Chapter Two

I stared at her for a long time, trying to make sense of her words.

"You're telling me," I said, testing each word on my tongue as I spoke, "that I'm half vampire?"

"Yes," the councilor said. "A dhampir."

"An illegal creation," the enforcer said, his upper lip curling in disgust.

"That doesn't make sense!" I protested.

Except…except I did seem to heal faster than most people I knew. And Thaden's odd reaction to my blood, his addiction. And the way my mom had moved cities so often when I was a kid, never staying in one place for long. Oh, my God, had we been running from my father my entire life? Running until she'd forgotten what we were even running from? Had he been not a deadbeat, but a deadly predator? And—

"Wait, illegal?" I blinked the enforcer into focus. "You can't possibly mean— I mean, not even you could try to pin this on me."

"Peace," the councilor said, raising one hand. "No-one holds you accountable for your father's crimes."

"But we will hold you accountable for not sharing any information that would lead to us tracking him down."

"Pay attention, asshole. I don't know where he is. I don't know who he is. He could've been Bigfoot for all I knew."

"Pay attention, dhampir," the enforcer said, leaning forward over the table. "Withholding information on the whereabouts of a fugitive is punishable by death. That applies to you…and your mother."

"Withholding information? She doesn't know her own damn name half the time, you son of a bitch, so don't you dare try blaming this on her. She—"

Fuck, when had I started crying? I palmed the moisture from my eyes and glared at him, but it was the councilor who spoke.

"We hold no grudge against your mother," she said. "As a human, she cannot have been aware of the crime in which she was involved. She must have been a strong woman to have survived that. Many humans would not."

"She is a strong woman," I ground out, because dammit, she fought a battle every single day for her survival, and just because no-one else could see it, didn't make it any less real.

"We will, of course, have to speak to her," the councilor began. I opened my mouth to tell her no way in hell was that going to happen, but she continued over the top of me. "I realize that's not possible right now, given her current mental state. However, should she become well enough, the council will arrange an interview with her. In the meantime, we're content to leave her under the care of Alpha Cain's healers...for as long as he is happy to continue providing that care."

I swallowed, and nodded mutely. As long as Cain was willing to continue providing her care. That was the kicker. He'd made it clear he wasn't my biggest fan, and it was no secret he'd only taken my mother originally as a way keep me in line until he could work out how to safely kill me. Well, fine. I squared my jaw. I'd just make sure he continued to need to keep me in line. Be enough of a threat to him that he needed some kind of leverage over me. Better a hostage than a corpse. Of course, the idea of me being any kind of a threat to Cain, aside from to his pride by being his son's fated mate, was laughable. But I'd been laughed at before. I was still standing.

"So what happens now?" I asked.

"You'll be detained at Darkveil Academy while we continue to study your dhampir properties," the counsellor said. "You can expect to hear from the council in due course."

"Make sure I don't have to come looking for you," the enforcer growled. "Because you won't like how that ends."

I suspected that was true, and I was all out of sass, so I settled for nodding my agreement.

"Good," the councilor said, rising to her feet. "Then that's settled. I'll have someone arrange a portal to the academy for you."

And with that, she turned and left the room, taking the manila folder with her.

*

Unfortunately for me, the councilor had failed to specify when someone would conjure a portal for me, and the enforcer took great pleasure in informing me they were all too busy to run around after the illegal dhampir daughter of a fugitive, and that I would have to wait until someone became available. He took equal pleasure in showing me to a dank holding cell, warded on all sides, to wait for that to happen. I was on the wrong side of a door to say for sure, but I suspect he took even greater pleasure in locking said door...and leaving me there until the following morning.

When I finally stepped through a portal into Darkveil, I was tired, hungry, and cranky as all hell. Not to mention looking like something the cat had dragged in, thanks to spending a night in my clothes.

"Ah, Ms. Ellis. Managed not to get dead over the summer, I see."

I twisted to my right and saw Zane leaning casually against a wall, eyeing me with faint amusement. I cleared my throat and hastily tugged my crumpled clothes down, then remembered he was an asshole, and I didn't care about anything he had to say.

"Must've been all the great advice you gave me last year about not dying."

"Oh, so she does listen. Nice to know I'm not completely wasting my breath."

I shrugged. "I'd listen more if anyone ever said anything remotely useful."

"Maybe if you'd listened more you wouldn't have ended the year in the healer's hands."

Well, he had me there.

"And I hear," he said, pushing himself off the wall, "that not dying is about to get even more challenging for you, what with your status change."

"What big ears you have, Grandma," I muttered, rolling my eyes. And then I frowned. "Wait, why's that going to make people want to kill me?"

"More than usual, you mean?"

I just stared at him until he continued.

"The illegal creation of a fugitive from justice, daughter of one faction but bound to another? No, I can't imagine why."

Fuck.

"It's going to be an interesting year. Which will make a nice change, because watching a bunch of useless students grappling with the basics is not my idea of entertainment. But watching you try to get through the year in one piece? Well, that just might be."

"So good to know I can count on you for your support, Instructor."

"I'm not here to take sides. Wouldn't want to impede your education."

"Right. Of course not. Can you at least tell me which dorm I'm in this year? Assuming that wouldn't mess with my education."

"Same as last year." He snapped his fingers, and a key materialized in his hand. He held it out to me. "Try not to get your mate arrested and almost executed this year, Ms. Ellis."

"No promises."

I took the key from him and pivoted on my heel before I could say something to land myself in really hot water. Zane wasn't, strictly speaking, out to make my life harder—he just didn't have a vested interest in making it easier, either. And making an enemy of him on my first day back would be bad form, even for me.

I thrust the key in my pocket and started down the corridor, making it exactly three steps before Zane's voice followed after me. "Forgetting something, Ms. Ellis?"

I paused, and glanced back at him over my shoulder before shrugging. "Nope, don't think so."

"The shifter dorms are that way," he said, jerking his chin in the opposite direction.

"Yeah, I don't think so. I might not have a shifter appetite, but a girl's still got to eat. And apparently they don't serve breakfast at the council holding center."

And with that, I continued on my way through the deserted corridors until I reached the canteen. There was, much to my disgust, no sign of the fully laid out breakfast buffet that you might ordinarily find at Darkveil, apparently on account of the fact that the semester proper hadn't started, and most of the students wouldn't be arriving until this afternoon. Still, I was able to swipe a foil wrapped breakfast roll, and I figured that was better than nothing. I didn't much fancy sitting in the empty canteen to eat, so I decided to head to my favorite place in the academy—which wasn't, in fact, my dorm room, despite all the fun times Cole and I had shared there last year.

The way to the library was encoded in my muscle memory, and it was no time at all until I found myself pushing open the door and stepping inside. Aside from this being the one place that I could pretty much guarantee to get some solitude—despite it allegedly being a public space—this was also my best chance to learn more about what I was.

A dhampir.

I shook my head. It was going to take a while to wrap my mind around that one. This time last year, I hadn't even known the supernatural existed, much less that I would be attending its academy. It had taken me long enough to come to terms with that. But finding out that I was one of them…and an illegal creation of that? Yeah, that one was hard to swallow. And Zane was right, much as it pained me to admit it. Surviving in this place had been hard enough as a mortal. But as a half vampire living amongst the wolves? I was going to need every advantage I could get, and that started with knowing everything there was to know about my dual nature. Of course, being the highly illegal creation that I was, it wasn't as straightforward as that. Shocker, right? It wasn't like the academy taught a whole lot about half vampires. But they couldn't bury every reference to them, either. And that meant, somewhere in these books, was a trove of information just waiting for me to stumble across it. Good news: I had pretty much unrestricted access to the library, all hours of the day and night outside of lessons. Bad news: that was barely enough time to scratch the surface of all the books that have been accumulated here throughout the centuries. And I knew, because I'd spent half of last year hunting through these books. Still, I might get lucky and happen across what I was looking for in the very first book I picked up. A girl could dream, right?

"I hope you're not planning on ruining any of these books with that disgusting concoction in your hand."

I twisted round, and found a petite Asian woman leaning over an open book at what had been my customary table last year, and a slow smile crept onto my face.

"Ling! Great to see you. But, uh, what are you doing here? No one else is getting here until this afternoon. Don't you have someplace better to be?"

"Apparently not," she said wryly.

I bit off the questions that begged me to ask before they could make it to the tip of my tongue. Ling was a closed book, and she preferred it that way. She was also my best friend inside of these walls—and outside of them, too—and if she wanted her privacy, then she wouldn't get any argument from me.

The slur against my sandwich, however, was vicious and wholly unnecessary. I glanced down at it to check it was not, in fact, in danger of dripping egg onto any ancient tomes.

"I'll have you know this is the breakfast of champions," I told her.

"It's a heart attack in a bun."

"Yeah, but it tastes so good…" I took a bite of it to underscore my point, and she rolled her eyes, then narrowed them.

"Why are you back here early, eating bad food and not loved up with your mate?"

"We are not—Well, I guess we are. But basically, the council."

"Do you plan to elaborate on that statement at all?"

I slumped down in the seat next to hers, and tossed my half-eaten roll on the table, narrowly missing one of the books.

"Come on, out with it," she said, but her tone was gentle. I still ducked her eye as I spoke, staring intently at the small streak of runny egg trying its best to drip from one side of the roll.

"I'm…" Fuck. How did I even say it? Tell her I wasn't everything she'd spent our entirely friendship thinking?

"You're you," she said firmly. "And whatever you're about to tell me isn't going to change that."

"Even if I'm half vampire?"

Silence. And then, "You're a dhampir? Dammit."

I twisted round to look at her, then lost my nerve and dropped my eyes back to my unappealing food.

"I don't think you should tell Jax," she said.

"That's…oddly specific." At least she was still talking to me, I guess?

"Yeah. I bet him last semester that you were part shifter, and I don't much fancy doing his cultural studies homework for a month."

I jerked my eyes back up at that, and caught the smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

"What? Come on, don't tell me you thought it was going to bother me that you're half vampire?" she said.

"Well…yeah."

She snorted, and all at once I felt ridiculous for worrying.

"Look, I told you, you're you. We're friends. Nothing's going to change that."

"Unless I tell Jax and you have to do his homework for a month?"

"Unless that."

I gave her a shoulder nudge and then sagged back in my chair. Great as it was that I wasn't about to lose my best friend, it didn't change the fact that I had this whole part of me that I knew nothing about. How did I even begin to wrap my head around discovering I was half vampire? And what that would mean for me.

Ling looked me up and down as if reading my mind, then nodded.

"Research?"

I exhaled slowly.

"Research."