Chapter Thirty #2
In a blink, my back hit the mat, his weight pinning me down before I could even gasp.
My chest heaved, fury and humiliation warring as I tried to buck him off.
Gabriel was immovable. His speed had put us in this position, and his strength kept us there.
And then he lowered his head. Warm breath brushed my skin a heartbeat before sharp fangs grazed my throat.
Just enough pressure to sting, but not enough to break skin.
My mind slipped back to the day he’d bitten me, my heart thundering painfully against my ribs.
Every instinct screamed at me to shove him off, to burn him, to do something before he followed through on the threat he’d made that day, but I couldn’t move.
“Dead.” He whispered, the word vibrating against my pulse.
For the barest heartbeat, I wasn’t on the training mat.
I was back in the haze of those dreams. The ones Gabriel had accused me of using magic to cause, the ones I hated myself for having, where his speed and strength weren’t weapons but something else entirely.
Where his hands on me, his mouth at my throat, didn’t feel like humiliation but heat.
My pulse hammered against my throat, right where his fangs grazed, each beat a mix of defiance and something dangerously close to want. I hated him for it. Hated myself more.
And then his body seemed to tense like he felt it too.
His chest rose sharper against mine, his fangs dragging that fraction deeper against my skin, not piercing but lingering.
His eyes flicked to mine, and for a split second, they burned with something rawer than mockery.
The moment shattered as quickly as it came.
Gabriel jerked back, lips curling in disgust, eyes narrowing with fury that looked as much inward as outward.
He pushed off me like I’d burned him, rising to his feet with unnatural grace.
“Pathetic,” he spat, voice sharp enough to cut. “The only thing that saved you is the spell on the pitch that won’t allow me to kill you.”
The words cracked across me harder than any blow.
My throat still tingled where his fangs had grazed, my pulse racing in a sick, traitorous rhythm.
Fury surged hot in my chest, clashing with the unwanted heat that coiled low in my belly.
I hated him. Hated the way he looked at me like I was less than nothing.
But worse—so much worse—was the pull I couldn’t explain.
The way my body still responded to him, reeling from the ghost of that split second where his mask had slipped.
I didn’t fear him. I refused to, but I couldn’t deny that something in me leaned toward him as if pulled by some tether I neither wanted nor understood.
Guilt gripped me in its fist. I had a mate, and my body’s response to the vampire felt like the ultimate betrayal.
I forced the words out past the tightness in my throat, sharp and steady. “If you’re trying to scare me, you’ll have to try harder. All you’ve proven is you know how to pin someone down and gloat. Though, I seem to recall the last time you had your fangs at my throat, I came out on top.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening as if he had to grind his fury back before it could crack loose.
Rumlock’s growl cut through the air like thunder. “Enough talking. Stance. Now. Use your magic, Knight.”
Giving the professor a tight nod, I scrambled to my feet, sinking into the fighting stance once more, calling flames to my hands.
The rest of combat class blurred into a grueling rhythm of strikes and failed counters.
Gabriel was too fast, and his raw strength outmatched me at every turn.
I reverted to dirty tactics I’d used on the streets as a child, combining them with the fire magic that was becoming easier for me to call forth with each attempt.
None of it mattered. Every move I made, he slipped past, punishing me with effortless precision.
When Rumlock finally signaled the end of class, Gabriel looked as infuriatingly composed as ever.
I refused to give him the satisfaction of so much as a passing glance as I limped off the training pitch to the locker room.
I worked quickly to scrub away the sweat and grime that coated my battered body before tugging on clean clothes and making my way across campus to the library.
I spotted Shadrie almost immediately. She sat at a corner table, staring at a stack of books as if they’d offended her. She didn’t look up until I dropped my messenger bag next to them and sank into the empty chair across from her.
“What are all these? Where’s Miles?” I asked.
“You look rough.” She chuckled before jerking a thumb toward the stacks. “He vanished over there just before you showed up. I found him and this stack at the table when I arrived.”
As if summoned by her words, Miles strolled out of the stacks, his face scrunched as he skimmed the open book in his hand. A grin suddenly split his face before he looked up and raced over to where we sat.
“I knew it!” He cheered, slamming the open book on the table between us. “Tinu nall, it makes so much sense.”
Curiously, I peered at the open book. “Tinu nall?”
“Starcaller.” Miles grinned, sliding into an empty seat beside Shadrie.
“My coven had a story about the time before the realms were separated. It took some searching,” he paused to gesture at the stack of books in front of Shadrie, “but I finally found the same story. Back when elves still ruled the supernatural world and the realms weren’t separated by the veil, there was a king who sought to consume everyone’s power. ”
“Wait, elves?” I frowned.
“I think I know some of this story,” Shadrie interjected. “They don’t teach about elves here because they’ve been gone from the realm for millennia, but there are stories our parents tell us as kids to scare us into not misbehaving.”
“Right, well, my coven tells us this story for a different reason,” Miles replied, waving his hand as if to wave her words away.
“So, this Elven king, he got power hungry to the point it was hurting all the realms. It wasn’t until a Starcaller arose, that he was defeated.
The story goes that she was half mage, half elven; the mage half being why my coven tells the story.
Anyway, she was fated to the most naturally powerful males in the realms and somehow was able to use their power as her own.
When their power wasn’t enough, supernaturals banded together and allowed her to borrow from them as well.
She managed to subdue the Elven king and strip him of his stolen abilities, but his queen begged for his life.
So, the Starcaller erected the veils that separate the realms and allowed him to keep his life as long as the elves left and never returned to the supernatural or human realms. She became the first non-elven monarch after that. ”
For a long moment, none of us spoke. The library’s silence pressed in close, broken only by the faint scratch of a pen in some far corner. My pulse thundered, hot and unsteady. Starcaller. I didn’t know why the word settled into me like it belonged there, heavy and immovable, but it did.
Shadrie leaned back slowly, studying me. “B… you okay?”
I tore my gaze from the open book, but the word clung to me, whispering through my veins like it already knew my name. Starcaller. I shook my head in disbelief.
“I–this… How can we be sure?” I stammered. I wasn’t ready to believe this was what Geordie had been pushing for me to discover.
Miles didn’t hesitate. He tapped the page with his index finger. “Because what you’re experiencing lines up with the story. It can’t be coincidence that you’ve exhibited abilities exclusive to certain supernaturals after coming into contact with them. The real question is, why?”
The room seemed to tilt, the weight of Miles’ certainty pressing down on me.
Geordie’s warnings slipped through my mind, colder, more insistent.
My chest tightened, heat prickling across my skin.
I didn’t want to believe this. I was just a girl from the human realm.
I couldn’t be some supernatural being of legend.
But deep down, I already knew the truth.
The name had resonated with some secret part of me.
Too right for Miles’ theory to be wrong.