“What type of mate am I if I can’t protect you?” He runs his fingers through his long black hair, and my breath catches on the “mate” word. Instead of diving into all of my muddled feelings, I fasten my hands behind his neck and tug his lips down to mine.
“The best kind.”
Aware of the eyes probing into my back, I lean in close, teasing his mouth with my lips. Hux groans low in his throat, slipping his tongue between my lips and cupping the back of my head. I don’t even care that with each tug of my curls, he’s destroying the immaculate hairdo Cynthia spent an hour on. I don’t care that each brush of his lips against my own causes my lipstick to smear. All I care about is calming the storm raging just beneath the surface of my monster.
My fingernails dig into his shoulders as he tilts his head to the side, devouring my lips at a deeper angle until the embers in my belly transform into a flame.
“I can’t let anything happen to you,” he whispers against my mouth. “I—we—won’t be able to survive it.”
“I’m always going to be here, Hux, annoying the shit out of you. You can’t get rid of me.” Our breaths fan together as our lips meet once more. “You too, Jack.” There’s a pause for a moment, and then the kisses become even faster and more intense, his mouth slanting over mine. I don’t have to look to know that Hux has transitioned into Jack.
“He’s been like this since we saw those words carved into your skin,” Jack admits. “You’re the most important thing in the world to him.”
His lips touch mine once more, biting sharply on my lip. The aggressive move surprises me—completely unlike both Jack and Hux. It’s punishing, almost. Still, I open my mouth and kiss him back with a fervid intensity, promising him the world in our clash of lips.
Somebody clears his throat from behind us.
“Guys, we’re going to be late,” Mason says, voice heady with amusement and lust.
I don’t know what I expect to see when I turn around, but it isn’t the flames dancing in all of their eyes. It isn’t the pure and unfiltered lust emanating back at me. Even Cal and Barret are staring at me as if they have never seen me before. When they catch me looking, Cal looks away with a frown, but Barret’s smile grows. I half expected jealousy and anger—hurt, maybe—but that’s not what I see at all.
Oh, the possibilities…
“Let’s finish this ceremony,” Hux says, straightening out his rumpled suit. I only know it’s Hux because his accent becomes more pronounced. Once more, he extends his arm for me to take. “And then, we can pretend to be a normal girl and a normal guy at a ball together. What do you say, my precious treasure?”
I smile softly at him. “We’ll never be normal, Hux. How can we be? We’re a bunch of monsters.”
CHAPTER 24
VIN
The commencement ceremony is a drag. Monster after monster steps up onto a stage and speaks a few words about how excited they are for the Roaring to begin. When Dimitri fucking Gray materializes, I notice every girl in attendance—and a few of the males as well—straighten in anticipation. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Violet exchange a glance with Frankie. When she faces the front once more, there’s a delicate flush to her cheeks that hadn’t been there prior.
Great. Even my mate is obsessed with our headmaster.
My mate.
Those two words still cause a torrent of butterflies to be unleashed in my chest. It seems surreal—utterly impossible—that someone like me found the one person I’m fated to be with for the rest of my life. If I wasn’t so positive that Violet was perfect for me, I would think it was a cruel twist of fate.
A Dracula and a Van Helsing.
It sounds crazy, even to me, and I’m the asshole living it.
When we’re finally dismissed, Violet is swept away by her other…err…boyfriends? Mates? Fuck if I know or even care. All that matters is that they protect and care for her when I can’t.
Say, now, for example. Before I can follow after her, a hand clamps down on my shoulder, halting me.
“Vin,” my father says shortly, staring at me like I’m a bug he wishes to squish. I imagine it’s the same expression he gives the monsters he hunts—like we’re nothing. Stefan Van Helsing is a tall and imposing man, well over six feet tall. He would be handsome if his mouth wasn’t twisted in a rictus grin and if anger wasn’t written into every line of his wicked visage. Vanessa stands on the other side of my father, face pinched tightly. It’s the only outward sign of her distress.
“Stefan,” I reply just as cooly. We don’t use titles, him and me. For as long as I can remember, he has always been Stefan to me. Now, my grandpa, on the other hand…
My heart pinches, as it always does, when I think of him. He was the only person—sans my twin—to have ever truly loved me. All of the other love bestowed upon me was conditional, with heaping layers of expectations I couldn’t even begin to meet. Even my mother, with her cherubic face and honey blonde hair, saw me as an object to twist and distort for her schemes. Her angelic face belies a wicked streak a mile long. She and my dad are carved from the same cloth, after all.
I’m a pawn for them to use, nothing more.
Abruptly, Stefan grabs my arm and drags me towards the gray tomb erected in the center of the graveyard. I’ve never seen it up close before, despite having lived on campus for years now. The dilapidated, seventeenth century chamber curves steeply at the top, the gray stone transitioning to a wooden cross. The name carved above the door has been eradicated with age,
