Series: Lords of Rathe Series by Meagan Brandy
Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Kicking my door closed, I toss all of my things into my room and shuffle into one of Ben’s oversized shirts I’ve officially claimed as my own that stops above my knee and some knitted socks. Ben won’t be back for another hour, so I grab my laptop and open up my assignment.
School sucks. I’m here because I’m doing what every other person does at my age, but there’s a lingering ache that continues to pound deep in my gut anytime I think about the future. I can never see it. I’ve tried, but all I see is nothing.
I see nothing.
Dark clouds fall around the bridge like a rainfall of destruction. A loud thumping sounds behind my ears, and anytime I try to look around to see where it’s coming from, I’m met with an empty street shaded by fog. I can barely see three steps ahead of me.
I turn back to the bridge that’s sticking out of the fat clouds, taking a careful step closer. The sound gets louder—so loud I feel the drum beating against my head. I just want to see what’s over it. What’s on the other side of this bridge? It has to be—a dark cloak falls from the sky in a rush and I stumble backward, falling on my back, a loud scream tearing from my lips. I barely finish screaming when I feel something force itself down my throat. My veins ripple from fire and my legs buzz like static.
I think I am dying. This is it. I’m dying…
I shoot up from the bed, sweat sticking my sheets to my clammy body. My heart stammers in my chest as I try to catch my breath. What the fuck is happening? I’ve never had nightmares before, ever, and this marks two in one week. But that’s not the strangest part. It’s the realness of it. I felt the pain. The utter defeat that fell over me when the other side of that bridge grew farther from my grasp.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I rub them with the palm of my hand when the wind’s gentle touch caresses me from around the nape of my neck. Goosebumps break out over my flesh when the sharpness of ice slides down the apex of my spine in the next breath. I shiver loudly but pause when a sense of wonder falls over me. It’s…different. Puzzling. Almost as if it’s right there. A heavy sense of hate and need twisting together into a suffocating tornado, but while I feel it, I also…don’t. Like it’s outside of me. Without touch.
Like it’s not mine…
The thought is troubling, especially since I’ve always been keenly in tune with the emotions of others around me. Everyone has always called me an empath, and I believe it. I know when Ben is upset, sad, happy. It’s never that I can see it and read him; it’s that I feel it, but this? This is stronger, more, in every sense of the word.
With furrowed brows and trembling fingers, I grip the edges of Ben’s shirt, pulling it up my body to wipe the sweat from my brow, and instantly, I’m slammed with a sense of soul-crushing possessiveness, so strong it makes me gasp. The shirt falls from my fingertips and the hairs at the base of my neck stand when I feel the weight of eyes on me.
I jump from my bed, a yelp leaving my mouth slightly as I reach for my bedside lamp, but I knock my phone off instead. Finally, I clamber for it enough to find the switch and light fills my room, blinding me in the process.
An empty spot in my room stares back at me, and for the first time ever, I think maybe I’m going crazy.
Eight
Knight
There have been three times in my life that I’ve known I don’t want to be here. At Rathe U. The first time was when I was told I’d have to come. Naturally rebellious, I hated anyone telling me what to do. My beast hated it too…
The second time was when I was late to my first day. Royals aside, I didn’t want any extra attention on me, and I got it that day.
The third time? Is now. Right the fuck now because I am one hundred percent certain that the seconds here feel like hours, and the hours like days, and the days like weeks, and well, catch my drift. Everything drags on.
My heavy boots slap across the long marble pathway. The front of the school is where the main entrance building and our sleeping quarters are, with the rest of the buildings separated and scattered around into sections. The monsters all stay in one area, as well as the vampires, the Lycan, the Ordinaries, and the Power Banks. All Power Banks, who fall into the Ordinary category, have no true power worthwhile yet. They’re above the catacombs, where the bloodthirsty monsters all reside. Since the blood suckers can’t feed off them, they’re safest there.