Dark Angel Academy (The Complete Series) - G. Bailey Page 0,72
in the street with Ren. The street is nearly empty, only a few couples walking around, and I can hear waves crashing in the distance. In front of us is a row of small shops, all selling fast food, and the one in the middle sells just ice cream by the looks of it.
“I’ve missed ice cream,” Ren tells me as he leads me across the quiet road. “Being dead makes you realise you should have eaten ice cream more, or anything you like, more often. I was always so busy, so focused on the coven, that I didn’t stop to enjoy the little things.”
“Is it hard to be the leader of the vampires?” I question as we get to the window of the shop. Ren doesn’t answer me as we head inside and the shop assistant smiles at us. I pick a chocolate ice cream, and Ren gets a vanilla before paying, and we head outside. Walking down the street, we eat our ice creams in pace, and it feels so normal. We stop outside an antique store, and I look in at the old chair they are selling and the birdbath, which is pretty. I end up watching Ren’s reflection in the glass, the wave of emotions and answers that flicker over his eyes. “My mother died in labour with me, like most female vampires do. Our death rates in childbirth are very high, and my father brought me up. He was cold, impassive and ruled the coven with an iron fist. He told me it was the only way to ensure the coven would be safe and under complete control...and it did work. Everyone feared him, especially me, and then his mistress killed him. It was unexpected, and she killed herself straight afterwards. Then the angels attacked and killed everyone I ever knew. I watched vampire children murdered, and all I did was run away, terrified.”
“That is horrifying,” I whisper. “You had no choice but to run. It’s an instinct.”
He humourlessly laughs. “Now I look back, I wonder if it would have been better if I never ruled at all. That I died then and there instead of running. I became the king of what was left of the coven overnight, at only eighteen, and I was clueless. I became obsessed with a way to free my people, to give them a chance to live a real life, not hidden away in the mountains, never seeing the world around us. You know what happened when I went to the angels and tried to make peace.”
“Instead, you became a monster just like the angels, Ren,” I sadly say, wishing it wasn’t the truth, but it is. “Angels are in chains, trapped and locked up under your rule. The angels above can’t attack the academy because you will kill the angels they are sworn to protect. There isn’t peace. You have their young. Many of their children, like Henry.”
“I’m not the monster in this world, Kaitlyn,” Ren growls, and without a care for the humans around us, he makes another portal right in the middle of the road. Taking my hand, he steers me to the portal and through it to another street.
But this one I know so well. Just like the tiny house in front of me. The slate roof, the dark brown brick walls, and white framed windows make my heart ache for my old home. The home I grew up in with rose bushes by the front door and a wooden duck my dad bought my mum for one of their anniversaries. I take a step forward as I see my mum walk out of the yellow front door with a bag of rubbish in her hands.
“Hello!” she says, smiling at us both with not a care in the world. Her messy blonde locks of hair fly around in the wind, and she has a few more wrinkles on her face than she did a year ago. “My husband never takes the rubbish out, such a lazy man, aye?”
Any words get trapped in my throat as I stare at my mother, who doesn’t know me at all. I feel gutted, lost and in pain as I look at her.
Ren laughs, wrapping an arm around my waist, and in my shock, I don’t move. “We are newlyweds, so I still take the rubbish out.”
My mum’s eyes twinkle with humour at Ren’s lie, and she looks closer at me. “That won’t last, make the most of it.” She