Page 12 of The Blackened Blade

The most deadliest predator is the one you don't even see coming.

It’ll make it all the sweeter when I come for her, for all of them.

I take another step toward the door, this time much calmer, when suddenly I’m knocked to the side and sent slamming into the wall beside me.

Pain slices through my right shoulder and back, a heavy ache growing in my head from the impact. It dulls my senses, as a figure looms over me.

“What do you think you were doing standing in everyone's way?” A tall blonde boy towers over me, a scowl stretching his features as he glares down at me. He's flanked on both sides by two brawny boys.

The boy with mousy brown hair gives me a twisted grin.

“Maybe she forgot her place…in the gutters.” He sneers, a dark chuckle leaving his lips.

The blonde I now remember was Jeremy Colton, and the mousy haired boy beside him was Jake Andrews. Both of them were wolf shifters and constant tormentors through my academy years.

Jeremy joins Jake in his joke laughing, as the third and most familiar boy just stares at me.

Kane was my childhood friend, he was also a shifter and a jock, part of the school's football team with the other two asses.

We were childhood friends but that wasbeforeSeria.

His cold, icy stare seems to agree with me.

A face that once held so much warmth and affection was now wearing a mask of indifference while watching others torment and physically assault me.

Kane turns away and heads toward the class, making his way to Seria and the other three boys I used to call childhood friends.

I turn and watch him leave, wondering if the memories I had of my young childhood were all lies and illusions.

The memories of the five of us flash by my eyes as I watch him make his way to stand beside Xander; one of the five of us playing hide and seek in the forest behind our homes, of building our own small forts and playing by the lake, of smiles and tears and promises of eternal love and friendship.

They had pulled me through a dismal youth and given me some resemblance of a childhood, knowing all too well what my home and family life were like. They were a hope of a better world to a younger me…but not now.

That was before Seria, before the academy and before the Facility.

A hand slams into the wall beside my face, just barely missing me by mere millimetres.

“What are you glaring at, pleb?” I turn back toward Jeremy and Jake, both towering over me, their eyes slowly creeping up my exposed legs from the fall.

What I wouldn’t do to slap the scum off their faces.

I ball my hands into fists but quickly realise, I’m not strong enough.

This body is physically too weak to take on two normal boys, let alone two athletic shifters.

My younger self had no scars or broken bones, but she had no physical strength or training either.

My mind is as sharp as a twenty-seven year old with years of experience of fighting and surviving assholes, but this seventeen year old body is weak even for human standards.

I needed time to become stronger.

Sure, I could inflict some well deserved pain, but it would be fleeting for a shifter who would heal quickly. But for me, I’d have some unnecessary broken or fractured bones that would take time I didn’t have to heal.

Jeremy bends down toward me, “Maybe I should teach you your place in a morememorableway?”

I clench my fists. What's a few broken bones anyway? He deserved everything I’d give him. Even with this weak body, I’d make sure I would inflict as much pain as I could.

His grin widens, his eyes gleaming with some disgusting thought as he leans closer.

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