Page 17 of Come Out & Prey (Apex Academy Capers #1)

I rush towards the door, ignoring Lucille’s barked criticisms about being ‘too eager’. Todd doesn’t give a fuck about our stuffy parents’ conventions, and I will not wait for someone to formally announce that the limo full of my friends has arrived to rescue me from the clutches of my DNA donors.

Matilda opens the door, and I stop short as I hear her gasp. My heels clack on the teak as I stop, unsure why the closest thing I have to a caregiver in this house of horrors has gone pale as a sheet. Her face turns to me, and my stomach clenches at the look of pity on it. Squaring my shoulders, I take a breath before striding over to her as she stands mute in the doorway.

Todd is leaning against the frame, the smell of cheap whiskey wafting from his rumpled tuxedo. His shirt is only half tucked in, and his hair is a mess. If that were the extent of the idiocy, I would get over it. But no… far worse surprises await in the background. My hand flies to my mouth, and I bite my lower lip hard to keep from ruining my makeup with the tears stinging my eyes.

The sleek, black limo isn’t in the background as I’d imagined. Instead, there’s an enormous bus with LED runners and blaring music. The shiny logo on the side proclaims ‘The Landing Strip Party Bus’, and the Heathers are hanging out the windows, waggling bottles of champagne at me. I can only assume the boys are in there as well, and by the sloshed look of my boyfriend, they’ve been riding around for a while before they came to get me.

“Delores,” Matildas starts, but I wave my hand.

Nothing about this is fair, but very little in life is. I have to make the best of the hand that I’m dealt, or I’ll never get away from Lucille and Bruno. Besides, getting smashed on prom night is a pretty common rite of passage, so maybe it looks worse than it is.

“It’s okay,” I whisper, passing her as I head out the door. “I’ll have my phone just in case. Okay?”

She nods, pushing her glasses up as she stares at the neon monstrosity serving as my carriage to the most important night of my life. “Please be careful.”

Nodding, I wait to ensure that neither of my parents is going to come charging across the threshold to laugh at my shame, and head out the door. I have no idea what possessed the boys to rent a party bus, but I’m sure it was Chaz’s idea. That idiot is always talking Todd into doing stupid, thoughtless, or plain mean things, and this has to be his fault.

Gathering what little dignity I have left, I take Todd’s arm to steady him as I walk toward the driveway with my head held high. I refuse to let anyone see how upset I am; they don’t deserve my pain. Reaching the bus, I push my less-than-perfect boyfriend up the stairs by his ass, ignoring his drunken commentary. Once he’s in, I turn to wave at Mattie and ascend the stairs.

I’m not ready for the sight that greets me. The driver lurches into gear and I grab the seats, holding on as both the movement and my disappointment nearly take my knees out from under me.

The Heathers are dressed in all of their designer finery—still coordinating by color—and they are obviously well on their way towards smashed. The boys are hooting and hollering from the bench seats as they watch Gold take her turn on the stripper pole in the middle of the aisle.

Yes, I said stripper pole.

She’s shaking what Zeus gave her like she needs the money and the girls are shouting praise for her clumsy, intoxicated slip and slide around the pole. The boys are tossing hundreds at her, chugging cheap beer in tall cans. The entire scene is like something out of a bad teen movie, and it makes my hands shake in fists at my side.

This was not what I planned for the most important night of my life, and I’m furious.

I take a seat at the front, inspecting the surface before I sit. This gorgeous dress will have to be sprayed for biohazards tomorrow if the condition of the rest of the bus is any sign. Placing my hands on my lap, I sit ramrod straight, trying not to let the others see how this is affecting me. I don’t know why they all did this, but I’m at the end of my rope. My mother tried to ruin my dress shopping experience and make me feel fat, my boyfriend allowed his friends to ruin our fairytale evening with a stripper bus, and my friends are so busy getting thrashed and pretending to be strippers they’ve barely noticed my existence.

My life is one big cosmic joke and I’m tired of being the punchline.

Todd stumbles over, holding out a bottle of Bacardi, and I shake my head. He pouts, but I don’t relent. I can’t get smashed—not with all of them barely able to walk. Someone has to be sober enough to get us from this monstrosity to the tables at the prom, and to be honest, I’d like to be the one not barfing on the way home—even if getting drunk would help me numb the pain of disappointment burning in my gut.

“DD, don’t be such a stick in the mud,” Purple calls, expertly swinging around the pole like she’s done it a million times.

That figures. Her innocent, big eyed little girl act for her family’s commercials has always been an act, but I don’t think I realized until now just how much acting she did. She’s definitely dancing like she’s looking for a quick bang, and that’s completely contrary to her public persona.

If only the faithful could see her now…

I shake my head to clear it. It won’t help to push my anger at the situation into her. I’m not a slut shamer, and I firmly believe that women should be able to do whatever they choose with their bodies. Our world takes enough control away from us—particularly the Council heirs—and I won’t allow my self-pity to make me a judgmental asshole.

Except we all promised to wait together.

Maybe the Heathers have been waiting until tonight to express their desires.. If that’s the case, then I feel both guilty, and a little sad. They never told me they were feeling tied down by our pact, and I would never have held them back if they wanted to choose their own path.

Shit. Now I feel like an asshole. Way to be a feminist, Delores.

You hogtied your friends to some stubborn vengeance plot against your parents. They couldn’t say no to it without upsetting you. Some ‘body positive’ feminist you are. You’re as bad as the stupid adults ruling our lives like petty dictators at a chessboard.

I open my mouth to apologize when the bus slams to a stop. One of the Heathers tumbles off the pole and to the ground and my head whips around to glare at the driver. The badger at the wheel grunts, pulling out a flask and taking a large pull from it before he wipes his mouth on his sleeve.

Gross. Drunk driving a stripper bus to a prom—there’s a life goal for you.

Closing my eyes, I call upon every ounce of patience and strength I possess as I stomp over to the pile of bodies and grab Todd’s arm. He leers at me drunkenly, and I brace myself so I can yank him out of the tangle of limbs, pulling with all of my might. When he finally stands, I hook his arm around my shoulders and trudge to the front of the bus. We take the stairs at a glacial pace, and I don’t wait for the others as I lead him to the small golf cart waiting to escort us from the main admissions building of Apex to the Arts and Humanities Center.

Once I situate the drunken oaf in the backseat of the golf cart, I climb in carefully, pulling up the bottom of my dress so it won’t touch the floor. I have no idea how many people have been in this before we arrived or what state they were in. Underage drinking is common in the elite tiers of shifter society, and there’s a decent chance there are students even more wasted than my companions already at the prom. They won’t provide liquor to attendees, but they won’t stop anyone who’s imbibed from entering, either, because of who our parents are.

The scenery flies by as the driver tears across the lush grass and hills between the two buildings. He’s short, with beady eyes and a slight frame that makes me think he’s probably a smaller reptile or bird. It’d be rude to ask, but if he licks his lips at me one more time, I might heave despite being sober. I’ve never understood why men seem to get a pass to be legit creepers—even to younger shifters like me—and if I complained, someone would suggest it’s my fault for wearing clothing that shows an inch of my skin.

I'm thankful that I found my future spouse early, so I didn't have to go through the meat market some elite girls have to go through to find their mates. Tonight, I’m going to solidify my dreams, even if the circumstances are not as perfect as I imagined. After all, real life is rarely perfect, and the lack of fairy tale romance I envisioned for this evening doesn’t mean I’m wrong about Todd. It simply means I will need to figure out how to steer him away from his idiot friends once we get to Apex, so that he makes better decisions.

With that determined thought, I feel the golf cart stop and the Shirdal Arts Center sprawls before me. I wait until the other couples exit before I climb out and start maneuvering my boyfriend off the bench seat. He loops his arm around my shoulder and I sigh, half-dragging him towards the steps. It takes another five minutes to get him up the stone staircase, and though part of me wants to punch them all, I'm also relieved when I catch the shrill tones of Pink shouting into her phone from the golf cart pulling in behind us. She’s probably recording an arrival video for her multi-platform empire because she’s incapable of blowing her nose without using it to beg her followers to buy her line of shitty sex toys.

Did I forget to mention her sleazy father not only made his underage pred daughter the face of their media empire, but also the spokes model for their lingerie and ‘personal care’ lines?

I probably didn’t, because it’s creeped me out since we were freshman in high school and she started making videos about things I would never discuss with Bruno and Lucille. Their relationship is the ultimate full body shudder embodied in a dysfunctional corporation masquerading as a family.

The shrieking stops, and I turn my head, finding Gold looking as if she’s ready to bite my face off for leaving them, and I’m in no mood for it. “Let’s go, baby,” I murmur, propelling my boyfriend to stumble inside with me.

Todd mutters something unintelligible and I sigh as we get checked in at the door. If we make it through dinner with no further incidents, I might even get this shitshow back on track. I just need to keep the rest of them from peer pressuring him, and we’re golden.

“DD! DD!”

I look away from the Heathers holding court on the other side of our table to see Todd—now semi-recovered from his stupor—grinning like a madman and shouting my name. His boyish good looks make my heart soften a little, and I give him a fond smile. “Hey. Why do you look like the pred that cornered the prey?”

His grin is blinding, and I immediately forgive all the bullshit he’s put me through tonight. I may have seen less of him this year with our classes diverging at SS, and the constant demands of our families’ social schedule, but Todd may well be the reason I didn’t lose it a long time ago.

It’d be really judgmental of me to not give him the same latitude he’s always shown me. Maybe he just got caught up with his buddies and things spiraled before he realized what was happening. It’s not like he’d ever purposefully hurt me by ruining our special night, right?

“Babe. Babe. Guess what I did!” He puffs up, his eyes still hazy from the booze.

“What did you do?” I reply, putting my chin in my hands as I lean forward to look up at him. Chad, Chaz, and Brett come running up, and I roll my eyes. Athena, save me with these morons.

“I spiked the punch!” Todd crows, holding up a rather large flask he’s pulled out of gods knows where.

“Bullshit, dickhead! I spiked the punch,” Brett growls, narrowing his eyes at my boyfriend combatively.

“No, we did!” Chad and Chaz shout, stepping closer.

Sitting up slowly, I rub my temples. Are they so goddess blessed stupid that all four boys separately spiked the giant trough of punch that every pred in here is gulping down like water? They can’t all be that brainless—for the love of Dionysus, they just can’t.

“Is… it possible... that none of you are lying?” I venture, looking from Todd to his growling pack of dipshits carefully.

Realization dawns on them slowly and they burst into a fit of snorts and sniggers, like children. Gold finally turns her attention to this side of the table, arching a perfectly sculpted brow. I shake my head and she shrugs, turning back to the lower preds who are fawning over the Heathers’ dresses.

“ The Toddman’s chick figured it out !” Chaz yells, pumping his fist in the air.

I suck in a calming breath, closing my eyes before I snap at him. We’ve all gone to school together since we were babies and this idiot knows my name. That neither he nor any of the laughing fools acknowledge my place as Todd’s future mate drives me batty, but I usually let it go. There’s no need to ruffle feathers until my place is secure, right?

Fuck. That sounded a little too ‘Lucille’ for my taste.

“Well, hopefully, people don’t get so blasted that they pass out before dancing.” I squint at the program on the fancy flower arrangement on the table. “It says next they’ll serve dessert while someone from Apex gives a speech.”

Brett grins toothily, dropping into his chair again. “Can’t wait to show whatever stodgy old fart they send what they’re in for when we arrive next year.”

Good luck to whatever poor professor they forced to give this speech. They’re going to need it.