Pride X Familiar ReVamp (Pride X ReVamp Book 1) by Albert Ruckholdt Read Free Book Online Page A

times I hated the way they bragged that their daughter had joined a strong and influential Pride.
    I worried my mother would start asking me when I would start dating seriously, and had any good prospects come alone.
    I politely sidestepped the issue each time.
    I couldn’t date anyone seriously.
    I didn’t have the heart to do so.
    My heart was in pieces, and I had no way of putting it back together again.
    I forgot to mention that I cried so hard after that day I really wanted to die.
    I cried hard for a week.
    My parents believed and rightly so that Caelum was at fault. My parents never liked him. They pitied him, an orphan of the state after his sister – his sole remaining relative – died. They sympathized with his circumstances.
    But they never found him worthy of me.
    And for that I could never forgive them, nor love them like a good daughter should.
    And because I loved Caelum I was afraid of telling him how I felt.
    I was afraid of hearing him say ‘no’.
    In the end, I missed my chance to tell him.
    When I calmed down and thought about our circumstances, I realized that maybe Caelum was right.
    It hurt like Hell to say goodbye, but he’d given me the clean break I would need in order to start again as an Aventis.
    As an Avenir.
    But regardless of the reasons, the end result was a hollow shell.
    Me.
    I spent time with my new friends.
    I spent time with a boy every now and then, and joined my new girlfriends on double dates.
    A met a special boy, and little by little he began filling the emptiness that consumed my heart.
    And then something happened – something I never dreamt of coming true.
    I saw Caelum again.
    And he threw my world into a spin.
    #
    (Haruka)
    He stood at the front of the class room.
    As a transfer student it was required that he introduce himself.
    I felt my heart beating loudly, so loudly I thought my classmates would hear it too.
    But they were all eyeing him warily, and I quickly understood why.
    His uniform’s jacket was lacking the all-important pin – the pin that identified the Pride you belonged to.
    I looked at him, studying what I could see of him.
    He looked a little taller, and he stood a little straighter.
    He’d lost some of the fat on his cheeks and the uniform hung well on his body.
    His jet black hair was now a dark auburn shade.
    He looked older.
    He looked…harder, as though he’d acquired an edge he lacked before.
    I was starting to understand this wasn’t the Caelum Desanto I had known for so many years.
    This wasn’t the Caelum that I held in my arms when he cried at his parent’s funeral.
    We weren’t children anymore, and that was more than evident in the aura I perceived emanating from him.
    It was an aura that quietly, confidently challenged the classroom.
    He spoke his name, enunciating it with precision.
    He greeted the classroom, the teacher, afforded the usual pleasantries and stated his hopes for a productive year.
    And then he answered the question on everyone’s mind.
    He calmly attached a specific pin to the left breast of his jacket.
    A Familiar.
    Neither Aventis, nor Regular human, but something that lay in between.
    I swallowed again, wondering if it was stomach acid I tasted in the back of my mouth. Or was it bile? As I swallowed I turned my head to look at another member of my class.
    She sat at the back of the room, her auburn hair falling in ringlets that framed her heart shaped face. She sat with a perfect posture, as though raised from an early age with all the teachings of a child born into a privileged family. Yet as far as anyone knew she was an orphan of the state.
    An orphan of Pharos just like Caelum.
    Then I watched him attach a second pin, the pin that identified the Pride that sponsored him into the Academy – the Pride he was affiliated with and to whose allegiance he’d been pledged.
    Since becoming an Aventis my eyesight was preternaturally sharp, and I recognized the emblem on the pin.
    It belonged to the Lanfear