Chapter 8
Eight
Wesley
“Hi there!” Chloe says animatedly as we stop in front of the woman. She looks between us both.
“Hello…”
Chloe extends her hand warmly as she grins. “I’m Chloe LaBeau, and this is Wesley Castor. We just wanted to introduce ourselves, since, you know, we don’t get many new additions mid-semester here.”
I bite my lip as she says my name. One of the things I’ve come to like about this place is the anonymity it brings me.
At home, everyone knows the Castor name, and therefore everyone knows who I am.
Though, now, with my being gone for four years, they may have forgotten about me, which isn’t a bad thing.
But here, most of the folks don’t connect me to my brother or my parents.
It helps that I don’t look anything like them.
If my brother and I hadn’t been twins, I would have wondered if I was a product of my mother’s affairs.
Here, people just know me as Wesley Castor, a rejected vampire with a fucked up condition.
Though I am the only vampire male here—and maybe even in existence—with a bloodheat, most people don’t bring it up, despite the fact I know they can smell it on me, which makes me feel self-concious as fuck.
I’ve had a few vampiresses offer to help me through it, but I’ve always declined.
Not because I don’t like pussy myself, I mean, I’ve fooled around with vampiresses before, and I didn’t hate it.
I certainly didn’t hate the feel of their breasts in my hands, and I definitely didn’t hate when they jerked me off.
I’ve just never fucked a vampiress and I’ve never really had the desire to.
My desire when it comes to that, it seems, is pretty niche.
But the moment Chloe says my last name, I can’t help but notice the way the vampiress’s eyebrows furrow or the way her shoulders tense.
“Castor, you say?” She swallows harshly. Chloe nudges me, and I reach my hand out to shake hers politely.
“Yes,” I say. “And you are—”
Her cheeks pinken, and I get the strangest whiff of sugar. Vanilla. Cream. She smells sweet like candy and the scent alone makes my mouth water. My cock throbs once more, pulling my attention, and I shift my stance so as not to draw attention to my little issue going on at the moment.
This should definitely not be happening right now, given the fact I just unloaded this fucking thing barely a half hour ago.
Seriously, what the hell is going on with me?
Is this a bloodheat thing? I wish I knew.
Being the anomaly I am, the doctors at home told me there’s no telling how my body will respond or progress with this issue over time.
So I have no clue if this is just part of a natural evolution of my heat symptoms or if this is something else.
But whatever it is, it’s freaking me out, and I need to get a handle on it.
I can’t very well be sneaking off all day to jerk off in the damn bathroom or closet.
“Ivy. Ivy Reign.”
Ivy Reign… the vampiress my brother was promised to? If she’s here, that would mean…
Ivy takes my hand gingerly, and the moment her palm connects with mine, I feel a fire rush through my blood, igniting me like a live wire. That pull in my chest, that sharp sting hits me. Hard.
I suck in a breath, trying to remember to breathe because I swear I feel like I’ll pass out.
The sweet vanilla scent hits me equally as hard, along with something else. Something tangy, something familiar but foreign at the same time.
Energy hits me, ricocheting through me and I feel that familiar aching in my balls, and I barely have a moment to process what’s happening before I come undone from the near electrical shock of arousal.
I drop her hand quickly and move back slightly, shifting my weight. The moan of frustration that wants to leave me is hard to ignore, but I do.
“Nice to meet you, Ivy,” I say, my voice much darker than it should be.
Thankfully, that’s the moment Professor Morningside announces we’re about to begin, and I swear I’ve never been so happy for art class to start in my life.
Chloe takes her seat next to Ivy, and I take my seat one desk away from Chloe, if only to put some distance between me and Ivy Reign.
Princess Ivy Reign, I remind myself.
Before I hit my first bloodheat at fifteen, I was my father’s choice for succession, and as his choice, it was common knowledge that one day I would have to claim and bond a princess so that I could seed the next generation of our Castorian bloodline.
And the princess in question, at least at the time, was Princess Ivy Reign, a princess from a neighboring, rival kingdom.
I didn’t know her, never saw her. I only knew of her by name.
My father told me I wouldn’t meet her until I was older, when her father, King Centrece would officially offer her to me.
I wasn’t opposed to the idea as a teen. If this was what was needed to further the benefit of the kingdom, I would have gladly done whatever my father required of me.
Because that was my duty as a prince. As the next future king of Castor.
And then my bloodheat came and everything changed. My mother knew. She’s the one who took me to town to see a doctor—without my father’s knowledge—and we’d been informed of what was wrong with me.
She didn’t address it after that. She had her own secrets to keep, and there was nothing truly to do.
I couldn’t be cured of this. I could only live with it.
And in those first few years, I stupidly thought I could compartmentalize it all.
That I could still claim and bind a mate, and I could keep my bloodheat desires a secret. I could be discreet. Like my mother.
And then father found me in a most compromising position, and suddenly I wasn’t good enough to rule. I was a stain on our bloodline, and Wyatt became the true golden heir, and I was sent to R.I.S.E.
I can’t help but wonder why in the world Wyatt would have rejected her.
He’s always been much more obedient than me, especially when it came to terms of rule sanctioned by our father. Part of me wonders if my father’s death has anything to do with it, but even so, it’s out of character for Wyatt.
On principle alone, let alone the fact Ivy is fucking gorgeous.
I can’t help the glances I take all throughout class; as if I’m convinced she’s going to disappear.
I find myself curious. About her, about my brother’s rejection.
I catch myself staring, as I work on my drawing, at her side profile and how her dark hair falls over her shoulders.
At the curve of her breasts, the way her pearls glint in the light.
My cock jumps again and I know I’ve been staring too long.
I adjust myself nonchalantly, cursing my damn cock that has a mind of its own. Fucking bloodheat.
By the time class is over, I find myself on edge in more ways than one.
“So where you headed next, chicky-boo?” Chloe chimes, and I watch with bated breath as Ivy grabs her small black bag. She looks demurely at Chloe, then at me.
Her cheeks pinken again and my cock twitches, knowing it’s because of her blood rush.
The thought of her blood rushing and heating other parts of her body makes my cock ache.
Fucking hell.
“Um… I think I have combat, actually,” she says nervously.
“Oh, no way! Me too!” Chloe says excitedly, linking her arm with Ivy’s as she guides her to the door, the motion driving Ivy past me.
Her arm brushes mine and I have to fight the urge to grab myself, because once again, that energy ricochets through me, lighting up every nerve in my body and my overactive cock.
I move faster, needing to get ahead of them, needing to get somewhere where I can’t smell her sweet intoxicating scent, where I can breathe and—
I don’t look where I’m going, so I run right into a solid mass and another intoxicating scent hits me.
I look up in alarm, my cock responding to the earthy scent of Adrien’s cologne, to the solidness of his warm chest. I realize he’s not wearing a shirt, and his golden skin gleams from the sweat and I have the urge to come. I can’t do that. Not now, not here, not—
“You okay, Wes?” he asks, his deep rumble not helping the weird energy circulating through me.
“F-fine,” I say and then I feel the air around us shift. He tenses, his body going rigid.
“Well, well, look what the bat dragged in,” Adrien mutters as Ivy sucks in a breath.
“Adrien—”
Hearing his name on her tongue is my undoing.
I am suddenly accosted with images in my psyche that make perfect sense—Adrien and his warm chocolate eyes, his mouth on my neck, fangs grazing my skin.
His cock buried deep inside me as he fills me.
Her deep ruby eyes and lashes staring down at me with a wonder that makes no sense.
Her perfectly shaped mouth, and the way she looked at me…
Mouths on skin, fangs breaking through. Blood.
So much blood…
And that’s when I feel it. My orgasm hits me hard and fast. I look up at Adrien for the briefest second, panic hitting me, and then I run.
“Wesley—” Adrien calls out to me, but I can’t stop, I can’t turn around, and I definitely can’t look at him.
“Is he okay?” Ivy asks, her voice ringing like a bell, echoing around me, inside of me… all at once.
I don’t hear his answer to her, because I run as fast as I can out of that room, seeking refuge in the one place I feel safest.
Home. Our dorm.
Part of me wishes he’d come after me. That he’d catch me and hold me and tell me that everything’s going to be okay, because I have the strangest feeling that it isn’t.
Nothing is going to be okay. Something’s wrong. Everything is just fucking wrong right now.
And only when I get there, out of breath, do I open the door and take cover, locking it behind me. I fall to the ground, pulling my legs up to my chest as I brace the onslaught of guilt and embarrassment, and the undeniable truth that something is very wrong with me.
And I think it has everything to do with Princess Ivy Reign.