Her Wicked Immortals: A Paranormal Bully Romance

  Her Wicked Immortals

  Candace Wondrak

   2019 Candace Wondrak

  All Rights Reserved.

  Book cover by Daqri Bernardo at Covers by Combs

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  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Epilogue, Part One

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Epilogue, Part Two

  Chapter One

  My soul was dead. Gone, in the blink of an eye. My body was violated, my freewill taken from me right before my very eyes. I was both myself and not myself, sitting before her shrine. My clothes were torn, ripped to shreds, a sign of the gods’ wrath. And they were wrathful—I had known it from the day I was born.

  This was the end for me; I knew it even before I heard armored footsteps behind me.

  My eyes opened, and as my hair, so light a blonde it was practically white, parted while I lifted my face, I felt my tears dry the instant I turned to view the approaching figure. There she was—less than ten feet from me, wearing beautiful, sparkling armor, her hair cut in a straight line near her chin. Both striking and fierce, elegant and deadly. I’d never before seen her in person, but I prayed to her often, and in this very temple.

  Her temple. The same temple I’d lost my innocence in. The same temple I’d lost so much in.

  “You,” she spoke, her voice harsh and jarring, sounding the opposite of what one would think she’d sound like. Justice was supposedly her forte, but this? This would be anything but just. This was vengeance, and it would be taken upon the wrong party. The wronged party. “You have disrespected my temple.” She reached for her silver sword, which sat on her right hip, her armored hand drawing it out of its sheath. Its tip pointed at me, its metal glimmering in the darkness of the temple.

  A few sconces lit the walls, nothing else. No windows, nothing but the lone door to the temple fifty feet behind her. She hadn’t walked in. She’d simply appeared. Gods did that.

  When one was approached by a god, a god one had never seen before, deep down, you still somehow knew who they were. I had known who this woman was from the very moment I’d laid eyes on her. She was the one goddess I had often prayed to, the one I respected above all else. This was not how everything was supposed to go.

  They always called me beautiful, but compared to her, I was nothing. I was only a woman, practically a girl, just out of my childhood. I was voluptuous and shaped the way all men desired, my long, luscious hair known for miles. I had many suitors, but it was not until today that someone had taken advantage of me, used me, and then discarded me like trash.

  The gods did what the gods wanted.

  “You will not disrespect it again.” Athena’s voice was stern, causing me to flinch. I couldn’t look away from her noble, vicious gaze, and it was at that moment I knew it was all over for me. Nothing would ever be the same.

  A sharp, sudden pain surged through me, and I doubled over, starting to heave. My lungs felt like they were stone, my eyes tearing up for a new reason entirely. These were not tears of innocence lost, not tears for what a god had stolen from me. These were tears of anger, of indignation—I had been a kind woman, and this was my reward? I’d been pious, and this was what the gods gave me?

  It wasn’t fair.

  My fingernails changed, sharpening and lengthening. My skin grew hard like stone, almost scaly like a serpent. And my hair—my long, beautiful, white hair which was the envy in all of the village—started to move of its own accord, taking on a life of its own. Hissing sounds erupted all around my head, and when I lifted my gaze back to the goddess before me, I bared my teeth, which had also grown quite sharp.

  “It would seem you are just as vain as the rest,” I whispered, “Athena.”

  Athena’s lips quirked into a smirk. “Be gone from this temple, gorgon. Your hideous face is no longer welcome here or any temple. Men and women alike will cower from you. What man, what god, could ever look upon you now and desire you?”

  The words were true, and they cut into my soul.

  She sheathed her blade and disappeared from my sight, leaving me to run from the temple, screeching. Pure, undiluted rage coursed through me. I was punished for something I had no control over, so I would make them pay.

  I would make them all pay.

  My eyes felt like a thousand pounds, fighting me as I tried to open them. My thoughts were jumbled, and I tried to process that dream. It felt…well, not to sound weird, but it felt like a memory. The strange thing was that it wasn’t. It wasn’t my memory. I wasn’t stuck in some movie flick and surrounded by Greek gods and goddesses. I wasn’t…

  And then I remembered.

  I remembered everything that had happened.

  My name was Mila. I was nineteen years old, a sophomore in college, commuting. I’d gone to my first college party at my friend’s insistence and…woken up without my clothes on, in someone else’s bed. I still don’t know what happened, if I drank something or someone drugged me, but I knew enough to know what had happened to me. I’d rushed home, a pit in my stomach, a fear in my heart.

  But that wasn’t the worst part. That wasn’t all of it.

  When I’d gotten home, I’d collapsed on the front porch, just outside the door. My parents had rushed outside—it was the weekend, so they were both home—to try to help me, asking me why I didn’t come home the night before, what was wrong. The pain had been too much for me, far too much. I’d felt like my whole body was caving in on itself, morphing and changing, twisting into something unrecognizable.

  My nails had sharpened, my teeth elongated. I’d watched as my skin turned scaly and my hair had defied gravity itself. Snakes. I was pretty sure my hair had turned into snakes. That was impossible, right? Just as impossible as turning my parents into stone was.

  Because that’s what happened next. One look from me, and both my mom and my dad had turned into a dark brown stone.

  I now lay in a bed, and since the last thing I knew I was standing on my parents’ porch feeling angry and spiteful, I knew I had to have been moved. Maybe it was all some hallucination, maybe it was the drug still running through my system. Maybe it was all a dream and none of it had happened.

  No…that couldn’t be right. I wouldn’t dream a dream, would I? That temple, that woman, who I’d instinctively known who she was—Athena—was too real to have been a dream. But what other explanations were there?

  I slowly sat up, glancing all around. A foreign room sat around me, its walls a dark blue color, its furniture bare and simple, clean and totally strange to me. A bed with artless sheets was under me, a mahogany desk on the nearby wall. The opposite wall held a tall dresser, along with a closet and a mirror. The wall that the bed was against had a window, and I turned my head to look out of it. What I saw…it was nothing I’d ever seen before.

  A green field, stone walkways, mountains in the far-off distance. Wherever I was, I had a feeling I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

  I was about to swing my legs off the bed and get up, investigate, figure out just how the heck I ended up here, but as my feet touched the carpeted floor, I heard the doorknob twisting. I froze, watching as a tall, slender woman walked in.

  She was gorgeous. Drop-dead beautiful in a way most women weren’t. Her hair was long and white, pin-straight. Her eyes were a pretty blue, the color of the Caribbean waters. Her lips were full and blood red, a startling color compared to her porcelain skin. If I had to guess how old she was, I’d put her somewhere in her thirties. The way she held herself, with her nose upturned, she radiated an aura of haughtiness. I wasn’t sure whether to ask her questions about where I was and how I got here or cower from her.

  Not once in my life had I ever seen this woman, and yet I felt something tug inside of me. My heart? A false sense of recognition swarmed through me. I didn’t recognize this woman, but a part of me did.

  “Ah,” she said, holding her hands before her. She wore a dark pencil skirt, black tights and heels that I would’ve killed to have back in high school, when I liked to try. Her blouse was an off-white color, tucked into the waist of her skirt. A string of pearls sat around her neck. “I see you’re awake. Good.”

  I decided to stop cowering and ask the questions I had. I stood on my own two feet, fe
eling small in front of her. “Where am I? Who are you? My parents—” Okay, so I didn’t so much as ask questions as I did throw them all at her at once while hoping a few of them stuck. My mind was a jumbled mess. All I could think about was that party…my parents…the snakes.

  “You are here and you are safe, and that is all that matters,” the woman spoke, sounding almost snide. I instantly decided I didn’t like her, whoever she was. “My name is Stheno, but you may simply call me by my title: headmistress. I run this little institution, this academy, if you will.”

  Academy? Like a school? I was already enrolled in college, and I sure wasn’t looking to transfer, even after what had happened at that party. Heck, I wasn’t sure what had happened.

  “My parents,” I said again, aware that she’d avoided their mention.

  “Ah, yes. We are taking care of them, don’t you worry. Phoebe sensed your awakening, and we were able to get there almost immediately. No one else witnessed your awakening, you have my assurances.”

  “Awakening?” I echoed, brows creasing in confusion. “What are you talking about? Where are my parents? I need to see them—” I started to move around the woman, Stheno—what a freaking weird name—but she smoothly stepped in front of me, blocking my escape with her intimidatingly tall stature.

  Her azure gaze sized me up. “You are the next reincarnation of an old friend of mine, and this is your new home. Whatever life you knew before, you can forget all about it. You won’t be returning home again, and you’ll never see your parents again, either.” When my mouth dropped, an argument forming at the base of my throat, she added, “Your parents have been unpetrified, their memories altered. No one you’ve ever met will remember you, I’m afraid. It is what must be done. It was done for everyone else here, and it will be done for anyone else who arrives after you.”

  I paused, letting her words sink in. None of this was making sense. My parents were unpetrified? As in I’d really turned them to stone? Their memories were altered…so they wouldn’t remember me?

  This was insane. This was all a dream. This woman talked about things that weren’t possible. Magic wasn’t real. Hair turning into snakes wasn’t real. All of this had to be a hallucination. Whatever drugs had been slipped into my drink at that party too strong. I was locked inside my own head, imagining all of this.

  And reincarnation? That just sounded wrong. Like I wasn’t really me. Like I wasn’t my own person. I was, and I was going to leave this place and go home, if this place was real or not.

  “Get out of my way,” I said, trying to sound tough. My hands clenched into fists at my sides, and I was about to say more when someone else strolled through the door.

  A man, the tall, dark and handsome kind. The kind I adored when I was growing up. Team Angel all the way, sorry, Spike. “Do you need my assistance?” He was talking to Stheno, his black gaze on her, completely overlooking me, as if I wasn’t in the same room.

  “No,” Stheno said, stepping aside. “She wants to run. Let her run. Let her see. They all do, eventually.”

  The man frowned—an attractive expression, I hated to notice—and I pushed past both Stheno and the man. I wasn’t in the mood for games, and if this was all in my head, it didn’t really matter anyway. I had to get out of this crazy place.

  I was out the door the next moment, rushing down the well-lit hall with a vigor I didn’t know I was capable of. I had no idea where I was going, no clue where I was running to; I just knew that I had to get out. I had to try to find my way out.

  Eventually I found stairs, taking two at a time as I headed down them. The stairs met another set of stairs on a landing of sorts before combining into one grand staircase to what I was hoping was the ground floor. I followed the red carpet on the floor, noting the expensive chandeliers overhead. Wherever this was…it was like a freaking castle.

  Soon I found a set of double, giant doors, pulling on one before rushing out into the light of day. The air was a comfortable temperature, the breeze light and airy. Not a single cloud was in the sky, and I kept running. I passed a group of people, huddled around a tree, eating lunch, from what it looked like. Girls and boys, all around my age. They all stopped chatting, pausing in their eating, to watch as I rushed by, my arms and my legs pumping as I ran.

  I didn’t care if I looked like a fool. If they were real, if this wasn’t all in my head, I didn’t know them. I didn’t care what I looked like to them. They were nothing to me, and I just wanted to get out. I wanted to go home. I wanted, as childish as it was, to hug my mom and cry in her arms. I wanted to break down.

  I deserved that, didn’t I? After what happened, after what I knew had happened—I had every right to break down and cry.

  Tears stung my eyes and blurred my vision, and I eventually ran to the edge of the cut grass, about to run into the forest that surrounded this castle in the middle of nowhere. It was then that I noticed the bangle jingling along my right arm, a golden snake, coiled around my wrist. I didn’t notice it before. It was not a piece of jewelry that was mine.

  The instant I crossed into the woods, a sharp pain erupted in my core, shocking me. I immediately fell to my knees, collapsing in the brush and the dead leaves on the ground. I still wore the same shorts and shirt I’d worn to that party, and I felt dirty. The ground I was collapsed on was cleaner than I was, I knew.

  My nerves were on fire, my whole body in a type of pain I’d never felt before. Sweat instantly coated my skin, and I managed to open my eyes and glance at the snake bangle on my wrist. Its golden color now glowed, and somehow I knew the pain I felt radiated from the metal on me.

  Like the forest was an invisible fence, a barrier, and the bangle on my wrist a shock collar.

  I crawled backward, inching myself back toward the grassy clearing. Bit by bit I returned to the grass, moving my body into the sun and away from the forest. Once I was clear, once I was out, the pain stopped instantly.

  My shoulders sagged, and I breathed heavily. Remnants of the pain lingered, and I crawled on my hands and knees a bit, trying to catch my breath. This…this couldn’t be a dream. You didn’t feel pain in dreams, right? If this wasn’t a dream, it meant it was real.

  All of this was real.

  I was really here. I’d really turned my parents into stone. This was real.

  My fingers clenched in the grass, and I squeezed my eyes shut. How could this be my life? Turning people to stone was something out of stories, out of—

  Everything around me seemed to freeze the moment I noted the hair that had fallen over my shoulders. Hair that had, last I knew, been a brown color, was now as white as snow. My hair was the same color as Stheno’s.

  “Now you see, you can’t leave,” Stheno’s voice cut through my thoughts. I looked up, watching as she approached, walking in the grass in her extremely tall heels without issue. She must’ve had years of practice. “If you’re done trying to run from your destiny, let me give you a formal introduction.” She waited, her eyes expectant as I got up.

  The others I ran past were moving closer, along with a few older looking people, the man who’d come to help Stheno included. They all crowded around, standing maybe thirty feet back. The man’s dark eyes were on me finally, finally noticing me, but they turned away instantly, a deep frown etched on his handsome features.

  Whatever they’d been anticipating, I was a disappointment. I was…I didn’t know what I was. Not anymore.

  None of this made any sense.

  “Welcome to Ouroboros Academy. We take in all kinds of mythological beings, including demigods, shifters, and cursed creatures like you and me. Here, we teach them how live, how to handle their powers and their gifts. Human society is not your home anymore. Mila,” she spoke my name, knowing it somehow, even though I’d never told her, “there is a lot you must catch up on.”

  Ouroboros Academy…the words felt strange in my head, and I didn’t trust myself to say them out loud. I’d mess them up, for sure.

  Stheno turned her head, locking eyes with the same man who’d come to help her before. “Conor, please, will you give Mila a quick tour? Answer any questions she has.” With a quick glance to me, she added, “I must notify the gods we’ve found our next Medusa.”