Covet

0

Life After Death

This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.

This isn’t how anything was supposed to happen. Then again, when has my life gone according to plan this year? From the moment I first got to Katmere Academy, so much has been out of my control. Why should today, why should this moment, be any different?

I finish pulling up my tights and straighten my skirt. Then I slide my feet into my favorite pair of black boots and grab my black uniform blazer from the closet.

My hands are shaking a little—to be honest, my whole body is shaking a little-as I ease my arms into the sleeves. But I feel like that’s fair. This is the third funeral I’ve gone to in twelve months. And it hasn’t gotten any easier. Nothing has.

It’s been five days since I beat the challenge.

Five days since Cole broke the mating bond between Jaxon and me and almost destroyed us both. Five days since I nearly died…and five days since Xavier actually did.

My stomach pitches and rolls and for a second, I feel like I’m going to throw up.

I take several deep breaths—in through my nose, out through my mouth—to quell the nausea and the panic rising inside me. It takes a minute or three, but eventually both feelings subside enough that it’s no longer like I’ve got a fully loaded 18-wheeler parked on my chest.

It’s a small victory, but I’ll take it.

I pull in one more deep breath as I fasten the brass buttons on the front of my blazer, then glance in the mirror to make sure I look presentable. I do…as long as you play fast and loose with the definition of “presentable.”

My brown eyes are dull, my skin sallow. And my ridiculous curls are fighting the bun I’ve wrestled them into. Of course, grief has never been my best look.

At least the bruises from the Ludares challenge have started to fade, turning from their original violent black and purple into that mottled yellow/lavender color that happens just before they disappear completely. And it helps slightly to know that Cole finally hit my uncle’s too-many-strikes-and-you’re-out limit and got expelled. Part of me wishes that he’ll meet an even bigger bully at that school for paranormal delinquents and misfits he was sent to in Texas…just to see how it feels for once.

The bathroom door opens, and my cousin, Macy, walks out, robe on and towel wrapped around her head. I want to hurry her along—we’ve only got twenty minutes before we’re supposed to be in the assembly hall for the memorial—but I can’t. Not when she looks like her every breath is an agony.

I know, too well, how that feels.

Instead, I wait for Macy to say something, anything, but she doesn’t make a sound as she heads toward her bed and the dress uniform I’ve laid out for her. It hurts to see her like this, her bruises no less painful than mine for being on the inside.

From my first day at Katmere, Macy has been this irrepressible presence. Light to Jaxon’s dark, enthusiasm to Hudson’s sarcasm, joy to my sorrow. But now…now it’s like every single speck of glitter has disappeared from her life. And from mine.

“Do you need help?” I finally ask as she continues to stare down at her uniform like she’s never seen it before.

The blue eyes she turns my way are haunted, empty. “I don’t know why I’m being so…” Her voice drifts off as she clears her throat in an attempt to force away the hoarseness of misuse—and the sadness that is causing it. “I barely knew—”

This time she stops, because her voice breaks completely. Her fists clench, and tears swim in her eyes.

“Don’t,” I say, moving to hug her, because I know what it’s like to beat yourself up over something you can’t change. Over surviving when someone you love hasn’t. “Don’t discount your feelings for him just because you didn’t know him forever. It’s about how you know a person, not how long.”

She shudders a little, a sob catching in her chest, so I just hug her harder, trying to take away a little bit of her pain and sadness. Trying to do for her what she did for me when I first got to Katmere.

She holds me just as tightly, tears rolling down her face for so many tortured seconds. “I miss him,” she finally chokes out. “I just miss him so much.”

“I know,” I soothe, rubbing her back in slow circles. “I know.”

She cries in earnest now, shoulders shuddering, body shaking, breath breaking, for minutes that seem to last forever. My heart crumbles in my chest-for Macy, for Xavier, for everything that’s brought us to this moment—and it’s all I can do not to cry with her. But it’s Macy’s turn right now…and my turn to take care of her.

Eventually, she pulls away. Wipes her wet cheeks. Gives me a fragile smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “We need to go,” she whispers with one last pass of her hands over her face. “I don’t want to be late to the memorial.”

“Okay.” I return her smile with one of my own, then walk away to give her some privacy to get dressed.

When I turn back a few minutes later, I can’t help but gasp. Not because Macy has done a glamour to dry and style her hair-I’m used to that-but because her hot-pink hair is now pitch-black.

“It didn’t feel right,” she murmurs as she combs her fingers through a few strands. “Hot pink isn’t exactly a mourning color.”

I know she’s right, and still I mourn for the last vestiges of my bright and shiny cousin. We’ve all lost so much recently, and I’m not sure how much more we can take.

“It looks good,” I tell her, because it does. But that’s no surprise—Macy would look good bald or with her hair on fire, and this is a far cry from either of those. It does make her look even more delicate, though. Even more fragile.

“It doesn’t feel good,” she answers. But she’s sliding her feet into a stylish pair of flats, adding earrings to the myriad holes in her ears. Doing another glamour—this one to get rid of her red and puffy eyes.

Her shoulders back, her jaw locked, her eyes are sad but clear as they meet mine. “Let’s do this.” Even her voice is resolved, steely, and it’s that determination that gets me moving toward the door.

I grab my phone to text the others that we’re on our way, but the second I pull open the door, I figure out it’s unnecessary. Because they’re all right here in the hall, waiting for us. Flint, Eden, Mekhi, Luca. Jaxon…and Hudson. Some are more banged up than others, but they’re all a little worse for wear—just like Macy and me—and my heart swells as I look them over.

Things are a mess right now—oh my God, are they a mess—but one thing hasn’t changed. These seven people have my back and I have theirs…and I always will.

But as my eyes meet Jaxon’s cold, dark ones, I can’t help acknowledging that while one thing hasn’t changed, everything else has.

And I have no idea what to do about any of it.

1

Check Your Mate

Three weeks later…

“I’m begging you.” Macy throws herself across her rainbow-comforter-covered bed and stares at me with imploring eyes. It’s so good to see her finally almost smiling again since Xavier’s funeral that I can’t help myself from smiling back. It’s not a full smile yet, but I’ll take it. “For the love of God, please, please, pleeeeeeease put those boys out of their misery.”

“That’s going to be hard,” I answer as I drop my backpack next to my desk before flopping down on my own bed. “Considering I haven’t put them into their misery.”

“That is the biggest lie you have ever told.” My cousin snorts, then lifts her head just enough to make sure that I can see her rolling her eyes. “You are one hundred and fifty percent responsible for the way Jaxon and Hudson have been moping around school for the last three weeks.”

“I feel like there are a lot of reasons Jaxon and Hudson are moping around school, and I’m only to blame for about half of them,” I shoot back…then immediately regret the words.

Not because they aren’t true but because I now have to watch as the little bit of color Macy had in her cheeks slowly drains away. She looks so different from the girl I met in November that it’s hard to believe she’s the same person. Her wildly colored hair still hasn’t made a reappearance, and while the deep raven black she dyed it for Xavier’s funeral suits her coloring, it doesn’t suit anything else about her. Except her sadness…it suits that just fine.

I start to apologize, but Macy rolls over to face me and plows ahead. “I know exactly what a miserable vampire looks like, and you’ve got two of them on your hands. And just an FYI, deadly and pathetic make for a really dangerous combination, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed.” It’s a combination I’ve been dealing with for weeks, a combination that makes my every breath feel like a bomb about to go off, my every move like I’m playing Russian roulette with everyone’s happiness.

And since the universe just isn’t done screwing with me…apparently, Macy was wrong when she first told me that Hudson had graduated before Jaxon killed him. Turns out: nope, so close and yet not quite there. Something about him lacking enough credits because he’d had private tutors instead of attending Katmere for all four years. Macy was several years his junior, so she’d shrugged—what did she know? No one spoke his name after his death. Either way, it means that everywhere I turn, there he is. Just like Jaxon. Both of them in our friendship circle but not. Both of them watching me with eyes that appear blank on the surface but hold a multitude of emotions underneath. Waiting on me to do or say…something.

“I still don’t know how I ended up mated to Hudson,” I say dully. “I thought you had to be interested in being mated, or at least ‘open’ to it, for it to happen in the first place?”

Macy grins at me. “Clearly you feel something for him.”

I roll my eyes. “Gratitude. I feel gratitude for him. And I’m pretty sure that’s a terrible reason to hook up.”

“So…” Macy’s eyes are positively sparkling with humor now. “You’ve thought about ‘hooking up’ with Hudson, eh?”

I throw a small decorative pillow at my cousin, who easily dodges its path and laughs. “Well, all I know is, most everyone at school would kill to find even one mate. You having had two since arriving is so not allowed.”

Macy’s teasing me, trying to lighten the moment, but it doesn’t help.

Hudson often sits with us at meals or in classes we share. Although most of the Order and Flint watch him warily, he’s somehow managed to woo my cousin with no more than a teasing half smile and a French vanilla latte.

In fact, she’s actually one of the few people who blames Jaxon for our mating bond being severed, and she’s let it be known she is firmly Team Hudson. I can’t help but wonder if she’s on Hudson’s side because she really thinks he’s best for me—or just that he isn’t Jaxon, the boy who insisted we challenge the Unkillable Beast, a move that ended up getting Xavier killed.

Either way, she’s right about one thing: eventually I’m going to have to deal with this mess.

I’ve been doing my best to ignore the situation a while longer, though…at least until I have a plan. I’ve spent nearly all my time since Xavier’s funeral trying to figure out what to do, how to fix things-between Jaxon and me, and Jaxon and Hudson, and Hudson and me-but I can’t. The ground has turned to quicksand beneath me, and my wings aren’t nearly as much help as you’d expect them to be,,, I mean, I have to land sometime, and every time I do, I start to sink.

Macy must sense my inner anguish, since she sits up on the end of her bed, her amusement fading as quickly as mine. “I know things are rough right now,” she continues. “I was just teasing about the boys. You’re doing your best.”

“What if I don’t know what to do?” The words explode out of me like I’m a bottle under pressure and Macy’s just caused the first leak. “I had barely begun to deal with being a gargoyle, and now I have to deal with winning a seat on the Circle of Doom and Desperation and being coronated right after graduation.”

“Circle of Doom and Desperation?” Macy repeats with a startled laugh.

“After which I’m sure I’ll be locked in a tower or beheaded or something else equally fatalistic.” I say it like it’s a joke, but I’m not kidding. There isn’t one ounce of optimism in me about being a member of the paranormal council Jaxon and Hudson’s parents head up…or anything else that comes with it. Including politics, survival, and being mated to Hudson instead of my actual boyfriend in this brave new world I’ve found myself in.

“I’m still in love with Jaxon. I can’t change how I feel.” I groan. “But I can’t stand hurting Hudson, either-or the look in his eyes when we’re sitting at the lunch table and he’s watching me with his brother.”

The whole thing is a nightmare beyond comprehension, and the fact that I haven’t been able to sleep pretty much at all since I nearly died only makes everything worse. But how can I relax when every time I close my eyes, I feel Cyrus’s teeth sinking into my neck and the agony of his eternal bite spreading through me? Or I remember Hudson placing me in a shallow grave and burying me alive (still not ready to ask how he knew to do that)? Or worse-and yes, this is actually worse-I see the look on Jaxon’s face when Hudson told him I am his mate?

Memories so devastating, all I want to do is run away and hide.

“Hey, everything is going to be okay,” Macy says, voice tentative but eyes concerned.

“‘Okay’ might be a stretch.” I roll over so that I’m staring at the ceiling, but I barely see it. Instead, all I see are their eyes.

One dark pair, one light.

Both tormented.

Both waiting for something I don’t know how to give them and an answer I don’t even know how to begin to find.

I know what I feel. I love Jaxon.

And Hudson, well, that’s more complicated. Not love, which I’m worried is not what he wants to hear. Yes, my pulse races when he’s near, but objectively, the guy is next-level gorgeous. Any person in their right mind would be attracted to him. Plus, there’s now this mating bond between us that is causing me to feel things that aren’t really there as well. At least not that I want them to be.

After everything he did for me, after the bond I realize we built over those weeks trapped together, I don’t want to disappoint him and tell him I don’t feel more than friendship for him.

I groan again. There I go, assuming Hudson even wants to be mated to me. He might be as mad at the universe as I am for putting us in this awkward situation.

Macy lets out a long sigh, then climbs off her bed and settles onto the end of mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push.”

“Your pushing isn’t what upset me. It’s just…” I trail off, not sure how to vocalize the confusion roiling around inside me.

“Everything?” She fills in the blank I left, and I nod, because yeah, everything is a hell of a lot.

Silence stretches between us, long and uncomfortable. I wait for Macy to give up, to go back to her own bed and forget about this dumpster fire of a conversation, but she doesn’t move. Instead, she leans back against the wall and watches me with a calm patience that isn’t exactly her normal modus operandi.

I’m not sure if it’s the silence or the way she’s watching me or the need to spill my guts that’s been building all day, but the tension ratchets higher and higher until finally I blurt out the truth I’ve been trying to hide from everyone, even myself. “I really, really don’t think I’m strong enough to do this.”

I don’t know exactly what reaction I expect Macy to have to my confession—in a split second I imagine everything from her lavishing sympathy on me to her telling me to suck it up, buttercup with a hard edge that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with how things are going pretty awful for her, too.

In the end, though, she does the one thing I don’t expect. The one thing I’ve never even considered. She bursts out laughing. “Well, no shit, Sherlock. I’d be worried if you actually thought you could deal with all of this on your own.”

“Really?” I’m flummoxed. And maybe a little insulted—does she really think I’m so incompetent? Just because I know I’m a mess doesn’t mean I want everyone else to know, too. “Why?”

“Because you’re not alone, and you don’t have to go it alone. That’s what I’m here for. That’s what all of us are here for-especially your boyfriends.”

I narrow my eyes at her plural use of the word—and the emphasis she put on it. “Boyfriend,” I correct, stressing the hard d on the end. “One, not two.” I hold up my index finger just to make sure she gets it. “One boyfriend.”

“Oh, right. One. Of course.” Macy shoots me a sly look. “Sooooo, just to be clear. Which vampire is that exactly?”

2

My Achy Breaky Bond

“You’re obnoxious,” I tease. “But would you mind if we focus on what really matters? Graduating high school?”

Between losing my parents, transferring schools, and missing four months while I did my best impression of a waterspout, I’m about as behind as I can get and still be a senior. Which means if I don’t finish the extra projects I’ve been assigned and pass all my finals, I’m going to be a senior again next year, too. And that is not acceptable, no matter how much Macy would like me to stick around another year. I mean, if Hudson can make up classes after being dead, for God’s sake, I can make them up, too.

“You know that’s the real reason I’m burying my head, don’t you?” I finally admit. “Because there’s no way I can deal with the ridiculous amount of work I have to make up and try to figure out what to do about Cyrus or the Circle or-”

“Your mate?” Macy smiles ruefully and holds up a hand before I can protest. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. But you’re right, as much as I’d wish it otherwise, you seem to really want to graduate.” She walks over and grabs her laptop off her desk. “So, as your self-appointed best friend, it’s up to me to make sure that happens. You’ve got a presentation due for Dr. Veracruz’s class on magical history, right? I heard some other seniors talking about it.”

“Yeah.” I nod. “Everyone had to pick a subject discussed in class this year, then write and present a ten-page paper about some aspect of that topic we didn’t have time to go over. She says it’s so that we all get a more well-rounded knowledge of the different parts of history, but I think she’s just trying to torture us.”

Macy climbs back on her bed and types something on her laptop. “I know just the topic for you to research!”

“Oh yeah?” I ask, rolling over and sitting up.

“Yes,” she says. “You guys discussed mating bonds, right? I’ve been dying to take this class just for that reason. Well, you’re a walking example of something not discussed in class.”

I shake my head. “Unfortunately, I missed that lecture, but Flint told me it’s possible to be mated to more than one person in your lifetime. I’m not the only person to ever have more than one mate.”

Macy pauses her typing and looks up at me, one brow arched. “Yes, but you’re the only one to ever have a mating bond severed by something other than death.”

“It’s never happened to anyone else?” I repeat, my heart pounding in my chest. “Really?” It seems so hard to believe, but also too terrible to believe. If no one has ever experienced this before, how are we going to fix it? What are we going to do? And why, why, why, did it happen to Jaxon and me?

“No one,” Macy reiterates. “Mating bonds never break, Grace. They just don’t. They can’t. It’s a law of nature or something.” She pauses and looks down at her hands resting on her keyboard. “Except, somehow, yours did.”

Like I really need to be reminded of that.

Like I wasn’t there.

Like I didn’t feel it snap with a force that nearly tore me in half, a force that nearly destroyed me…and Jaxon.

“Never?” I must have misheard that part. Surely I’m not the only one.

“Never,” Macy insists, deliberately enunciating each syllable even as she looks at me like I’ve suddenly grown three heads. “Not kind of never, Grace. Not almost never. Never never. Like never in the history of our species never. Mating bonds cannot be broken while mates are alive. Ever.” She shakes her head for emphasis. “I mean never. Ever. Nev—”

“Okay, okay. I get it.” I shake my head in surrender. “Mating bonds never break. Except Jaxon’s and mine did break and neither of us is dead, so…”

“Yeah,” she agrees with a frown. “We’re in totally uncharted territory here. It’s no wonder you feel so messed up. You are messed up.”

“Wow. Thanks for that.” I pretend to pull a dagger out of my heart.

But Macy just makes a face at me. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” I agree. “But there’s one part of this whole thing I just can’t figure out. I’ve been thinking about it for days, and it’s why I’m so skeptical about the whole this never happens thing. I—”

“Never,” she interrupts, waving her hands around for emphasis. “It literally never happens.”

I hold up a hand again to get her to pause, because I’m really trying to work toward a point here. “But if that’s true, and mating bonds never break, why exactly was there a spell to break mine? And how did the Bloodletter just happen to know it?”