Page 11 of We Hunt the Night

“My brother’s a dick. You can say whatever you want about him, and I guarantee I will have heard it before and agreed. My mom wants the best for him, and your bloodline is all she sees. I had no idea about the whole marriage proposal, but he probably did. I’m just sorry.” She clears her throat and steps up to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. It takes me a second, but I hug her back, sobbing into her shoulder for a long moment. “If we both survive this, you can marry me to avoid my brother. Don’t worry, I don’t want your babies, and I don’t fancy you. I firmly like men. We can live in a big house with girly shit and forget men exist except for when we are horny.”

I burst into laughter. “Deal. You’re my kind of crazy, Wini.”

She laughs and leans back. “Come on, sleep will make all this seem a little less bad.”

Wini waves to the end of the corridor. “Are you okay? I know this is probably going to be difficult with what happened,but you’re alive. You’re fighting still, and that is something to celebrate, and it is worth celebrating.”

I know she is right, but celebrating what happened today feels like cheering at a funeral. “I’m not okay, but I’m coping enough. It can’t get any worse.”

The day is nearly over. I can have a bath and then sleep. There couldn’t possibly be more to go wrong. I’ve been accidentally bonded to men that hate me, put the dragon shifter race at risk of extinction, been thrown off a roof by my bonded who probably didn’t even care that I managed to survive it, and then found out that I’ve been given away in a marriage proposal with absolutely no consent on my part—and to my ex of all people.

I walk with Wini, my legs still shaking, and I feel exhausted. She looks at me when we get to a row of steps. “Dragons haven’t fought for us. No generations in the last hundred years have fought for the witches. They’ve avoided bonds, and then they all end up dead, and now four of them are in the war. This is big, this is life changing. Four of them with you could end this war. Do you know what that means?” I don’t answer her, and she sighs. “I know you feel under pressure and scared, but everything happens for a reason. Every move in our lives is guided by the goddess, and she did this. I know she did. She wants the war over.”

“I didn’t want this. I wanted to be someone normal,” I admit. “I wanted to make spells that helped the war. This is nothing like I imagined and planned out.”

“You still can be the smart witch, the dragon witch, and any title you earn here. Every witch in our history that is remembered began here. You can do that too.”

I know she is right; I know I should answer her, but all I want is to curl up in bed and not think for a good eight hours. But somehow, the day is not done with me yet. “You do know aboutthe room change, right?” I stare at her, stopping on the staircase that leads to the rooms and close my eyes. “Your bonded stay in a shared space, well, room, while you are at the academy. Usually, the academy just makes up a room to be in the room, so you should have five separate rooms in there and one big communal space. They worked out that bonds need to be close to each other as much as possible for the first few years. It’s not good for us to be that far apart.”

“I can’t sleep in there with them. They’re going to kill me,” I snap. I know it’s not her fault, and I immediately feel bad for taking it out on her. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped then.”

“Oh, they can’t kill you. They’d likely die too. There aren’t many stories of bonded surviving without each other.” She grins.

“Did I tell you one of them threw me off a roof?” We are at her door. She doesn’t know what to say as she stares at my face, waiting for me to laugh and say it was a joke. I don’t blame her. “Well, if I die tonight, you know who did it.”

“Good luck,” she chokes.

I pause, looking back. “I wish you were sent to the towns. I never made friends except your brother, and that didn’t work out well for me.”

“Me too, but I’m not an heir to the Umbral Authority like he is. He was born that role, and I grew up with everyone telling me how handsome my brother was, how amazing it is to be related to him, and how lucky I am that I will have a brother on the Umbral Authority one day when my mother steps down.” I shake my head at the thought of growing up with Lock shadowing over me. I imagine it was hard for her. If anyone knows what a hard childhood is like, it’s me. “He’s like a pretty picture on a wall, except for right behind that pretty picture, everything’s a little rotten. But he still told me about you. He’s never spoken to me about a girl before, and he told me about you. I’m really fuckingglad you’re not a swooning nutcase who wants to be his wife. It will do his ego good to have you around, but be careful.”

I watch her walk away down the stairs, thinking about what it must have been like for her to grow up in his shadow. A few steps and I’m in front of the door to my bedroom. Which isn’t just mine anymore, and I hate that. It was the first thing I could claim as my own, and I wanted to keep it. Not share it. Not with them when they hate me.

I walk through my door before I can chicken out and run in the opposite direction. We don’t have separate rooms, and my stomach sinks like a rock in the sea. The room has changed massively to incorporate five double beds in a half-moon shape, each with their own window right behind them with the beds pressed against it. There are more chests, more wardrobes, enough for one each for all of us, and there are four more doors, I gather, to all the new bathrooms.

Maz is lying back on his bed, but he sits up when I come in and happily grins. There is no black eye or bruise or any swelling on his face from where Vale punched him. Their healing skills are not a rumor, then. Black, if I remember his name right, is here, but he’s already in bed and sleeping. One of the bathroom doors is shut with a light pouring out from the edges, and it could be either Vale or Kane. Either way, I’m happy they are both in there and not out here.

“Hey, I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry?—”

“Your psycho fucking friend threw me off the top of the tower,” I snap, “and nearly killed me. I can’t decide if he is stupid or just mean. If I die, so do you all.”

“He thinks he is strong enough to survive it because he doesn’t want the bond,” Maz softly explains. “I don’t agree with him.”

“I guess we are lucky that I’m good at spells, and Vale is going to learn exactly how good I am at them. He wants to play dirty,then fine,” I angrily shout, hoping Vale is in the bathroom and hears me. Maz climbs off the bed and comes to me, but I storm over to my suitcase, which is resting on the cabinet. “And one more thing, and this goes for all of you, don’t touch my stuff. I swear to the goddess, I will come up with the most sickening spells and make sure that all of you have your cocks turned into pencils. Permanently.” I’m not sure how I’d make that spell, but I would. I can hex things too.

Maz doesn’t come much closer, just lifting his hands. “Noted, but I haven’t actually done anything, so I’d like my cock exactly how it is because it’s kind of perfect.”

“Oh, my goddess.” My cheeks brighten as I rummage through the suitcase until I find the top I was looking for and a pair of shorts along with new underwear that I hide in the top so he doesn’t see it. I grab the duvet blanket off my bed and pillow next.

“What are you doing?” Maz questions. I turn to see him standing in the moonlight, his arms tightly crossed.

“None of your business. Go away.” I go into the bathroom and shut the door, flipping the lock. I throw the pillow and the blanket into the bathtub before daring to looking at myself in the mirror and taking a long breath. I barely recognize myself under the grime and ash, under my nest of messy hair. I don’t bother showering. I don’t want to wipe the ash and the death off me quite yet. I just need to sleep, and pretend this isn’t happening, but I can’t sleep in that room with them.

I strip off and pull on the old tatty shirt. It’s got holes all around the rim of it. The dark gray has faded so much now. It almost looks white. There are some stains that I’ve never been able to get out because I’m not willing to try to use a spell on it, but it’s my comfort top; it’s the only thing I can sleep with. It’s the only thing I have left of my father. They found me in this topwhen I was a kid. It was huge on me back then, falling down to my feet, but now it doesn’t. Now it just stops at my thighs.

I climb into the bathtub, wincing as the cold porcelain touches my thighs and stomach, before I curl up and pass out, asleep within seconds. I don’t know what time it is when I wake up to a strange sound outside my door. The sound of a woman screaming pierces the air of the academy.

Chapter 8

---