Chapter 21

Ren laid on his side. He stared at his bedroom door. He'd thrown off his blankets, too hot with the heater on, but still cold enough that he was getting goosebumps. He didn't want to get up. He needed to get up. He was going to be late. His mom had already taken off. She'd said her goodbyes before he was awake enough to argue with her. She knew what she was doing. She just didn't want to deal with his grumpy attitude before work.

He really couldn't blame her.

Everything had gone downhill since the night he met Ashton. Though, could he really blame it all on that? Things had been going down since the beginning. He felt like he was going in circles. He was in a rut, always thinking how much his mom was sacrificing for him. She wouldn't listen to any of his solutions. As much as he wanted to help, nothing was working.

With a heavy sigh, he sat up. He scratched his stomach. He looked around his room without really seeing it. Another day. He didn't want to think about how he would have to deal with the kids at school. For a second, he thought about skipping, but Ashton was going to meet him after. He might as well just go. At least then he wouldn't feel guilty about wasting his mom's money.

The cost of school in Reginae was fucking ridiculous. Especially when it wasn't going to get him a better job than he could already get.

He pulled himself out of his warm bed. He downed a bottle of synthetic blood and pulled out five dollars. He quickly got dress, throwing on whatever he had clean in his drawers, grabbed his bag, and ran downstairs. He tossed the bill on the couch before shrugging on his jacket.

The morning air was crisp, clear, but freezing. His eyes became itchy and dry from the harsh treatment. He ignored the pain, locking the front door, and heading down the same path that he took every day.

Nothing was different. He arrived at school, he waited in the same spot that he always did—listening to the other students joke and play around—and then went to first period. He wished that the day would go by in a blur, that he could go numb to everything, but it wasn't that easy. He was tortured by how slow the day was going. While he'll forget these pointless days in the future, it wasn't soon enough. The agonizing feeling of being gawked, mocked, and being ostracized was going to stick with him for too long.

The day wasn't going as bad as it could have been. Currently, he was jogging back and forth in the gym. He wasn't the slowest in the class, but he wasn't the fastest either. While the other boys were pushing themselves—almost passing out—he kept his breathing steady and tried to have an out of body experience.

His mind was going blank, mindlessly doing what Coach Harris was telling him. Coach Harris didn't give a fuck about Ren and Ren didn't give a fuck about him.

But things soon went to shit when Regan bumped shoulders with Ren on the way to the water fountain.

Ren had always thought that they needed to put more fountains in the gym. One for the forty teenage boys they shoved into a forty-five-minute time block wasn't enough. There was always fighting breaking out over who got to be in the front of the line.

Regan shoved Ren with a disgusted look on his face. His less than pleasant friends—Sam and Ollie—were with him. They were pulling the face of smelling shit.

"Can you watching where you're going?"

Ren stood there. He wasn't going to give them more of a reason to come after him. They would get bored soon enough. There was only so much whining Regan could do before even he got annoyed by his complaints.

"Fucking fag," he said before turning. He only got a few steps away before Darrien stepped in his path.

He had one brow raised. "Come again?"

As if possible, Regan looked like he was looking at an even more disgusting thing than Ren. "Oh fuck off will yeah?"

Darrien gave Regan the side-eye, but that was it. Regan got away, heading to the fountain. Sam and Ollie didn't stick around. They dispersed as if they had merely been there to spectate the pending fighting between Ren and Regan.

No one else in the gym had really noticed the small confrontation. Or they had and they didn't care. Ren wouldn't find it hard to believe that everyone was turning a blind eye to what was happening to him. He'd been dealing with the same shit for so long that sometimes it felt like it was supposed to be this way.

Darrien slowly turned from looking at Regan to Ren. He opened his mouth to say something.

But Ren didn't want to hear it.

He ran away, not caring if it was rude or that Darrien would be the next one to terrorize him. He just wanted to run away from everything. If only it were that simple.

***

It wasn't easy to forget that he was a vampire and that everyone in town hated him. It wasn't easy to forget that his father was a rapist and that the whole reason his mom was living the way she was was because she was too kind to kill the monster that was leeching off her. It wasn't even easy to believe that he could change the future. He already knew how his life was going to play out. He was going to become a miserable fuck, sending money to his mom, and awaiting the day he just bit the dust. He hadn't thought about dreams, love, or anything remotely silly like that.

He had to focus solely on getting out of this town before someone decided to put a bullet between his eyes.

But he never counted on his mom having her own secrets. She knew the Mantels long before he was born. She was a witch. His grandparents had been witches by what he read.

He thought it was funny that she could be a hypocrite—hiding critical things away from him—and she accused him of being awful for hiding one thing away. Going to the Mines was going to be the best for all of them, but what did hiding the fact that he was a witch do anything for him?

Now he had to worry that someone could find that out. Witches were just as bad as vampires. Possibly even worse in the eyes of humans. Witches were deceiving creatures that stole children, ate men, and slaughtered anyone just for the fun of it. In simple terms, they were nothing more than savages. They lived in the wastelands, the parts of North America that had been deemed unlivable.

He was thinking all this while he waited for everyone to leave. He'd tuned them all out and hadn't noticed that he was the only one there. The biting cold did next to nothing to him. The thoughts in his head to taking all of his attention. Then, he heard a faint noise from behind him. He stood up in a second.

Ashton was there. He wore a blank face, one that made him look far much older than he was. His hair looked lighter in the sun—more golden than Ren would have thought. He was wearing a black coat that reached down to his knees. He was wearing a matching sweater and gray slacks.

His light skin looked even white against all the dark colors. Ren tried to not think about how smooth Ashton's cheeks looked. Or about how he wanted to know how it would feel to graze his knuckles against Ashton's jaw.

"What the hell are you wearing?" Ren couldn't help but gawk. Ashton looked like he came straight out of a fashion magazine. If anyone was here, Ashton would sure as hell draw a crowd.

Ashton didn't look at all amused. He gave Ren a drawl stare. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say anything."

He stuck his hands into the pockets of his pants. He glanced around, eyes lidded. They weren't as red as they had been last night, but they were a faint pink that still had Ren on edge.

Ren narrowed his own eyes, trying to get a better look at them. Ashton's eyes were surrounded by dark circles. They weren't too dark that anyone would notice if they weren't looking. It wasn't any of Ren's business. He didn't even care about what was happening in the Mantel's life.

But it was curious.

He also didn't like that he had to be around a vampire that was on the verge of starvation.

Ashton caught him looking. His mouth turned down into a deep scowl. "It's just a fucking coat for christ's sake."

Ren couldn't hold back the sharp laugh that bubbled up in his chest. He cut it short, but it was too late. Ashton glared at him though it wasn't much of a threat when his pale cheeks were turning a dark shade of red.

The color matched well with his eyes.

Ren wasn't going to tell him that. He'd die of embarrassment if he did.

"Never mind," Ashton grumbled. "Let's go before someone sees us together."

Yeah. Because that was the thing they should be worrying about right now. Not that they were about to crash a Hunter Society rally or that Ashton looked like he was about to attack the next living thing he saw.

Ren thought they were alone as they walked around the corner of the school. He was proven wrong when Darrien turned the next corner. He was about ten feet away from them, but he'd already noticed them.

"Who the hell is that?" Ashton hissed as low as he could.

Ren had gone rigid. He didn't know why Darrien was still hanging around, but it couldn't have been for a good reason.

He couldn't say anything. His lips were sealed shut like someone had glued them together when he wasn't looking.

Darrien slowly walked toward them. His eyes were solely on Ashton and if he knew anything about vampires, he would know that the last thing he should be doing is heading toward one that was hungry.

He stopped four feet in front of them. He tucked something away in his pocket. Ren just caught the corner of it. A box. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought that it was a cigarette box. But he couldn't imagine Darrien smoking at all.

Darrien locked eyes with Ashton. It wasn't that the world stopped turning. It didn't feel like anything at all. Worlds were colliding in the quietest of ways—in a way that Ren couldn't explain and he wasn't going to try to.

He held his breath as the two of them eyed each other, both analyzing for a threat. The thick air surrounding them clogged Ren's throat. He finally let out a breath, breathing once more, but it felt different. There was a stiff weight inside of his lungs that made him itch from the inside.

He wanted to claw at his chest to ease the irritation. He wanted to dig his nails in until he drew blood and the irritation was replaced with just raw pain.

"Hi," Darrien said, breaking the silence. He finally broke the gaze with Ashton. He looked at Ren. "I was looking for you."

The awkwardness in the air was driving Ren crazy. He had to fight with his legs to keep still and not bolt.

The way Darrien said that he was looking for Ren sounded ominous. It entailed something more. That "more" was what Ren couldn't quite grasp.

Ren licked his lips a couple of times. He had to play it cool. He and Ashton weren't doing anything wrong. They were just fucking standing outside the school. He was scared of nothing.

But when he glanced at Ashton from the corner of his eyes, his confidence plummeted.

Ashton's eyes had turned from light pink to a dark red. He was clenching his fists inside the pockets of his pants so much so that his veins were popping.

Ren turned away, eyes wide, as he felt his own gums ache.

Fuck. They were so fucked.