“Just do it already,” he says.
Jaxson shakes his head from side to side. “I can’t. Don’t make me.”
The man takes off his hood. Nathanial Price stares at Jaxson coldly. “I knew you couldn’t fucking do this.”
I look at Nat and then Jaxson. “What are you doing?”
Jaxson tightens his grip around my waist. “We can take her back to the city. Forget all about this. Nobody will know.”
“You know the rules,” Nat says to him. Nat takes something out of his pocket and walks towards me. “I fucking have to do everything.”
I feel Nat puncture my skin on my lower back, and I scream. Jaxson covers my mouth. After a few moments, I feel my body going limp.
Jaxson delicately lays me on the ground. I feel like I’ve taken too much Nyquil and can feel my eyelids close against my will.
As my eyes shut, Jaxson looks at me, wiping a tear from his eye. Nat stands over top of me with the camera recording every moment. I try and speak, but no words escape.
As my world fades to black, I hear the distant sounds of shouting, then nothing at all.
The Beast-ess
Ryland Academy Rules
Book 3
Mya West
Prologue
Lance
Summer before senior year.
My father sits at the dinner table with a steady smirk on his face. I do not think I have seen him maintain such a pose since before mom passed. Unless talking about money, I do not think I have seen him ever show this much of an endearing expression.
This is going well, I tell myself.
Selena tosses her long blonde hair to one side as she continues to tell my father about a cheerleading camp she attended last month. “It’s not as lame as it sounds, Mr. Cain. A third of the time we are at camp they are preparing us for university. One instructor attended Yale and showed us how cheerleading helped her on her application. She walked us through the whole application process.”
My father’s smirk turns into a smile for a moment. “That’s lovely, Selena.” He lifts his wine glass and takes a sip. Marta, one of my father’s maids, stands over him and pours more wine when he lowers his glass. My father nods ever so slightly, not even looking at Marta, before she becomes part of the background again.
Marta smiles at me, and I try my best to ignore her. Marta is doing a poor job at being part of the background. The huge smile that’s plastered on her face is unavoidable. She looks at me and raises a thumbs up discretely. I roll my eyes and pretend I didn’t notice.
Marta’s gesture reassures me that this is going well.
I have managed to bring home a girl that my father approves of.
Why wouldn’t he approve of Selena Jensen? She is gorgeous with a great body, but more importantly to him, she has a solid last name. Jensen. It is not the wealthiest name around the town of Ryland, in fact, my father wears that title, but it is worthy of a Cain’s attention.
Selena is the first girl I have ever brought home to meet the infamous Arthur Cain. I am certainly not a saint by any means, but when a man like Arthur Cain is your father, you cannot bring home any girl without her being grilled to meet his measure for the kind of woman I should be with.
Selena glances at me with a smile and looks back at my father. The two continue to talk about what she wants to do after high school. Under the table, Selena places her hand on my upper thigh.
Selena Jensen truly was the perfect girl to bring home.
She was the perfect girl for my father.
What about for me though?
Sure, she is the hottest girl at school, but at times, I see a nasty side of her, especially around those she considers less then herself.
I push my thought aside. Why the hell am I self-sabotaging this?
Things are going great with her and my father, which is something of a milestone.
I notice briefly Marta’s smile again. When I look over at her, she winks at me.
I love Marta to bits, but man, is she annoying me right now.
Can she be any more obvious?
She only wants the best for me, of course, and is happy that our dinner together is going amazing.
So why do I feel so uneasy?
Fuck, I need a cigarette.
I glance at Selena, then back at my empty plate where the remains of a porterhouse steak are.
Selena is in love with me. It is obvious. Plain as day. My father must see it too, and Marta.
I do care for her too on some level. It is not exactly love, but I guess it could grow into that. I look over my father’s head at a picture on the wall behind him. It was a family portrait of me, my father, and mother on our family boat. My father had bought it almost a year before my mom passed. Some of my greatest memories of my family were on that boat.
I imagine what my mother would think of Selena. Would she be as impressed as my father seems to be?
“Not everything that looks pretty is pretty in the inside,” my mother told me once. I was a young teenager and was starting to notice girls more. Hell, girls were noticing me in groves.
Jenna Cain was a woman known for her charity work, her caring nature for community and others. My father, on the other hand, had a different reputation.
“What do you think, son?” My father’s voice interrupts my thoughts, and I realize I have not been paying any attention to the conversation.
Selena notices the family portrait behind my father. “Is that your mother? She is beautiful. I wish I could have met her today.” I
