30. SECRETS

30

SECRETS

T he next day Charlotte gained the opportunity to explore the campus without too much scrutiny, since classes were not in session. She wasn't confident in going alone yet, but Aiden wasn't leaving her side, and all their friends were eager to show her around.

Students stared when she walked past, and she wondered what they thought of her being a human in their domain. Were they afraid of her, or did they hate her?

Blaire and Lukas led Aiden and her into the cafeteria for breakfast, the first time she got a decent look at most of the student body.

Aiden placed his hand on her lower back to guide her to the buffets to the left of the entrance. The abundance of food overwhelmed her. Biscuits, grits, porridge, rice, sausages, bacon, eggs, fruits of various types all littered the space. Some foods seemed normal for breakfast, but others not so much. Who had fish for breakfast?

When Aiden noticed her looking at the grilled fish, he said, " Blackthorn Academy has students from all over the world, so they try to provide foods similar to what they are used to back home."

It made sense. She didn't think she would enjoy moving away for school and not having at least some comforts of home, but Blackthorn Academy went all out. Rich people things she didn't understand.

They grabbed trays and picked out their preferred breakfast before Aiden led her to the beverage table, allowing her to choose her favorite. Picking up a can of grape soda, she turned and squinted.

"Aiden?" she said, making Lukas and Blaire halt ahead of her and turn around at the sound of uncertainty in her voice.

"What's wrong?"

She looked up at him and then back to the refrigerator units on the wall. "Are those what I think they are?"

His hands tightened on his tray, knuckles turning white. "They are," he said, voice measured and slow.

Her swallow made her throat click. "You need one?"

"I will, yes."

Her eyes shifted to Lukas, who watched her with wariness. "And you?"

"I was going to wait until after breakfast, so you didn't have to see, but yeah."

Blaire gave her a sympathetic smile. "It's hard at first, but you get used to it."

She scanned the cafeteria, taking in the students laughing and eating. Some were drinking from blood bags like the ones in the refrigerator units.

"You don't drink human blood?"

"We do. Through donations received from clinics. We drink from blood bags freely given by humans. It is against our laws to consume blood from a live source… "

The conversation with the headmistress played in her mind, and she looked between Aiden and Lukas. "Do you want me to get you both one? It's okay."

"You don't have to—"

"It's not—"

She laughed as they spoke at the same time.

Lukas shook his head. "I'll grab them when we sit down, if you're okay with it."

"I'm not going to stop you from doing what you need to live," she said, letting Aiden guide her to a large round table in the back corner where Riley, Seth, Dominic, and Layla were already seated.

When she put her tray down, Riley jumped up and wrapped her in a big hug. "I'm so glad you stayed!"

She stiffened, taken off-guard. She gaped at Riley. "Did I have a choice?"

"Well, yeah, you did. I just thought…" Riley looked around at everyone and then back at Charlotte.

Aiden tensed at her side.

"I didn't mean it bad," Charlotte clarified. "I mean, I thought with the attack and me knowing everything, I couldn't leave if I wanted to." She looked at Aiden as he lowered himself into his seat. "I don't want to, just so you know."

He slid her chair toward him when she sat down, his arm banding around her waist, fingers tightening on her hip. He leaned over to whisper in her ear, "I wouldn't let you go, anyway."

"Not another one," Dominic grumbled.

"What?" Layla asked, looking at Aiden and Charlotte, then back to Dominic, who focused his attention on them.

"Korrena couples." He shook his head. "Horny rabbits."

Layla flushed, poking her eggs with a fork .

Seth smirked. "Don't be jealous, Dom . Aiden's twenty. He's waited long enough."

Blaire frowned and looked at Seth. "Dom's also twenty."

He looked at Dominic and then at Blaire and grimaced. "Shit. Sorry, man."

Charlotte sympathized, having learned that a Korrena pairing usually showed itself by the late teens. If Dominic was already twenty, he was long past due, like Aiden. She wondered if his Korrena was human too.

Lukas sat down, sliding a blood packet in front of her to Aiden. She looked between them. Everyone at the table stopped what they were doing to look at her.

"If you don't stop acting like I'm going to freak out and run from the room screaming or faint, I'm going to… I dunno… scream and not run from the room."

Lukas laughed. "Blaire did faint."

Blaire rolled her eyes. "Not at the sight of blood."

"No, at the sight of fangs," Aiden quipped.

Charlotte stared at Blaire as her cheeks bloomed pink.

Seth swallowed a mouthful of orange juice and looked at Blaire. "Didn't you say you had a panic attack when you first saw someone drink blood?"

"How would you feel if you had no prior knowledge and hadn't seen it before?"

"She's right," Charlotte said. "I've seen it before. I saw a rogue attack someone before."

"Well yeah," Riley said, twisting her lips. "We all saw what they did last night."

"No, I witnessed it in Athens."

The table fell silent .

"What did you witness?" Layla asked.

"At first, I thought it was a couple making out, but then I saw the rogue man's face. He was drinking from a human guy. I thought he was a vampire."

"Always vampires," Lukas mumbled.

Dominic set his fork down. "The headmistress knows about it?"

"I told her," Aiden said.

"Well, I've already sent word to the clan about what happened, and Gabriel touched base with me this morning."

"Who's Gabriel?"

Dominic looked at her and smiled. "My cousin. One of the members of the Blackthorn Clan, which I know you're aware of from the headmistress." When she nodded, he continued. "He told me the king is interested in what this means, that another human is a Korrena. He's sent for the Oracle."

"Does that mean I'll have my memory erased?"

Aiden growled, and she put her hand on his thigh in reflex at the sound. "Over my dead body," he said.

"It won't happen anyway," Dominic insisted. "Korrena pairings are sacred to our kind. The clan would never wipe your memory strictly on the grounds that you're Aiden's Korrena."

There was so much she didn't understand about their world. The laws, the culture, the Korrena bond. She'd spent the morning while they got ready asking Aiden questions she suspected were odd to him, but with all the stuff about vampires out there, she didn't know what was real or not. Stuff like how they are fine in the sun, garlic, strength, and other things.

It stunned her to learn they had preternatural healing, especially knowing their kind was able to die and that Aiden had died once already. Learning that most injuries healed in minutes to hours, while diseases like cancer could be gone within the month, fascinated her. But like humans, any fatal injury spelled certain doom. If they couldn't heal fast enough, it would claim their lives.

Their strength outmatched humans, but only if they used it with intent. That explained the frightening grip the rogue had on her.

"Do you mind?" Aiden asked, holding up the packet. "After last night, I'm kinda…" His lips flattened.

She remembered the headmistress explaining the condition sanguis manie . It scared her to know that without blood, Aiden would die. She would never deny him what he needed.

"Don't make yourself sick," she said. "Any of you." She looked at the full blood bags on every tray but Blaire's. None of them had touched their packets, and Charlotte suspected it was because of her. "I don't want you to suffer, so please."

One by one, they picked up their packets and consumed them as she asked. It didn't scare her. It didn't turn her stomach to see blood move up the tubing into their mouths. It wasn't different from her ordering a steak and consuming a cow. They weren't feeding off a human directly. They weren't killing anyone. In a way, humans did worse by killing animals, but in the end, it was all for survival. Not sport or the desire to harm like the rogue from last night.

She stirred the grits on her plate as a thought occurred to her. "I forgot to ask you about Shark Week," she said, looking over at Aiden.

His brows tightened in confusion. "What's that?"

Layla swallowed a sip of blood before speaking. "Is it that thing on the Discovery Channel? My parents have old episodes on their computer from the nineties."

"I think it still airs," Riley said.

Seth nodded. "It does. I still watch it."

"No, that's not what I mean." Charlotte's cheeks turned pink. " Maybe I shouldn't talk about it at the table."

"Oh my god, I know what you mean," Blaire exclaimed, turning saucer-eyed, drawing attention from nearby tables. "I forgot you called it that." She giggled with glee.

Lukas observed her with a raised brow.

Blaire turned to him. "Remember when I got my period, how I freaked out?"

"Don't remind me," he muttered.

"That's what she calls it."

When Lukas looked at Charlotte, her face turned molten.

"Sharks aren't actually attracted to human blood, you know," Seth said.

"What do you want to know?" Riley asked, elbowing Seth in the ribs.

He grunted. "What? It's true."

She held her hand up in front of his face. "Anyway, Blaire thought everyone would want to eat her until we talked." She laughed at Blaire's incredulous look. "Hey, it was cute."

Charlotte toyed with the tab of her soda can. "I mean, won't they? Won't it attract attention when it happens?"

"Nope," Riley said, taking another drink of blood. "We have them too. Unless you're bleeding from a wound exposed to air, most of the time we won't notice. Or unless the covered wound is bad enough." Her smokey blue eyes shifted to the bandage on Charlotte's arm. "Like that, I can't smell it. I did last night, though."

It made sense. So as long as she kept herself clean and sanitary—which she always did—there wouldn't be an issue.

Layla put her empty packet on her tray and pushed it away. "Do you think more humans will awaken like Charlotte has?" Everyone looked at her .

The prophecy was clear that Blaire becoming a Vasirian was the key to other human Korrena discoveries, but Charlotte's awakening contradicted that.

"I wondered the same thing," Charlotte whispered.

"All we can do is speculate," Dominic said. "And with you needing to settle in and get used to this new world, it's best not to dwell on it until we hear from the Oracle."

As much as that sounded like a good idea, it was hard to not think about.

"Speaking of settling in," Riley started, and Charlotte looked at her. "What about your parents?"

"My moms had to return to Atlanta to finalize some paperwork for my grandma, but I told them on the phone this morning about the scholarship, and that I've been staying with you and Blaire."

Blaire leaned back in her chair. "So they don't know about you and Aiden?"

"What am I supposed to tell them?"

"You're dating?"

"Oh. Well, they suspect that already." Exhaling a long sigh, she looked at Aiden. "I don't know what to do. Even though I'm grown, they are a big part of my life. Will they ever be able to know? I mean, if things actually work out where I stay with you and we don't break up, what then?" Her gaze moved to the others. "What am I supposed to tell them when school's over?"

Dominic shook his head. "Breaking up really isn't how it works with Korrena pairs. Once you two seal the bond, you're bound until death."

"Okay," she said, tone casual. "I'm not put off by that at all. Aiden explained how it works. How it's stronger than marriage. I just wondered if it was ever possible. "

"Only the breaking of the bond ritual, which was explained to you," Aiden said, low, but Lukas flinched at his words.

She glanced at both Blaire and Lukas and the turmoil in their expressions. Watched how they moved closer to one another to comfort each other. Was that how the bond worked?

"Listen," Dominic said, stealing her attention. "Your parents can never know. The clan will wipe their memories if they find out anything about our world. And if they discover the information was given intentionally, there would be punishment for the guilty party. I can't cover everything up." His eyes met Aiden's across the table. It reminded her of his words in the alley last night. He covered up the murder for Aiden.

"When you're done with school, and start your career, you wouldn't be living with your mothers anyway," Blaire reasoned. "They won't know the difference because you can still visit them and everything. Look how often we go to town, and Riley is working for Sara."

Maybe she put too much emphasis on sharing things with her mothers, but if it would put them in danger, she would keep their secrets.