“Dracula?” Alex raises a pierced eyebrow. “I don’t have a problem with him.” He takes a step closer until his silhouette blocks out the steadily rising sun. He’s all I see, all I hear. He consumes the entirety of my senses. “It’s you I hate.”
“Me?” My words become garbled as one of the skeletons places his hand over my mouth. I attempt to bite down with my fangs, but release a pained cry when I hear a snap. Blood drizzles down my chin from my broken fang, and I try my damn hardest to hold back my tears.
As abruptly as the skeletons converged on me, they release me and crawl back towards their respective graves.
Alex stands over me, panting, his eyes fixed on the lick of blood from my broken fang. His expression shutters as he bends down and grabs the two flags. Without a word, he strides across the cemetery to where Mummy is waiting.
“Violet!” Hux roars, and I turn my head just as he tosses a partially shifted mermaid into a gravestone in his effort to reach me. In quick strides, he hurries towards my side and tenderly cups my jaw. “Whom do I have to kill?”
“We lost,” I lament as somewhere in the distance, I hear Cheryl’s squeal of victory.
Vin and Mason join the huddle next, each covered in a layer of blood with their shirts ripped. Behind them, Frankie stands with an impassive expression on his face, his cold eyes flicking across my body until it rests on my bloody mouth.
“What happened?” Cal demands, stalking towards my other side with Barret hot on his heels. When he sees me, his face scrunches together in sympathy. “Ouch. That looks like it hurts like a bitch. At least you’re still cute.”
“Very cute,” Barret agrees, and I roll my eyes at their attempt to humor me.
“We lost,” I repeat again. That realization settles in my chest like a heavy ball of lead, intermingling with the tangle of nerves already present. “We lost, and Cheryl won.” I clench my hands into fists before slowly, carefully, raising myself to a sitting position. An idea occurs to me as I turn towards the gathered men. “It’s the universe deep-dicking us. If you can’t stop it, enjoy it. At least if the universe makes you preggo, you’ll get child-support from that bitch.”
Just because they won the battle, doesn’t mean they won the war.
I have one goal in life, and one goal only—destroy Alex and Cheryl, no matter the cost.
The idea occurs to me when we’re all gathered around Mummy, after the first official training session for the Roaring has commenced.
Alex sits across the circle, sipping from a water bottle, and I nudge Barret inconspicuously with my elbow.
“Think you can do me a favor?” I ask, batting my lashes up at the tall, imposing man. Barret’s brows furrow in confusion before he follows the direction of my gaze. Understanding dawns as a mischievous grin—reminiscent of Mason’s—lights up his handsome face. “Maybe, instead of water, Alex can be drinking dead bugs?”
“I can do something even better,” he whispers, closing his eyes. I whip my head in Alex’s direction just as he begins to choke. His eyes widen in horror as his hands reach up to grab at his neck. To my macabre fascination, dozens of beetles crawl out of his mouth. The girl beside him screams and scatters, and the male on the other side vomits. A centipede slides out of first his left ear and then his right, followed immediately by a swarm of gnats. Dark liquid seeps from his eyes like tears of tar, solidifying into a collection of stink bugs, millipedes, and worms.
“You’re right,” I say to Barret, canting my head to the side as panic flitters across Alex’s handsome face. “This is better.”
As if he’s heard my words, Alex’s head snaps in my direction, eyes hurling vitriol and pure hatred. He looks seconds away from launching himself at me and wringing my neck. With a sly smile, I give him a finger wave that quickly transitions into me flipping him off. Maybe it’s stupid to poke the beast, but I’m done being bullied by this asshat.
I stare at Barret first, his face scrunched in concentration, before focusing on Cal, who is deep in conversation with Mason and Vin, one hand absently rubbing up and down Barret’s thigh. Hux sits on the other side beside Frankie. Alex may have the powers of the undead, but me? I have an army.
And I might not win the battles, but I always win the war.
Always.
Chapter 15
Mason
With a heavy sigh, I toss the joint on the ground and stomp on it.
She’s late.
A-fucking-gain.
Honestly, at this point, I should stop acting surprised. Mother dearest only cares about two things—her image and Zeus’s cock. She wouldn’t know love if it bitch-slapped her in the face.
In the distance, cresting the boughs of trees, is Prodigium Academy. It’s been my home for the better part of three years—my one escape from this hell I have found myself in. Behind those brick walls, I have made friends and created my own makeshift family. And I met Violet.
I chuckle darkly as I remember Butt Wipe’s face completely consumed by slimy bugs. The asshole deserved it for what he did to Violet. Fortunately, her fang grew back in less than an hour, but it still hurt her like a bitch. Any man who hurts Violet deserves that…and more. Alex is lucky she didn’t tell Hux the truth about her chipped fang. He would be six feet under with nails beneath each of his fingernails by now.
“It has been a long fucking day,” my mother exclaims as she materializes behind me, stalking forward. Her snakes cascade around her shoulders in a myriad of colors—red, orange, green, and even a few yellow. They slither and hiss as they set their eyes upon me, but fortunately, I don’t turn to stone. That would be a pain in my ass if I froze up every time I came into contact with my mother. She stops before me and air-kisses both of my cheeks. “Did you get my present?”
I clench my hands into fists and take another haggard breath. Externally, I’m calm and collected. Internally, my stomach is a tangled nest of nerves and anger, each strand more vicious than the snakes on my head.
“I did,” I say, moving to sit beside her on the stone bench. She smooths out her silver gown, glimmering like starlit silk, before sighing heavily.
“A mother only wants what’s best for her son—”
“I’m not severing the mate bond,” I cut in resolutely. I still remember the fury that pulsated through me when I’d entered my bedroom the day before Halloween to find that spellbook on my desk. It had been an ancient tome about mate bonds. More importantly, how to destroy one. The thought of purposefully doing that to Violet…
Revulsion courses through me, causing my body to shiver.
Yup, no thanks. Not happening.
“But the prophecy…” Mom pleads, and for a moment—for a painful, fucking moment—I think that her anguish is sincere. I think that she actually cares about what happens to me. But Mom? She has never cared about me. I’m the bastard child she never wanted, a reminder that she wasn’t good enough to be Zeus’s wife. I don’t know who my father is, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t really care about Medusa, either.
I care about Violet, and that’s it. She’s my mate, my other half, a puzzle piece that was created in the heavens to fill the emptiness constantly plaguing me. I know innately that Violet will never hurt me. The prophecy about Dracula’s daughter being my murderer is a hoax. There’s no way that crazy, eccentric girl will do anything to harm me. The only pain she’s capable of is of the broken-heart variety. She can completely destroy me, if she ever desires to. She holds my heart—or what remains of the tarnished organ—in her hands, and can either squeeze blood back into my system or crush it completely. The choice is hers.