Elara felt something cold drip onto her face.
A single drop ran from her forehead down to her temple.
She scrunched her face but still refused to open her eyes.
A few seconds later, more drops landed right on her cheek.
She finally opened her eyes.
Kael stood beside the bed, a few strands of wet, tousled hair hanging over his forehead, a towel draped over one shoulder.
Elara stared at him blankly for a few seconds–her mind was still too chaotic to concentrate–before she finally realized what the shirtless man was doing.
Kael stepped closer and once again flicked his hair right in front of her face.
“What?” Kael asked.
His chin tipped up, like he was daring her to start a fight.
“The water got on my face.”
He looked at her for a moment, then shook his hair again.
“Good.
I thought you were dead.”
“Can you not mess with me?” Elara said, wiping her damp cheek.
“You messed with me first, you know.”
Kael kept running his fingers through his hair, completely unbothered by the fact that he’d just woken her from such a long sleep.
“What are you doing here this early?” Elara asked, giving up on lying down and struggling instead to push herself into a sitting position against the headboard.
“First, it’s not early; it’s already afternoon.
Second, I’m starving.
Third, if I waited for you to wake up on your own, I might’ve been stuck here another few days.”
Elara glanced at the massive window across the room.
The sun had already climbed to its peak.
She hadn’t realized just how long she’d been asleep.
Kael crossed to the closet, ignoring her irritated glare, and pulled out a shirt to cover the bare torso he’d been walking around with all this time.
“Get ready.”
“Why are you taking clothes out of my closet?” Elara asked, genuinely confused.
He turned, giving her a look as if she’d just asked the dumbest question of the year.
“Do all humans lose their memory the second they take a hit to the head, or is that just you?
This is my room.
My closet.
Now go back to yours and get ready.”
Elara didn’t move, still perched on the edge of what turned out to be Kael’s bed.
The more she tried to make sense of this dream, the more confused she got.
“You seriously don’t want to eat?” Kael’s patience was already running thin.
“If I knew where my room even was, I wouldn’t be waiting–”
“You talk too much.”
Kael scooped her up in one arm and strode out of his room, straight into the one right next door.
He shut the door, set her down, and said, simply, “Hurry up.”
Her feet touched cold marble.
Her body still ached, but it was already way better than yesterday.
Slowly, she made her way to the closet and found women’s clothes that looked perfectly normal.
Maybe this really was her room.
“You want to watch me change?” she asked.
Without answering, Kael turned to face the door instead.
“Not even in a dream.”
Elara let out an irritated huff.
Of all the dreams she’d had since childhood, this was the first time she’d met someone as annoying as Kael.
A few minutes later, Elara found herself two steps behind Kael as they left the building–some kind of student dormitory.
His stride was long and fast, and she struggled to keep pace, sometimes falling far enough behind that she had to call out just to get him to slow down.
“Walk beside me.
I won’t know if you’re being attacked if you’re trailing behind me like that.”
“Isn’t this a school?
How does a school even allow that kind of thing to happen?”
Kael glanced back and saw Elara almost lose her balance–she managed to grab hold of a nearby pillar just in time.
“You forget what a stupid thing you did yesterday?”
She shot him a look, but didn’t argue.
As a human, she was already pushing her luck just being near creatures like these.
Kael pulled her closer as they entered the Ravencrest corridor.
White columns lined the hallway, holding up the ceiling that arched over groups of students chatting.
The place was much more crowded than she had imagined.
Students gathered along both sides of the corridor turned to watch them pass.
Kael’s grip on her arm tightened.
“Whatever they’re saying, you don’t need to listen to it.”
Before Elara could respond, the whispers started–quiet at first, then bolder, following the two of them the whole way until they stepped into a massive hall lined with arched windows that stretched all the way to the ceiling, flooding the room with light even without the chandeliers hanging in neat rows overhead.
“Why is everyone looking at me?” she finally asked.
“Because you’re human.” The answer came far too simply.
“The only one here,” Kael added.
Ravencrest’s dining hall looked less like a cafeteria and more like a big fancy ballroom, nothing like any lunchroom Elara had ever seen.
She swept her gaze across the space again.
Long tables filled the hall, but not all of them held the same kind of food.
Her steps slowed.
On the left side of the room, werewolf students sat in loose clusters, eating what looked like far more food than any one person could finish–mostly meat, vegetables, and various warm dishes.
The other side of the room stopped her cold.
Vampires sat in neat, orderly rows, their pale skin catching the sunlight in a faint shimmer.
There were no plates, no food across their tables.
Each of them held a single glass goblet filled with something thick and deep red, sipping it slowly.
Blood.
She was certain of what she was seeing.
Elara was still staring when Kael pulled her toward the werewolf tables.
“Don’t just stand in the middle of the room.” His voice snapped her back.
“You’ve got a face like you’ve never seen them before,” he added, and left it at that.
No matter how hard she tried to act as if this were just another part of her dream, she couldn’t help but be startled when she saw the vampires drinking from glasses as if they were sipping afternoon tea at a royal gathering.
They walked toward an empty table.
Before Elara could even sit down, the whispers around them started to grow.
One conversation cut off.
Another picked up, pitched too low for her to catch.
But a few voices spoke just loud enough to reach her.
“Why’s she even still here?”
“Shut up.
Kael can hear us!” someone hissed.
Elara tried to tune it out.
But another voice, dripping with mockery, cut through clearer than the rest.
“If she’s really a Perfect Blood, why does Kael Rhaen have to babysit her?”
“I think ‘Perfect Blood’ is just a title at this point,” someone else sneered.
“Look at her.
One hit and she’s knocked out for days.
What good is perfect blood if her body is so weak?”
“Maybe the blood’s the only perfect thing about her.
The rest of her’s just pathetic.”
Laughter followed, careless of the fact that the subject of their conversation was sitting close enough to hear every word.
Elara kept her eyes down, forcing herself not to react, even as confusion churned inside her over what exactly they were talking about.
On the other side of the hall, something shifted among the vampires too.
A few of them caught her eye as she tried to look away from the werewolves who’d cornered her with their whispers.
Their gaze was nothing like that other race’s.
No mockery, no laughter–just a strange, heavy silence, like she was being studied by something far hungrier than curiosity.
Kael nudged her elbow.
“Eat.
Now.” She did as she was told.
But before a single bite reached her mouth, her gaze landed on a vampire sitting with quiet elegance in the middle of the group.
She looked different from everyone else in the room.
Her clothes were far more refined, unmistakably luxurious.
Her long hair was arranged with perfect care, and several students orbited around her like she’d formed the center of a circle without even trying.
Nobody had to tell Elara that this girl held a different kind of standing than anyone else in the room.
Her presence alone made that clear.
Elara nudged Kael back.
“Who is she?” she whispered.
Kael followed her gaze before answering, his voice dropping lower, as if even ordinary conversation might carry across the whole hall.
“Elsinne Calemont.”
“House of Calemont?” The name surfaced from somewhere in the fragments of what her father used to tell her, back when she was small–she didn’t even know how she remembered it.
Kael let out a mocking huff.
“Look at that, your memory’s coming back.”
Elara watched her again.
The princess of House Calemont was in the middle of a conversation with a few vampire students when her gaze suddenly lifted, and their eyes met.
The princess smiled–not at Kael, still working through the food on his plate, but directly at Elara, who found she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
“If you’re gonna sit here staring all day, I’ll just leave you here,” Kael said dryly, eyeing Elara’s untouched plate.
“Let them have you for dessert.”
Before Elara could respond, the entire hall went quiet.
Conversations cut off suddenly as every set of eyes turned toward the same spot.
The princess was walking–calm, unhurried–straight toward their table.
Elara glanced at Kael.
He’d already noticed.
The moment the princess drew closer, he set down his fork and rose to his feet.
In one motion, his body was between her and the princess.
That movement came so naturally it looked like he was bracing for a threat.
The princess stopped a few steps away, her laugh light and refined.
“Your guard dog’s awfully aggressive,” she said, tilting her head to peer around Kael and find Elara.
Kael’s expression didn’t change.
“Your Highness.”
“I just want to talk to her.
That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“No need to come any closer,” Kael said, offering no room to negotiate.
Her brow arched.
She looked him over, head to toe, then let a thin smile settle on her lips.
“Interesting.
You’re restricting me from speaking to a human my own family assigned you to guard.
I didn’t expect the future alpha of Clan Rhaen to be quite this protective of a human.”
A few students still watching from nearby tables immediately dropped back into whispers.
The princess’s attention shifted to Elara, hidden behind Kael’s broad back.
His hand reached behind him and closed around her wrist–right over the wound still healing from yesterday’s blood draw–as if he were trying to shield it from view.
“Relax.
I’m not going to hurt you.” She paused, her voice turning playful.
“At least, not today.”
To Elara, that didn’t sound like a joke at all.
“I only came to say something, Rhaen,” Princess Elsinne said, though there was nothing close to a request in her tone.
She knew exactly where she stood–far above anyone else in this room.
Kael, apparently, didn’t care.
“Say it from there.”
The princess laughed.
“You really are impossible.
Fine.” She turned back to Elara.
“Your blood draw yesterday didn’t go through.”
The memory hit Elara instantly–the needle in her vein, the clear tubing she’d ripped free, the blood scattering across the marble floor.
“The Crown’s reserves are running low,” the princess continued, light as ever.
“Your blood was supposed to be delivered yesterday.
Wouldn’t want us going hungry, would we?”
Elara’s eyes dropped to her wrist, still locked in Kael’s tightening grip.
“Rhaen?” The princess took a step closer.
Kael didn’t flinch.
He tipped his chin up, unbothered.
“Take good care of her,” the princess said, then leaned in just enough to whisper, “Don’t let this human die.”
Kael said nothing.
She straightened, giving Elara one last glance.
“Don’t forget to eat, human.”
The moment Princess Elsinne returned to her own table, Kael’s grip on Elara’s wrist finally loosened.
But Elara was still staring at his back, her mind crowded with too many things she didn’t understand.
One thought, though, kept circling back louder than the rest.
Her blood.
For the first time since she’d returned to this dream, Elara realized it wasn’t her presence that made everyone stare.
It wasn’t even that she was human.
It was something running through her veins.
Something they called…
Perfect Blood.
This story has been living in my head for a while, and I’m so excited to finally share it with you.
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