Brooklyn was the last in the group, and just as they started to walk away and the hall broke into a raucous of chattering gossip, she turned back and grabbed my arm. “That’s why you’ll never be one of us,” she hissed. “You betrayed your own sister-wolf.”
“What? How?” I asked, yanking my arm away. “And since when are you my sister-wolf? You barely said two words to me last year, and when you did, it was to tell me I wasn’t one of you.”
Brooklyn glared, her eyes flashing with her wolf. “You brought that girl here. Now Vance will never look at me again.”
“Um, you’re welcome,” I hissed back. “For saving your race.”
I felt a tug toward the wolves, and for a second, I forgot all about Brooklyn. I’d felt some kind of calling, a summoning. Did they want me after all?
And then Brooklyn stiffened, and I realized Alarick was calling her, not me, through whatever Alpha magic he had. With one last, hateful sneer, Brooklyn turned and flounced after them, leaving me with the race of my people who accepted me.
Chapter Eight
“That was pretty hard for you, yes?” Viktor asked as we made our way across the lovely green campus at the end of the longest Monday in existence.
“Yeah,” I admitted, remembering the wolves walking away from me in their group, the one I wasn’t a part of anymore.
“It’s probably time you learned to drink from the source.”
“What?” I asked, turning to him in surprise.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to feed from a human,” Viktor said. “It’s important to know how, so you don’t kill them, even if you never do it after you learn how.”
“Oh,” I said slowly. He was talking about my near-fang-exposure with Lindy before I’d been distracted. I’d gotten used to drinking blood after a summer where it was all I wanted to do, but they’d never offered me a human. In fact, they’d been pretty fucking adamant about the fact that humans were strictly off-limits. I was supposed to go get an emergency packet of blood from my locker if I started to fang out in class.
“You think you’re ready?”
“Hell no,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. If I bit someone, I’d never stop. I wouldn’t be able to.”
“Everyone feels that way at first,” Viktor said, sliding a hand around my elbow and guiding me away from the path toward my dorm. “That’s why you’ll need to practice.”
“How?” I demanded. “I’ll kill someone.”
“You’ll practice on me,” Viktor said. “Just until you get the biting part down.”
“Wait, I’m going to bite you?” I asked. That was… Interesting. I couldn’t deny that the idea of him biting me had been a little exciting when I’d found out what he was. But vampires were about the only thing that didn’t smell like a meal to me.
“I’m your maker,” Viktor said, looking uncomfortable. “I’m responsible for teaching you.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that Jonathan Ravenwood was my maker first, but the thought of biting the ancient vampire made me want to puke, so I quickly decided against it. I wasn’t drooling at the thought of biting Viktor, but it wasn’t exactly horrifying, either.
“Who’s your maker?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, his flawless brow drawing into a broody frown.
I thought that over until we reached the boys’ dorm. I wanted to ask more, but he clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk about it, so I changed the subject.
“How does it work?” I asked, hesitating as I looked from Viktor to the dorm.
“I’ll show you how to start, and how to seal off the bites so you don’t leave scars when you finish. It barely hurts them if you bite them correctly. Like a finger-stick at the doctor’s. And then once you’re done, your saliva heals them. It’s actually very quick and humane.”
I tried not to dwell on that word. It reminded me that we weren’t human.
“Well, that sounds easy enough.”
“It is,” he said with a small smile. “Once you get the hang of it.”
“How long does that take?”
He shrugged. “Depends on how much you practice. If you were to bite someone now…”
“I’d kill them,” I supplied.
“It would be very painful,” he admitted. “Even once you’ve practiced on me, you might take too much the first time you have human blood. But you’ll get better at it as you go. The important thing is that once you’re in a situation where there’s no other options, that you’re prepared.”
“And I don’t rip someone limb from limb.”
“Right.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s get started.”
He took my hand and led me into his dorm. I’d stayed in Alarick’s room plenty of nights the year before, and as Viktor led me up the stairs to the third floor, I couldn’t help but remember the excitement I’d felt those nights, and how different this felt. This time, I was here to learn, not hook up. There was none of the giddy, first love infatuation I’d felt when I was going to spend the night with Alarick. Instead, I was nervous. Even though I didn’t want to drink Viktor like a juice box, I might still hurt him.
What if I couldn’t stop at one taste?
Viktor’s room was small like Alarick’s, and also a single, but the similarities stopped there. While Alarick’s room had been undecorated and furnished with wooden furniture and earth toned bedding, Viktor’s room was bright and light, with clean lines, white furniture, and nautical themed décor. Paintings of ships and whales decorated the walls.
“Wow,” I said. “Did
