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  SLAYING YEAR TWO

  GRIM REAPER ACADEMY, BOOK TWO

  - reverse harem romance -

  Copyright © 2019 by Cara Wylde

  Cover by Otilia Jakab

  All rights are reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  I couldn’t believe I was here. Hazard, Kentucky. The name fit the place. I threw the backpack over my shoulder, pulled my hood over my hair, and got ready for the forty-minute-walk to Lena’s Diner. I could have taken a cab, but I didn’t want to. As stupid as it might sound, I’d missed this place. That didn’t mean I wanted anyone to recognize me, hence the hood, even though it was freaking hot outside. One week until school started, and I’d made the decision to visit my mom at the very last minute, but at least I’d made it. It said something about how far I’d come after my weekly therapy sessions with Mason Colin.

  Yeah, that was right. After the finals, – which I aced, by the way, – practice started, students were assigned to their mentors, and the Academy became deserted. It was Christmas vacation all over again, except this time there was no Paz in sight, either. I was the only student left. Headmaster Colin hadn’t given any explanation to anyone as to why he hadn’t assigned me to a Violent Reaper, which left me to deal with the clusterfuck of having to tell Klaus, Patty, GC, and Paz something. Anything. Thank God I didn’t have many friends, or it would’ve been a major pain in the ass. At least, the ones I did have, I trusted. I couldn’t possibly lie to Klaus and Patty. So, I told them the truth. I was the daughter of Valentine Morningstar. Apparently, because he was a nephilim, – so only half supernatural, – and my mother was human, I had turned up human. That was the only thing that really did make sense in all this shit-show. Patty was over the moon. Klaus didn’t know how to feel about it, so even though we kept in touch all through practice, and then all through the summer vacation, we didn’t talk much about it. He wanted to pretend like nothing had changed, and I was fine with it. Actually, I was more than fine. I was grateful.

  Okay, my friends were one thing. My boyfriends were another. I couldn’t lie to GC and Paz, either. I told them. Paz was taken aback. GC was even more excited than Patty. I guess, in the end, it did matter to him whom he dated. Dating a human was fine and all… Something new and interesting. But dating Valentine Morningstar’s daughter?! Suddenly, I wasn’t a normie goddess anymore. I was a goddess in my own right. Sometimes he proved to be so shallow that I didn’t know what to think of him.

  Paz had an entirely different reaction, though. Since he’d told me about the prophecy and how he didn’t particularly believe in it because prophecies were superstitions for the poor and the less fortunate, he’d gone through a one-eighty, and started talking about conspiracy theories. What the fuck?! A demon suddenly addicted to conspiracy theories?! Jesus! That was the last thing I needed in my life! After practice was over, he spent the summer digging for more prophecies, trying to find out where the one about the human retiring Morningstar had originated, and… – oh God, this was the craziest part, – and working on putting my genealogy together. He even traveled to Bulgaria, and now he had a tentative family tree to show me once we got back to school. Honestly, I wanted nothing to do with his new hobby. It was almost like he was obsessed with me and the history of my supposed family, and that made me feel uncomfortable. Even after so many sessions with Headmaster Colin, I still wasn’t ready to find out who I was and where I came from. And Paz… Ugh! Pazuzu had made it his mission to turn every unturned rock.

  I was dying to see them after a long, tedious summer vacation, and at the same time, I dreaded the moment of our reunion.

  My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket to glimpse at the screen. A smile tugged at my lips.

  “Mis u goddes take care, mkay”

  GC had no respect for grammar or spelling when he texted. Sometimes I didn’t even understand what he was saying, and it was a good thing Pazuzu was online twenty-four seven to translate.

  “Idiot, learn how to spell! *angry emoji* Dearie *heart emoji* do take care, though. You shouldn’t have gone alone.”

  I rolled my eyes. Maybe creating a group text for me, Paz, and GC hadn’t been my most brilliant idea.

  “I’ll be fine, guys. Chill.”

  A bunch of heart emojis from Paz, too many kiss emojis from GC, and a fuckton of poop and angry emojis they exchanged between themselves. I switched my phone off. Paz had spent his summer vacation in Hell, at his mom’s place, and GC had traveled to Egypt, India, Thailand, and a bunch of other places with Andromeda and Apis Senior. When he didn’t travel, he lived on his parents’ luxurious boat. Oh, how I wished I’d gone with him. Andromeda had invited me, in fact, but I was forced to refuse. For one, Pazuzu would have never let me hear the end of it if I spent the summer with GC and his family, and two, I’d made a promise to Headmaster Colin.

  The diner was in sight, just across the street. I chewed on my lower lip anxiously, not feeling quite ready to face my mom. My adoptive mom, that was. Headmaster Colin had told me it would be healthy for me to make peace with my past and my parents. They did the best they could.

  “But did they?” I’d asked him in one of our therapy sessions. I’d pulled my shirt up to show him the cigarette burns on my abdomen. They were faded now. “He did this to me. I was three! He stopped when I told my mom, but that didn’t mean the abuse ended there. He found other ways.”

  The Headmaster had sighed and nodded. “I know this is hard to accept, but whatever he did to you, it was never personal. In his head, he wasn’t hurting you, he was hurting someone else. He was taking revenge on someone who’d hurt him in the past. You were just a reminder of that pain.”

  “That makes no sense. I’m not his daughter, and I’m not my mother’s daughter. What’s the connection between my real parents and them?”

  “You should ask them yourself. You have all these questions, all these things left unsaid… You’ll have to face the Lazarovs sooner or later. Why not sooner?”

  “You could just tell me, you know. You’re a mage.”

  “There are things no one else can do for you, Mila”

  So, here I was. Back home. Lena’s Diner. Thanks to the unbearable heat, there weren’t many customers today. I crossed the street and looked through the window. My mother was behind the bar, nursing a cup of coffee and watching some new girl she must have hired recently. From my mother’s expressi
on, it was clear the new girl wasn’t doing great. But it wasn’t like she had many options. People didn’t exactly flock to get a job at Lena’s.

  I wonder… Did you look for me when you saw I was gone?

  She turned, and I stepped away from the window before she could see me. What’s the point? I should have stayed at the Academy and minded my own business. They weren’t my parents, so why was I here? Headmaster Colin had said I needed closure. That it would make me feel better to talk to them, confront them, tell them what I knew, and have them fill in the blanks that kept me up at night. And then, I could get out of their lives for good. Forever. Or just out of my dad’s life. Maybe it was worth keeping in touch with the woman who’d raised me. She’d done a piss-poor job of it, but at least she’d done it.

  I took a deep breath and went inside. The chirpy sound of the bell that announced a new customer didn’t impress anyone. No one looked my way, not even my mom, now busy admonishing the new girl in a hushed tone.

  “You always ask them if they want extra sauce. Always.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll remember.”

  I stepped up to the bar and removed my hood.

  “Mom?”

  She turned to me, and her blue eyes filled with tears. She was naturally pale, and her skin still managed to turn even paler. She rounded the bar quickly, smashed her hip in one of the bar stools, cursed under her breath, and threw the thing aside.

  “My baby! Oh God, thank you for bringing my baby home.”

  She wrapped me in a warm embrace, and I resisted her for a second. Just a second. Then I let out a deep sigh I didn’t know had accumulated in my chest, and hugged her back, relaxing as I inhaled her familiar scent.

  “My baby. Where have you been? Why did you do this to me?” She was crying now. “Why would you ever do this to me?”

  The whole diner was staring at us. I felt uneasy, so I pushed her away gently, and looked into her beautiful blue eyes.

  “Mom, we need to talk.”

  She cupped my cheeks with her trembling hands, pushed my blue hair away from my forehead, took a step back to look at me better.

  “You’ve grown.”

  “Mom, come on. I look exactly the same. Let’s go to your office.”

  More tears streamed down her wrinkled cheeks.

  “Why did you leave, baby? Why did you leave me? Was I so bad to you?”

  I forced a smile. “N-no. Come on, everyone is looking.”

  “I looked for you everywhere. I went to the police. I… I did my best. They said…” She shook her head and sniffed loudly. “Because you’d packed some of your things and we couldn’t find the suitcase, they said they couldn’t do anything. That you just ran away, and it wasn’t a missing person case. They refused to help me.”

  “Yeah, Mom, because they have better things to do than to look for someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter.” She hugged me again. “You’re back.”

  “Mom.” I struggled to push her away, and it wasn’t easy. “Mom, please. Come on. Mom, I’m not staying. We need to talk.”

  She furrowed her brows. I tipped my chin toward the customers at the tables, and she finally understood we were putting on quite a show, and it was all in bad taste. She took my hand and pulled me behind the bar, in the cramped room she called her office, and closed the door.

  “What do you mean you’re not staying? Mila, you broke our heart! You left without a word, without a note… Your father and I have been worried sick!”

  I laughed bitterly. “Dad. Yeah, I bet.”

  “Mila, don’t be so disrespectful. He has his flaws, but he cares. You’re our baby. Our only child.”

  I dropped my backpack in a chair and ran my hands through my long, blue hair. I hadn’t trimmed it in a while, and it was driving me crazy. Having long hair in summer was such a bad idea. I shrugged off my tattered hoodie, too, and remained in an old tank top and my new wristbands. Yes, I’d finally bought new ones.

  “Mom, I know everything. I know you and Dad are not my real parents.”

  That took her completely aback. As if her knees had suddenly turned to jelly, she sat down behind her desk.

  “Baby, I don’t know…”

  “Stop calling me baby! I know, okay? I know everything!”

  “You know what? You have to tell me where you’ve been all this time. It has been almost a year. You were gone for a year!”

  “Does it matter? Don’t change the subject.” I took a step toward the desk, placing both my hands on the edge, looking her straight in the eye. “Katia. I know my mother’s name is Katia. It’s time for you to stop lying and start telling the truth. Lies never helped anyone.”

  “Baby…”

  “You say you care about me. So, prove it. Who is Katia? Where is she? Why did she give me away?”

  She placed her elbows on the desk and covered her face with her hands. I could hear she was breathing heavily now, as if she was on the verge of a panic attack and she was trying to keep it at bay. I pulled up a chair, sat down, and crossed my arms over my chest. I felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t back down now. If I had to, then I’d apologize later. Right now, I needed answers. And, apparently, I had to press her for them. Fine. I could do that. I was VDC. There were few things that scared me, and this woman’s panic attack caused by her own lies sure wasn’t one of them.

  “I’m waiting,” I said. “Take all the time you need but know that I will not move from this spot until you tell me the truth. The whole truth. It’s the only reason I came back.”

  “The only reason you came back,” she said in a weak, defeated voice.

  I swallowed hard. “That and… I missed you.”

  She looked up at me. “I missed you too, baby. I missed you so much. And I just couldn’t understand why you’d…”

  “Mom, please. Understanding why I left isn’t rocket science. Honestly. It’s not like I was happy, or like Dad wanted me around. Let’s move on, okay? Katia. Tell me about Katia.”

  She took a deep breath and released it slowly. She reached out under the desk, opened the mini fridge she had there, and pulled out two glasses and a bottle of what looked like… gin? Really?! My mother drank at work?! Wow! Since when? This woman was full of surprises.

  “Since you left, I need a drink from time to time, so…” She shrugged as she poured two fingers of gin in both glasses. She pushed one over the desk toward me and took a sip of hers.

  “Mom, I’m not drinking with you.”

  She smiled bitterly. “You’re still calling me Mom.”

  “Should I not?”

  “No, no… you should. I raised you, after all.”

  “You did.”

  “Katia gave birth to you, but I raised you. And I did my best, please believe me. I’m sorry about your father. Stepan is… a difficult man.”

  “Well, that’s one way of putting it,” I huffed.

  She shot me a pained glance. “Stepan and Katia… They weren’t on good terms.”

  I leaned over the table. The smell of gin entered my nostrils, and despite myself, I grabbed the glass and took a sip. Not bad.

  “They were together for a while, both so poor they didn’t have a thing to eat most days. He did odd jobs here and there, she started working herself… but he didn’t agree with her… mmm… line of work. They broke up.”

  “What was her line of work?”

  My mom shrugged and took another sip of her drink. She was trying to dodge the question, and for once, I couldn’t blame her for it.

  “She was selling her body,” I said in a stern voice.

  Her eyes bore into mine. “How did you know?”

  “I have my ways. So, they broke up. What then? Where are you in this story?”

  “I was her friend. Before… you know. Before she started working. I knew her since we were ten, going to the same school. She dropped school after a few years,
though. She used to disappear for days. I didn’t know much about her, just that her mother was ill, and she was her only caregiver. My parents would sometimes give me food for her, but when her mother died, she vanished for a year, then came back to ask me for money. I helped her, of course. She was an orphan now. That was when I met Stepan, her boyfriend. They were both renting a room in a rundown house on the outskirts, but they were barely surviving. I helped them for a while, but I couldn’t do much for them. It wasn’t like my own family was rich. Then she vanished again, and I found out months later what she’d started doing. From Stepan.”

  “So, you stole her boyfriend or what?”

  “I didn’t steal anyone. They were separated. He wanted nothing to do with her. After she’d left, he’d gotten a job at a factory, and he was doing better. Katia… had made her own choices. She was barely seventeen… I admit now, we judged her too harshly then. I judged her too harshly. All I could see was Stepan and how she’d broken his trust and his heart.”

  “And you thought you could mend his heart.”

  She smiled. “You’re judging me harshly now.”

  “I’m not. I’m just stating some facts.” She nodded but didn’t say anything. “Where do I come into this picture. Or… when?”

  “Years after. Stepan and I were married, and we were planning to move to the US. We’d worked hard to save enough money. She just appeared out of nowhere, at our door, with a baby in her arms. She said she needed me to take her. Take you. She had no one else she could trust, and she said it would only be for a while, until she got back on her feet. Stepan wanted to hear nothing of it. But I couldn’t turn her down. She said… no more than a month. Two, at the most. Until she managed to get some money and rent a better place. She couldn’t keep you, a mere baby, in the same room where she…” Her voice cracked.

  “Worked,” I finished her sentence.

  “I’m sorry, Mila. You were never supposed to hear this. I never wanted you to find out about your mother and what she… did. She didn’t come back for you after a month, and she didn’t come back after two months, either. We kept waiting, Stepan and I. Three, four, five months. A year passed, and there was no word from Katia. We went to the police. We just wanted to track her down. They looked for her for half a year, maybe, and then they gave up. She was nowhere to be found. It was as if she hadn’t existed in the first place. Completely vanished. And Stepan and I had to leave. We couldn’t wait any longer. What were we supposed to do? Abandon you? Take you to a children’s home and leave you there? We adopted you and made a promise to each other that we’d never tell you about Katia. There was no point. Just pain, shame, and disappointment. We didn’t even know who your father was. Stepan thought it must have been one of her clients. We gave you our name, took you to the US with us, and raised you as our own. Later, I found out I couldn’t have children. So, in the end, you proved to be a blessing.”