Hearts of Darkness: A Valentine's Day Bully Romance Collection

by Joanna Mazurkiewicz

  She chuckles. “I’m the only girl on the football team.”

  This surprises me. I’d heard a girl made the cut, but I hadn’t seen anything about her yet. “I heard you earned that spot. Maybe luck’s already on your side.”

  “Or I used up every bit of my lifetime allotment.” When she grins, the corners of her eyes crinkle. She sticks out her hand. Her leather-studded cuff catches my eye. “I’m Freya Mittlehain”

  I take her hand. “I’m Adam Kensington.”

  There’s no flicker of recognition in her eyes when she hears my name. My mood lifts slightly. Maybe she doesn’t have any idea who I am.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says, gripping my hand. She’s squeezing, and I like the strength of her. It’s different. Most women don’t do that.

  “Nice to meet you.” I tighten my grip, and she grins. “You’ll have to show me your tattoos sometime.”

  She shakes her head. “You have to earn that, Adam Kensington, and I don’t think you’re up to the challenge.”

  The End

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  You can also preorder Teammate (Triple A’s Book Two).

  About the Author

  J. A. WING DREAMS OF chocolate and flying. Or maybe flying /in/ chocolate. When she's not writing her latest contemporary dark romance, feathers and whiskey are two of her favorite things. When asked for the time, purple is the correct answer. Always. She lives in the middle of Nowhere, USA, with the man of her dreams.... and his pack of wolves.

  MY SOUL TO BREAK

  A Grim Reaper Academy Novella

  Cara Wylde

  About My Soul to Break

  My name is Hayley Clarke. I’m an exchange student at Grim Reaper Academy, and I want to go home. What should have been an awesome experience has turned into my worst nightmare when Jace Merlin and Ivor Gray set their eyes on me. One is a mage, and the other is a vampire. Normally, I would stand up for myself. But I’m only human. I wouldn’t stand a chance. All I need to do is survive the semester, and then everything will be okay. I’ll be back home, all forgotten. All I need to do is... not fall in love with my bullies.

  Chapter One

  How had I ended up crying in the bathroom stall again? It seemed to happen a lot lately... I would’ve gone to my dorm-room in the east tower, but the girl’s bathroom was closer to the dining hall, from where I had run away ten minutes ago, as fast as I could, as if chased by the ten plagues of Egypt. The plagues were just two, though – Jace Merlin and Ivor Gray. My nemeses.

  I curled up in a ball, sniffed silently, and tried to dry my face with the sleeves of my uniform blazer. The tears just wouldn’t stop falling. I felt awful, and I was starting to lose hope that I would ever feel good again. I had been in this dimension for almost a month, the only exchange student at Grim Reaper Academy. One might wonder how an exchange student program would even work when Grim Reaper Academy was the only one of its kind in the entire world. There were no other Grim Reaper Academies. Just one. The only institution accredited to prepare the twenty-two Grim Reapers the world needed to function properly in peace and balance. Well, let me tell you a long, complicated, fascinating story.

  Two hundred years ago, a human was invited to apply to Grim Reaper Academy for the first time in history. A human just like me, but not quite. She was the first student with absolutely no supernatural powers to pass the entry test, and she was also the first girl to be sorted into the Violent Death Cabal. She turned Grim Reaper Academy upside down, and she later turned the whole supernatural world upside down, when they all discovered that she was, in fact, just as supernatural as the shifters, demons, archangels, vampires, and false gods attending or teaching at the prestigious institution. She was a dream jumper.

  As it turned out, humans happened to have their own supernatural powers. Not all humans, unfortunately. But the rarity of this new, never before known or studied superpower made it even more attractive, awe-inspiring, and terrifying at the same time. Mila Morningstar was her name. From what I had heard, she wasn’t human anymore, but that didn’t matter. Her legacy still lived, and it was now carried on by her cousin, Yolanda Aleksiev, who was currently attending the Academy as well. We were in the same generation. The only two humans and dream jumpers to attend Grim Reaper Academy and prepare to become two of the most powerful and influential people in the world – Reapers whose career consisted of granting death to the worthy and the unworthy, equally. Going back to the exchange student program... How was it possible, indeed?

  Mila Morningstar opened the possibility to travel to different parallel dimensions of this Earth, and later on, her cousin – who was a much more gifted dream jumper than she was, – mapped the parallel dimensions in such a clear, detailed, and strategic manner that even the supernaturals who couldn’t dream and dimension-travel at all could read the map and understand how it all worked. Long story short – because lunch was probably almost over, and I would eventually have to leave this bathroom stall and head over to my next class, – it turned out that dream jumpers could not only travel to these parallel dimensions in their sleep, but they could also change places with their counterparts in those dimensions. The trick was to find a parallel dimension that was on the same timeline as the one they came from. Which was actually quite difficult, as Mila and Yolanda had both discovered that most parallel dimensions were usually either a few steps in the past, or a few steps in the future.

  It took years for the most talented dream jumpers in this world and in my world to find two dimensions that were perfectly parallel. But when they did, they started to do much more than just exploring them – they started experimenting. And Yolanda Aleksiev had had a lot to do with these experiments. Once our dimensions made contact and agreed on how to further proceed to better explore and learn about the possibilities of interdimensional travel, they decided that the next generation of students attending Grim Reaper Academy should have at least another human invited to apply. This human, of course, needed to be a gifted dream jumper.

  Hayley Clarke. That is my name, and I was chosen to apply to the Academy in my dimension. I passed the test, I did the first semester there, and then the headmasters of the two Academies in the two dimensions came up with a brilliant idea – insert sarcasm. I, Hayley Clarke, was to exchange places with my counterpart in this dimension. The deal was for only one semester, and since it wasn’t like I could refuse, I said yes. After all, the Hayley who would exchange places with me and come meet my family and friends was so similar to me that one could easily believe we were one and the same. We weren’t one and the same, which was something I always stressed on every time someone asked me about it and about how this whole thing worked.

  I’d thought it would be easy. The two dimensions were so much alike that’d thought I wouldn’t even feel like I was away from home. Oh, how dearly mistaken I had been! Everything was different. For one, back home, in my dimension, Jace and Ivor had never paid me any mind during the first semester. Jace was in the Neutral Death Cabal, just like me, a mage coming from a long line of mages. The name Merlin said it all. He was a direct descendent of the great wizard who’d guided and advised King Arthur himself. In this dimension, though, this Jace was anything but neutral toward me. Aside the fact that he was a total asshole and considered himself royalty just because he had the name of Merlin, he seemed to had made it his personal mission to make my life miserable and downright unbearable. He was the reason why I was in this bathroom stall now, huddled on top of the closed seat of the toilet, so if anyone came in, they wouldn’t realize I was there at all.

  The students of the four cabals usually stuck with their own. I was Neutral Death, so I always ate at the NDC table. I had thought that the students who were NDC were supposed to be decent people, and back home, that was generally true. This dimension was different. No matter how much everyone wanted to believe that my dimension and theirs were essentially the same, the more time I spent at their Grim Reaper Academy, the more I und
erstood that belief was not utterly wrong, but also deeply unfair and narrow.

  Most of the students here were awful. It didn’t matter whether they were in the Violent Death Cabal – which was known for housing all the major jerks, – the Righteous Death Cabal – which wasn’t very different from the VDC, – the Neutral Death Cabal, or the Merciful Death Cabal. Most were entitled, proud douchebags, with egos which, if they were to climb, would make them jump to their deaths. Just because they were immortals or near immortals, they believed that they were better. Better than me, at least. Probably not better than Yolanda, who even though was perfectly human herself, was a star even before her first year at Grim Reaper Academy. No one dared to touch her. No one dared to look at her the wrong way, or to address her like she was on the same level as everyone. She was popular, I was not. So, that made me the main target to all the bullies who were made to feel insignificant and irrelevant by Yolanda’s simple presence. I was the other human, and I was nothing like them. Aside from the fact that I came from another place – a place they couldn’t visit themselves because supernaturals simply didn’t dream and didn’t have the ability to dream travel, – I also looked different than all the other girls at the Academy. You see, vampire girls were naturally skinny. Shifter girls were lean and strong because they inevitably worked out a lot. And mage girls could easily change their looks if they wanted to. But if you happened to be a human and if you also happened to come from a family of people who tended toward the heavy side, there was nothing you could do about it. So, here I was, Hayley, the human from a parallel dimension, whose only skill was to dream dream dream, and whose body took great pleasure in distributing every piece of chocolate she consumed to all the wrong places on her belly and thighs. I wouldn’t have said I was a heavy girl, but I sure was curvier than all the other girls here.

  Eating at the NDC table in these conditions was more than a chore. It was punishment. Now, for instance, I was crying in the bathroom because Jace had pulled another of his disgusting pranks on me. He came from a strong line of mages, his powers were well honed, so he was pretty much capable of doing anything he wanted. Since I got here, he’d repeatedly made my books, notebooks, and pens disappear in class and gotten me in trouble with the professors, he’d tripped me in the hallways, and acted like the spoiled brat that he was, all the while laughing at me and turning me into the black sheep of the Neutral Death Cabal. Today, at lunch, he’d crossed the line.

  After the Psychology class with Headmaster Colin, everyone headed to the dining hall and fell in line, trays in hands, waiting for their turn at the open buffet. When it was finally my turn, I started piling vegetables onto my plate, only to have them turn into cupcakes before my very eyes. It took me a minute to realize what was happening. The laughter coming from behind me gave it all away. I turned to see Jace Merlin staring at my food with focused intention and making every piece of tomato, cucumber, and asparagus turn into a vividly colored cupcake with a simple flick of his wrist. At first, I tried to ignore him. I gave the tray away to one of the servants, grabbed another one, and proceeded to pile another batch of vegetables onto my plate. There was no use. Jace kept turning everything into cupcakes, while making fun of me and encouraging his friends to call me names and whisper amongst themselves that I just couldn’t help it, I had to eat all the sweets I set my eyes on. When they all started calling me “piggy”, I snapped. I dropped the tray and ran out of there like my life depended on it.

  He was a moron. I knew that. I knew that I shouldn’t let him get under my skin, but it was easier said than done. And all the other guys who had laughed at me... No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get their faces out of my head. And the one who had encouraged him the most was Ivor Gray, who was actually in the Righteous Death Cabal, but for some reason liked to hang out with the NDC guys, especially Jace. God, I hated them! I hated them so much, and it hurt so badly that I felt helpless and small every time I faced them and every time they did these nasty things to me. I should have stood up for myself, but how could I? I didn’t have any powers, and I didn’t have any friends.

  One would think that Yolanda and I would have bonded over the fact that we were both human, but the reality was different and way harsher than that. I did try to befriend her when I came here in January, and she seemed nice enough – just like her counterpart in my home dimension – but what was different between this Yolanda and my Yolanda was that this one seemed to be constantly lost in her own thoughts, in her own world. She rarely paid attention to what was happening around her. She had stood up for me a couple of times in the past, but that hadn’t made things better. On the contrary, it had made them worse. It usually worked on the spot, when the guys bullied me, because they would immediately pretend like they were minding their own business when Yolanda made her appearance, but after she was gone, they would come on to me even harder than before.

  No, I couldn’t rely on Yolanda. Seeing how focused she was on her own stuff, she wasn’t even able to be a real friend to me. Sometimes I thought that something had to be done because there was no way I could allow them to walk all over me the entire semester, but then I always realized that I was the only one who could do it, I was the only one who could stand up for myself, and no matter how much I wanted for things to be different, for some courage and balls to materialize out of nowhere, it was just not going to happen.

  I had always been shy, I had always kept to myself, even before Grim Reaper Academy. When I received the invitation to apply to Grim Reaper Academy, I was already in my second year of college. I knew nothing about the existence of the supernatural world, and to be included in something so special and extraordinary was like a dream come true. Little did I know that it would all turn into a nightmare simply because I had the gift of dream traveling and was, thus, the only candidate for the student exchange program.

  My heart jumped in my throat when the bathroom door opened and three girls came in, giggling and talking loudly, pulling out their makeup bags and taking over the mirrors. I dragged in a deep breath, wiped my face as best as I could, swung my legs over the toilet seat, and smoothed down my clothes. I wasn’t wearing any makeup, and I was sure my red eyes would betray me. I didn’t know who they were, but it didn’t matter. As far as I could tell, Yolanda wasn’t with them, and aside from Yolanda, I didn’t really know the other girls at the Academy. I stepped out of the bathroom stall, doing my best to hold a straight, decently confident posture. The girls shot me a curious glance, but no one said anything. Two of them were MDC, and the third one was RDC. Of all the four cabals, the Merciful Death Cabal was made up of slightly more reasonable people. Yolanda was MDC.

  I stole a quick glance at myself in the nearest mirror. My black hair was slightly disheveled, but since I had a bob cut, a few vigorous strokes were enough to make it look presentable. As I had expected, my eyes were red, the thin, inflamed veins making my dark brown irises stand up more. At least, my red and black uniform looked okay. It helped that the working staff always made sure we had a clean set of clothes each morning before going to breakfast and then first period.

  “Hi,” I said in a feeble voice in the girls’ general direction. None of them said the words to me, and realizing how silly I was acting, I added weekly: “Sorry.” I rushed out of there just like I had rushed out of the dining hall, with my proverbial tail between my plumpy legs.

  Dammit, I thought. I can’t go to class like this. As I walked briskly down the hall, stealing worried glances around me and doing my best to avoid anyone whom I knew might take pleasure in tormenting me, I squeezed my books to my chest and thought of ways of skipping. The next class was History, and since this was year one, the four cabals usually had classes together. I knew that Jace and Ivor were both in my History class, and there was no way I could face them again today. I took a right, ran to the doors leading into the open inner courtyard, and stepped outside, in the chilly February air. There was no one here. All the students and professors were in class, and even
if they hadn’t been, I doubted they would’ve been eager to spend their free time in the snow-covered yard. I closed my eyes for a minute, inhaled deeply, and allowed the cold wind playing in the skeletal branches of the trees to rush over me and take my pain away. Another minute, and I felt almost ready to face everyone again, but I had a better thing in mind.

  I need to do something. This shit can’t keep happening again, and again, and again. I don’t know how to stop it, but maybe she does.

  I crossed the yard purposefully, reached the other wing of the Academy, and headed straight for the Infirmary. I found the nurse reading some old book on traditional cures and medicines. She looked up when I burst through the door, set the book aside, and gave me a wide, gentle smile.

  “Miss Clarke, are you okay? Shouldn’t you be in class?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, I’m not feeling very well.” I touched my temple with a shaky hand. “This awful headache... It just won’t go away.”

  She nodded, stood up, and went to look for something in the suspended cabinets filling up two of the Infirmary’s walls.

  “This will help,” she said as she gave me a small bottle with three white pills in it.

  I took a look at the pills and shook my head. “They won’t. I’ve been taking them for weeks. Do you have anything stronger?”

  “Let me see...”

  She thought for a second, then left the room. I didn’t need more than a few seconds. I reached out where I had earlier spotted the sleeping pills, and stuffed a bottle into the pocket of my uniform blazer. When she came back, I took the one pill she offered me, thanked her, and kindly asked her if she could write me a note that would excuse me for the rest of the day.

  “All right, Miss Clarke, but just so you know, this doesn’t really happen around here.” She took out a piece of paper and started writing. “I’ll help you this one time because you’re different than the rest.”