Page 4 of Ellie 1

“You’re not with anyone but me,” he declared so confidently that it annoyed me.

I snorted. It was true, but I still snorted. His attitude this whole interaction—the attitude of all the men in the damn building that day—pushing the last of my patience into snapping. I gave him the look he deserved and made it clear I was mocking him. “As I said, adults understand discretion. My sex drive needs more than once every other week, Tommy.”

He left.

He blinked at me like he’d never seen me before and just left.

Well, that was almost worth the annoyances of the day. I never thought I’d ever see the moment Dr. Tommy Fitz was rendered speechless.

Why do I sleep with that dipshit?

Right, he was really,reallygood at it with all of his experience.

Asshole.

2

Ha-joon

I had wanted to join All Supes Hospital from the start of my career. It was the ultimate hospital and represented themoralitythat I wanted to see in the world. It took all patients—vampire, witch/warlock, and shifter—without prejudice. They had doctors of all species as well. They took all insurances. They were at the forefront of medicine.

They did everything.

Well, except one thing… Donations.

Yeah, the for-profit hospital didn’t take donations. There was no outside influence on the hospital from donors to keep it going. Grateful patients or family members could donate anonymously to one fund that fed the staff during overtime shifts because of emergencies or traumas.

That was it.

Andthey paid their staff and doctors some of the best salaries in our world. It was like the medical mecca for our world.

The absolute kicker? It was our oldest hospital. It was the first real supe hospital—especially any joint species one.

When humans found out about us over a hundred years ago—before I was even born—they were less than thrilled about our existence. I couldn’t personally speak on that, but I trusted myparents and family. The stories I heard were fair and they were understanding that some of the humans were genuinely reacting out of fear.

And that tended to make people behave badly.

But they had been living in the UK at the time where my father was born and he said over and over again that he’d been so disappointed in his countrymen and women. That their greed had led to their deaths and eventual banishment. That their anger to find out they weren’t the best or most powerful led to their ruin.

Humans all over the world tried to immediately wipe out supes, which was stupid because all they’d had were legends and myths. How they really found out was a mystery, and over a century later no one was going to have the true answer. There wasn’t the internet or trustworthy communication back then.

But wherever it started, it played out the same pretty much everywhere. It started as a rumor and finger-pointing. Then a mob formed with theories and normally targeting the wrong people.

When they did target the right people, the supes stepped in and handled the situation… Which very blatantly proved we were real and then true chaos started. From there, the dominoes fell.

The result? A lot less humans in the world.

Likea lot.

Yes, we lost people too, but the human population was decimated after picking a fight with us. Whole family trees gone in a night because they thought they were picking on prey only to find out they weren’t the predator.

We were taught somewhere between ten and fifteen percent of humans survived, and they were all relocated to Africa. That was the continent with the lowest percentage of supes, so we would be inconvenienced less. It made sense since vamps had anaversion to sun exposure and witches and warlocks were almost as physically fragile as humans.

And the rest of the world was ours.

Was there always peace and equality? No, not even close, but from what my family and friends who were alive before the humans found out said, things were worlds better.

Well, for us. Humans weren’t happy on their one continent and with their limitations. Especially since all of the ones alive before it all happened died off.

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