Chapter one
1715 Words
I let out a loud cry as Scarlett’s staff struck my back and sent me flying to the ground. I landed with a loud thud; the sound echoed throughout the training hall.
I heard the students gasp. They weren’t shocked. This had been happening for weeks. They were enjoying it, in fact.
It was my third week at Nightshade Academy, a school for vampires...not just any vampires. These children belonged to very powerful families whose wealth stretched back generations.
You need great connections to get in here, or, in my case, good grades. I had gotten in on a scholarship after high school.
At my old school, I was bullied because I was different. My father was a vampire, but we weren’t related by blood. He had rescued me from the back seat of a car after my parents died in a crash.
I was just five years old at the time. Only fragments of memory remained, but I could still hear my dad’s voice as clear as day. “Get down, Aurora! We are going to crash!” he shouted.
I could hear my mother’s shaky breath and her loud cry as the other car collided into us.
My foster father had caught the scene when his eyes met mine. He said it made him want to protect me. He had tried to use mind control to make me forget it, to protect me, but it would resurface in the form of dreams… no… nightmares.
Because I was human, I never fit in. I lived in a vampire town with people who could feed on me or kill me if they lost control. The students taunted me, saying I didn’t belong.
When I got into this academy three weeks ago, I had thought it was a chance to start afresh. I had thought children of influential families would have more important things to do than bully a human.
But it was even worse here.
Way… worse.
“Scarlett!” the combat instructor shouted. “I told you to take it easy on the human! She doesn’t heal like us!”
Scarlett scoffed. Her boots made gentle thuds on the ground as she circled around me, her staff positioned behind her, stretched out and ready to strike. “If she can’t take it, then she shouldn’t be in a school such as this.”
“Stand down, Scarlett,” the trainer instructed.
Scarlett scoffed and stood before me. “This school is for powerful vampires. If you are too weak to train with us, then leave,” she hissed.
The students laughed.
I struggled to stand up from the ground. My back still ached from being struck, my whole body, in fact. She had struck my legs, my hands, and my stomach. I limped as I got to my feet.
The whole class laughed as they watched me.
“A vampire would have healed by now,” a boy said.
“I can’t imagine being a human,” a girl said with a disgusted look on her face, her hands pressed against her chest in awe.
“I would kill myself,” another girl said.
“Quiet, students!” the instructor shouted.
They continued to murmur. Scarlett wore a smug look on her face as she walked back to her seat. Her black ponytail swung as she walked. Some of the students gave her high-fives as she passed them.
“Ms. Creed?” the instructor called out to me. I turned around and began to limp toward her. She wore a look of pity in her eyes. “Do you want to take a few days off from school? You humans need time to rest after things like this.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine, ma’am.”
“You do not have to push yourself too hard just to prove that you are strong, Aurora. You are not like us. If you push yourself too hard, you might break,” her brown eyes narrowed.
But that was the thing...I had to prove myself. That was the only way the bullying would stop.
“I’m fine, ma’am,” I repeated. As I parted my lips to speak again, my gaze caught somebody in the crowd of students who murmured amongst each other.
Nicholas Blackwood. He was the son of the vampire king and one of the best students in school. He had black hair and grey eyes. He never smiled, never spoke to anybody, never laughed. He was just… icy.
He kept to himself. Even when the girls flooded around him, trying desperately to get his attention, he still didn’t give any of them a second glance.
I felt all the hair on my arms rise as I noticed he was looking at me. There was something in those eyes that made a person’s skin crawl.
I gulped and quickly looked away.
The bell suddenly rang. Instantly, all the students stood from their seats. Their staffs landed with a loud clank on the ground as they tossed them aside. They did it every day after combat training, and I had to pick them up.
The school’s headmaster had declared that I would clean up the training hall every day after school for two weeks as punishment for trashing the library five days ago. Only it wasn’t me. Scarlett and her friends had done it and pinned it on me.
I had to stay back after school to clean up before I went back to my dorm.
“You can go back early to your dorm. I’ll ask the cleaners to handle this,” the instructor said, looking at the mess on the floor.
“It’s okay. I’ve got it,” I persisted.
She pressed her lips together. “Alright, then,” she said and walked off.
I moved to a chair in front of the class. Each step ached more than the last. I slumped into the chair and sighed as I looked around at the gigantic hall. It would take more than an hour to clean it all up.
After a few minutes of catching my breath, I finally stood up from the seat and began to pick up the staffs, arranging the chairs as I went. As I picked up one of the staffs, I suddenly winced in pain. A splinter had caught in my thumb. I immediately dropped the staff and tried to pull it out.
But my fingernail wasn’t long enough to grip it.
Tears clouded my eyes. I felt my heart drop, but it wasn’t because of the splinter that had turned the skin around it red and made it swell. It was as if all the emotions I had bottled up, forcing myself to stay strong, had come rushing up at once.
Their hateful words, the fact that it was true I didn’t belong in the world I grew up in… the only world I knew… It scared me.
Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. My brows pinched together and my chest tightened. “Come on…” I whimpered as I struggled to get the splinter out, but I felt it go in deeper.
“Aurora… right?” I suddenly heard a voice behind me.
I spun around in shock, my eyes growing wide. It was him...Nicholas. I hadn’t expected any student to still be here. They all usually went back to their dorms immediately after the bell rang.
He was still in his combat uniform: a pair of black boots and a black tank top with the back of our school emblem embedded on the left side of his chest. His biceps were unbelievably huge. I watched him clasp his veiny arms behind his back.
His black hair sat perfectly on his forehead. My eyes trailed up his pointed nose and sharp jawline.
It was the first time the two of us had stood face to face. The girls weren’t lying...he was handsome.
“Y… yes. Aurora,” I answered.
He nodded and walked past me. I turned and watched him pick up a backpack from one of the chairs and throw it over his shoulder. He turned and began to head toward me. I stepped aside to let him pass, but he suddenly stopped before me.
I looked up at his towering figure, watching as his eyes turned red...not the red of anger, but literal red. Red veins formed underneath his eyes. I could see him struggling to force them back to normal. “Are you bleeding?” he asked.
He could smell my blood from just a tiny injury?
I slowly nodded and hid my thumb behind me.
He sighed and stretched his hand toward me.
I looked at his hand, then up at him. “What…”
“Give me your hand,” he commanded.
My heart dropped. Did he want to feed on me?
I quickly shook my head. “I’m not your food, Nicholas. There are blood bags in the fridge.”
A look of annoyance formed on his face. “I can control myself around human blood. I can’t say the same for the other students. If you don’t want to become lunch or dinner, give it here,” he instructed.
I slowly slid my hand into his. His brows pinched together as he observed my thumb. “This might hurt,” he said as he squeezed the skin with both fingers.
I shouted in pain.
The pressure pushed out the splinter and he quickly picked it out. He tossed it aside. “Clean up your wound,” he said in a cold tone and walked past me.
I looked back at him, watching as he walked out of the hall. Except during training, I had never seen Nicholas speak to anybody for more than ten seconds.
Why did he help me?
The thought bothered my mind for a few seconds, and then I shrugged my shoulders and continued to work.
As I picked up the staffs, I felt an itch on my right wrist. I reached for it and scratched, but it got worse each second. When it became unbearable, I bega
n to scratch uncontrollably. Then I looked at it.
My hands trembled. My lips parted in shock at what I saw.
“What is that?” I gasped.
- Writer
