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Roxy

Being a rogue female shifter would be better than this.

The thought rang through my head as I watched the battle die down. Vampires and shifters had been sworn enemies since the beginning of time, according to shifter legend, but all I saw was carnage.

Blood.

Death.

Senseless violence to some degree but also self-defense.

If I was rogue, this wouldn’t be happening. Or maybe it would.

I didn’t think the shifter council would’ve recruited me if I was bound for being an alpha of a high-ranking pack or running on my own through the forest with no group or family to back me.

“Is it over?” I remembered one of the other shifters asking me. I didn’t know her name or even when she began fighting next to me, but the blood on her clothes and the vamp claw marks along her shirt told me she had been there all the time.

I was only nineteen. They came to get me from my aunt’s home on my eighteenth birthday, before the cake. Not that there would be any cake. My aunt didn’t believe in birthday celebrations. Correction: she didn’t believe in celebrating my birthday.

Either way, that night, I had been packed and ready to go. If the shifter council soldiers hadn’t come to recruit me, and by recruit, I meant draft me without consent, I would’ve been gone anyway.

My aunt was one of those who thought because I’d hit eighteen, I was ready to be kicked out of the nest.

I was, but not because I was one year older but because I was tired of being in a house where my surrogate parent hated me and showed it.

“I think it’s over. I don’t…I don’t see any more.”

“There were a group of vamps over that mountain, but they retreated.” The girl with flowing, red hair and bright green eyes scanned the field we were in. “There’s no one to report to.”

I let out a long breath, my chest still tight from the adrenaline of the fight. I let out a laugh. “What the hell do we do now?”

She began to speak but gasped instead. “You’ve been bitten.”

“What?” I patted my skin, looking for what she was calling a bite.

“It’s there. On your neck. You…you didn’t know?”

I rolled through the memories in my mind. My time in the shifter council’s army was a blur from the moment they came to get me until this moment. “Oh,” I said. “Shit. I had one latched on to my neck, but I didn’t know if he…”

We turned our attention to an incoming group of shifter soldiers. Ones whose sharp shoulders and tight jaws signaled someone in charge.

“The war is over,” one of them said. He regarded me with his head cocked to the side. A tingling fever started at the top of my head and before I could catch myself, I swayed a bit. “She’s been bitten. Take her to the healers. And be careful. She might turn.”

Turn?

Turn!

I was taken to the shifter hospital. Nothing more than a huge tent with beds inside. This was a war, after all. I didn’t expect the treatment of a hospital when we were still in the wake of such violence.

“Lie on the bed. Let’s look you over.” The woman practically pushed me down on the bed and put gloves on before touching my skin. “This is some bite. Deep too. Did they drink from you?”

I sighed. “I didn’t realize they bit me until someone else brought it to my attention. I didn’t really have my timer out when they did it.”

“Smart-ass,” she muttered.

“Are you feeling any symptoms?”

“What are the symptoms of a shifter being bitten by a vamp in the middle of a fight?”

The woman wearing scrubs unraveling at the corners of the pockets planted her fists on her ample hips. “Are you feeling the need to bite my neck? Are you hungry for blood?”

“No. I’m hungry for a damned cheeseburger.” I was tired of her shit and stupid questions. I tried to sit up, but a wave of powerful dizziness put a stop to my movement. “Oh. My head.”

The nurse or healer, whatever she was, put the back of her hand on my forehead and stabilized me, grabbing my arm. “You are warm.”

“I just shifted back. It’s almost summer. That doesn’t mean anything.”

She shook her head. “It does. What’s your name?”

“Roxy,” I answered.

“Roxy, you’ve been bitten by a vampire. We don’t know what happens next. We have little research on shifters who have been infected. You’re young. They’ll send you to Summer Ridge, and you’ll be fine.”

Summer Ridge. No fucking way. “The school where the pack rejects go? I’m fine. I can just go back to Urban Academy. I’m fine.” I’d been a student there before being sent to do battle for the summer or maybe forever. Nobody had actually given me an end date.

Maybe if I said it enough times, it would make it true but something had changed.

“Urban Academy? You were a student there?”

Apparently when I was offered up for recruitment, my aunt hadn’t bothered to share that bit of information. “I am.”

An alpha came over, wearing a stern expression. When he opened his mouth, my life would be turned upside down. My stomach sank. “What’s your name?” He had a clipboard. It was never good when they had a clipboard.

“Roxy. Roxy Swifthunt.”

“Roxy, you’ve been bitten. The council’s orders are clear. All bitten persons between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five are to be transported directly to Summer Ridge.”

I scoffed. “Summer Ridge, my ass. Don’t you mean Marked Blood? It’s the Marked Blood Academy. No use in happying that shit up.”

“Call it what you will, female. You’ll be put on the next bus immediately.”

If I ever found the vamp who bit me, if he wasn’t ash, I would kill him myself. Maybe I already had. In the heat of battle, I didn’t always know.