Page 11 of The Princess's Pet

“You’re new around here, right? I haven’t seen you before,” she asked, and I nodded. “Well, servant classes are mostly boring, depending on what you’re signed up for. But my older brother tells me this is the most useful class he ever took. Which of course could also mean it’s the most useless class he ever took, never can tell if he’s being serious or not,” she went on and I found that I quite liked her easygoing-ness. After being stuck with the Princess who didn’t speak much for the past couple of days, it was nice to listen to another person chatter on carefree.

“Who do we have here, Ana?” A tall boy with the pale yellow eyes of a shifter asked, wearing a green uniform himself. He slung his arm over Ana’s shoulder and looked at me with a slightly crooked grin on his lips. He was tall, but not quite as tall as full-blooded shifters, nor did he have the stereotypical bulky, muscular build. He was lean with brown carefully kept curls.

“Harris, this is Percy. Percy, this is Harris,” Ana introduced us. “Percy is new,” she added.

“It’s nice to meet you, Percy. You’ll love it here, Sanguis Academy is pretty cool; stick with us, we’ll show you around,” he said happily, genuinely, his grin growing.

“Thanks,” I said a little awkward.

It was nice to meet other people around my age that seemed so happy, but it was also odd. Did they not have masters or mistresses, with mood swings that they found difficult to keep up with? Was no one chomping down on their necks or making them feel all kinds of ways they shouldn’t?

The group of students started to move into the small auditorium; there couldn’t have been more than 50 students once everyone was inside.

“I don’t mean to be rude, Percy, but what are you?” Harris asked, looking at me curiously. “It’s the eyes, I just can’t tell,” he explained.

“I’m half-witch from the Flores coven and almost half-beast shifter,” I explained awkwardly.

“I wondered, your yellow eye is all beast shifter, brighter than mine,” he said cheerily. “So, plants, that’s your thing in some way, right, that’s what Flores does?” he asked, as if he thought he was right but open to the possibility he was wrong. I nodded smiling. “Cool, cool. So, how long have you served the Borealis family?”

“What’s your beast, Harris, a fucking dolphin?” A loud voice playfully interrupted, before I could answer and a much larger young man with bright yellow eyes and a mop of blonde hair hopped over the desks in front of us and shoved Harris. They both wore the same green uniform. “She doesn’t serve the Borealis family; she’s a personal servant. Don’t you have a nose? Can’t you smell Her Royal Highness the Princess Selene Borealis all over the poor girl? I almost shat myself when I walked in thinking the evil witch was here,” the man continued beforelooking at Ana and then me. “No offence to witches,” he added sheepishly.

“Dylan, can’t you at least try to make a good impression?” Ana gasped dramatically, before turning to me. “Percy, this is Dylan, the hot idiot of our group,” she said, and although it might have been taken as a compliment her voice was all derision.

“Watch your tongue, boy and how you speak of our Princess before I cut it out,” hissed a voice from behind me.

I turned to see a young man with black hair, bright green eyes, and the same midnight blue uniform I wore.

“Calm down, Dickward. There’s no one to impress here. We’re all servants,” Dylan replied, unfazed by the threat.

“The name is Edward, dog, and we may be servants, but some of us hold our masters with the respect they deserve. You disgrace Viridis,” Edward snarled.

“Sit down, class, so we can begin today’s lecture,” the voice of a woman called from the front before the confrontation could continue.

The lecturer introduced herself while she set up her computer and screen.

“My name is Dr. Phears. That’s Phears with a P, H and not an F,” she began. “I will be taking you through a series of lectures on knowing the nature of your master or mistress. This will be highly important knowledge for some of you, so I suggest you pay attention. You may believe yourself familiar with vampires, beast shifters, and witches, but not one of you is a pureblood, and you have no innate knowledge of the nature of a pureblood,” she paused, switching screen.

“Today, we will start with the nature of pureblood vampires, my favourite topic, being a pureblood myself,” she began. “The most important nature of a pureblood vampire is the drive tofeed,” she switched to a slide titled ‘Blood, sources, and blood that sings.’

“Not all blood is of equal quality, and what one vampire may find appealing another may find revolting. Personal taste is highly important. Blood is our lifesource. While we consume other nutrition in small quantities, it is blood that satiates our appetite. It is not uncommon for purebloods to acquire specific sources of blood. A source is an individual that provides blood to a vampire, willingly or unwillingly. In particular, vampires search for sources with blood that sings. What does this mean?” she paused to ask the class. “Yes, you at the back,” she pointed to someone I couldn’t see.

“It means a source that a vampire finds more pleasing than others,” a girl answered.

“That’s a partly correct answer, well done,” Dr. Phears praised before continuing. “Blood that sings is more than simply pleasing. It doesn’t just taste good or better than others. Blood that sings produces what is known as a bloodhigh. A bloodhigh is a state of euphoria created when a vampire feeds from a source that sings. It is rather similar to being high from other substances. The bloodhigh and its effects are what we crave. The better the source, the longer the bloodhigh lasts,” Dr. Phears explained. She switched slides.

“Possessiveness,” she read the slide title. “We’ve just covered the very basics of blood, now we’ll look at the basics of vampire possessiveness. Undoubtedly, some of you will have been affected by this innate trait,” she paused again and her eyes flashed up to me briefly. “When a vampire finds a source with blood that sings or that they may simply enjoy, they feel an extremely strong need to mark what their instinct has declared belonging to them. Now, this serves two purposes. The first is that when done correctly, marking (something we’ll discuss soon) is a very clear way of informing other vampires and supernaturals, that a source belongs to someone else and exactly who that source belongs to. The second purpose is to calm the vampire’s instinct. The need to own and possess can become overwhelming, and an overwhelmedvampire lost to instinct could easily kill the source they want to protect and keep,” she paused and switched slides.

“Marking, now marking can take a few forms and usually involves venom—vampire venom and its known effects will be discussed in another series of lectures. Venom scent is strong and unique to each vampire. A vampire will aim to either cover or insert their venom into whoever they are trying to claim, whether that be a source or mate. Sources are usually marked by the vampire injecting their venom during feeding. The smell lingers on the source for usually a day, perhaps two, and cannot be washed away. If a vampire cannot feed, perhaps in concern for the health of the source, they may cover the source in their venom, usually via their saliva. Marking a mate can also be done in this way, but a mate can also be marked sexually. The sexual fluids of a vampire also contain venom, and if sexual fluids from the vampire enter the chosen mate similarly to feeding, the chosen mate will be marked with the scent of the vampire for a day, perhaps two. Marking is, therefore, an act that must be regularly repeated if the vampire is to ensure that whoever they wish to mark remains so.”

“What can we do to help ourselves if a vampire shows possessiveness over us?” a voice called. Dr. Phears looked perturbed at the interruption, but paused to think of an answer.

“Do as you’re told,” she said simply. “If you try to fight a marking, for example, instinct will likely take over and the vampire will force the marking or kill the source to avoid others potentially stealing it from them. I assume you all want to live. And a vampire that has become possessive wishes for you to live too. Don’t tempt those protective instincts; as well as they might keep you safe from others that would try to harm you, they might also destroy you to stop others from having you,” Dr. Phears answered soberly.

I couldn’t help thinking that Ana’s brother was right, this was probably the most useful class, for me anyway. The Princess had said that I sang to her yesterday and mentioned being bloodhigh. She was also marking me which made sense if I was her newfavourite source. Would she also feel possessive over me because I was her soul match? Were her protective instincts also working with her possessive instincts? The only reason she chose to keep me close after all was to stop others from having me and using the soul match against her. Thinking of it, the future queen having a known soul match didn’t sound like a very safe thing. But no one knew about the soul match. The Princess didn’t mention it to her friends yesterday, they were surprised to see me there, and I sure wasn’t going to say anything and put a target on my back. Was the soul match a secret? This was something I’d need to speak with the Princess about.

My mind wandered more as Dr. Phears introduced the nature of Beast Shifters.

When the lecture ended, Ana wrapped her arm in mine so we were walking side by side.

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