicked, dislodging the feral little beast mid-air. “I saved your ass!” she howled as the feral thing hit the ground in the distance and scurried away. “Ungrateful little gremlins!”
Chuck was there in an instant, hurtling his massive frame toward us like a locomotive to sweep Ava from her feet. But the beast had already scampered, tearing away from the sight.
I wish I was that rabbit.
Demon blood and all.
Ava giggled and swung her feet as he held her in his arms. I’d never seen Chuck look at anyone like that. His stony jaw bulged, dark, soulless eyes bore into hers. I could have a hundred damn henchmen racing for me in this moment, and he’d still be consumed by her.
“I think I just threw up in my mouth a little,” I muttered as he lowered her feet to the ground.
There was a tiny scratch of blood on her leg. Still Chuck bent, swiped it with his finger and the stuck it in his mouth.
“She could be infected,” I muttered.
“Very funny.” Ava waved me away with her hand. “Off with you, shoo!”
I shook my head and smothered a smile. Even in the shittiest moods Ava knew how to make me laugh. I took her advice, lifted my head to the main building and made for the front door.
I’d make Judas listen while I apologized. Whatever it took, right? Whatever it took. I yanked open the front door and stepped around the other students milling
in the middle of the corridor, catching sideways glances.
“What?” I confronted them. “What are you looking at?”
Still they never answered, only turned away. They hated me, no, they feared me, feared my dad, which felt the same to me. I reached for my pocket as a woman stepped out from the doorway of a classroom up ahead. She wore a black shroud, moving seamlessly like a ghost.
Like calls to like, Morwenna...this was...the only way.
I stopped dead. Letting some pimply Ghoul smack into the back of me. “Watch it,” I snarled, unable to take my eyes from the classroom where the woman appeared. Goosebumps raced along my arms. I tried to move but my feet felt nailed to the floor.
“Mor?”
I flinched and wrenched my head toward Nero as he stepped around me. He glanced to the corridor and then to me once more. “You okay?”
I swallowed, and then nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
But he wasn’t, from the defeated look in his eyes to his slouched posture. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night. I didn’t know if that was better than the plague of dreams which haunted me.
“You okay?” I reached for him and caught the flinch before I dropped my hand.
“Yeah, yeah I’m good.”
Lies. They slipped so easy from his lips. He wasn’t, and he clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk either. So, I didn’t talk. Instead I reached for his hand and grasped his fingers with mine, before tugging him. My gaze went to the doorway, searching for the woman in the shroud as I strode along the hallway and passed, dragging Nero with me. But the woman never returned, even as I stepped around other students and passed the open door where the woman disappeared.
Ms. Lucas sat at the desk at the front of the classroom. She lifted her head, peering at me with beady demon eyes as I passed and towed Nero with me.
“Mor, where are we going?” he murmured.
“We’re going to sort this out, once and for all.”
I sucked in a hard breath and turned right. I knew exactly where to find Judas, we shared more than a friendship; we shared a darker need.
“I don’t think…” Nero started.
“Then don’t think,” I said and headed for the classroom at the end of the hall. I inhaled hard, taking in the sweet, crisp scent of the moon. 13 Moons. The classroom was purpose built, silver walls, black furnishings. A hanging sphere in the middle of the room that held within it the power of the dark moon. It was a place of peace, a place where immortals like Judas could catch their breath.
