1

“Morning Martha,” I said as I descended the stairs.

“Happy birthday Lucas,” she smiled up at me.

Martha has been our cook and oversees the running of the house from before I was born and she’s like a second mother to us. Reeves was the butler and he’s also been part of the household since before my birth.

The main house of the lair was divided into two separate parts of the same building. The house had four floors with two separate entrances. The eastern side was reserved for my family and our personal staff while the western side was reserved for guests from other lairs. They were exact replicas of each other with two staircases that led from the ground floor either to the eastern or western side.

The ground floor had a large dining room, restaurant standard kitchen, an office for meetings, entertainment room and the library that was open to family, staff and guests alike.

The second floor housed all the staff which included Martha and Reeves, Jane and Janet, the two cleaners and the security personnel that watched over us. I had put my foot down at them escorting us to school although Hannah was guarded by Thomas and she loved him.

The third floor was occupied by Chris, Hannah, Preston and Rev. Each bedroom in the house was en-suite with built in cupboards but from the third floor up the cupboards became walk in closets. The higher your rank the bigger your room.

The fourth floor held Jax’s room at the end of the staircase with the gym, my personal office and then my private bedroom. I liked being alone and Jax almost never bothered me unless there was an emergency. The only person that ever dared to venture into my room at night was Hannah and that only happened after she had a nightmare.

Jesse stopped by every few days and checked in on us, when he wasn’t travelling for business or at the Company offices and I smiled as I saw him already seated at the dining room table with my siblings and Jax.

“There he is,” Jesse said and stood up as we hugged and he wished me a happy birthday.

“Thanks,” I said as I sat down.

“Your eye looks better,” he said to me and I grinned.

“I look better than Jax,” I said and Jax glared at me before laughing.

His eye was still black and his lip was also split open like mine. We sparred together every day, training for hours after homework and then checking on some of our business interests. We rarely had to talk to one another and we could communicate with looks. We have known each other all our lives, to be fair, and we were more like brothers than anything else.

“I only let you win because it’s your birthday,” he said and I laughed at him.

“Sure you did,” I said.

We had no secrets from each other and my siblings knew exactly why I trained and what we did as a family, how we made money and how Jax and I spent our time. Hannah was quiet and she liked to read whereas Chris was popular and people probably didn’t even knew that we were related. Lately though she’d been drawing attention as she grew out of her awkward phase and became stunning overnight.

Thus far glares have worked but I didn’t know for how long it would work. She was being noticed by boys and I hated it, Jax hated it too and I had an idea that he had feelings for her other than the brotherly love he had felt up to this point. I wasn’t really sure how to feel about that and I tried to ignore it.

“So today marks a special day,” Jesse said and looked at me.

“Yes it is,” I said as Chris grinned at me.

“It’s a blood moon tonight, you’re lucky, the sooner the ceremony is held the stronger your chances are of getting a strong beast,” Jesse said as I saw pride in his eyes.

“Ten pm can’t arrive fast enough,” I said to him.

“Did you read all of your father’s journals?” he asked me.

Preston and Rev joined us in the dining room and Preston grabbed me in a choke hold and messed up my hair. Rev only grunted and I took it as well wishes. Rev rarely spoke to anyone and when he did it was mostly one or two word sentences, unless you were named Hannah.

“I read them all,” I said to him. I had shared my revelation about their deaths with Jesse and he had started investigating immediately although we kept it very low key. We didn’t want whoever was responsible to catch wind of it and run.

“What are your plans before the ceremony?” Jesse asked.

“Nothing much, I have a fight at seven pm at The Drake, then we’ll meet you back here for the ceremony,” I said to him.

“Don’t be late, the Elders doesn’t like to wait,” he said.

“We’re going to be late,” Chris said loudly as she stood up from the table and grabbed her car keys. Jax and I always drove to school together following her but we never talked at school. We were on the opposite end of the social scales.

Chris was popular and considered one of the It Girls where we were considered the bad boys, we were popular in the sense that nobody bothered us and everyone was afraid of us, there were plenty of rumours associated with us and the fact that we always had some sort of injury and bruised or bloodied knuckles at school.

Carson McIntyre however was the captain of the football team and Mr. Popular at school. Every girl wanted to date him and every guy wanted to be him, except us of course. Girls liked us because we emitted an aura of being dangerous and unapproachable whereas Carson liked all the attention.

“Have a good day Hannah, love you,” I said as I kissed her forehead. Thomas was waiting by the door for her with her backpack.

“Love you to infinity,” she said and ran to Thomas who picked her up and walked outside to the SUV transporting her.

“Gee thanks, what about me?” Jax asked as Hannah laughed and blew a kiss to Rev. He caught it and put it in his pocket as Hannah laughed again and Jax grabbed his heart.

“You know I’m killing you if you bond with my sister,” I said to Jax and Rev smirked at him as we all caught him watching Chris get into her car.

“Shit Jax, your days are numbered,” Preston said with a laugh.

Jax was a head shorter than me with brown hair and blue eyes, he was my right hand and I trusted him with my life. Preston had black hair with neon blue streaks and a piercing through his eyebrow, he was the same height as Jax and the carefree one of the group.

Milton was the odd one out. We called him Rev, and I have no idea why, but like I said before he rarely spoke. He preferred to communicate with his fists, he had shoulder length light brown hair, wore a leather jacket and wherever we went we always had to pull him off someone.

We sat in the back row of class and a few people were staring at us, probably because we almost never attended class and they were surprised we were still in school or because of the shiners that Jax and I sported which would only fuel the rumours more.

Apparently we’ve killed a few people, mainly people that look at us in the wrong way or took too long to get out of our way. We’ve been to jail too and we roam the streets at night looking for innocent people to beat up.

I smiled as I thought to myself how shocked they would be if they knew those rumours weren’t even remotely true. We did fight yes, at The Drake, with each other and in training but we haven’t killed anyone, yet. We certainly haven’t been in jail either and we didn’t bully anyone.

“Mr. Grey, care to enlighten us with the answer?” Mr. Leroy asked me and I realized I was looking out of the window and daydreaming.

“I would but that would defeat the point of you teaching the class,” I said to him and you could hear a pin drop at the sudden quiet of the room.

“Why are you in this class?” he asked me.

“Because History is one of my classes,” I said and leaned back in the chair.

“I’m sure this will be the first and last time we see you in class,” he said as he turned back to his desk and picked up the book from which he’d been reading.

Rev eyed him and I put a hand on his arm and shook my head. Mr. Leroy would not survive if Rev jumped him. He had serious anger issues and he didn’t like anybody, sometimes I wondered if he even liked us but for some reason he stayed and he was loyal although a bit aggressive.

Carson stifled a laugh from the back of class and I saw Rev’s jaw clenched but he kept looking in front of him and I knew that if Carson said another word then chaos would break out in this classroom. Thankfully, he kept his mouth shut for the duration of class.

Classes passed swiftly and I was standing near my locker just before lunch time when I heard Carson and his friends make their bet. This was a new low even for Carson and I wondered when he had turned into the asshole I now knew he was.

I shook my head as I turned to walk away when somebody slammed into me with a force and she stumbled backwards. I caught her arm just in time but her books went flying everywhere and she had knocked the wind from me.

“Sorry,” she mumbled as she bent down to pick her books up.

“Careful, you could kill someone with that elbow,” I said to her.

“I’ll try not to kill you next time,” she said and I laughed suddenly.

“I’m Lucas,” I said to her.

“I know who you are,” she said and I frowned slightly.

“Have we met before?” I asked her.

“Wow, you don’t remember, guess the rumours are true,” she said and started to walk away.

“What rumours? Where did we meet?” I asked her.

“Don’t worry about it, next time watch where you’re walking,” she said and hurried down the hall to the cafeteria.

“What’s your name?” I called after her but she raised her middle finger up and I smiled. She had spunk, I liked that and now I had to know what her name was.

Unfortunately for me she was part of Carson’s crowd, lots of people were actually but I knew she was dating some basketball player. I’d have to find out some other way. I rarely paid attention to the other students in school but her face did seem familiar. My phone pinged and I took it out of my pocket and sighed.

Tessa: Happy birthday Lucas, I’ll bring your present tonight after your ceremony

Lucas: Thanks, might have to reschedule

Tessa: I’ll be waiting up for you

Lucas: Tessa, we’re taking a break remember

She didn’t reply and I hoped she got the message. Tessa was my on and off girlfriend but I haven’t seen her for two weeks now since I’d told her that we needed to cool things down. As I got closer to seventeen I realized that I didn’t love her and I never would.

She had other ideas and becoming the bonded or chosen mate of a Sire was a coveted position. Some girls would pretend to like me just to get that mark and have that power. I was committed to waiting for my bonded half, or at least giving it a chance. I wanted what my parents had, the love they shared, the true absolute love of two fated partners, that was something nobody could tear apart and I wanted that for myself.