Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Normal. Act normal. Everything was normal. Why would I act any other way?

Because it was normal to find out that the only guy to ever show genuine interest in you happened to be the brother of your Physics professor. It was basically another Tuesday when you learned he'd been a vampire all along, reading your mind and hiding in plain sight. And hell, how bizarre would it be if your first club fieldtrip didn't consist of nearly drowning, while your only friend shifted into an Aquarius, and used his magic water tentacles on you like probing vibrators.

And that wasn't even taking into account how comically ordinary it was that this all happened after said physics professor transformed into a psychotic lust demon and took your virginity.

What a silly girl I would be to freak out about a life so mundane and commonplace.

I was awake and out of my hotel room before anyone else in Astrology Club was so much as stirring, already packed and waiting at the bus stop. I stared at the soft colors of the sun rising over the mountains with a distant expression. The moon had already vanished behind the mountains, and the daylight was a warm hug by comparison. Minutes ticked on as I contemplated every decision I'd ever made in my life. My obsession with going to college, the dreams I was chasing, the people I was getting mixed up with…

Was this the elusive bad crowd that I'd always heard about? The ones who I normally evaded by studying and being too uncool to be worth corrupting? Was this finally my time to enter my rebellious phase? Maybe I should get an ear piercing and a tattoo next.

I rubbed the Leo symbol on my neck absentmindedly. I rolled the Capricorn symbol on my lower lip into my mouth, then I dragged it slowly across my teeth. Two marks permanently etched on my skin.

Oh how the good girls have fallen.

The sun fully lifted over the mountains, and I dropped my gaze to my lap. The full moon's influence was long past, any confidence I'd had last night was a distant dream, and my classmates were likely now getting up and enjoying breakfast. I should have been doing the same, but I was too frazzled to look at food at the moment.

Fortunately, I'd woken up in my own bed and not naked and bloody in the hot springs, which I guess was customary after getting fucked silly by one of the zodiac signs. So respectful, those monsters. I genuinely appreciated the way the great beasts of lore always had the mind to plug my phone in to its charger and leave my glasses in easy reach. My soul might even be warm and palpitating with love if not for the all-consuming, throbbing, fucking headache that was destroying my brain.

When Adrian had his way with me, I was fine the next day—I even questioned whether it had happened at all. I felt so wonderful and full of life .

When Marcus did the same, I ended up with what I assumed a hangover might feel like if I was ever exciting and loose enough to drink. Maybe that was the blood loss talking.

The blood loss.

Because I just got drained to an inch of my life by a vampire.

Which was fine. All fine. Nearly dying made me come so hard I saw Jesus shaking a disappointed finger at me. What did I have to complain about? Just another night at Graves Academy!

"Is this seat taken?"

I shrieked internally— wait, no, externally —as Marcus sat down beside me. He had clothes on, his shaggy hair was blond, his eyes were gold, and there were no water tentacles towering over him. One might even say he looked human, but oh how I knew there was not a single drop of human blood anywhere in this man. Well, unless you counted mine.

"So we're asking permission before we impose on my life now?" I was snippier than I'd intended with that question, but it was deserved, so I wouldn't be apologizing.

Marcus glanced up and to the side as though he was thinking about it, completely unashamed. Smiling even.

"Good point." He said, immediately owning his offenses. He sat down and nudged up against me, bombarding my bubble with that low key scent of sage. "Let me rephrase. I could sit with you in your room, or I could sit with you here at the bus stop, but I'll be sitting with you either way. I will be so kind as to let you choose though." He winked and the parallel to the way he'd propositioned me last night wasn't lost on me.

"What a gentleman." I rolled my eyes, but refused to look at him at any point in that rotation.

"I do my best." He chuckled before patting me on the shoulder. After a long pause he added, "I was going to tell you sooner than later, you know."

"That you were a vampire, a monster, his brother, or that you lied to my face for a whole damn month? Please be specific." I pursed my lips, yet Marcus just kept looking at me like I was the cutest puppy having an adorable meltdown, and it was annoying.

"All of it, eventually. I was probably going to start with the bit about being a vampire. I thought I'd already given myself away as a zodiac shifter with all the sappy astrology talk, so I'm a little surprised I have to explain that part at all."

"Yes, when a guy asks me what my sign is, I do automatically assume he fucks women with water tentacles." I raised a brow in his general direction, and he laughed.

"Exactly." Marcus shrugged as casual as ever. "So that kind of went without saying."

"And the whole brother thing?" I prodded next, not letting him off that easy.

"That's uh..." He glanced away sheepishly. "He and I aren't particularly close, so I don't really like to talk about him. Being in his class complicates matters. But it was going to be difficult to ignore for much longer, so that was on the confession list, considering. "

"Considering." I repeated flatly, before scraping that Capricorn symbol along my teeth again.

"And as for lying to you," Marcus' voice shook just slightly, and I wasn't used to hearing him sounding uncertain. "I'd never lie to you without a good reason. At Graves Academy, there are strict rules about revealing ourselves to humans, and I didn't want to scare you away. We weren't really close enough to talk about any of this yet."

"Well, we sure as fuck are now." I loved how he was somehow blaming the "rules" for his deceit. Granted, I'd never flat out asked him, so I guess technically he withheld rather than lied. But that was splitting hairs.

"Agreed." His empathetic smile was so genuine, my whole body relaxed. Somewhere in my brain, the phrase ‘you're being too hard on him' had the audacity to exist. Everything about him had me very quickly getting sucked into his rhythm again. I was going to do my best to be more stubborn than that, but it was tough when the subject of my ire was cute and fun and nice to me. "So that's why I'm now telling you about it. Though, if I'm being honest, I don't regret any part of last night. The big reveal wouldn't have been any fun if there hadn't been a surprise aspect." Oh my god, stop saying all the right words. "I wanted our first time together to be exciting . Maybe even a little dangerous. Show you what life in my bed is all about." I raised my brows, and he ruffled my hair. "Did you really want sex by candlelight in a hotel bed? Because you didn't seem too interested last night when I offered to take you to your room."

"W-well…" My cheeks were scalding despite the morning frost. How was I supposed to respond to that ?

"You could have had me in my human form, and I might have been sane enough to end the night on a chaste kiss. Maybe, at most, offer ‘polite missionary for beginners.' But no , the sweet, little, innocent Virgo wanted to get bent over the edge of a public pool by a monster who'd just ripped his fangs out of her throat."

This all seemed rather damning when laid out like that.

I opened my mouth to speak, but with absolutely no good retort, I just awkwardly stared at him in extended silence. After it had become adequately uncomfortable, I finally muttered, "So you still think you would have… uhh… did stuff with me in human form too?"

"Ha!" Marcus' laugh came out like an accident, and he rubbed my shoulder way too cordially. "You thought I was inviting myself to your room to play scrabble?" He was entirely too amused by this. "Now I have to know what you imagined in that pretty little head of yours."

"I-I mean, maybe you just wanted to talk and get to know me better," I lowered my volume to something I could barely even hear. "And maybe make out a little bit." And maybe it would have escalated from there, but only maybe…

Fuck, no wonder I'd been a virgin for so long. I was as smooth as a cheese grater.

But then, shouldn't it have been awkward for him to sleep with me knowing his brother had been with me already? There had to be a literal bro code against that, right?

Marcus snorted, and I didn't know what was so funny. "Oh sweet little Lila, welcome to my family. "

"I just threw up in my mouth."

"No you didn't."

"I hate you."

"Also not true."

Why was he always right?

"Because I can still read your mind, Baby Doll."

I jumped at the intrusion directly into my headspace, having nearly forgotten about that little ability of his. This motherfucker right here.

"That language is unbecoming of a lady." He said aloud.

I accidentally snort laughed, before I forced a serious expression back on my face. "Whatever." I sighed heavily, knowing I'd basically already forgiven him, while also resenting myself for being so easy. He should be groveling right now, begging for my grace and mercy, but the worst thing he did was get me off until I wanted to cry.

Well, he also almost drowned me. And he drained my blood without asking.

Dammit, no, he did a lot wrong. Just because I liked it, and he's hot, and I like hanging out with him, and he's good at… things—none of that excuses the rest.

Or does it?

In all fairness, he'd been holding in a lot of heavy truths, and it wasn't reasonable to ask all those things as a new acquaintance in an unofficial ‘maybe, kind of hanging out' situationship that had only gone on a couple weeks. Was I being na?ve or being ridiculous to think he owed me so much?

Rein in the crazy. I lambasted myself.

"So then, this is your mark, huh?" I tilted my head to the side, letting my hair drop over my opposite shoulder to better reveal the Leo symbol on my neck.

Marcus nodded but didn't elaborate.

"When did you put it on me?" I was sure he sensed my nerves as I asked, because he seemed hesitant to answer. Maybe because he obviously knew even better than I did what kind of ritual it entailed. "It requires a blood exchange to mark someone, right?"

He nodded, swallowed, inhaled, then exhaled. "S-so, one more confession." One more inhale. "The reason I knew what happened last full moon wasn't because my brother told me about it. We don't actually get along very well, and I wouldn't say we share things with each other. Definitely not intimate details."

I scrunched my nose, confused by where he was going with this, while having an increasingly sinking feeling that I wasn't going to like the answer. "So you guys don't talk?"

"No." Marcus was far less brazen and aggressive than he'd been last night. His words seemed tentative, and his demeanor carried a sense of shame. I suppose that was to be expected when the influence of the moon was gone. He'd already told me the moon changed him in the past, even if I hadn't interpreted it literally before. Hell, even I had to admit I'd felt a bit different last night. He drew in yet another slow breath before he answered, "I found you splayed out on the lunch table sometime after the… event." He admitted, before releasing that held breath. "Adrian had left you there, and I didn't want you to wake up somewhere public and exposed, so I took you back to your room."

"O-oh." I didn't know how to process even one part of that, other than the fact that now the professor was going to be the one earning my forgiveness next, because seriously ? He just left me on that table, naked and—A full body shudder made its way up my spine. "So you just decided to mark me?" Still trying to put this timeline together. Still determining who the biggest douche canoe was. Marcus had already told me he unlocked the door for me that night, so he had probably come back to re-lock it. That would explain how he found me.

But for Adrian to have literally put me in the position that I might have woken up exposing myself to the lunch lady— that was going to require a very compelling apology. Clearly their parents had fucked up the both of them.

"I had to, or I couldn't have entered your room. Vampires require an invite to enter another person's space. Since you were unconscious, the only way I could get that was to share blood with you. Otherwise I would have had to either take you home with me or leave you naked in the hallway, and both of those seemed like they would have been traumatic sprinkles on top of your melted sundae."

I blinked a few times. "You really are a gentleman."

"Of course." He nodded along like he was patting himself on the back. "You can reject a one-sided mate scar at any time, so there was no risk or danger in putting it there. It would also ward off any shifters who might take an interest in you under the pull of the moon by disguising your scent with mine. I figured that was a better alternative than subjecting you to the emotional and social detonation of having one of your other classmates finding you spread eagle on a lunch table and dripping with demon come." The visual alone, when spoken out loud and by a guy I'd been crushing on, was among the worst things I'd ever imagined. "I did what I had to do. I hope you can forgive me." He rubbed his neck, and I was surprised to see Marcus looking so vulnerable. His apology was unexpectedly sweet, and I wanted to tell him he didn't do anything wrong.

"I really appreciate it." I covered the lower half of my face with my hand to hide a fraction of the flush in my cheeks. The real Marcus was nothing like the possessed Aquarius Marcus. "I don't know what I would have done if I was still there during breakfast rush. And I'd probably never be able to look you in the eye again if I'd woken up at your place after all that, having no idea how you were related to any of it."

He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me a little closer. "Don't give me too much credit." He chuckled. "I marked you without asking more because I was afraid of what might happen if I exposed myself to the full moon by leaving. It can be hard to guarantee I won't transform any given month, especially with a touchy trigger like the Capricorn's, and I didn't want to risk hurting you by leaving the dorm. It was safer for my sanity and our future relationship to have done it all this way."

Future relationship? Dammit, now I couldn't be mad at Marcus. He was sweet, respectful, and always thinking about my best interests. The only time he deviated from that was when his whole brain was literally being controlled by moon hormones, and I didn't understand enough about his species to judge fairly.

All things considered, I was fine, and the crimes I was holding against him mostly involved enthusiastically satisfying me over and over again using magic that I didn't know he had, so his lies were fairly inoffensive deep down. I couldn't imagine what it was like to navigate the world as a supernatural creature trying to blend in with humans, never knowing who you could trust. Wearing a mask, day in and day out, always hiding your true self—I didn't have the capacity to successfully pull off such a thing. He deserved a bit of sympathy.

"Well, at least one of you was raised right." I half smiled, trying to come off as more easy going than I actually felt. "You two aren't even the same kind of magic thing though."

"Right, sorry, I should have been more clear. He's my half -brother. We share a mother, who you may have now guessed was a Zodiac Shifter. His father was an incubus, who she married, and my father was a vampire, who she had an affair with."

Oh shit. "Sounds like you have fun family reunions."

"They're like having a birthday party every day, but instead of cake, they serve nine-day-old road kill."

This time I really did throw up in my mouth. "I can smell that metaphor."

"At least you can't taste it like I can." He squeezed my shoulder affectionately, and we very quickly were on easy, comfortable terms again. Actually, I was more relaxed around him now than I was before, oddly enough. There was something about someone having seen you naked with your face contorted in orgasm that removed any pretense from casual conversation .

Like, what was I going to do here, at a bus stop on a cold February morning, that was more embarrassing than begging for dick and tentacles?

Nothing. Literally nothing. We could finally be real friends now.

"You know you owe me a lot more of an explanation than that, right? If you want me to trust you again, I need full disclosure going forward. I need to know what a Zodiac Shifter is, how vampires work, what other magic things exist that I don't know about—the whole nine yards."

"I think that's fair. There's no real point in trying to hide it from you anymore." He tapped his finger against his chin. "How about next Sunday? We can go somewhere private, take our time, and I can put everything out on the table. Let's call it a date." He smiled and my cheeks flushed, and he might always have that effect on me.

"Deal." I confirmed. Somewhere in my gut, I knew he was still the one with the upper hand even as I was the one making the demands. I suppose there were worse ways for a guy to feel like he was winning though. If going on a date with me was viewed as a coveted prize, then I was okay with being tricked into it.

I just had to roll with all of these punches and keep my guard up a whole lot higher than I'd been keeping it. I was now marked by two psychotic monsters who would turn into weird astrology creatures on the full moon every month, and I didn't know what to make of that. This was either going to be the death of me, or my ultimate slutty awakening .

Because my human body could totally survive a Vampire Taurus or a winged, Incubus Aries. I could only hope they never both ended up triggered at the same time.