Firelight by Sophie Jordan Read Free Book Online

scenting its prey and I wonder if hunters are really human at all. If maybe they aren’t just as otherworldly as the draki. He looks around, searching the hall as I struggle to get myself under control. Before he sees me. Before he knows.
    My lungs start to smolder, the familiar burn catching the exact moment his hazel eyes lock on mine.
    The slam of my locker jars me and I tear my gaze off him. To Tamra. Her hand presses flat my locker, her fingertips white where they dig hard into the metal.
    The last bell sounds.
    With a quick dip, she grabs my books off the floor and drags me toward the bathroom. I glance over my shoulder as bodies empty the hall in a rush of unnatural scents. Perfumes, colognes, lotions, hair sprays, gels…they clog my senses. Here, nothing feels real. Except the boy staring after me. He watches. His gleaming gaze following, stalking me like the predator I sense in him. He moves away from the lockers in a loping, catlike motion.
    My draki continues to stir, awake and alive at the hungry way he watches me. My skin quivers, the flesh of my back tingling, itchy where my wings push. I keep them buried. Buried, but not dormant.
    Tamra’s hand tugs harder, pulling me. And I lose sight of him. He’s swallowed up in the flurry of humankind around me, like so many moths bumping and dancing around a light, congesting the hallway.
    But I still feel him. Yearn for him. Know he’s there even when I no longer see him.

    My nostrils flare against the harsh bite of astringent. Instantly, my draki withers at the unnatural odor. I press a hand to my mouth and nose. The hint of fire in my lungs dies. My back stops tingling.
    Tamra’s gaze slides over me, and she exhales, clearly satisfied to see it’s me again. The me she approves of, the only me she wants around. Especially here in this new world she hopes to conquer for her own.
    “You’ve stopped glowing. Thank God! Are you trying to blow it for us?”
    I stare toward the bathroom door. Almost like I expect him to follow. “Did he see?”
    “I don’t think so.” She shrugs one shoulder. “He wouldn’t know what he saw anyway.”
    That’s true, I suppose. Even hunters don’t know draki manifest into human form. It’s been our most carefully guarded secret. Our greatest defense. And it’s not like I was unfurling my wings in the hallway. Not quite, anyway.
    I hug my arms as the invigorating hum fades from my core. This is my chance, I realize. I can tell her about Will…confess just how much I risked that day in the cave with him…confess how much I risk right now. I can declare everything as I stand in this putrid bathroom. Tamra squints at my face.
    “Are you going to be okay? Should I call Mom?”
    I consider this. And more. Like what Mom would say if I tell her everything. What would she do?
    And instantly I know. She’d yank us out of school. But she wouldn’t take us back to the pride. Oh no. She would just plant us in some other town. Some other school in another desert. In a week, I would be redoing this wretched first day all over again, suffering the heat and climate somewhere else without a beautiful, exciting boy around. A boy whose mere presence has revitalized my draki
    —the very part of me that hasn’t felt alive since we left the mountains. How can I walk away from that? From him?
    Tamra shakes her beautiful mane of hair off her shoulders as she surveys me. “I think we’re okay.”
    She wags a finger at me. “But stay away from him, Jacinda. Don’t even look at him. At least not until you’ve gotten yourself under better control. Mom says it shouldn’t take long before…”
    She must see something in my face. She looks away. “Sorry,” she mutters. Because she’s my sister and she loves me, she says this. Not because she’s really sorry. She wants my draki dead as much as Mom does. Wants me normal. Like her. So we can lead normal lives together and do stuff like cheerleading.
    My stomach cramps. I take my books from