Chapter 28: Chapter 29: I’d rather throw myself at Mr. Asher
I stepped forward even though every survival instinct in my body screamed at me to turn and bolt in the opposite direction. My boots dragged across the trampled grass as if they had suddenly been forged from solid lead, each reluctant step sending dull, echoing thuds through the tense silence. The sound rang unnaturally loud in my ears... boom... boom... boom... like the entire field had fallen deathly still, holding its collective breath just to listen to the frantic, stuttering rhythm of my pulse.
Moon Goddess, if you’re even listening... please, be with me right now, I whispered desperately inside my mind.
Not that she had ever answered before.
If the Moon Goddess had given even half a damn about a broken soul like mine, I wouldn’t be standing here called... wolfless, cursed, branded as a liability before I’d even opened my mouth on most days. I wouldn’t wake up every single morning already braced for the fresh new ways the people around me would find to remind me that I didn’t belong. That I was wrong. Defective. Unwanted. But fear has a cruel, desperate way of dragging even the most abandoned souls back to old, half-forgotten prayers. When the noose tightens around your throat, you’ll bargain with anyone... even gods who have long since turned their backs and walked away without a second glance.
Old habits die hard.
Even the stupidest ones. Especially the prayers to deities who had made it painfully clear they wanted nothing to do with me.
Ysara waited for me at the front of the raised platform, wearing the most syrupy, insincere smile I had ever witnessed on a living face. It was the kind of smile that belonged to someone who would happily pretend to be your closest confidante. The smile that whispered I’ve always liked you while her cold eyes screamed I would absolutely enjoy watching you bleed.
As if we shared some secret, sisterly bond of affection.
As if I hadn’t spent the last several days expertly dodging her thinly veiled insults.
"Don’t be afraid, Nyx," she cooed, her voice soft and sticky-sweet enough to rot teeth on contact. "You’re one of the lucky ones..."
"To finally leave this gods-forsaken hellhole?" I cut in sharply before she could finish her scripted little speech.
A sharp wave of surprised laughter rippled through the students gathered behind me...quick, bright, and genuinely delighted. For once, I wasn’t the only one who found Ysara’s over-the-top performance utterly ridiculous.
Ysara’s smile froze mid-bloom, locked in place for a single, dangerous heartbeat. Then her eyes narrowed into glittering, razor-sharp slits that could have sliced through glass.
Mr. Asher stepped forward before she could fully recover, a flicker of unmistakable amusement dancing in his usually cold, unreadable gaze.
"Are you saying," he drawled slowly, each word hanging in the air like curling smoke, "that the only stroke of luck worth celebrating... is escaping this academy?"
I didn’t hesitate for even a second.
"Absolutely."
There was no point in lying. They all knew the truth anyway. Pretending otherwise would only insult all of us.
"Enough," Ysara hissed. The cloying sweetness in her voice curdled instantly into something brittle and venomous. She forced the smile back onto her face like snapping a porcelain mask into place, then continued as though my little interruption had been nothing more than a minor, forgettable inconvenience in front of the entire surviving student body.
"Each professor is permitted to select one student, someone who has... caught their particular attention."
My stomach plummeted like a stone dropped into freezing water.
Irene’s voice sliced through the heavy silence next, cold and dripping with pure venom.
"And Mr. Tavien has chosen Nyx Vaeloria," she announced, every syllable laced with open disdain. "Even though she scarcely deserves the honor."
The contempt in her tone was so thick I could have choked on it.
My gaze flicked instinctively toward Mr. Asher. For one dizzy, disorienting second, the question burned through my mind like wildfire: Why me?*Out of everyone here, stronger, faster, more powerful, more useful, why choose the wolfless disaster who couldn’t even shift?
And why not his own brother?
But I kept my mouth firmly shut. Because whatever his twisted, unknowable reasoning, it had just yanked me out of whatever humiliating color-selection circus they were about to unleash on the rest of the crowd.
Unless...
Unless this was simply the opening move in a much larger, far crueler game.
Knowing this academy, that wasn’t just possible.
It was probable.
One by one, the professors began calling their chosen few.
Mr. Kaelen stepped forward first, his marble-pale vampire features utterly devoid of any readable expression.
"Ashriel Tavien."
Ashriel moved without hesitation, tall, silent, and lethally graceful, cutting through the crowd like a blade forged from midnight itself. But right before he reached the platform, he turned his head just enough to pin me with a glare so venomous it stole the air from my lungs.
A glare that clearly screamed: You stole something that belonged to me.
Excuse me?
I didn’t steal a damn thing from you, Mr. Brooding Darkness Personified.
Take your attitude and shove it somewhere dark and unreachable.
If anything, Mr. Asher had dumped me onto his team like unwanted, inconvenient baggage.
Ysara called next, her voice ringing out with false elegance.
"Silvan Jorik."
Silvan glided forward, tall, elegant, radiating that effortless aristocratic vampire arrogance they all seemed to bottle and wear like expensive cologne. Pure-blooded. Untouchable. Dangerous.
Which made Ysara’s choice... utterly baffling.
Vampires despised being placed under witches. Especially witches like Ysara, who wielded her power with a velvet glove stretched tight over an iron fist. Whatever political games were playing out between their ancient houses, it wasn’t my concern. Not my circus. Not my centuries-old immortal grudges.
Let’s move on.
Then Mr. Evander Nightfen’s deep, resonant voice rolled across the field like distant thunder.
"Liora Sewlyn."
My heart squeezed painfully as I watched her step forward, shoulders squared, expression carefully calm. But when her eyes met mine for the briefest moment, I saw it, quiet defeat.
Well.
That settled it.
Liora and I would never share a group.
Fantastic.
One after another, the selections continued. Irene eventually chose Lyric Ainsley, another pure-blooded vampire, naturally. She clearly had a very specific type, and it sure as hell wasn’t anyone who looked like me.
Watching the procession unfold, the cold truth settled over me like a thick, suffocating fog: Mr. Asher had almost certainly chosen the single most useless student in the entire academy.
Me.
But I hadn’t begged him to pick me.
That had been his choice.
If anyone wanted to complain about his terrible taste in students, they could take it up with him directly.
"Now," Ysara announced, raising her voice until it carried to the farthest edges of the field, "the rest of you will select your colors... by playing a game."
Of course they would always play a Game.
I was almost certain now that Ysara and Irene were the true architects behind every sadistic twist this academy had ever devised. Every ridiculous rule, every humiliating ritual, it all reeked of their particular, meticulously crafted brand of cruelty.
My gaze drifted across the sea of watching faces and snagged on two very familiar ones.
Thorne.
And Elion.
Both staring straight at me with unnerving intensity.
Thorne’s expression was sharp, focused, like he was mentally calculating odds, outcomes, and future moves. Like I owed him something he fully intended to collect, whether I wanted to pay or not.
Elion, on the other hand...
Elion looked far too smug. Far too certain. Like he had already decided I was going to hand him whatever he wanted on a silver platter, no questions asked, no resistance allowed.
Honestly, I couldn’t even begin to unpack the complicated layers in their twin stares, part hunger, part challenge, part something darker and more dangerous I didn’t want to name.
But then a very childish, impulsive thought crept into my mind.
Before I could stop myself, I looked directly at Elion, stuck out my tongue in the most immature, mocking gesture imaginable, and waggled it like a defiant five-year-old.
Immature?
Absolutely.
Petty?
Without question.
Satisfying?
Beyond words.
And best of all, it worked like an absolute charm.
Thorne’s face darkened instantly. His jaw clenched so hard I half-expected to hear teeth crack from where I stood. He looked two seconds away from launching himself across the field and decking Elion on principle alone.
Meanwhile, Elion...
Elion just grinned wider.
No.
Wait.
That wasn’t just a grin.
That idiot was flirting with me. Openly. Shamelessly. As if my ridiculous tongue-sticking tantrum was the most charming, adorable thing he’d seen all week.
I immediately launched a full-scale internal rebuke at both of them in my head.
Absolutely not.
I am not interested in either of them.
If I had to pick, and I most certainly do not... I’d rather throw myself at Mr. Asher than deal with either of their exhausting nonsense.
Since Ashriel clearly finds me about as appealing as a pair of wet socks anyway.
Wait.
What the actual hell was I even thinking?
I am not interested in anybody.
I mentally slapped my own brain and sternly told it to behave itself immediately.
By then, the game for color selection had officially begun... and from where I stood, forced to watch from the sidelines like some disqualified spectator, it looked ridiculously, unfairly, intoxicatingly fun.
Obstacles pulsing with magic. Bursts of strategy and raw power. Bursts of laughter. Real stakes. Real excitement.
And I was missing it all.
All because Mr. Asher had decided to "save" me.
I cursed him silently in at least seven different languages, each one more creative and vicious than the last.
Because honestly?
It looked like the most entertaining thing to happen in this miserable place in days.
And I never... ever ...get to have any fun.
