Page 67 of Mortal Shift
“Hey, if you want to be with your boyfriend, then what’s stopping you running around together like Darkveil’s answer to Romeo and Juliet?”
“You know how that story ended, right?” His lip curved upward in that half-smile that made my traitorous heart skip a beat. “And you’re wrong. Thaden is my friend, nothing more.”
“Yeah, which is weird enough by itself. Did you miss the part where he’s avampire?”
Cole massaged his temples and gave me a sardonic look.
“Shockingly, no.”
“Okay, well how about the part where he keeps cornering me and drinking my blood?” I growled. “You’re supposed to be my mate, so could you at leastpretendto have a problem with that?”
Cole frowned. “Humans enjoy it.”
“Not me. I don’t!”
“Oh. Odd.”
I threw my hands in the air. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say? Fucking ‘odd’?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“That you’ll stop him, of course.” I glared at him like he was a complete moron because he clearly was. “If he’s your friend—for some inexplicable reason—and if anything that happened between us in the dorm wasn’t completely, one hundred percent faked, then say that you’ll tell him to stop.”
Cole stretched his hand toward my face and I flinched back, but he simply brushed his thumb under my eye and then drew it back, frowning at the moisture glistening on it.
Fuck. Now I was crying. Great. Just damn great.
…Worse, it wasn’t about Thaden feeding on me. It was the thought of our kiss being a lie.
“Just…leave me alone,” I said, twitching away from him irritably and turning my back. “Let me go.”
“I can’t do that,” he said.
“Why do you even care?”
“Why are you still trying to escape?” he countered, his voice as exasperated as my own.
“Let me think.” I counted off on my fingers. “I got dragged here against my will. You yourself told me less than fifty percent of people survive long enough to graduate. I have no supernatural skills or powers, so it’s pretty unlikely I’m going to be in that number.”
“You’re supernaturally pessimistic,” he said. “I think that counts.”
“Shut up.” I ignored the fact that apparently everyone round here thought I was pessimistic and kept counting. “Most of the academy is on some kind of personal mission to make my life a living hell—that includes you, by the way. Those that aren’t trying to kill me get their kicks by trying to humiliate me. Freakingvampireskeep drinking my literal blood—”
“I think you have a xenophobia issue,” he commented, and I glowered at him.
“I donothave a xenophobia issue. Did you miss the part about drinking my actual blood?” I went to carry on counting, realized I’d run out of fingers, and switched hands. “Myonlyfriend here is a loner who won’t even tell me whatspeciesshe is, never mind anything else, the guy who’s supposed to be some sort of magical soul mate to me is a total asshole and I don’t knowwhatthat says about my soul, and oh yeah, there’s the big one: You had your pack drag my mom away and youstillwon’t give me a single scrap of proof she’s okay.”
“This is about your mom?”
“Of course it’s about my mom, you moron! I have told you and told you that I need to know she’s okay, but you never hear me. No-one round here hears me. So fuck you, Cole Bryant. I’m going to check on her, and you arenotgoing to stop me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I’d like to see you damn well try— Wait, you’re not?”
“No, I’m not. I’m coming with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
