Bloodline Secrecy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 2) Read online

  Bloodline Secrecy

  Bloodline Academy Book 2

  Lan Chan

  Copyright © 2020 by Lan Chan

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, (electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  All names, characters, groups and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and all opinions expressed by the characters, whose preferences and attitudes are entirely their own. Any similarities to real persons or groups, living or dead are coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover by Christian Bentulan

  Editing by Contagious Edits

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  I know…

  Need More Now?

  Did You Enjoy This Book?

  Connect With Me

  1

  They say you should never meet your heroes. That same rule should apply to meeting your friends’ families. You know, in case you open your big mouth and comment that there are no low-magic users on the Council. I was too stupid to heed any of the rules. Sophie tipped her nose up in the air as we stepped through the portal and landed right back onto Bloodline Academy’s portal field.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she hissed. The portal flared again. A teenage girl’s worst nightmare stepped out: Her parents.

  We trudged back to the dorms. Her mum glanced around at the sorry state of our room. I tried to kick the pile of dirty laundry under the bed, but she had a practiced eye. Lucky for me I wasn’t her biological spawn. Though you would never have known it based on the skin-peeling glare she threw my way.

  “Thank heavens we decided to move,” Nora said to her husband. “These girls are practically living in squalor.” Sophie imitated being hanged behind their backs.

  “Don’t be like that, dear,” Mani said. “They’re teenagers.” His interest was piqued by the stack of books I had on my bedside table. The one on top was The Beginners Guide to Binding Spells.

  “Is this for Basil?” Mani asked as he picked it up and rifled through the contents. Basil wiggled out of the pocket in my backpack. I set it down on the bed so he wouldn’t have to jump to get to the floor.

  “Fat lot of good it has been,” Basil said. “Beginners indeed.”

  “It’s got a lot of stuff about history and the restrictions behind soul binding but not a lot about how to practice it,” I said.

  “I should think not,” Mani commented. He replaced the book and glanced at Sophie’s bedside table. She promptly cut his focus by stepping in front of the plethora of makeup.

  “Can we talk about this?” she asked.

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Soph,” Nora said. She was standing in front of the mirror. At the moment, it was just being a mirror. She fluffed the roots of her mass of midnight black curls. Tapping on the glass, she tried to get into the MirrorNet, but it wouldn’t materialise. That garnered an approving nod. “At least we know they’ve got adequate security measures on this thing.”

  “Do they?” I asked. Since there were parents in the vicinity, I unzipped my backpack and suitcase and absentmindedly tried to unpack my stuff. “I mean, two unauthorised guests just appeared through the portal and there’s been no alarm so far.”

  Mani gave me a cheeky grin. That’s where Sophie got her smile from. It was all dimples and flashing white teeth. “Ah, you forget that we were students here too.”

  “A thousand years ago,” Sophie muttered under her breath.

  “Besides,” Mani continued, pointedly ignoring his daughter, “who says we’re unauthorised? Nora put through a request for teleport last night.”

  Sophie made a tortured sound and flopped back on her bed. “This is not happening.”

  “We have discussed this at length,” Nora said. She put her hands on her hips. I’d only been staying with them for three weeks, but I knew what that tone and stance meant. Sophie turned to me. If looks could kill, my teeth and fingers would be boiling in a cauldron right now.

  “Please don’t do this, Mama,” Sophie pleaded. She got up on her knees and clasped her hands in front of her in supplication. “Pleeease.”

  The pleading only seemed to cement Nora’s resolve. “The decision has been made. Besides, it’s for your own good. We’ve spent too long at the bottom of the supernatural pile. It’s about time someone did something about it.”

  “Somebody should! Just not you guys!”

  “We’re not having this discussion again, young lady. Now, get this place cleared up. We’re going to see your headmistress and then we’ll be back to take you to the Reserve.”

  Mani threw us a pitying look as he followed his wife out the door. I let out a breath after they were gone.

  “I’m going to kill you!” Sophie said. A teddy bear launched through the air and narrowly missed my head.

  “How was I supposed to know they’d take it this far? You should have told me how suggestible they are!”

  She put her pillow over her face. For a second I was worried she was trying to suffocate herself until she screamed into it. “This is so embarrassing.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Easy for you to say, your parents aren’t moving a stone’s throw away to try and campaign for a low-magic representative to be added to the Council!”

  I picked at my nails. It had been almost six months since I’d seen Nanna. I would give anything to be embarrassed by her again. “Lex...”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Basil came to sit beside me. He rested his mitten hands on my wrist. I got up and dumped my suitcase on the floor beside my bed. The demon blade slid out from beneath a leather jacket Sophie had bought for me in Zambia. I hadn’t had any of the proper clothing. For some reason I thought it was going to be warm in Africa in winter, but I was dead wrong.

  “I can’t believe you just leave it lying around,” Sophie said.

  The demon blade was treacherous. Sophie’s older cousins were fascinated with it. So were the pack of shifters who lived in the compound. They made it a game to see if they could trick the blade into recognising the
m. But after the blade went haywire and almost cut her male cousin in half, they were forbidden from going anywhere near it.

  We heard footsteps in the hallway. “Oh God,” Sophie said. “It begins.”

  The door opened. Her parents came back with the headmistress. Jacqueline Pendragon gave new meaning to the term statuesque. Even during the off-weeks, she was dressed in structured suit pants and a metallic gold blouse that set off the lighter tones in her hair.

  “Welcome back, ladies,” Jacqueline said. She purposefully eyed the blade in my hands. “Nora tells me you’re going to accompany her to the shifter Reserve.”

  “Under duress,” Sophie explained.

  The edge of Jacqueline’s mouth tipped up. Basil and I exchanged a glance. I wondered if Jacqueline knew the real reason why Sophie was having a panic attack. The Reserve was where most of the shifters who weren’t integrated into the human population lived. It had been explained to me that the area was magicked to appear as though it was a sprawling nature reserve combining the natural environment of the shifter’s animal halves. Kind of like the billabong and swamp areas we had on campus for those students who were otherworldly. During breaks, most of the shifters, including one insanely hot lion shifter, went home. And we were about to gatecrash the place to speak to their Council representative.

  “Be that as it may,” Jacqueline said, “I happen to agree with Nora. It’s about time there was some proper representation in the ranks.”

  “You don’t think the high mages represent us?” I asked.

  She raised a brow at me. “I seem to recall you were the one to ask that question, Lex.”

  “Yeah, but I was half delirious at the time!”

  She smiled outright this time. Her focus returned to Nora. “The shifters are definitely your best bet for support. I’m just not sure if you’re catching them at the right time.”

  It was a full moon cycle. I’d been around long enough to know that the shifters tended to get a bit rowdy during this time. Nora just grinned.

  “Now is the perfect time,” she said. “They’re all aggressive and enraged. They’ll see the injustice of it, and they’ll feel like it’s their duty to help us.”

  If there was one thing I knew, it was that Nora understood how to tame a wild animal. She’d had the shifters in Zambia eating out of her hands. Literally.

  That’s how we found ourselves standing in the portal field for the second time that day. It was the arrival and departure point for most of the portals. Before my very eyes, a suitcase on wheels appeared beside Nora. It was a strange hard-plastic case that was transparent. Inside, the case was stacked with separators. Air holes were strategically placed to allow for ventilation. There was a massive pie sitting at every layer. The smell of stewed fruit, berries, and crusty pastry would have made my stomach grumble. But I remembered that first day in Zambia when she’d tried to cook us breakfast and set the kitchen on fire.

  “I assume Sophie made those,” I said. She laughed.

  “You bet your butt.”

  “Any magic in there?”

  She only winked at me.

  Sophie was chewing on her nails. I swiped her hand from her mouth. “You’ll be fine,” I said. We stepped through the portal.

  All of my platitudes flew out the window a moment later. As my foot touched down on the other side of the portal, a pair of unbelievably green eyes met mine. Sophie and I both squeaked at the same time. We’d materialised in a structure suspended in the treetops. It was like a tree house magnified by a thousand percent. The room we were in was surrounded on two sides by floor-to-ceiling glass. The view it afforded was an extensive network of wooden and rope bridges that turned the area into a community of buildings. But the majestic view only registered in a tiny part of my brain. The rest of me was trying not to react to the sight of Malachi Pendragon and the girl who was clinging to him like her life depended on it.

  2

  Sophie stepped closer to me. I shook my head at her. A slice of unbearable irritation shot through my chest, but I bit my tongue and reminded myself that I’d been the one to push him away. So I had no right to feel anything if he moved on. That’s what I kept telling myself as I fisted my hands behind my back.

  I refused to look at the girl directly. The blurry, two-second vision I’d had of her was enough to make my blood turn cold. If someone had ordered up a girl who was my complete opposite, that’s what they would have gotten. Legs, boobs, blonde. It was a killer combo. Someone murder me.

  Sophie’s eyes bugged out. It was only then that I noticed Max and another boy standing just behind Kai. This time I reached for her. She clenched her fingers around mine once and then let go.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Mwansa?” Kai asked. He managed to extract himself from the girl. “Durin is waiting for you in the convention room.”

  Why? I kept screaming in my head. I knew he and Max were close but of all the places he had to be, why did it have to be here and now?

  He took Nora’s suitcase from her. My left eye twitched. I bit the inside of my cheek drawing blood. It was a poor distraction.

  We followed him through the network of wooden bridges between the buildings. I had a flashback of the bridge we’d had to cross during last semester’s trial exams. Had it really only been a month? Of course, thinking about the trial made me think about other equally pleasant and unpleasant memories. Like when Kai had kissed me. And the look of surprise on his face as Lucifer stole his life.

  “Lex!” someone shouted. I had just enough time to brace myself for impact as a body collided with me. He was five years younger than me but over the break, Charles had managed to edge ahead in the height department.

  When he pulled away, I shook my head at him. “Are you eating magic beans or something?” I placed the palm of my hand on the top of my head and measured it against him. Yep. Either he had grown or I had shrunk.

  Charles screwed up his face. “Beans suck!”

  I couldn’t help laughing. He might have the physique of a teenager but inside, he was still growing. “You brought it with you?”

  I gathered by the way he was eyeing the blade in its scabbard strapped to my back that he wanted to see it. “Don’t even think about it,” Nora said. “We’re here on a peaceful mission. The last thing I want is for anyone to get cut up.”

  “Aw man!” Charles said.

  “Chuck,” Max said. “Now isn’t the time.”

  Charles’s chest rumbled. He stood close enough that I could feel the vibration of it. The look Max gave him was pure disapproval. A ring of amber appeared around the corona of Max’s eyes. Charles tried to resist the order of a more dominant shifter, but it wasn’t long before he had to lower his gaze. His nose scrunched up.

  “I’ll show you in class,” I told him.

  “Promise?”

  I nodded. He gave his brother one last glare before bolting off the way he’d come. I almost had a heart attack when he leaped through the window of the building and landed by the tips of his claws on the branch a couple of metres away.

  “That’s going to be a bit of an issue in the next few years,” Mani commented.

  Max slid his fingers through his hair. “Tell me about it. Especially since he survived that demon attack and somebody gave him the idea that he’s some kind of badass protector.” His gaze slid over me. The back of my neck got really hot. Honestly, if my whole body didn’t turn to mush when I thought of Kai, I would be in very real danger of having a crush on Max.

  I coughed and scratched at my cheek.

  “I did not put that thought in his head,” I said.

  “He has a drawing you did taped to his bedroom wall. It literally has the words “my little protector” written on it!”

  I could see Sophie biting her lip to stop from laughing. I’d drawn that picture for Charles while I was recovering from the demon attack in the infirmary. “It was supposed to be a joke!”

  “Don’t ever joke about a predatory shifter’s protective instincts,”
Mani said.

  I threw my hands in the air. “Well, I know that now, don’t I?”

  He patted my back. I’d made the mistake of jumping a mile in Zambia when I’d seen my first snake. The wolves in the pack got all growly and wouldn’t let me go out on my own from then on. I pretended it was irritating but secretly, I kind of liked it. To a point anyway.

  “You know what? Why don’t I just zip my lip and pretend that I’m not here.”

  “First good idea I’ve heard come out of your mouth,” Kai muttered.

  My jaw clamped. It took everything in me not to turn around to where he was bringing up the rear with the girl and snap at him. Zen. I thought of a placid lake. Cool, calming waters. It had been easier to pretend while I was away.

  Kai’s presence felt like it was rubbing me raw. What was his problem? He literally had a goddess pressed to his side. Surely he wasn’t still pissed that I’d stopped anything from happening between us? Pain shot through my jaw. I had to massage my face to get it to unclamp.

  Thankfully, we’d reached the convention room and I was spared from having to answer. My foot had just hit the edge of the balcony when something dark blurred in my periphery. I blinked but the only thing I could see was the rustle of the leaves in the trees around us. Yet, my mind refused to give up the impression of a humanoid silhouette. I frowned. While the others filed through the glass doors to the convention room, I found myself drifting to the edge of the square balcony. There was nothing there to see, but I couldn’t fight the feeling of being watched.