Fantasy

OPHELIA
Everything looks exactly the same as it did yesterday. There are still groups of students studying on the lawn. The same black-haired senior, wearing artfully torn jeans, stands beneath the maple in the quad and recites his poetry to a crowd of awestruck bystanders. Everyone laughing and talking and walking to class the same way they did the past few days, like they have no idea that vampires exist. That all those TV shows and movies aren’t fiction after all. And not only that, but they’re here on campus. Pretending to be students while preying on their peers and feasting on our flesh.
Are all the Ruby Dragon Society members vampires? Unlike most college sororities and fraternities, students have to be invited to pledge the societies. Which will never happen to me. I’m simply a nobody who ended up here because of a weird clause in the trust that was set up before I was born. For 

MALACHI
I said I’m on my way, jackass, I tell Axl as I leave Ophelia, tamping down the rage simmering beneath my skin.
You got a crush on the cupcake, Kai? Xavier teases me, and I shrug off his comment. Pair of goddamn assholes. A crush? What am I, twelve years old? All because I enjoy making conversation with her. Fuck! I wish I could have one goddamn moment without two fuckwits in my head. I’ve never been good at blocking them out. No matter how much time Alexandros spends teaching me how, I can’t do it. And ninety9 point nine percent of the time, I don’t want to. But now, well, there’s a girl with pink hair and radiant blue eyes who smells like fucking heaven that I’d love to get to know a little better without those jackasses acting like teenage boys about it.
Just get the hell over here, Axl orders.
Shaking off my frustration, I move quickly and a few minutes later, I reach the fiel

AXL
“But has he ever forbidden you from biting anybody before?” Malachi asks before stuffing an entire slice of pizza into his mouth.
He licks the grease from his lips and frowns. I’m as baffled by this whole no-biting-Ophelia deal as they are, but I’m stopped from answering by Xavier. “Why do you eat that shit?” he asks, his nose wrinkled in disgust.
Malachi pulls a face. “Because it fucking tastes good, numbnuts.” At least I think that’s what he mumbles with his mouth stuffed full.
Xavier makes a fake vomiting noise that has me suppressing a smirk. He’s never taken to junk food despite its prevalence in today’s culture. “It has like zero nutritional value. Even for humans.”
“Well, we’re not as bloodthirsty as you,” Malachi snaps back. “Some of us enjoy actual food too.”
Quick as a flash, Xavier has Malachi’s throat grasped in his hand. He tips his head back and runs his tongue along the vein in Malachi’s neck. My cock twitches in my jeans at the sight. They’ve always been so fucking hot together. “Let me bite you,” Xavier growls.
“No.” Malachi wrenches out of Xavier’s grip, but his eyes are hooded with desire. “I’m too fucking hungry.”
Xavier rolls his eyes and flops onto the sofa, obviously aware this is a battle he won’t win. Malachi might submit to us when he chooses to, but he’s always been able to kick both of our asses, and clearly Xavier isn’t in the mood for that kind of fun right now. Besides, we have more important matters to discuss.
Malachi sits forward, hands clasped between his thighs. “So, the girl? Has he ever forbidden either of you like that before?”
Xavier casually runs a hand over Malachi’s shaved head. “You know he hasn’t, Kai.”
Malachi shakes his head. “I know that hasn’t happened in the last hundred and however many years. But you’ve both been around a lot longer than I have.”
It’s true that he’s the youngest of us. We were on a trip to Ireland when the professor found him on the side of the road, sobbing over a dead horse. He’d been riding the animal when it stepped in a hole and broke its leg. A traumatized soldier just back from the First World War, Malachi used the bullet he’d been saving for himself to put the animal out of its misery.
Despite swearing he would never turn another human and being content with Xavier and me for over a century, Alexandros saw something in Malachi that he wanted. And, well, over a hundred years later, here we are.
Xavier shakes his head, dragging me back to the present. “He’s never asked me. You?”
It was just the professor and me for 27 years. He rescued me from a baying mob who chased me through the streets of London, having accused me of trying to fuck some rich prick’s daughter. I mean, I did try to fuck her, but still.
I pleaded with him constantly for a companion or a brother, having lost my mortal brother, Frederik, when we were both children. Every day since, I have both regretted and thanked all the demons in heaven and hell for Xavier’s presence in my life. He is my biggest ally and my immortal enemy. “No. Not me either.”
Malachi grunts with frustration. “So why this girl? Why is she so special?”
I recount the conversation the professor and I just had in his office, leaving out no detail in the hopes they might find an answer in his words where I could not.
Xavier growls. “So, we’re supposed to babysit her, but we can’t fucking bite her?”
I grunt, my frustration mirroring his. “That’s what he said.”
“Well, this fucking sucks,” he grumbles.
Malachi shrugs. “It might not be so bad. She was kind of interesting.”
The pink-haired pyromaniac is exactly his type—curious to the point of rabid, not to mention fearless. I guess she’s kind of like him. The last thing we need is for him to catch feelings. He’s only just gotten over his last breakup, and that was sixty years ago. “You will not go making friends with her, Kai.”
He rolls his eyes. “Never said I was.”
“Doesn’t mean we can’t fuck with her though. I mean, when those cheeks get all pink with indignation and then she opens that pretty little mouth …” Xavier grunts. “Yeah, I’m gonna have a lot of fun.”
“And he never said we couldn’t fuck her, right?” Malachi adds, a wicked glint in his eye.
“No, he didn’t,” I agree. “And I have to agree with Xavier for once. Pissing her off made me hard as fuck. Such a bratty little mouth she had on her.”
Xavier moans, and Malachi shakes his head like he disapproves. Pity he doesn’t get to make the rules. No biting is our only boundary. Still plenty more fun we can have without breaking our oath.
Yeah, Ophelia Hart is going to regret the day she ever met us. I’ll make damn sure of it.

OPHELIA
Everything looks exactly the same as it did yesterday. There are still groups of students studying on the lawn. The same black-haired senior, wearing artfully torn jeans, stands beneath the maple in the quad and recites his poetry to a crowd of awestruck bystanders. Everyone laughing and talking and walking to class the same way they did the past few days, like they have no idea that vampires exist. That all those TV shows and movies aren’t fiction after all. And not only that, but they’re here on campus. Pretending to be students while preying on their peers and feasting on our flesh.
Are all the Ruby Dragon Society members vampires? Unlike most college sororities and fraternities, students have to be invited to pledge the societies. Which will never happen to me. I’m simply a nobody who ended up here because of a weird clause in the trust that was set up before I was born. For the past several years, I dreamed of escaping Havenwood, and now I’m stuck here for four more years.

Chapter 7