Page 24 of Cloak of the Vampire
Someone suddenly cleared their throat, taking me out of my locked-eyes connection with Ragnor. It was Cassidy.
I slowly moved my eyes from Ragnor to Cassidy. Our eyes clashed, and she held mine for long moments. It was as if she was trying to determine whether I was going to acknowledge our shared past. When she finally spoke, all she said was “I would like steak too.”
And just like that, I realized that the lives we had before were gone. Erased. Friendships? Lovers? Teachers? No one cared about that but me. Cassidy was a struggling musician up there. Here, she was in cahoots with a powerful vampire Lord, seated at his side attable one, and being waited on by someone she used to know—and if I’m being honest, didn’t really like all that much. She didn’t owe me anything, so waiting for her to say something other than what she did was moot. Down here, Cassidy didn’twantto know me.
It seemed as if I was the only one holding on to the life above, and despite the circumstances, despite the anger and betrayal, this had to end. Now.
As though my body had switched to autopilot now that I finally understood how things worked down here, I found myself gritting out, “With our Lord ordering three steaks, we’re out. My protein recommendation is chicken breast.”
“I’ll take the chicken, then,” Cassidy said with an exhausted sigh as if she had just negotiated to free a hostage. She could be overly dramatic when she didn’t have her way.
There were so many things on the tip of my tongue that I wanted to say. Instead, I wrote down Ragnor’s and Cassidy’s orders on my notepad.
“Is that all?” I asked, looking at everyone seated at table one.
The beautiful man quietly placed his order without incident, and I quickly scribbled it down on my pad.
When I looked up, Cassidy was still staring at me. In her eyes, I finally saw what I hadn’t seen before.
Panic.
She was begging me with her eyes to not say anything. Not here, not now.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out Cassidy’s motivations, seeing as she’d just shown up on the arms of the Lord of our Leagueandwas important enough, apparently, to sit attable one.
Our marginal friendship from before was now a distant memory. All of it flushed down the fucking drain now that she was no longer a poor lead singer of a shitty band living in a shitty neighborhood waiting to become a vampire.
First Logan, now Cassidy. Despite being surrounded by hundreds of vampires, I was truly fucking alone.
After I finished writing down the rest of the orders, I turned on my heel and left, staring straight ahead and ignoring the pitying looks of my classmates and the mocking ones of the rest of the League.
CHAPTER 9
It was close to dawn when I finished my first cafeteria shift. Even Lon was gone. I ripped off my apron and threw it in the laundry bin before washing my hands in an attempt to wash away this awful,awfulday.
I had been ridiculed, taunted, yelled at, cursed at, and stared down. I had endured watching Cassidy and Logan laugh and eat and carry on like they didn’t have a care in the world.
I left the kitchen, wishing the place would be set on fire, and was just walking out of the cafeteria when a familiar voice said, “Good job today.”
With as high strung as I was, that comment sent me over the edge. I whirled around, enraged, and was sending a punch straight to the speaker’s face when he caught my wrist, grabbed my other wrist, pushed me backward as though I weighed nothing, and shoved me against the wall.
That’s when I came face to face with Ragnor Rayne, the reason for all my pain.
His eyes were a cool midnight blue and his face was as intimidatingly blank as always. Now all I could think about was him. His hold on my wrists was strong, but he wasn’t hurting me. His touch seemed to set my skin on fire. His palms were so rough and warm.
“Nice attempt,” he said in a low voice, glancing at my much smaller hand still balled in the fist that was meant to strike him, before returninghis gaze to my face. “But consider this a warning. If you ever try to hit me again, I won’t be so forgiving.”
“Let me go, asshole,” I snarled, despite feeling my body start to give in.
With lightning speed, he freed one hand, and used it to grab my neck. I found myself wishing he’d grabbed me hard enough for it to hurt. For a split second, I was vulnerable to him, as my body was betraying me.
“Be careful, Henderson,” he said, his eyes no longer so cool and his breath quickening. “Or—”
I didn’t wait for him to finish. Wild thoughts that shouldn’t have manifested ran through my head. So I used my free hand to attempt to punch him once more, but in a blur, he turned me around so that my front was pinned against the wall, my arms were behind my back in a shackling hold, and his thighs pressed against the backs of mine, completely immobilizing me.
I inhaled sharply as our bodies were twisted up and pinned together in a way that they should not have been. When he suddenly tightened his hold, he pressed closer until I could feel him in ways I wished I couldn’t feel.
Something pooled in my belly, something I refused to acknowledge. I wanted to run as far away from him as possible.
