by Coralee June
Wicked Webs
CoraLee June
Raven Kennedy
Copyright © 2019 by CoraLee June & Raven Kennedy
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by Nichole Witholder
Edits by Helayna Trask
Created with Vellum
For Helayna, the best editor out there. Thank you for sticking with us through this monster of a book—pun intended. We love your jokes and your expertise. Our books wouldn't be the same without you.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
Thank You For Reading
About the Author
About the Author
Also by CoraLee June and Raven Kennedy
Chapter 1
You’d think that a graduation ceremony at a prestigious academy for hundreds of supernaturals would have less nudity, but for some damn reason, every time one of the shifters was called to walk the stage, another graduation gown was ripped off, howls erupted, and then dicks and boobs were swinging like pendulums before they made their shift and pranced off the stage. Shifters were so damn obnoxious sometimes.
The camaraderie was infectious, though. Friends and supernatural-sanctioned cliques giggled excitedly, and proud parents cheered in the auditorium. You could taste the sense of nostalgia in the air. Everyone was sad to leave Thibault Academy behind.
Everyone but me.
Luckily, I didn’t have to wait too long for my own name to be announced. There seemed to be a quiet sense of boredom when “Motley Coven” was called out, with just a few polite claps. I didn’t let it bother me, though. I sashayed my vampiric ass across the stage and scooped up my diploma with pride.
Headmaster Torne barely spared me a glance before he turned to greet the student after me. Of course, they got a smile and a congratulatory pat on the back. Some might be bitter at the dismissive way this school treated me, but I’d learned not to expect much from my five years of attending Thibault as a scholarship student.
I was pretty much the scum of the school. I was put down for my weaknesses as a vamp and lack of a good family name, but I didn’t give a fire-hell fuck. I got to attend one of the best supernatural academies in the world. Because of that and this diploma now clutched in my sweaty hand, I was going to make something of myself.
As I descended the stage, I looked down at Aunt Marie, who was standing off by herself in the corner. Her bony hands shook as she clapped for me, and I could see the pride on her face. It had been a long road to get to this point. Everything I did was for her.
I might not have had the roaring applause that the populars or the paragons got, but I had a cheering section of one, and that was all I needed.
I walked out of the room through the door behind the stage and headed into the reception area in Thibault’s ostentatious ballroom, where the rest of the graduates were already milling around. Naturally, all four of the breeds had segregated themselves in a corner of the room—vampires, necromancers, shifters, and elementals tended to stick to their own kind. And then there was the lowly scholarship charity case like me, and I just kept to myself.
I made my way over to the vampire’s area, my mouth already watering from the smell of bloody cocktails being served. I snatched up a champagne flute brimming with O negative from a passing server and downed the drink in one go. With slightly shaking hands, I leaned against the wood panelled wall and studied the thick roll of parchment in my hand.
This was it. Whatever slip of paper was inside my diploma would determine the rest of my long, immortal life. Because today wasn’t just about graduating from Thibault. Today, we also received our placements into internships, higher education, or jobs in the supernatural community. In short, it was a big fucking deal, especially for me.
I didn’t have pure blood or a big, important family name. I didn’t have an overabundance of power or friends in high places. I was smart, and I was driven. That was it. Which was why I busted my ass at this school for five years—so that I could get a good position in society and work my way up from there. I was done being the poor, parentless Motley Coven charity case. I was going to be more.
“You weren’t going to open that without me, were you?” a kind, motherly voice said to my left.
I smiled and turned to see the red-haired woman who’d approached. “Aunt Marie,” I greeted her warmly.
My sweeping gaze assessed every nuance of her expression. The corners of her eyes were wrinkled, and her lips, although coated with pale pink lipstick, seemed dry. Her shoulders were stiff, lifted so high they nearly touched her fashionable silver hoop earrings. She was tense—beautiful, but tense.
I’d learned to look out for signs of bloodlust since her first episode when I was seven. I still remembered that day. The gentle woman who sewed me dresses with pockets and baked bloody cookies had turned into a frenzied, ravenous animal. She tore our living room apart and screamed for blood, her manic need forcing me to hide in the cupboard under the kitchen sink.
When it was all over, I found her in the bathroom, with dozens of empty blood bags littering the floor. She’d eaten everything we owned—every carefully rationed ounce of it. We lived off a very strict allowance, so that loss had taken weeks to recoup. But just when we caught up, Aunt Marie had another episode and decimated our stash again. So we faced facts that it wasn’t a one-off, that her bloodlust would only get worse, and we prepared for it.
It was our secret. Vampires with bloodlust were either taken away to be imprisoned or put to death. Our council simply eliminated the problem instead of researching the disease. But I wouldn’t let that happen to her.
So ever since I was a kid, I helped to hide her condition from the world. We kept to ourselves. We made sure to have hundreds of blood bags in the house for when a frenzy hit. It was the cheap stuff, since we couldn’t afford anything else. She’d stay locked in our shared bedroom with chains and bars, while I prayed to the gods that my aunt’s mind would return and the frenzy would subside.
My greatest fear was that this would be it—this would be the time when she wouldn’t come out of it. But she did. She always fought it. For me.
The dynamic in our relationship switched drastically because I had to take on a lot of the responsibilities, but there was loving give and take. She was my biggest supporter, and I was her advocate. It didn’t matter to me that I had to catch wild animals and toss them at my aunt when the frenzy was particularly bad. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t leave the house sometim
es because of her fear of an episode coming on. All that mattered was that she was my family, and I took care of my family.
We’d had plenty of close calls over the years, but we were careful. We had to be. And though it was hard and scary at times, I wouldn’t have had it any other way, because that woman was my rock.
Aunt Marie took me in when I was just two days old. I was the bastard of an apathetic woman and a proud man who didn’t want me tainting his family line or revealing his transgressions outside of his public marriage.
Aunt Marie didn’t have much, just a one bedroom apartment in the vampire community. But she had love, and a lot of it. She gave up most of her life to raise me and battled the bloodlust to stay sane during my childhood. It wasn’t always easy, but it was worth it, and I couldn’t imagine sharing this moment with anyone else.
“I couldn’t open it without you, Aunt Marie. Hell, I wouldn’t even be here without you,” I told her with a smile.
She came forward and held her arms out to me, blood-red tears filling her eyes as she enveloped me in a big hug. When she pulled away, I laughed at the dress she was wearing—I hadn’t noticed it before.
She was in a knee-length black cotton dress with clowns printed all over it. Leave it to Aunt Marie to not bother with traditional garb on a prestigious day. I loved how, despite it all, she clung to her quirky personality. One of her hobbies included going to local thrift shops, finding the most ridiculous fabrics she could, and then turning them into something she loved.
“I like the dress,” I said with a wink while noting that one of the clowns was sucking a phallic looking banana.
“You know I hate stuffy clothes. Everyone here is dressed for a funeral,” she said in a disgusted tone while looking around the room. She wasn’t wrong. It was like looking out into a sea of mourning wear.
Aunt Marie was fun despite her grim diagnosis. Even though most of my life was spent worrying about when the bloodlust would become too much—when she would finally snap—she never made it feel like a hardship. She just made the most of everything we had.
“You should have worn your cantaloupe boob dress. That would’ve really livened things up,” I teased.
Aunt Marie laughed, but her joy suddenly cut off. She sniffed the air and squeezed her eyes shut, every muscle in her body going stiff. She was hungry. I’d gotten to the point where I could predict when another episode would come. Bloodlust was like a boomerang, every time we thought we had gotten through the worst of it, her illness would circle back to haunt us.
I noted her shaky hands and the dull, glassy look in her eyes. She looked happy, but there was an underlying desperation creeping to the surface.
“Let’s open this, yeah?” I asked, feigning nonchalance while squeezing her hand.
We didn’t have much time, and she needed to go home soon. Her episodes were sporadic, but they could be triggered when she was around too many people. Aunt Marie had a thin thread of control when it came to fending off the bloodlust, and I couldn’t let it snap today. Not here, where there were hundreds of vampires around, including political leaders of our community. If they saw her fall into a mindless frenzy, they’d take her away quicker than I could blink, and there would be nothing I could do to stop them.
“Yes! I’m on pins and needles,” she said, her smile shaky.
Distraction. She needed a distraction.
I tore off the ribbon tying the rolled parchment together and unfurled it, revealing my diploma.
Just my diploma.
No invitation to work at the council. No slip of paper stating I was offered an internship. No acceptance letter to attend a university abroad. Just...nothing.
“What the fuck?” I whispered under my breath before looking up at my aunt.
She was waiting with bated breath, a proud grin on her face. Luckily, she seemed clueless that something was wrong.
Aunt Marie never got the opportunity to attend Thibault. She dreamed of attending and one day working for the council. She loved everything about this school, but she hadn’t been strong enough or rich enough to get in. In many ways, she lived vicariously through me, and I didn’t want to let her down.
I opened and closed my mouth, at a loss. I wasn’t sure what to tell her. I didn’t know how to explain that the weak, nobody vamp, the one who’d busted her ass to be top of her class, didn’t get an assignment at all.
“So? What did you get?” she pressed.
I coughed a bit to cover the emotions bubbling up in my chest, trying my best not to cry in front of her. Aunt Marie had sacrificed so much to raise me. I wanted to take care of her. How the fuck was I going to do that if I didn’t have a job?
“Secretary! A-at the council headquarters!” I blurted out with a stutter. It was the first thing I could think of.
Shit.
She squealed in excitement and wrapped me up in a bone-crushing hug, her tears of joy drenching my black graduation gown. Aunt Marie’s happiness almost made the guilt I felt disappear. “This is amazing, Motley! A secretary now and maybe a vampire representative one day! I’m so proud of you.”
Shame like nothing I’d ever felt before filled me from my toes up, but I didn’t falter. I wanted to give her this joy. Just once. I could figure out what I was actually going to do later.
When she pulled away, I noticed how her skin had started to turn gray. She began to tremble, and her fangs descended, dripping with venom. Bloodlust was coming.
My lips thinned into a grim line. I hated how quickly it took over her.
“I—I think I need to go home,” she whispered in a low, strained voice.
“Want me to take you?” I offered, but she thrust her hands up in protest at my offer. She hated feeling like a burden.
“No, no. I want you to celebrate. Mingle with your peers,” she insisted.
I had to suppress a snort. If only she knew that I had no peers to mingle with. I hadn’t made any friends while at Thibault. I was a loner. My closest friend was the librarian, Mr. Kinley.
This place wasn’t prestigious for no reason. Only the offspring of the most powerful and successful families attended here, or the few scholarship students like me. And those of us here who got in for our brains or impressive abilities had to stay highly competitive. It wasn’t exactly a place that fostered friendships. Not that I would’ve told my aunt that.
“Stay here. I’ll catch a portal home.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. If I were being honest, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry about my dim future, but I wanted to be there for her.
“I’m positive. Go. Have fun. I’ll be fine. I can hold it off for another hour at least. That’s plenty of time for me to get home.” She grabbed me for one last hug, and I squeezed her tight, though I couldn’t ignore how every muscle in her body was coiled with tension.
As I watched her walk away, the only thing I could think of was how the fuck am I supposed to take care of us now?
I was drowning my sorrows with spiked blood, lingering at the bar top while I listened to everyone excitedly discuss their placements. Enforcer training. Paralegal to the Judge. Internship for Blood Regulations. Shifter military. Department of the Dead.
Everyone but me seemed to have been offered prestigious placements with promising futures. Part of me wanted to knock on Headmaster Torne’s door and demand an explanation, but I knew it was no use. I arrived here as nobody, and I’d leave here as nobody.
“Heard you got an empty diploma.”
I stiffened at the voice and looked over to find none other than Stiles Trant.
The rich, handsome, powerful, prodigious son of the well-connected Trant family. He was the Vampire Paragon, the someday council ruler of our kind, and the guy that all the girls swooned over.
But to me? He was just my secret half-brother.
I hated the fucker.
The man who dumped me off at Aunt Marie’s house when I was two days old? Yeah, that was our father. The only difference was he kept
Stiles and tossed me away. I’d come out of the wrong cunt, I guess.
“How did you find out?” I asked, hating that he knew.
Stiles had been pissed when I was accepted into Thibault on the scholarship program—he’d felt like I was encroaching on his territory. He always liked to remind me this was his place and not mine. He was more territorial than the fucking shifters. Stiles had inherited his sense of entitlement from our father. Me? The only thing I inherited was the Trant blue eyes. Stiles and our father had blond hair and strong jaws, while my hair was a cherry red ombré, and my features were far more delicate.
“Everyone knows,” Stiles said with a mocking smirk as he sat down beside me. He looked handsome and affluent like always, his expensive black suit setting off his shiny hair. I looked around, noticing for the first time that people were definitely talking about me. They weren’t exactly being subtle, staring at me as they whispered, tossing me knowing smirks throughout the room.
Thibault had set up this little after graduation party, but most of the parents and professors had left hours ago, and the once dignified celebration was now just a bunch of graduated students grinding on each other to the dance music and getting drunk off the spiked drinks.
“Great,” I muttered into my cup, turning away from the gossipers.
“You’re really surprised?” he asked, sounding like the pretentious dick he was.
“Fuck you, Stiles,” I snapped, swiveling in his direction. “I worked my ass off here for five godsdamned years. I deserved to be the highest ranking student, and everyone knows it. But Headmaster Torne couldn’t let me win that, could he? And now they won’t even give me a placement,” I seethed. “They’re punishing me for being fucking poor with a bastard last name, and it’s pathetic.”