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  I stood there, shocked and frozen, gaping at him as he turned to leave. Partly because he just kissed me—in front of everyone—but also because...

  “You can’t just leave me here!” I hissed at his retreating back.

  But he’d already slipped out of the room, and the door closed with a heavy thud that echoed throughout the huge gym. I felt that shit in my godsdamned bones. “Fucking shifter,” I mumbled under my breath. I was seriously debating ditching this class until Gritt came back, but a voice stopped me before I could even try to make my escape.

  “Void, you’re late.” I turned to face the teacher and the few dozen vampires sitting on the maroon bleachers. “The lesson was just getting started.” He was dressed like a typical gym instructor. He had windbreaker pants tied tightly around his waist, and an oversized gold athletic jacket with the school’s crest over his chest. I immediately didn’t trust him, mostly because I didn’t like gym teachers on principle. Anyone that forced me to run automatically made my shit list. But there was something about the sinister gleam in his gray eyes that had me wanting to run for the door.

  “I’m Coach Willis. We were just going over vampire attack methods. Have a seat.”

  I quickly crossed the gym and found a spot on the front row. I had to be careful when I chose seats. If I picked one of the top rows in the back, I’d risk someone tripping me on my way up. Plus, I’d have to endure everyone twisting in their seats to stare at me. I preferred to be off to one side, but I didn’t want everyone to think I was weak, so front and center was the best bet.

  Of course, Blaire was sitting on that row, but I didn’t notice until I’d already sat down. Dammit.

  Her legs were crossed to show off the short length of her uniform skirt. She’d have to be careful standing up, because one wrong move, and we’d all be seeing her vag. Although, maybe the entire student population had already seen it. Blaire kind of had that easy seductress vibe going on.

  I’d barely gotten settled in my seat when the coach walked up to me. “Void. Can you tell me what happens to a victim when bitten by a vampire?”

  My cheeks flooded in embarrassment and other vampires around me snickered. My memory flashed back to Render’s kiss at the ball, and the way he’d drawn me in at Vampire Headquarters and licked my wound. It had been...erotic. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the pleasure coursing through my veins, making me wish I could wrap myself around his body and dry hump him into oblivion. I was embarrassed about giving in so easily to that pleasure, but the chemistry between us was too strong to ignore. Not that I was going to admit that right now to Coach Willis in front of everyone, so I decided that the safest bet was to play ignorant. I didn’t want rumors spreading that I was Render’s blood whore, despite knowing that everyone saw. Technically, Render had never initiated biting me. But when his teeth had dug into my tongue and lip, I’d learned the meaning of bliss. When a vampire bit you with their venom, it was said to be one of the best feelings in the world.

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  Everyone laughed at my answer, a few scoffed. One girl with long brown hair and black lipstick gagged in disgust like the idea of drinking from me was revolting. “Yes, well, I assume living with humans your entire life wouldn’t allow for many opportunities.” Coach Willis’s voice was gruff and humorless.

  My knee bounced, revealing my anxiety. I wished Render or Gritt would get in here. Weird. When did I start thinking of them as allies?

  Coach Willis whirled around, returning to the center of the gym. “Come up here, Void,” he ordered while pointing at the shiny floor beside him.

  Dammit. I didn’t want to stand up. I wanted to sink into the bleacher seats and pretend I wasn’t really here.

  “Why?” I asked warily.

  I wasn’t sure why I asked. Probably because I had a death wish. Or maybe it was all my years of having an issue with authority figures. Mistress Cock could definitely attest to that. Coach Willis gave me a sneer, probably imagining the many ways he wanted to murder me. His fangs popped out slightly, letting me know that my guess wasn’t far off.

  “I didn’t realize I had to give you a reason,” Coach Willis snapped. It was then that I realized he had an angry Southern accent, the type of drawl that he tried to hold back but couldn’t when his emotions were heightened. It was a deeply Southern twang, one you’d only hear in movies or in some backwoods town in Oklahoma. “How about you get your ass up here and do what I say? Otherwise I’ll have Headmaster Torne deal with you.”

  I gritted my teeth. He knew damn well that by tattling on me to the headmaster, Torne would act like it was justification for expulsion. Maybe before, I’d just wanted to stay here so I could actually learn about my powers and have the chance to practice, but now, I had other reasons for wanting to stay. I wanted to figure out why I was so drawn to the paragons, to figure out why feeding from Gritt was different, plus our mate bond and Render’s craving for me. I didn’t want to leave yet.

  “Look at her, too scared to go up,” Blaire whispered to a friend, making them all laugh.

  I twisted in my seat to look behind me at the rows of vamps just waiting for an excuse to tear me down. Fuck that.

  Standing up, I adjusted my skirt before tossing Blaire a wink and walking toward Coach Willis. Once I stood next to him, Coach Willis got a little gleam in his eye. He turned back toward the bleachers, scanning them. “Peaches, come here and help me demonstrate something, please?” he asked, gesturing toward a girl sitting up front.

  I had to hold back a snort at her name. Peaches? Who the fuck named their vampire child Peaches?

  “When bitten by a vampire, the experience can be very pleasant for the victim,” Coach explained while the Peaches chick made her way toward me. She looked like the typical vamp. Porcelain skin that had probably never seen a blemish, blood-red lips, and eyes bright but terrifying. She stalked instead of walked, body moving in a predatory way that had every hair on my body standing up. “Peaches, I want you to demonstrate this effect on the Void,” he said, holding his arm out to me like I was some sort of decadent treat.

  My mouth dropped open in surprise. “Excuse me?” I asked before taking a step backward. I didn’t like this one bit.

  Peaches didn’t seem bothered by the instruction, nor did she stop walking, despite my obvious discomfort. Instead, she smiled. “Sure thing, Coach.” Then the bitch flashed forward and placed her lips at the thudding pulse on my neck, making me freeze in shock.

  I didn’t even have time to process what was happening before she sank her teeth into my skin, causing that pleasurable energy to flood me like fire. But unlike with Render, this felt wrong.

  There was no attraction, no desire. It was like she was force-feeding me pleasure through a needle, and I was helpless to stop it. There was a toxic exhilaration transferring between us, and I hated it. “No,” I said, making the entire class erupt in laughter.

  “What’s wrong, little Void? You don’t like it when someone takes something from you?” Blaire sneered. “Guess you know what it feels like now.”

  Peaches laughed while her fangs continued to dig into my skin. I was helpless to stop the way my eyes rolled back and the heat pooled between my thighs. It was the worst kind of assault. It was taking my body and using it against me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. “Look, she’s gonna fucking come,” one of the guy vampire’s chuckled.

  “Enough, Peaches,” Coach Willis said. “We need the blood bag to be full for the rest of my demonstration.”

  When she finally pulled away, I folded in on myself, pressing a hand against my neck.

  “Void, describe to the class how that felt,” the coach said as Peaches wiped my blood off her mouth and migrated back over to her seat, an extra pep in her step.

  I swallowed the bile rising up in my throat, but I leveled him with a look despite the fact that I wanted to cry. “It felt like someone was forcing pleasure on me. It felt like rape,” I replied, moving my eyes to lo
ok out at the vampire students. A few of the females had the decency to seem disturbed by my analogy, but most of them kept an emotionless expression perched upon their perfect, porcelain faces. Blaire had the audacity to smirk like she was enjoying every second of this.

  “That’s a bit of a dramatic explanation,” Coach Willis said “The venom in our fangs is meant to make the feeding an enjoyable experience for our victims. You’ll rarely hear of a human complaining.” He was making light of my mandatory participation. Acting like I was in the wrong here. He made me sick.

  “Great. Well, you proved your lesson,” I said while moving to go back to my seat, feeling violated in ways I couldn’t describe. I just wanted to go back to the feral cabin. Hell, I just wanted to go home, wherever that was.

  Coach Willis held up his hand. “I didn’t say you were done,” he said before clicking his tongue. “Raul, come here, please.”

  A larger guy with dark, sweeping hair flashed forward, teeth bared at the smell of my blood dripping down my neck. I realized that I now had every vampire in the room hungry for a taste of me. Their prejudice only stemmed so far, I guess. They couldn’t deny their need to feed. Not with my blood running freely and the scent of it in the air. All of them had their fangs out now, even Blaire.

  “Now, it is possible for a vampire to hold back their venom, in the instance of an attack,” the coach explained. “When defending yourself, you might not want your opponent to enjoy the experience. Sometimes you want them to feel pain.”

  At his words, my heart started pounding, and the blood drained from my face. I took a step back, deciding that it was time I got the fuck out of here. I was prideful, yes. Determined to prove I was strong—hell, yes. But I didn’t have a death wish. Coach Willis looked over at me, and that gleam in his eye had only grown. I saw the monster behind his smirking expression, and I knew that I was in very real danger.

  “Raul, test it out on the Void. Remember to hold back your venom. It takes practice.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head adamantly. “I don’t consent to this.” I held both of my hands up in front of me like that could ward them off.

  Raul flashed closer to me, taking advantage of my outstretched hand to grab hold of my wrist and sink his teeth into my skin. I cried out, my eyes slamming shut from the tears that threatened to spill out. I couldn’t yank my arm back no matter how hard I tried; he was too strong, and it would only tear the veins and tendons in my arms. So I stood helplessly as he drank while my mind raced and my panic peaked.

  I knew that if I reached up with one hand and yanked off my amulet, this could all be over. I could destroy them without a thought. But there was a part of me that didn’t want to prove them right. I didn’t want to be the Void everyone feared. I just wanted to be treated with some humanity. I guess that was too much to ask of a roomful of supers.

  At Raul’s initial contact, that familiar pleasure shot through me, this time more aggressively. But upon the coach’s reminder to hold back his venom, it faded away, and the reprieve ended. Raul cut off his venom, and then a searing, sharp pain came next. It was a tearing sensation like my skin was being pulled back with licks of fire.

  I gritted my teeth, barely holding back a scream. I refused to give these vamps the satisfaction of hearing how much they were hurting me. Instead, I focused on the hollow of Raul’s cheeks as he sucked from my wrist, and the crimson drops of life escaping the corners of his mouth.

  “Next,” Coach Willis commanded, but Raul took his time pulling away. He didn’t even bother to clean the wound with his healing saliva either, just let me continue to bleed in pain as he turned and made his way back to his seat.

  “This time don’t let your venom out at all. Control the impulse. Remember that she’s a disgusting Void. You don’t want this to be enjoyable for her. She’s a threat that you must get rid of,” Coach Willis shouted, his Southern accent in full swing as he stalked around me, clearly enjoying his demonstration.

  Oh my gods. He wants me dead. The realization left me stunned. How could everyone just sit there and let this happen?

  Another vampire girl flashed on me in an instant. She sunk to her knees and cut into my skin with her fangs, dipping into my plush skin right along my inner thigh. She drank heartily, and I cried out, unable to stop myself. It felt like knives were shoving through the muscle. It fucking hurt. So badly that all I could do was stand there as my awareness started to sink.

  “Well done, Misha. That’s enough,” Coach Willis called.

  But the heady scent of my bleeding puncture wounds was too strong. Misha didn’t disengage. Instead, her manicured hands curled around my calf, and she started drinking more.

  And then, another vampire had flashed forward and sunk his fangs into my arm. And then another one was tearing through the tendons on my back. Then I felt more pain on my right shin; just above my ankle was assaulted. Then my chest. My shoulder. My stomach. My clothes became torn and bloody, and my screams finally escaped my throat until the sound was echoing through the gymnasium, bouncing back to my ears and playing my pain on a loop.

  I tried to push them back, tried to break away, but it was no use. I just grew weaker where I stood. I could feel my eyes freezing over like the puddle outside my childhood home in winter. I could feel my skin grow clammy. Sweat danced around each bite, mixing salty determination with my blood.

  I tried to reach up and grab my necklace, ready to fucking end them, but a hand stopped me before I could. “Nope. You won’t be using your Void powers right now.” My watery eyes opened to see Blaire standing there among the writhing, greedy vampires as they drank from me. “Such a nice view, watching my kind suck you dry,” she said with a smile, her fangs poking into her bottom lip. “Now you know what it feels like.”

  Tears tracked down my cheeks and landed on the pair of vampire heads below.

  “Enough! Disengage, class! Disengage!” Coach Willis shouted, but it was no use. The feeding frenzy was too strong.

  I wasn’t sure how many vampires were feeding on me when my knees hit the gym floor. I didn’t want to collapse, but my body had other ideas. I couldn’t see Coach Willis. I couldn’t see anything except for blood and predators. Their triumph in the air was heavy on my tongue, and I briefly wondered what I’d done wrong in my life to die like this.

  “Enough!” a booming voice yelled through the gym, but this time, it wasn’t Coach Willis.

  I knew that voice. It was the only thing I could remember in that moment besides pain.

  Noises like fighting broke out. Black dots kept littering my vision, and I couldn’t lift my head, couldn’t be sure what was happening. Then several vampires were thrown away from me, and stone-like arms wrapped around me. I was lifted and held against a bare, warm chest. My amulet started to vibrate at the familiar power, rippling across my bloodied skin. The Void was hungry again, likely trying to replenish all that was taken from me.

  “Headmaster Torne will be hearing about this,” another voice yelled.

  “Good,” Coach Willis’s voice replied coolly. My vision started to go fully black, but I could hear the vampire predator’s final words before I lost consciousness. “I was doing him a favor. She doesn’t belong here. Remember who the real enemy is, shifter.”

  That’s the last I heard before my entire fucked up world went black.

  And there was a small part of me—the part who hated who I was, the part who hated how hated I was—that hoped to never wake up. Or maybe I should wake up one last time just to destroy them all, be the Void they expected me to be.

  Fate had planted destruction like a weed in my soul, and it was time to water it.

  Chapter 15

  “Why weren’t you there? Why didn’t you stop them?” an angry voice yelled to my right. Too loud for the headache I had.

  I was lying on something comfortable. Plush, cool leather pressed against my bare skin. I was naked and swimming through darkness. Where had my damn clothes gone?

  “Where was I?
Where the fuck were you? That was your godsdamned class!” I heard Gritt yell. “I had to go check on the fucking bobcat. I couldn’t get out of it. I’m the paragon.”

  “Yeah, well Devi almost fucking died because of your godsdamned paragon errand.” That angry voice belonged to…Render? I’d be baffled if I weren’t so groggy. “I texted you to say that I’d be late, but you obviously didn’t get it.”

  “No, I didn’t. And in her first ten minutes alone, she almost gets fucking killed by a bunch of your vamps!”

  A hum broke through their vitriol. “Words and instructions are funny, aren’t they? We were told to protect the other students from the Void. But who knew we’d also have to protect the Void from other students,” a calm voice replied to my right. Hyde.

  “I didn’t think the professor would use her like a human blood bag,” Gritt said, the anger evident in his voice.

  “She’s too weak. Can’t you do anything, vamp?” another voice said. It sounded like it was coming from behind me. Was that Quade?

  “I’ve sealed all of her wounds, but she’s still too pale. They took way too much blood,” Render replied. Then I felt his cool tongue trace over my thigh. I flinched at the sudden touch.

  “If they’re all sealed, then why are you still running your fucking tongue all over her?” Gritt snapped.

  “I’m making sure I got them all. How did you even know she was in danger?” Render countered, but Gritt didn’t respond. Instead, it was Hyde that interjected.

  “Ohhh. Looks like our growly Shifter Paragon is more connected to Devicka than he’s admitted,” Hyde said with amusement. “Good. Maybe now he won’t be so intolerable,” he teased.

  I tried to move, but a groan escaped my lips from the pain. The entire room went silent. It seemed like the only sound I could have made were grunts and moans.