“So? What did you get?” she pressed.
I coughed a bit to cover the emotions bubbling up in my chest, trying my best not to cry in front of her. Aunt Marie had sacrificed so much to raise me. I wanted to take care of her. How the fuck was I going to do that if I didn’t have a job?
“Secretary! A-at the council headquarters!” I blurted out with a stutter. It was the first thing I could think of.
Shit.
She squealed in excitement and wrapped me up in a bone-crushing hug, her tears of joy drenching my black graduation gown. Aunt Marie’s happiness almost made the guilt I felt disappear. “This is amazing, Motley! A secretary now and maybe a vampire representative one day! I’m so proud of you.”
Shame like nothing I’d ever felt before filled me from my toes up, but I didn’t falter. I wanted to give her this joy. Just once. I could figure out what I was actually going to do later.
When she pulled away, I noticed how her skin had started to turn gray. She began to tremble, and her fangs descended, dripping with venom. Bloodlust was coming.
My lips thinned into a grim line. I hated how quickly it took over her.
“I—I think I need to go home,” she whispered in a low, strained voice.
“Want me to take you?” I offered, but she thrust her hands up in protest at my offer. She hated feeling like a burden.
“No, no. I want you to celebrate. Mingle with your peers,” she insisted.
I had to suppress a snort. If only she knew that I had no peers to mingle with. I hadn’t made any friends while at Thibault. I was a loner. My closest friend was the librarian, Mr. Kinley.
This place wasn’t prestigious for no reason. Only the offspring of the most powerful and successful families attended here, or the few scholarship students like me. And those of us here who got in for our brains or impressive abilities had to stay highly competitive. It wasn’t exactly a place that fostered friendships. Not that I would’ve told my aunt that.
“Stay here. I’ll catch a portal home.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. If I were being honest, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry about my dim future, but I wanted to be there for her.
“I’m positive. Go. Have fun. I’ll be fine. I can hold it off for another hour at least. That’s plenty of time for me to get home.” She grabbed me for one last hug, and I squeezed her tight, though I couldn’t ignore how every muscle in her body was coiled with tension.
As I watched her walk away, the only thing I could think of was how the fuck am I supposed to take care of us now?
I was drowning my sorrows with spiked blood, lingering at the bar top while I listened to everyone excitedly discuss their placements. Enforcer training. Paralegal to the Judge. Internship for Blood Regulations. Shifter military. Department of the Dead.
Everyone but me seemed to have been offered prestigious placements with promising futures. Part of me wanted to knock on Headmaster Torne’s door and demand an explanation, but I knew it was no use. I arrived here as nobody, and I’d leave here as nobody.
“Heard you got an empty diploma.”
I stiffened at the voice and looked over to find none other than Stiles Trant.
The rich, handsome, powerful, prodigious son of the well-connected Trant family. He was the Vampire Paragon, the someday council ruler of our kind, and the guy that all the girls swooned over.
But to me? He was just my secret half-brother.
I hated the fucker.
The man who dumped me off at Aunt Marie’s house when I was two days old? Yeah, that was our father. The only difference was he kept Stiles and tossed me away. I’d come out of the wrong cunt, I guess.
“How did you find out?” I asked, hating that he knew.
Stiles had been pissed when I was accepted into Thibault on the scholarship program—he’d felt like I was encroaching on his territory. He always liked to remind me this was his place and not mine. He was more territorial than the fucking shifters. Stiles had inherited his sense of entitlement from our father. Me? The only thing I inherited was the Trant blue eyes. Stiles and our father had blond hair and strong jaws, while my hair was a cherry red ombré, and my features were far more delicate.
“Everyone knows,” Stiles said with a mocking smirk as he sat down beside me. He looked handsome and affluent like always, his expensive black suit setting off his shiny hair. I looked around, noticing for the first time that people were definitely talking about me. They weren’t exactly being subtle, staring at me as they whispered, tossing me knowing smirks throughout the room.
Thibault had set up this little after graduation party, but most of the parents and professors had left hours ago, and the once dignified celebration was now just a bunch of graduated students grinding on each other to the dance music and getting drunk off the spiked drinks.
“Great,” I muttered into my cup, turning away from the gossipers.
“You’re really surprised?” he asked, sounding like the pretentious dick he was.
“Fuck you, Stiles,” I snapped, swiveling in his direction. “I worked my ass off here for five godsdamned years. I deserved to be the highest ranking student, and everyone knows it. But Headmaster Torne couldn’t let me win that, could he? And now they won’t even give me a placement,” I seethed. “They’re punishing me for being fucking poor with a bastard last name, and it’s pathetic.”
Stiles simply shrugged, as if my outrage didn’t matter, and signalled to the bartender, who immediately brought him a glass of fresh blood. He took
