Bad Blood
Suddenly, a flash of pain wracks my body and my back arches off of the ground.
It feels like my entire skeleton is being both stretched and compacted at the same time. Panting, I stare up at the starry sky, my fingers digging into the dirt below as if I can hold on. Todd is saying something, but I can’t actually make out the words because the agony in my frame is so intense that my ears are ringing. My eyes close and I wail as fire flows through my veins. The sensation of breaking bones and something spreading on my skin makes me cry out again, but there’s no relief to be found.
Then, almost as soon as it started, it all stops and my body stills. I open my eyes, waiting for my vision to clear and sharpen as most predators do. But it doesn’t—I can see on either side, but there's a blind spot in front of me. I move my head back and forth, trying to figure out how this works, when a loud exclamation nearly deafens me. The clanging in my skull is only rivaled by the intense thumping of my heart as it beats faster than I have ever felt before in my life. My back left leg twitches, thumping the ground as I glance around wildly. The shouting is coming from Todd, who I can see now that I’ve re-positioned my head.
“You—You— You !” he screeches again, the sound making my ears ache with its pitch and volume.
I can’t respond—no shifted preds can, except a very few gifted alphas with superior genes—but I thump my foot in frustration again to get his attention. My body is shaking with fear, and despite Todd’s many flaws, I don’t know why I would respond to him this way. The trembling is so intense that I can’t seem to control it and it makes my nose itch. Instead, he points an accusatory finger my way, his eyes flashing yellow for a moment as he spits on the ground next to me. My heart rate jumps again and the instinct to flee flows through me like lava from a volcano.
Danger, danger!
“I should have known you’d be some measly half-breed! Making me wait all this time, like a fucking monk only to put out for a lousy, inexperienced virgin lay,” Todd growls, pacing in front of me. “My father said it was a good match, and we’d be rich and powerful, but look at the Drews now . They produced motherfucking prey .”
His words sink in, and I realize that every single thing I’ve been feeling since the change is not what any pred should be feeling. The fear, the pounding blood, the instinct to run—those are prey reactions. Holy goddamned shit, I’m not a predator. Oh, my goddess Hera… he’ll kill me. I have to go; I have to get away before his change finishes and I’m dinner. My legs decide to work for more than a feeble Morse code and I leap into the air, taking off into the bushes to get away from whatever hungry predator Todd is.
He’s destroyed me—completely broken my heart and soul—but staying alive takes precedence over that. I don’t even know how to shift back yet, and I definitely can’t defend myself in whatever form I’ve taken. It feels tiny, and I don’t hear my animal's voice inside of me yet. I read online that it takes time to hear it, and all I know right now is that I have to get to safety.
“I’m going to ruin you, Delores Drew. You can run, but you can’t hide. You stole five years of my life while I waited for you to grow up and claim the power our animals give us. I sat through every stupid date and listened to every dumb wedding fantasy. All I wanted you to do was give it up so I could secure the marriage agreement between our fathers. But, oh no, not you. Unlike the rest of us, Saint DD of the big tits refused to lower herself and emerge. Well, look at you now—you’re food, and the rest of us are going to eat you alive .”
A pathetically weak howl echoes through the training area and I realize Todd has just shifted without the pain I experienced. Large paws appear outside of the bushes I’m concealed in, and I hear a weird giggling sound before he takes off into the night, the sound as deafening as thundering hooves to my sensitive ears.
Shifting that quickly can only mean one thing—he didn’t wait. He’s been cheating on me, and he’s had his animal for a while, possibly even the entire time we’ve been dating. Another wave of betrayal washes over me and I ache from head to toe as the realization that my life has been a lie lances through my soul. As if my animal can sense the torment inside of me, pain shoots through my body again, and before I know it, I’m lying naked on the grass in the bushes in my human form, panting as I stare up into the night sky again.
How?! I want to scream into the Universe.
My parents and grandparents are preds from long lines of predators—we have DNA maps. There’s no way this could be happening. Yet, the instincts and bodily functions I felt when my shift emerged were not those of any Apex pred, not even a small one. It seems impossible, but Todd’s expression was so disgusted, hungry, and full of outrage there’s no way his reaction was a prank. Whatever sort of four-legged predator he is—I didn't get a clear look at him to see which—the truth was revealed during his fury.
My intended fiancé didn’t wait for our perfect prom night as he promised. There would have been no reason for the limo, the champagne, the rose petals or the fancy suite, even before they moved the prom to Apex. Everything I knew about my life—from my boyfriend and friends to my lineage—was an illusion.
They all tricked me and now I’m humiliated.
Sighing heavily, I gather myself enough to roll to my feet and plod over to the gown I loved so much. All the glitter and style seem dulled in the wake of my revelations. I ignore the corset and torn undergarments—Todd ripped them off because he was too uncoordinated to figure them out—and simply slide myself into the dress. With some flexible yoga-style moves, I zip the dress enough to keep my boobs—the ones he sneered about—covered. I reach down and dangle the shoes off of my fingers because they are beautiful, but I’m not wearing them for my walk of shame across campus. I can’t deal with teetering on soft grass along with everything else.
It occurs to me that the jewelry Bruno made certain I wear is nowhere to be seen. The necklace and earrings must have dropped when I shifted and had to flee from Todd. That’s another thousand pound weight on my shoulders because it may not be the first thing I get in trouble for when I get home, but you can bet it’s going to come back to bite me. Lucille is going to lose the fucking plot, but there’s no way I can crawl around the training circle in the dark to find the blue stones. Not now, anyway.
I’m not crying yet. It’s like there’s a block on my emotions. I know a giant, uncontrollable wave of rage and pain is coming, but it’s sitting on my chest like a thousand pound weight. My body is running on autopilot as I trudge back towards the Shirdal Arts Center and whatever fresh hell awaits me there.
I can’t sneak around the front because the door monitors checked everyone in when we arrived. I don’t want them to realize I didn’t stay in the ballroom like we were supposed to. They’re probably still attending to the sick preds, so it’s possible I can sneak in through the back and slip out the front door to find a place to hide until I can call Mattie to check me out when she picks me up.
When I reach the back door, I open it quietly, tip-toeing into the chaos. There are three nurses in pajamas—a hedgehog, an opossum, and a mongoose—attending to the students one by one. The stuffy dragon that eyeballed me is standing in the corner, half-shifted, with huge iridescent wings tucked against his back. They’re beautiful, and I wish I had the time to go over and see them up close, but I can't risk it. He looks concerned, but also like he’s trying to find someone and is annoyed that he can’t. I avoid catching his gaze—it looked like he wanted to question me earlier and I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself.
My back presses against the wall of the room, clinging to shadows as best I can while I slink towards the front entrance to the ballroom. If I can make the next forty feet without being noticed, I’ll be home free. I just hope that Todd hasn’t?—
“ Look everyone !”
I freeze as the sound of Pink echoes through the room like knives on a chalkboard.
“ It’s DD , the big-breasted bunny shifter ! Shall we show her what we do to prey at Apex Academy ?”
My head turns and I look at her standing on a chair with her phone at the ready, clearly live streaming this for her RipTok. The other Heathers follow suit, climbing onto chairs and baring canine fangs at me. Gold wiggles her fingers at me and blows a kiss before turning into a wolf. Purple crosses her arms over her chest, arches a brow, then morphs into an African wild dog. Silver snaps her jaws, shifts into a coyote, then looks down at the boys below as if waiting. They’ve all half-shifted into hyenas, including Todd.
My friends lied.
Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
The devastation sinks in for a second before self-preservation kicks in. I have to go. I have to get out of here now and hide where they can’t find me.
If I don’t…
“ Run, rabbit, run !” someone screams gleefully.
Pink looks down and smirks. “Give her a little head start, boys. The Pred-pros you’re wearing will livestream the chase and her last moments directly to my channel. I’m hoping for a billion views by morning, so make it bloody.”
She just ordered them to kill me on live TV.
Fuck!
Clutching my shoes, I hike the dress up and run like hell out of the ballroom and front door, almost tumbling down the steps of the building. When I get to the bottom, I look around in a panic before I remember the secret courtyard in the library I discovered last week. It’s enclosed enough that my scent might not draw them while masking me in the leftover pheromones of the hot professors.
I take off like a shot, hearing the train of my dress rip and the expensive shoes clack in my grasp as my feet pound the grass between Shirdal and the Draconis library. If I don’t make it, I’m going to die after the lousiest lay in predkind, and that really pisses me off. Gulping in huge breaths, I push my limbs to the max, almost leaping up the stairs of the library. The doors are open and I thank Athena, figuring she’s the most likely to be protecting my post-virginity scorned ass.
The halls are pitch black, so I have to pause for a brief second to allow my vision to adjust. Once they do, I picture the route I took to get to the main library doors, and then the steps I wandered along that took me to the little oasis amid cement and metal. When I finally find the door, I sigh in relief when it swings open without catching on a lock.
I suppose being a school full of predators makes you less likely to believe you need extra security to protect things.
Stepping onto the cool grass, I drop the shoes and reach down to rip the remains of the long train off my dress. It is definitely ruined—much like me—and I can’t stand to be contained any longer. The ragged hem now falls loosely above my knees and I climb onto the stone table on the right side of the tree. My legs criss-cross, and I briefly consider that I might flash someone, but given that I’m probably the only prey on campus hiding from ex-friends who want to eat me, I’ll take the risk.
I go to pull out my phone and realize it was tucked into the secret pocket of my corset, and I left that in the training arena.
Hera above, what in the literal fuck am I going to do now?
The dam breaks and the tears come, the absolute futility of my situation hitting me in the chest like a baseball bat.
I’m all alone and I’m going to die.