Page 4 of Just One Bite

Chapter Two

Parker

“My chest kinda burns.” I rub my sternum while devouring a burrito. They must have added extra hot peppers.

“Those burritos kill me,” Zant says from next to me, wiping his hands. He’s already consumed his.

The tree branch we’re sitting on quakes under the weight of the two of us. His short, disheveled hair is being crushed by the mask dangling half on and half off his head.

“Worth it,” I say, deciding any burrito from the culinary club is worth the heartburn.

Below us, a crowd of new students funnels through the haunted maze—a Doxlothia tradition since it first started.

This year, I get to be the one doing the scaring and not the one walking alone in the maze, which is a path that runs through a wooded area and leads to the castle.

They set it up every year with artificial fog and obstacles you can't see around. I wasn’t scared my first year, but it wasn’t exactly a fun experience.

Everyone else already had friends, packs, or even siblings to walk with.

Zant is a year older than me and scouted me out in the maze.

I almost killed him in the process of him trying to scare me last year.

Zant and I have been best friends since our early school years in the city.

Long story short, our dads are business men who like to put their kids in private school.

Only, my dad did it because he wanted to see me less and Zant’s dad put him in because he actually loves him and cares about his future.

I call him a daddy’s boy, and he tells me to eat shit, but he smiles when he says it.

When I got Noxx House and couldn’t join Zant in Solexxa, I was bummed, considering we’d gone to a private boarding school together and shared a room for years.

But he said I’d be bored there, and he was probably right.

Solexxa houses some of the smartest people on campus and produces the country’s brightest scientist, lawyers, and several of Vviveren’s famous botanists.

Zant isn’t interested in any of that, but he is smart.

He says Noxx House is Solexxa’s more energetic older brother that throws better parties.

I finish my burrito, thinking I want another. Just as I do, Zant pulls one from his bag and hands it to me.

“Don’t say I never do anything for you.”

“Why did you hide it?” I smile and snag it from him.

“I knew you’d find it and inhale it in a breath. I worry your stomach will burst.”

I focus back on the crowd, eating my burrito, and Zant watches in disgusted horror as I devour it in four bites.

Just when I’m about to get an earful, my spine straightens.

Like a beacon, her steps call to me. There’s no real reason for it—all the girls are permitted to wear the same shoes, but I still find her.

The girl from across the hall. I’d been such a dumbstruck asshole I didn’t say a word to her then.

I was afraid I’d scare her. A few of my packmates jump from the bushes, and she doesn’t flinch but holds one of the girls while another one clings to her back.

She looks tired and a little annoyed by the way she’s shushing them every five seconds.

Probably her sisters, if I had to guess.

That type of annoyance is reserved for siblings.

Her dark hair frames her face, and her eyes stand out even in the dark. One golden and the other violet. I noticed them in the hall when her eyes widened, and my heart pounded at the sight of her.

“Who is that?” I ask.

Zant is on the council, which means he knows everything about everyone, and not just because they get the full list of incoming students.

“You haven’t heard? Mighty Alpha didn’t debrief you today?

” Zant teases. Vampires don’t understand pack dynamics.

Just like they’d never understand the sensation of shifting under a full moon.

There is nothing for them to compare it to.

If you’re not in a pack, you’re a lone wolf, and that’s for a select few.

Being a lone wolf is the last thing I want to be.

It’s a lonely life, and if I’m packless, then as an alpha myself, it becomes nearly impossible to hide.

All the ones I’ve known never had any family to begin with or were estranged from their pack for other reasons. It’s all fucking depressing.

“I was in practice all day,” I say, still staring.

“Uh-huh, is that why you’re hiding here with me and not your precious packmates?”

I’m not hiding. My pack leader, Gavin, is on the council too, which means he and the other students on the council lead the orientation along with the dean.

“You’re one to talk, shouldn’t you be on your way to orientation right now?”

“I’m killing time. Someone’s gotta keep you company. I can’t believe none of them asked you to go scare with them.”

I didn’t expect them to. Being a stray alpha in Gavin’s pack doesn’t get me any fuzzy feelings from the rest of the pack. Still, it’s better than the alternative. But none of that matters if I don’t pick a mate this year. I sigh at the familiar twist of tension in my chest.

When I don’t answer, Zant says, “The whole campus has been buzzing about them. Take a whiff.”

They smell like a collection of floral perfume, spice, and baked goods, but it’s not anything abnormal. “They smell human.”

“You gotta tune into it. Pure vampire instinct. Focus on one of them. Think about her blood and the wetness of it on your tongue. Her heartbeat. The surge of blood when you drink directly from the vein.”

Being a hybrid has its perks but also drawbacks. It makes everything fucking hard. Tuning into the werewolf instinct versus the vampire is different, and I have to concentrate real hard to do either.

Trying to humor him, I focus on the dark-haired girl I can’t seem to stop watching anyway.

I imagine standing in front of her, her eyes widening as I sweep the hair from her collarbone and run my lips over the warmth of her neck.

Her blood pumping below the surface of her porcelain skin when I sink my teeth into the pulsing vein in her neck.

The euphoria and the harmonious flutter of her blood as it surges into my mouth.

I take another long breath, and the hairs on my arm rise with the scent filling my head, and the rush carries heat from my skull to my toes. So sweet.

I almost never think about blood, but I’m thinking of her blood a lot now and how to get to it.

“Shit. That’s different,” I say. The burning in my chest is more intense, and now it’s in my throat too.

“They’ve got something special. Those three sisters are all anyone is talking about, including the council.”

Mention of the council snaps me out of my daze.

“I take it your stance hasn’t changed this year?”

“I don’t want a council seat.”

He nudges me. “We need more people like you. We’ve got too many assholes and not enough golden boys like the great Parker Owens.”

Zant has been asking me to join the council since before I went to Doxlothia. He called me the first year he got in and said, “ Dude, you gotta do this .”

He loves the politics of it all, the power, but more importantly, the gossip.

“Don’t fucking call me that.” I try to wrestle him off the branch, and the bark snaps and cracks with our weight threatening to buckle it.

“You’d be an instant vote-in. All the girls screaming your name and holding up your posters. ‘ Oh, Parker. Mark me. Please! ’”

I tackle him again, and we fight until the tree cracks and sags a few inches lower.

“Truce,” we say at the same time.

Noxx House has housed more people on the council than any other house. Zant says it’s a sign. He thinks everything is a sign. His mom is really intuitive and into that stuff.

“I’m just saying it could solve just about every one of your problems this year.”

The air’s filled with all sorts of smells, but my eyesight improves in the dark, making the girl from the hallway easy to find again. She’s getting closer, only a few feet away. Both the wolf and the vampire in me like watching her from above in the shadow of the treetop.

“It’s too much pressure,” I say before my attention is completely elsewhere.

“And Captain Owens can’t handle pressure?”

“That’s different. I’m good at sports. It comes naturally.”

The last thing I need is to draw more attention to myself and make trouble for Gavin.

No matter where I am, assholes seem to follow.

One reason I joined Gavin’s pack was to lay low and stay out of trouble.

Other alphas might consider it humiliating to submit in another alpha’s pack, but I call it vacation.

No one bothers me or asks me about the future. Why must I always do and be something?

It leaves me open to focus on being a good captain and getting onto a pro team. What more do I need?

“You’re a natural leader.” He taps me. “It’s in your blood, I hear.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Zant continues talking about all the things in my blood and the fact he believes in me.

Blah, blah, blah, but I tune out his caring words like I normally do and find the girl from the hallway again.

They haven’t made much progress. Mostly, her sisters prevent her from moving more than a few inches at a time before they scream and use her as a human shield.

I need to know her name.

“Are you even paying attention?” Zant hits me on the shoulder, then follows my line of sight to the girls. “Fine, you closed-off bastard.”

“She’s got the eye thing,” I say.

“Like Cane.” He finishes the part of the sentence I don’t want to say.

Different-colored eyes are usually associated with old werewolf bloodlines. She smells human though, so it must be distant.

“Do you know her name?” I ask.

“Uh, no, I skimmed the list. Let’s go say hi. See if we can get her name. Ten bucks says I’ll get her to tell me first.”

I smile and tug my mask over my face. “Deal.”

The girls scream as we drop from the trees and cut off their path while the dirt plumes around us.