Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
And that’s not you, I thought, studying the coldly handsome man relaxed and sleeping in my presence. Your clan will accept you back if you crush it at the academy, so that’s all you have to do.
I damn sure wasn’t interested in getting in his way, so other than the natural repulsion every decent person has against a murderer, Orion didn’t have any extra personal hatreds stoking his fire.
But with Edric—
I flicked to the tall, terra-cotta-skinned wolf, and found him glaring right back at me.
—it’s personal as hell.
He blames me for being ripped away from his sick mother’s side. Blames me that her final days were riddled with worry and loss from being cut off from her son. All of that pain he laid at my feet... and I only had to look in his eyes to know it.
Paxton wouldn’t bother me. Orion only wanted me to not bother him. Nyx would torment me as long as I made it fun for him. But as for Badr and Edric, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have time for their distractions. They were coming after me, and they weren’t going to stop until they made me feel the maximum amount of pain a person can feel.
Oh yes, I was sure of this... because the same look reflected in my eyes every time I looked in a mirror.
“Let us jump right in it,” Miss Raza announced, shaking me out of my thoughts and forcing Edric to break his unsettling eye contact. “Now, your homeroom teachers should’ve informed you of the curriculum changes. We’re starting everyone at the beginning with a clean slate, so let’s get clear on what that starting point is,” she said. “Who can tell me about the birth of the five dominions?”
Miss Raza—no other name given—was a short, dainty woman with flowers on her skirt, laurel clips woven through her hair, and bright, red lipstick on her thin slash of a mouth.
Her voice was a little too chirpy—like she just transferred to the academy after working with kindergarteners for the last ten years.
Raza nodded at a raised hand at the front row.
“The five dominions were a fae creation— No, a fae mandate,” they said. “The fae divvied up the different territories, and the fae demanded that no one from another dominion cross those territories without permission and approval. It was also the fucking fae who decided that us wolves have to live out in secret communities deep in the woods, and never let the mundanes discover the existence of shifter wolves, vampires, demigods, or any of it. Fucking fae,” he spat.
The sentiment was mutual. Fae weren’t spoken of kindly except for within their own dominion, and in the mundane dominion where they had some strange, lust-filled fantasy that fae were all these gorgeous, sensual creatures that couldn’t stop falling in love with teenage mundanes.
“It’s undeniably true. The fae forced us into hiding and gave control of this world to our inferiors. Because of them, we’re no better than those skulking rats. Vampires.” Raza’s venom came through clear—chirpy voice or no. “But why?” she asked. “Why did they do this, and how did that history bring us to where we are today?”
“It all started with the demigods,” said a bespectacled girl sitting on the other side of Orion. “After their gods shoved a piece of their souls down their throats and created them, vampires sensed the divinity in their blood and... attacked.”
“Vampires smell blood,” Raza continued. “One sniff and they knew instantly that demigods were special. Mundane blood has an amazing restorative and drug-like effect on them. Werewolf blood is poisonous to them, but demigod blood...” She whistled low. “It was like drinking watered-down grape juice your whole life and then discovering fine wine. Why keep wasting time with the inferior version? They couldn’t get enough, so everywhere in the world they lived, whole covens hunted down demigods.”
She paced the length of her desk, caught my eye, and looked away just as quickly. So far, most of my instructors were dealing with me by pretending I didn’t exist. Seemed Raza was adopting the same approach. “Vampires were hunting demigods to extinction. Out of desperation for survival, they came together from all over the world to fight and live as one. Thus began the First Vampire-Demigod War.”
Nods abound. Of course, we knew all of this and more, but what even I didn’t know was, “Why did werewolves join the war?” I asked. “It had nothing to do with us, but—”
“You will raise your hand and be called upon in my class,” Raza snapped with her back to me.
I raised my hand, but she didn’t turn around to look.
“I’d like an answer to that actually,” Orion remarked. His eyes were still closed and his arms crossed over his stomach. “Why did we get involved with their war?”