by Elena Lawson
The man she was speaking to didn’t seem pleased to hear it, but it was hardly Granger’s fault. Or anyone’s at the academy, really. Not even mine—though I would take more of the blame than anyone else. All the fucked-up shit did start happening after I arrived, after all.
Coincidence? I hoped so, but I knew better than to believe it.
“What about you? Are you and the guys just going to stay at the Abbey?” Bianca asked when I didn’t respond, adding a few more pairs of shoes to her bag.
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Actually, no. We’re going to Spain.”
There was so much I hadn’t told her, I realized. About Martin’s letter and the truth of my parentage. Not only that we were going to Spain, but why we were going. That Leo and Lara had come after all this time spent apart. That as Bianca and I spoke, they were probably trying to figure out how to cook on the old stove in the kitchen.
Bianca’s brows raised nearly to her hairline at my admission. “Spain?”
I barked a laugh. “Yeah. Taking Cal and Adrian with me, too. Jealous?”
She narrowed her sparkling brown eyes at me with a cheeky sneer. “Hmmm, let me think…trapped in a hotel with two fifteen-year-olds for three weeks or wine, waves, and all the Spanish food I can eat…?” She pretended to hold each option in either hand, tipping the imaginary scales before one side won out. “What do you think?”
I smirked. I wished it was about the wine and the food and the scenery. But it wasn’t. Those things were just perks of the trip. Perks I intended to make as much use of as I could.
“Maybe you can stop by at some point in your vacay with the twins? Have you ever been to Spain before?”
She shook her head.
“Well if you wanted to come, you can just call me, and I’ll open a portal to your place that you guys can come through. We’re going to stay at my father’s summer home there. From the coordinates, it looks like the place is in the middle of nowhere.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, maybe I can escape without the boys for a day or two. Leave them with the nanny.”
I wondered at how much Louie and Eddie hated still having to be watched over by a nanny. They were almost sixteen, after all. When the next term started, they would take their places at Arcane Arts Academy with us.
I nodded. “That would be cool.”
“What happened with the lawyer after we left by the way?” she asked as she zipped her suitcase back up. “Marcus and I were wondering what he could have wanted to leave you…if that’s not too personal,” she added with a little wince.
I inhaled deeply, looking down to my hands in my lap as though they had the answers written on them. “His house,” I began, peering up to find Bianca with her head cocked. “…and a letter.”
I didn’t miss the inquisitive stare she tossed my way from beneath her lashes.
I sighed and straightened spine, launching into the full recounting of what’d happened the night before, not leaving out anything. I told her about my mother, and about what Martin thought we might find in Spain. And after she stopped freaking out and accepted my words as fact rather than fiction, I told her about Leo and Lara, too. And how tomorrow after we received our final grades, I’d be rushing back to see them before our flight out tomorrow night.
“Well shit,” she said after a beat of silence, chewing her bottom lip.
“I know.”
“So, you’re not a witch, then?”
I shrugged. “Not only a witch. I guess I have Enduran blood, too.”
“Maybe that’s why—”
“I bonded to two Enduran familiars?”
“Yeah.” Bianca pursed her lips, her gaze growing further away as she mulled something over in her mind. “Are you going to tell anyone else? Like Granger? Or…?”
I hadn’t really thought about it. But… “No. I don’t know if they would let me continue here as a student if the faculty knew I wasn’t a full-blooded witch. Besides, I really don’t think it makes much of a difference. I’m still me. I can’t shift into a wolf or anything.”
Bianca nodded her head slowly. “Guess you’re right.”
“Promise you’ll keep it to yourself?”
She narrowed her eyes at me as though offended I even asked her the question. “Of course, I will.” She reached across the space between our two beds and pulled my hand from my lap into hers. “You’re my best friend, Harper. The only real one I think I’ve ever had.”
My chest squeezed painfully at her admission and the earnestness of her gaze. The guilt of what I’d put her through by shutting her out the last few days weighed heavily on my shoulders. I bit the inside of my cheek, squeezing her hand back. “Back at you,” I said with a half-hearted smile.
“Am I interrupting something here?” a rich baritone broke the quiet and Bianca and I jumped back from one another. “If you need a moment, I’m happy to watch quietly.”
Draven smirked coyly from the windowsill. How he’d managed to get the window open without us hearing him was a mystery, but there he was in all his glistening black hair and leather jacket glory. The cool night breeze drifting into the room brought with it the scent of his musky cologne and the crisp mountain air cleared the room of its staleness and made gooseflesh rise on my arms against the chill.
“Damnit, Draven!” I cursed. “You could’ve knocked.”
“Happy to see you, too.”
At his words, my body relaxed, and I found myself with the tiniest of smiles pulling on the edge of my lips. I found that I was happy to see him. Some part of me had been waiting for him to come since everything that happened. Just as I’d craved Cal and Adrian’s strength, and Elias’ comfort. In my grief, I’d craved Draven, too.
I rose at the same time as he stepped into the room and shut the window behind him. I launched myself into his arms, not giving him a choice but to accept my mushy hug. His body tensed beneath mine—the muscles beneath his t-shirt hardening for an instant before he relaxed into my embrace and placed his wide hands on my lower back, pressing me gently to him.
I vaguely heard Bianca whisper, I’ll just give you two a minute, before I heard the solemn click of the heavy wooden door close behind her.
“Are you alright?” Draven whispered into the top of my head, his warm breath spreading over my scalp, making a shiver run down my neck.
“Define alright,” I groaned into his chest, clenching the worn leather at his back into my fists. I sighed before I pulled away—just enough to be able to look up at him, but still close enough to keep my arms loosely around him.
Draven reached up a hand and pushed the unruly red hairs from my cheek, cupping it in his cool caress. “The pain will recede,” he said with a certainty in his gaze that had me questioning whether he was trying to compel me. For the briefest moment, I thought about asking him to.
He could make the pain go away completely. He could make me forget. Draven could force me to be happy.
But the moment passed, and the guilt pressed in again, heavier than it was before. I couldn’t do that. It would be an insult to his memory. Not to mention it would be straight up cheating.
I blew out a breath and tried to look away from his haughty stare, but Draven held me firmly in place. “You are so strong for one so young,” he said, more a musing for himself than anything else, I thought.
My lips parted and I’m not sure what I was about to say, but when Draven’s gaze flickered briefly to my lips, all rational thought flew out the window. Was he…? Did he want to kiss me?
Almost involuntarily, my eyes flicked to his lips.
When I looked back up to his eyes, I found the piercing blue orbs watching me—studying me. He looked into both of my eyes in turn, seeming to search for something. I saw a vein grow thick in his neck and his own lips parted.
Something like hunger flashed over his features before he schooled it back into submission.
“Draven…?” I began, not even realizing I was pulling him nearer until I could feel his breath agai
nst my lips.
His scent enveloped me. That smoke and roses oud I’ve come to know as his. But this close, there’s another smell there I hadn’t noticed before, something sweet, like ice-cold cherry cola after a day spent in the sun. It comforted me.
As he leaned down, his lips a whisper from mine, his hand on my lower back tightened, pressing me into him until I could feel the press of his body flush against my own. My stomach flipped low and hard—that fluttery feeling that comes only with fear or falling wreaked havoc on my nerves. Made my toes curl.
My lips brushed his in the barest of kisses and a small noise escaped my lips—something halfway between a moan and a whimper.
It’s that tiny sound that broke the spell.
All at once, Draven released me, leaving me dazed and more than a little unsteady on my feet. I blinked rapidly and cleared my throat, suddenly all too aware of my body. Of the way I shudder and the burn in my cheeks. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, clenching them only to open them again—put them behind my back, and then into my pockets. Looking everywhere but at the vampire still standing gargoyle-still three feet away.
“I—” I began, not really sure what I was going to say, but needing to fill the void of silence that’s sucking the life out of the room and filling it with a tension so thick you could carve it with a knife.
Idiot. What was I thinking?
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, as though reading my thoughts and knowing I had been about to apologize. “It’s not your fault. It’s the—um…”
I glanced up to find him uncomfortably rubbing the back of his neck, moving his hand to push the longer strands of black hair from his face—uncovering his piercing blue eyes—cast down at the floor. “I shouldn’t have fed on you.”
“What?”
“Feeding on someone…human, vampire, or witch, I suppose—it creates a sort of blood-bond. It’s a perfectly normal side-effect. The endorphins released during the feeding process both for you and for me leave a lasting impression.”
I lifted a brow and waited for him to meet my gaze. “You blood bonded with me?”
“It’s not an exact science. Sometimes the connection is stronger, other times it’s barely there at all after a feeding.”
Was this why I’d been dreaming about him? I hadn’t wanted to think about it. I’d woken up three times in the last week from rather vivid dreams of Draven. I couldn’t talk to the guys about it. And I was too upset with Bianca to want to talk to her about it. But even now the thought of telling her made a pit yawn open in my stomach.
What would she think? Though Bianca agreed Draven was the finest bit of eye candy for miles—she hardly approved of me spending my time with the vamp. And the guys would get the wrong idea. Things between me and them had changed.
We’d become friends. More than that, though, we were becoming something else, too. What I felt with them was undeniable. Just as what I felt for Elias was.
They were all tied to me in some way, and I to them.
But now, looking up at Draven’s impish, apologetic grin, I knew that there was something there, too. Whether it was born of blood bonding or not. I shook my head to clear it.
“Ok,” I said simply. “Might’ve been nice to know that little tidbit before I opened my legs for you.”
The blush simmering beneath the flesh of my cheeks burned hotter. I didn’t mean to say it like that. He had spread my legs. But only to bite…ugh, fuck it.
“Can we just—can we change the subject?”
Amused now, Draven nodded with a tilt of his head that was something of a tiny bow, the sparkle of mischief back in his eyes. “As you wish,” he said and gave a little wink that had my stomach fluttering again.
Bastard.
I cleared my throat and bit the inside of my cheek, moving to sit on the edge of my bed. Draven sat next to me, and I noticed how he was careful to leave a good foot of space between us this time. I also noticed how he wasn’t in his usual overly relaxed state, but instead seemed almost rigid in the way he sat. It looked horribly uncomfortable, but I didn’t say anything. For all I knew, I probably looked the same.
“Have you been by the Abbey?”
Draven shook his head. “A bit hard to get to Ireland without a witch to escort me there.”
Right. I sighed.
“Well, have you talked to the guys?”
They were just out in the old caretaker’s shed. The one I’d converted into a makeshift studio-apartment for them. After everything that’d happened, the students weren’t keen to have them around—even though it was proved they had nothing to do with the murders. This was the first time they were back with me on academy grounds since everything.
They didn’t say it, but I thought the only reason they didn’t stay back at the Abbey was because they didn’t want to endure the second-degree from Leo and Lara. I didn’t blame them. Leo would grill them with questions about the familiar bond, and Lara…well, Lara would be making them swear blood-oaths against harming me—emotionally or otherwise. She was awesome like that.
Draven pursed his lips. “No. I just came straight to you.”
He didn’t know anything yet, then.
I sighed.
I really didn’t want to have to explain everything for a second time today, though it seemed I had little choice.
His dark brows furrowed, shadowing his bright eyes. “Did I miss something?”
“Ha!” I laughed grimly. “Get comfortable,” I told him. “This might take a hot minute.”
I launched into a full recounting of Martin’s letter. I told him about my heritage. About what Martin left me in his will. And about his suggestion to go looking for answers at La Casa Rosa. Once I was finished, I mentioned the fact that Leo and Lara were currently at the Abbey and that me and Cal and Adrian would be going back there tomorrow after classes were through to have dinner with them before out late-night flight.
“So, will you come with us?” I asked him when he didn’t say anything after I’d finished. His lips were set in a hard line, and the furrow in his brow never softened.
“Draven?”
“Hmm?” he said, barely looking up—still processing everything I’d told him.
“Will you come?”
His lips parted as he looked into my eyes, searching. I wondered if he was looking for the same thing I’d searched for in the mirror earlier that day; some indication of the wolf’s blood running through my veins.
He looked away and expelled a breath. Like me, he wouldn’t have found even a trace of Enduran in the green of my gaze. My eyes didn’t glow—never had to my knowledge.
“I’ll need to request leave,” he said, his voice faraway.
Right. He would need permission from his queen. I didn’t pretend to know the intricacies of vampire life or their hierarchy, but after a term at the academy, I knew more about them now than I ever had before. “Is she like, the queen?” I asked him and watched as he rearranged his thoughts to answer.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I know female vampires are more rare than males. And I know male vampires often form a sort of…coven…? Is that the right word? Anyway, they form a group around a female—protecting her and sharing her,” I shuddered at the thought. Though it both excited and repulsed me. But the latter was only because I didn’t like the thought of Draven going home to this so-called queen of his to share his blood and body with her.
When he closed his lips firmly and narrowed his gaze at me, my breath hitched. “So, is your queen the female of your group?”
“You have so much to learn,” he said, distant, with a small smile on his lips now. “She is—as you say—the female of my group, but she is also known as the queen of us all. She is the last living connection to the original Vocari.”
I didn’t really understand what that meant, but I nodded anyway. “So, you, like, sleep together and stuff?”
I hated how pathetic I sounded asking him that, but I felt like I
needed to know. It was driving me mad not knowing. God, was I jealous?
Why?
I unfolded my hands in my lap and stood. “Never mind, don’t answer that.”
Draven chuckled at my discomfort and a sizzle of embarrassment and anger raced along my spine. I hefted Bianca’s pillow from her bed and chucked it at him, catching him off guard. The pillow thwacked him square in the face and his eyes went wide. He jumped.
I snorted as I tried to conceal my laughter at his indignance.
I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle it. “I’m sorry,” I managed between fits of giggles—not sorry at all.
His shocked expression morphed, his brows lowering, eyes narrowing, a sneaking grin curving the corner of his lips. “You’ll pay for that,” he said in a way that managed to be both joking and terrifying.
I froze when he stood in a flash of movement and gasped as he appeared right in front of me. I flinched, anticipating a retaliation, but none came.
“It would be too easy to attack now when you know it’s coming,” he said. “I’d rather wait until you least expect it.”
I couldn’t help the grin that split my face. Something about Draven disarmed me. I’d hadn’t smiled at all in the last few days, with the one occasion this morning being the exception. I hadn’t laughed. Or blushed. Or had a moment’s reprieve from thinking about Martin and my grief over his loss.
But I hadn’t thought of him in almost a full twenty minutes or so. As the weight settled back onto my shoulders and my smile faltered, I realized just how heavy the burden was.
And then the weight compounded as I thought of everything else we still had to do. To uncover and figure out. Shifters and vampires were still in danger. And it seemed witches were now, too. We didn’t know why Donovan was killing teenagers from the academy, but there had to be a reason. We didn’t know why witches had captured shifters and vampires and kept them locked up in that warehouse in butt-fuck nowhere.
But we did know they had injected some of them with something. Cal and Adrian included. We know there was a lab. They were testing. But for what?
Hot tears pricked at my eyes as the heaviness of it all settled over me.