Ravenwood Academy Year Three: Wolf Song Read online

  Wolf Song

  Ravenwood Academy

  Year Three

  Lena Mae Hill

  Ravenwood Academy Year 3: Wolf Song

  Copyright © 2020 Lena Mae Hill

  Digital Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in cases of a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, and events are entirely coincidental. Use of any copyrighted, trademarked, or brand names in this work of fiction does not imply endorsement of that brand.

  Published in the United States by Lena Mae Hill and Speak Now.

  For more information, please visit www.lenamaehill.com

  Cover Design by Lori Grundy

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945780-94-3

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Prologue

  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

  Blurb

  Nothing in life is free—even life itself.

  After a split-second decision that gave her a second chance at life, Timberlyn struggles to control her new instincts as her life spins out of control. Her newly awakened hunger takes over, and she has to decide if she made the right choice after all. She may have saved her life, but every day is a struggle not to lose herself. Cut off from her family and the wolves, she takes solace in her friendship with Svana and Viktor, despite their hatred for the Wolf boys. But will Alarick despise her when he finds out the truth?

  When she returns for her third year at Ravenwood Academy, everything is different. Her friends. Her status. Her link with the wolves. Now bound to Jonathan Ravenwood, she must fight harder than ever to carve out her own path and fight for what’s right.

  Prologue

  “Timberlyn,” Viktor’s voice crooned above me.

  I summoned all my strength and dragged up the hundred-pound weights that had been attached to my eyelashes. The effort would have left me out of breath, but breathing hard took more than I had in me.

  Viktor’s thumb skimmed across my lower lip, then tugged down, gently parting my lips.

  I wanted to speak, but producing a single word was too exhausting. I let my lids fall closed again. Once, I would have fought, but I no longer had the strength. I was sinking into the earth, my body so heavy I was sure it would simply collapse under its own weight.

  “Do it,” a soft, familiar voice urged. “Before it’s too late.”

  I heard him move. My eyelids fluttered open again as he lifted his wrist to his mouth. One needle sharp tooth sliced through his vein before he pulled back and held it over my mouth. I watched, immobile, as a bead of dark liquid gathered. Viktor tilted his wrist, and a thin stream of deep crimson fell between my parted lips before I closed my eyes and sank into darkness.

  Chapter One

  I was hungry.

  That was the first thing that came when I woke. It wasn’t a normal hunger, one that would have let me sleep until morning. This was a nagging need, aching in roots of my teeth instead of my belly. I tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t relent. At last, I sat up and looked around at a vaguely familiar, dimly lit room filled with hospital beds just like the one I lay on. I remembered finding this room with Amy. I knew what it was for.

  My head swam with dizziness and nausea, and I jumped up from the narrow hospital bed and ran to an open bathroom door. Fifteen minutes later, I’d emptied my stomach and my bowels at least half a dozen times, and I was so wrung out I thought I must’ve puked up my very insides. I stumbled back to the bed and fell facedown on it, ignoring the fact that I was in a room full of people strapped to beds and hooked up to machines. All of them but me.

  I managed to sleep, but I didn’t know for how long. It seemed only minutes before I sat up with a start, gasping in pain as a pang darted into my canines like a dentist had touched a nerve with a metal pick—and without Novocain.

  “You’re up early,” Svana said, smiling shyly at me.

  “I am?” I blurted without thinking.

  A second later, Viktor was on the other side of the bed, looking as impossibly beautiful as always—and a little guilty.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Well, you were dying,” Svana said. “Mr. Ravenwood got hold of you, and they basically drained you.”

  “Right,” I said, wincing at a dart of pain in my temple. “Did I die?” I pressed the heel of my hand to my head and closed my eyes, remembering the school’s namesake saying my blood might give them magical powers or some bullshit.

  “We weren’t sure if it was too late,” Viktor said, taking my free hand. “Usually, you have to have some of our blood first, before that happens.”

  “Before what, exactly?” I asked.

  “Before you—well, your heart stops.”

  I swayed on the bed. Was I… Dead?

  “Typically, when we evolve someone, there are certain steps we have to follow,” Svana said. “A human gets some of our blood, and it sits inside them, and nothing really happens, but it’s stored there.”

  “Like a virus?”

  She grimaced. “Later on, if you died, you’d need to have your own blood drained out for it to really work properly. Our advanced blood retains some kind of… Like a memory… Inside you. When you eat, it builds up to replace your human blood, replenishing just like yours would after you suffered blood loss.”

  “But it’s not really my blood,” I said. “It’s more like a parasite.”

  “No,” Viktor said. “It’s still you. There’s no outside being taking you over.”

  I wanted to believe them, since they’d been vampires for a long time, but it sure as hell felt like there was something inside me. A ravenous beast, to be exact.

  “So, I did die.”

  “Your heart stopped,” Viktor admitted.

  “Then why is it still beating?” I asked. It was pounding in my temples, in my throat, in my teeth. I could feel it.

  “Well, see, usually that doesn’t happen,” Svana said. “But after Viktor gave you some of his blood, it apparently… Revived you.”

  She and Viktor watched me as if waiting for my reaction.

  “So I’m not dead,” I said in relief.

  “No,” Viktor said softly. “You’re not dead.”

  “But we think you changed partway,” Svana said. “Maybe it didn’t go exactly right because you were a wolf already. See, when this superior blood replaces yours, you become something more than human. Something better. But you already were something more than human.”

  “Better how?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

  “Stronger,” Viktor said. “Faster. Enhanced senses.”

  “I already had all that,” I pointed out. “When I was a wol
f.”

  “Well, now you’re… something else,” Svana said.

  Was I? If they drained all my wolf blood, was I still a wolf? If they fed me more of their blood, would I die and become a vampire? Was I already a vampire? I should feel different if I were so completely changed. If I were a vampire, I should be cold like them, with the same stillness in my chest. And if I was a vampire, shouldn’t I feel more dead?

  Svana’s pretty nose wrinkled. “Also, we’re faster and stronger than wolves. And we’re not animals.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said. “I feel like I could eat an entire herd of deer right now.”

  Viktor winced. “I’ll bring you more food.”

  He disappeared from the room, only to return a minute later with a 44-ounce Styrofoam cup, the kind you could get at gas stations and fast-food restaurants.

  “What’s this?” I asked, taking it from him. It was cold to the touch, but I could smell something irresistibly tantalizing rising from the red straw sticking out the top. I swallowed hard, my throat constricting with thirst.

  “You know what it is,” Svana muttered, looking at the floor.

  “Try not to think about it,” Viktor said. “Just drink.”

  “It’s blood, isn’t it?” I asked, though I already knew. I wanted to be disgusted. Okay, I was disgusted, even knowing some of my best friends drank this all the time. I didn’t want to be rude and show it, but seriously. I wasn’t about to drink blood.

  But oh god… It smelled so good. My teeth were throbbing like I had dual toothaches, and the pain was shooting up my jaws, filling my head with a pulsating pain.

  “Will it make me more… Like y’all?” I asked. “Will it replace my blood?”

  “No,” Svana said. “It gives you strength, though. Strength to build up your new blood and finish evolving. So yes, in a way it will make you more like us.”

  “I can’t drink this,” I said, pushing it back to Viktor. My fingers clenched around the cup, though, refusing to release it even as my brain was telling me there was no way I could drink forty-four ounces of blood like it was a fucking slushie.

  “If you don’t eat, you’re going to end up hurting someone,” Svana said quietly, her eyes cutting around the room.

  Shit. The others in the beds… They were all humans. Humans who were ‘donating’ this blood to us. Oh, god. I definitely couldn’t drink it now, knowing they were captors in this house of horrors. These were the girls Mr. Wolf had tried to change, the girls who had supposedly died. He’d told the boys that they were dead, but they weren’t. They were all here, comatose, being drained of blood to feed the vampires. It made sense. They would have died if not for the machines. Why not take blood from them instead of healthy humans?

  But it was also horrific and wrong. These people had no choice. They hadn’t chosen any of this. They’d just been excited to be recruited to a great school, never knowing they’d end up here, being kept alive and having their blood sucked out for vampires like my friends… And me.

  As I looked at the shape in the next bed, my focus sharpened, as if I could suddenly see an added dimension. I could hear her heart hammering, a soft rush of blood entering her arteries with each beat. I could smell a warm, sweet, animal scent that made my teeth throb so hard I gasped in pain. Hunger twisted through my empty insides, clouding my mind with a need that bordered on madness.

  Viktor edged the cup closer to me, pushing the straw against my mouth. I pressed my lips together, but when I inhaled through my nose, I knew I couldn’t resist anymore. I didn’t open my eyes, but I let my lips part. Viktor gently guided the straw inside, and my lips closed around it. I didn’t think I even sucked, but suddenly, my mouth was filled with salty, coppery, sweet relief. It flowed down my throat and up into my teeth in thick waves of soothing comfort, like liquid chocolate.

  It seemed only the next second that the hollow echo of the straw suctioning against the empty bottom of the cup met my ears.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Svana asked. “The more you eat, the faster you’ll heal and finish the process of evolving into one of us. You’re still you, Timberlyn. You’re just… A better version of yourself.”

  I could have said I was fine as I was, but in truth, I’d always wanted to be a better version of myself. Or at least a less outcast one. Now, I had not only a boyfriend, but friends. And they wanted me to be like them.

  Yeah, I’d had to die to really do that, but it wasn’t like they’d killed me.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I asked, jumping up from the bed. I was feeling stronger by the second. It might be gross to drink blood, but it felt like I’d just had an intravenous shot of espresso. I couldn’t deny the addictiveness of the rush. I already wanted more.

  “We haven’t been out,” Viktor said. “We found you, and we didn’t want to leave you in case…”

  “In case what?” I asked, glancing between them.

  “Mr. Ravenwood killed you, Timberlyn,” Viktor said. “I gave you my blood, but…”

  “But…?” I prompted when they started sharing looks I couldn’t read.

  “We didn’t know if it would take,” Svana said. “Usually, you’d have to drink some of our blood first.”

  “Oh,” I said slowly. They didn’t know that I’d bitten Mr. Ravenwood. I’d had vampire blood before being drained, before Viktor had tried to save me. Maybe that hadn’t been enough to turn me, and I’d been too weak, but once I’d been infused with Viktor’s blood, it had put me over the tipping point.

  “Yes,” Viktor said with a quick nod. “Mr. Ravenwood thinks you’re dead, Timberlyn.”

  “Oh,” I said again, this time a startled exclamation. “So, you’re saying I have a super old, powerful vampire after me?”

  “He’s not after you,” Viktor said. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “He will be if he realizes you didn’t die,” Svana said.

  “It wouldn’t be a year at Ravenwood without someone wanting to kill me.”

  Instead of laughing at my bad joke, Viktor grimaced. “We brought you here because there’s food,” he said. “And a place to keep you without suspicion for a few days. But others come here to eat. You shouldn’t stay here any longer than you have to.”

  “So, let’s get out of here,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Svana said. “Not unless you want to kill a lot of people.”

  “So, what do we do?” I asked, looking around at the six beds. With six people on them. Who all smelled so good I was suddenly salivating. A sharp, stinging pain stabbed into my teeth again, and I gasped, reaching up to cover my mouth.

  “Until you’ve learned to control your impulses, it would actually be better for you to be locked somewhere safe,” Svana said softly.

  “Locked up?” I asked, my gaze flying from her to her brother. Yes, I was hungry, and my teeth hurt, but it wasn’t that bad. I could totally handle it.

  “Everyone has to do it,” Viktor said. “We’ll come and feed you every day and teach you some techniques for controlling yourself.”

  “We’re not going to throw you in a jail cell,” Svana said. “If you don’t want to go into hiding for a few months, we won’t make you. But it’ll be a lot harder to hide the evidence if you’re slaughtering people in the middle of class.”

  “No,” I said, backing against the bed and sinking down again. I remembered the administrators telling me why humans were at Ravenwood.

  And I wasn’t going to be a heartless animal who treated humans as food. Amy had told me she’d had to learn to control herself before she could see me. It had taken her a summer. Which meant that I’d have to stay in Ravenwood for the summer instead of going home. But if that meant my family would be safe, I’d do it. There was no way I was going home and risking the lives of my family members, even if I had a lot of questions I’d like to ask my parents.

  “Okay,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. So, where’s the daycare for baby vamps?”
>
  Chapter Two

  “What about the wolves?” I asked as we hurried across the parking lot to Viktor’s car. As we went, I glanced around, searching for a familiar figure hidden between the trees in the forest behind the clinic.

  “They’re fine,” Viktor said, opening the passenger door for me.

  I slid into the leather seat, not missing the way he tensed that the mention of the Wolf boys. “Why didn’t Alarick come find me?” I asked Svana, twisting around in the seat while Viktor circled the car.

  “Listen, Timberlyn,” she said. “No one knows you’re alive. That’s how it had to be. To keep you safe.”

  Shock rocked through me. “He thinks I’m dead?”

  “It was the only way to keep you safe,” Svana said, avoiding my eyes.

  “Alarick is not unsafe,” I gritted out. “He’d never hurt me.”

  Viktor pulled out onto the road and turned toward Ravenwood Academy. “Amy doesn’t know either,” he said. “No one knows.”

  “I’m fine with going somewhere safe for the summer,” I said. “But Alarick needs to know I’m okay.”

  “Wolves hate vampires,” Svana warned.

  “Yeah, well, he won’t hate me.”

  Viktor glanced sideways at me. “This changes everything, Timberlyn. Your life isn’t going to be the same. You’re one of us now.”

  “I don’t hate y’all,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “And he won’t hate me. No matter what I am.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Svana said. “I just… I’d hate to see you get hurt.”

  “Then don’t hurt me,” I snapped. “You’re the ones who lied to me. Alarick has never done anything but try to protect me.”

  “We were trying to protect you, too,” Viktor said quietly.

  “Then how come you told Mr. Ravenwood about me?”

  “That’s not fair,” Svana said. “I didn’t know he’d go after you. We have to report back to the council every week, just talk about everything that goes on at Ravenwood. I didn’t know your dreams were real.”