NEXUS ACADEMY: BLOOD AND BONDS

SERA

The moment my hands touched Brad Harington, his lungs forgot how to work.

☆~☆

That afternoon, on my way to the cafeteria, Brad cornered me.

“You lost, charity case?” he smirked, backing me against one of the lockers. “This hallway isn’t for people like you.”

If anything, I’d spent months honing the art of pretending not to care.

Chin held high. Shoulders straight. Jaw set firmly in what I hoped resembled confidence.

Brad liked an audience, and over time, I’d learned to give him nothing.

“Don’t get too close to her, Brad,” Jay, one of Brad’s friends, warned, grabbing him by the arm.

“You know she’s a freak.”

Brad smirked. “Oh, really? My little mute has some demonic power now. What else can you do besides flickering bulbs and breaking things?”

He handed his phone to Cole.

“Wouldn’t want you breaking it like everything else.”

His gaze dragged over my body, making my stomach turn.

“Can you break me?”

He stepped closer, nearly closing the distance between our lips.

God forbid Brad took my first kiss.

I shoved his shoulder with all the strength I could summon. It shouldn’t have been enough to make the thick-muscled quarterback stumble.

But it did.

I still don’t know how it happened.

The moment my hands made contact with his shoulders, he gasped sharply, as if he were choking, and staggered backward.

Then his knees folded, and he hit the floor hard, his palms scrabbling against the tiles.

Screams erupted around me.

I looked up to see students crowding the hallway, watching the show as usual.

Except it was a little different today.

“She did something—look at him!”

“Wow! The freak really has superpowers.”

“Is that a superpower, or is she a jinx? Look at her strange eyes!”

Accusations came from every direction.

A fine tremor moved through me, no matter how tightly I curled my fingers.

“I didn’t…”

I swallowed, trying to steady my cracked voice.

“I didn’t do anything.”

But I knew I had.

I’d felt the heat surge beneath my skin—fast, violent, wrong.

I dropped to my knees beside him.

“Brad.” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. “Hey. This isn’t funny.”

I pressed two fingers to his neck, the way I’d seen people do in movies.

Nothing.

Just my own pulse hammering beneath my fingertips.

By the time the paramedics muscled through the crowd, my vision had blurred. I didn’t even remember when I’d started crying.

“Clear!”

Brad’s body jerked.

Once.

Twice.

Then nothing.

The silence stretched for far too long.

“He’s breathing,” someone finally whispered.

I should have felt relieved.

Instead, my body understood it before my brain did.

The hairs on my arms rose. My legs went strangely still.

It was fear.

I was scared of the unknown—of what I was.

The looks of my fellow students and teachers sealed my fate.

Teachers tried to herd everyone away, but what was the point?

Phones were already out. Videos were already recorded.

I caught flashes of myself on glowing screens—pale, shaking, mascara smudged, looking exactly like what they called me.

A freak.

☆~☆

I stared at my hands.

They were still tingling.

Everything that had happened felt like a dream.

Principal Carver’s voice droned on about the horror and disruption I’d caused, about how I had almost killed their star quarterback.

Outside his office window, an ambulance sat in the parking lot, its lights flashing red and blue against the grey sky.

I could still hear students hovering in the background.

“That girl is jinxed, I’m telling you.”

“She almost killed him.”

“She’s a freak with those creepy eyes.”

“Ms. Night.”

Carver leaned forward, coffee breath and all, snapping my attention back to him.

“This is the third incident in two weeks.”

He flipped through his notes like I was a problem he could file away.

“First, every light bulb in the SAT testing room exploded when you walked in. Then Victoria Adams’ phone burst into flames after she ‘bumped into you’ in the hallway.”

He paused. “And now this.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t do anything,” I repeated like a mantra, shaking my head.

“Witnesses say you touched him. On his shoulder.”

He adjusted his glasses and leaned away from me, as though even sitting this close was too much of a risk.

“What exactly are you, Sera?”

His voice dropped almost to a whisper.

“Because I’ve been in this school for twenty-two years, and I have never been afraid of a student. Not once.”

His eyes remained on me.

“Until now.”

He didn’t ask me who I was.

He asked what.

I didn’t know how to answer because I didn’t know either.

But deep down, I knew something was wrong with me.

The lights above us suddenly flickered.

“Don’t…” Carver stiffened.

“I’m not doing anything,” I snapped.

And I was sure I wasn’t.

I hadn’t felt the heat or adrenaline that usually accompanied the strangeness.

Whatever this was had started three weeks ago, on my eighteenth birthday, and it was becoming stronger and harder to control.

The lights steadied as strangely as they had flickered.

Ring. Ring.

The unexpected shrill of the phone cut through the tension.

Carver flinched as if he’d been stung.

“Make sure those videos are deleted,” he barked into the receiver, wiping sweat from his face with the back of his hand. “We don’t need bad press.”

When he hung up, his decision was already made.

“You’re done here,” he announced decisively. “Whatever you… are, this school isn’t built for it.”

Somewhere in the back of my head, a younger version of me was screaming—the one who’d memorized vocabulary at midnight, who’d begged the universe for this chance.

But she felt very far away now.

My actual thought was shameful, and I almost hated myself for it.

Relief.

At least at home, wherever that was now, I could be alone with my mum.

She might know what to do.

“I understand,” I replied quietly, already thinking about how I’d explain my symptoms—or whatever this was—when I saw my mum later.

“No,” a cold voice cut in. “You don’t.”

I turned toward the voice, and every thought I’d been holding onto scattered at once.

Because she hadn’t been there two seconds ago.

I would have noticed.

You couldn’t miss someone like her.

My eyes couldn’t stray far from her jarring, impossible violet eyes, which seemed to pin me to the wall.

Her hair was pale, silver-white, shimmering beneath the lights.

She wore a blue suit that screamed money—the kind my mum couldn’t afford in years.

But it was her face that intrigued me the most.

She had the look of someone who had already solved every problem the world could throw at her and was faintly bored by it.

“Who—” Carver started, visibly rattled, his trembling fingers betraying him.

“They call me the Treader.”

Her gaze stayed locked on mine.

“But you may call me Headmistress Valora Grey.”

She turned her attention to Carver.

“I’m here for the girl.”

Her violet eyes returned to me.

“And careful. You almost got her killed.”

For the first time in the last three weeks, I became a little hopeful.

I felt like she could see everything.

Not just who I was.

But what I was becoming.

SERA

“This… this is highly inappropriate…” Carver stammered.

“Mr. Carver.”

Valora’s voice remained mild, but the air changed—not exactly cold, but wrong. Very wrong.

“You have a daughter,” she continued. “Emily. Sweet girl. Bright. Struggling in AP Chemistry.”

Carver froze.

She smiled faintly. “College applications are quite delicate. It would be unfortunate if anything affected them.”

“I can’t just—”

“Or,” she interrupted, producing a thin folder in her hand, “you can sign this transfer and be rid of the whole troublesome situation.”

Carver stared at the folder. Then at her. Whatever he saw in Valora’s eyes made the fight leave him.

He signed without reading it, his hands trembling. He didn't even look at me.

“Excellent.”

Valora turned back to me.

“Come, Sera. We have much to discuss.”

“Absolutely not.”

My voice came out sharper than my trembling hands deserved.

“