Page 123 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

“Well done, you’re so brave. I’ve thought about asking him for extra credit,” Clara admits. “I always chicken out, though. Silly, right? Professor Zott is quite nice. Most of the teachers are, really.”

“Kira?” Becky asks in that same expectant tone she’d used earlier.

I wish I could respond the way she wants me to, but I can’t. What she did to Zott…it’s disgusting, and crude, and makes my skin crawl. Cowardly, I lower my gaze to my plate.

She waits, and I sense the others exchanging glances.

I push a pea through the gravy.

“You could say something, you know,” she says.

I look up. “What would you like me to say?”

Her face hardens. “You always act like you’re better than us.”

I drop my fork in surprise. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.” She snatches her plate up and stands. “Talking to the prince like that this morning? Who do you think you are?”

I frown, but find myself speechless.

“Whoa, Becks. Won’t you sit back down?” Harvey tries.

She ignores him, looking at me with tear-filled eyes. “You’re not better than me, you know. I’ll have a collar too one day.”

I hold her gaze. “All right. If that’s what you want.”

Her eyes flare. “Of course it’s what I want!” She storms away and leaves the dining hall. Silence settles over our circle as we watch the door above shut.

Harvey clears his throat. “Women, huh?” We all look at him. “Just trying to lighten the mood,” he mumbles.

I attack my peas like they’re my enemies, stabbing them one by one until they’re all dead. I only came to the dining hall so no one would think I regretted my little performance at breakfast. Because I do not regret it. Do I?

Above me, Nathaniel barely looks at me from his seat at Victoria’s table. In fact, I don’t think he looks at me at all. Susie attempts to draw me into conversation, but my mood only sours.

I soon say goodnight and go downstairs to try to sleep. Try, and fail. I lie in the dark, turning the day over piece by piece. Now that there is nothing else to distract me, smaller details return. Becky kneeling at Zott’s feet, cheeks flushed, her forehead pressed against his swollen belly. The way she’d smiled afterwards, proud and relieved as she straightened her uniform, as if she’d won a contest. Waiting for someone to tell her she had done well.

Eliza was too preoccupied with the mayor.

And me…I had not meant to upset Becky.

I toss and turn, thinking of the others. Harvey laughed off what happened to him because joking was easier than admitting the truth. Jane thinks it’s her fault she doesn’t enjoy the abuse Felix inflicts on her, and Eliza smiles at a man who checks his timepiece every time he’s inside her. Susie is perhaps the most confusing of all. She seems to have Arken and Nathaniel’s ear, yet somehow has no control over her own fate.

None of them are fighting it. They are barely even resisting. And the hard truth is, neither am I. Not enough.

You’re not better than me, you know. Becky is right. I have spent a month telling myself I am different. That I am still a wolf of the Resistance. That I am only playing along until the right moment arrives.

I reach under my pillow and close my fingers around the paring knife. Three inches of borrowed steel. I have carried it for weeks. I have carried it past him in corridors, at breakfast, in the dark outside the Potions laboratory when there was nobody else in the world but the two of us. And I did nothing, because I was waiting for him to lower his guard.

I stare at the ceiling.

As though he would lower his guard around a threat.

My hands find the collar, fingers splaying over its buckles.

Slowly, something occurs to me. There is one thing that every vampire in this place lowers their guard for. I think of Zott, with his hand at the back of Becky’s head. Felix, with his trousers unfastened. The mayor, with his eyes on his timepiece as Eliza pleasures him.

And Nathaniel, pressing me to a wall in the dark, telling me exactly what he would do to me if I followed him again.