Bitten

by Jordan Stephanie Gray

Genres: YA Contemporary; YA Romance

Synopsis

​"A deliciously dark and viciously sexy romance. You will want to devour Jordan Gray's stunning paranormal debut. But beware, this book bites back." –Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Once Upon a Broken Heart

Crescent City meets Fourth Wing in this fast-paced and romantic debut, in which a teenage girl must survive ruthless werewolves, a glittering court, and deadly politics to exact revenge on the monsters who destroyed her.
 
After a vicious werewolf attack on the night of her seventeenth birthday party, Vanessa Hart loses everything she loves in a split second. Her best friend, her father, and even her home.
 
Bitten and imprisoned without explanation, Vanessa endures an agonizing transformation into the very beast that maimed her, and her captors make it clear she cannot escape: she will either swear her life to the Wolf Queen’s Court, or she will die.

With no other choice, Vanessa joins their enchanted Castle Severi—where flowering vines grow through the walls, gifts are bestowed by the stars, and a claw can break through skin as easily as silk—but she hasn’t forgotten what they stole from her. 
 
Vanessa still seeks vengeance, scheming in the shadows even as she finds herself mesmerized by the golden prince Sinclair Severi, who threatens to steal her heart though he is promised to her nemesis. And by his brooding, disgraced cousin, Calix, whose smoldering gaze hides even darker secrets. Immersed in the magic of their whimsical yet cruel society, Vanessa soon learns not all is as it seems.
 
The Court is at war, and she may simply be a pawn in its lethal game.

For Fans of:
Forbidden Romance
Enemies to Lovers
Werewolves
Paranormal Romance
 

Release date: September 30, 2025

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 384

Sample

The Seven Werewolf Courts enforce few laws.

Do not expose your wolf to humans.

Do not speak court secrets to outside ears.

Do not bite humans without direct permission of the regent.

Under no circumstance will you ever kill a fellow wolf.

Breaking such laws does not incur punishments like imprisonment or maiming. The dungeon beneath Castle Severi has remained empty for centuries for a reason. When one breaks a law as a werewolf, the only true consequence is death.

Not imminent death, of course, but the excruciating burn of isolation.

Lone Wolves do not survive once cut from their pack. Lone Wolves lose themselves, slowly, painfully, the way humans lose limbs to frostbite.

Queen Sybil Severi knew this. It was why, when she found her sister, Cora, in bed with a human, she didn’t hesitate in dragging her sister out by her hair and flinging her before the feral members of court. The human man waited in the wings of their most sacred castle, half-dressed, shivering, grotesque. The Bite of the Wolf marked his ribs, and a fever touched his feeble brow.

“Traitor,” Queen Sybil growled. And that was enough to condemn Cora in the eyes of the court.

Cora transformed, a moon-white wolf with glowing red eyes, fighting the nobility with snarling teeth and dripping fangs. The first three laws had already been broken, but the fourth was broken here. Now. As Cora ripped out the throat of a Wolf General and spat the bleeding flesh onto the pristine marbled floor. Some of the nobility backed down. Bowed in lieu of a fight. Others fought harder. The walls splattered red—all with their own blood. Cora seemed victorious, but her power diminished the moment Queen Sybil said, “You are hereby removed from court and pack forever.”

The cleaving happened instantly, like invisible hands wrenching the sisters apart. Throwing them on opposing sides of the room. The Wolf Queen’s eyes blackened, darker still as she watched her sister crumple to the ground with a piercing howl.

“You will leave Castle Severi at once and never again step foot on our hallowed grounds.” Queen Sybil approached, and her footsteps trailed scarlet across the floor. “You are banished, Cora Severi, and should your human turn, he too will die.”

Cora shifted from wolf to woman with a sickening snap of bones breaking. She lay on the floor in a pool of the court’s blood, her body glistening like that of a fallen star in a midnight sky. “You can’t,” she hissed. “If he turns—”

“He is a traitor to the crown, and thus he will be made a Lone Wolf. Same as you.”

“But… but…” Cora searched for words, her red eyes dimming to a bitter auburn.

“There is nothing left for you to say.” Queen Sybil picked up her sister’s limp arm and began to tear her away from the throne room, out of the castle, and toward the woods where she would wander until her soul turned to ash and dust. Until she herself became ash and dust.

But Cora would not go so easily. She said, with as strong a voice as ever, “And what of my child?”

One by one, the court shifted. From wolves to men in a shattering second of pain. The Wolf Queen stared down in fury, ignoring the gasps of those surrounding her. More gasps over a single child than the dismembered royalty at her feet.

“You are banished,” Queen Sybil repeated, claws slipping forth from her fingers as easily as knives through a corpse. “You are a traitor.”

Her sister sat up, chin raised. Eyes narrowed. “The laws of court say nothing for the sons of traitors.”

Queen Sybil knelt, tucking a claw beneath her sister’s chin. Drawing blood. Cora did not flinch. “What would you have me do?”

“Let him be born.”

“You will die before then.”

“You know I won’t,” Cora snapped. Rage surged in her gaze. “I will birth him, and I will bring him to the castle’s entrance. You must take him.”

The nobility began to whisper, but Queen Sybil silenced them with a single look. Her claw dug deeper into her sister’s flesh. “I am queen. I do not have to do anything.”

“Take him, and I will go quietly.” Her sister sucked in a sharp breath. “Take him, and I will dispose of my lover myself.”

“Now?” the Wolf Queen asked.

“Now.”

Queen Sybil straightened. She surveyed the remaining members of her court. Still plenty in number, even more plenty in strength. She had no worry of the child’s future betrayal—especially if the Oracle read his prophecy upon his birth and found him worthy—but she did have worry for the safety of her own child.

The boy had been born a fortnight ago, sickly and small. The court did not trust him as a leader, though he’d yet grown beyond a newborn babe. He would be strong one day. The Oracle predicted as much. He just needed to get there. He just needed to complete his ascension into wolf and become the crown prince she knew he could be.

And so the Wolf Queen decided, with the eyes of those she most trusted and most doubted observing her every move, that she would call forth the powers of the Cassiopeia constellation and enact a powerful blood bargain.

“Should you kill your lover on this day and birth your child on the grounds near the castle’s gate, I will raise him as my own. But your blood will protect my heir with all his might, and should my heir’s life come to an end, his will as well.” Queen Sybil outstretched her hand. One more second of contemplation, and she would revoke the bargain. Her sister knew this and grabbed the queen’s claws. Squeezed. Her blood dripped onto the Wolf Queen’s flesh and sizzled between them. Before their eyes, the blood absorbed into the Wolf Queen’s skin, and then vanished.

The blood bargain had been struck.

Queen Sybil stood with a smile as haunting as the castle itself. She rolled her shoulders back and straightened the crown of stars atop her black hair. “It is done, then. Kill your lover and be gone, sister. Should you survive long enough to birth your child, deliver him to us. Then die.”

Cora stumbled to her feet and found her human lover still shivering in the wings. The Wolf Queen’s Court watched as Cora ripped the man’s head from his neck, tendons snapping as easily as vines. Humans. Queen Sybil sniffed and turned away. “Clean this,” she ordered. Then, “Chase her out.”

Without hesitation—or ability to do otherwise—her court obeyed her every command. And, a Lone Wolf sure to die, Cora fled the soldiers who hunted her. She ran, and she ran—until one day, weak and dying, she gave birth to a boy and placed him on the grounds of the castle’s gate.

The guardian returned to the prince who awaited his protection, and both were raised as brothers. Never apart. Only together.

But this is not the story of the prince and his guard. This is the story of a human girl, and how the prince and his guard destroyed her.

There is a full moon tonight.

It hangs in the blackened sky like a mermaid’s scale, glowing bright as candlelight against the darkness. I stare up at it, wiping the sweat from my brow with an already sticky forearm. The early September heat of St. Augustine is killer. Enough to make you feel as if you’re drowning on dry land. Humidity fills my lungs with each breath, and even the spectral moon can’t make me forget that I’m slowly boiling alive.

I’m going to kill Celeste.

My butt aches under the knife-sharp edge of her front porch step while she runs behind her house to retrieve some sort of surprise. I have no idea what it is, or why we she’d need it when we’re supposed to be driving to the movies already. Dad dropped me off on his way to work, giving us barely enough time to order popcorn before the trailers.

“Can I at least help you?” I call after her in frustration, but I’m left with only the sound of her parents’ television blaring a sitcom laugh track through half-open windows. “I’m getting eaten alive,” I say, swatting at a pair of overeager mosquitoes.

They drift away in the warm breeze, and I hunch, wrapping my arms around my knees while I wait. Crickets chirp. A distant car horn blares. Though I pull out my phone to scroll for a moment, I put it away just as quickly with an impatient sigh. Whatever surprise she has planned, it’s taking forever, and we’re definitely going to be late to—

A branch snaps beside me.

Frowning, I turn toward the sound, but only a solitary lemon tree stands in that part of the yard. The moon casts long shadows behind it. “Hello?” I whisper, eyes narrowing on those shadows. No one answers me. Of course they don’t. Squirrels can’t talk.

Shaking my head, I ignore the prickling feeling at my nape. “Celeste, we really need to get—”

She returns in a rush, hiding the surprise beneath an old beach towel. Her cobalt-blue curls blow like ribbons in the breeze. “I know you have the whole control-freak thing going on, but try to be patient. I’m almost done.” She charges up the steps past me and into her house. Her parents yell at her for slamming the door, but she doesn’t bother apologizing. Once Celeste Ward puts her mind to something, she becomes unstoppable.

I should know. That’s how our friendship started, after all—she marched up to me in first grade, tugged on the messy braids my father had clumsily thrown together that morning, and told me we were going to be sisters whether I liked it or not.

I don’t know why she picked me, but before that day I hadn’t known what true friendship meant. Celeste’s love is unconditional-and-all-consuming. And it’s worth sitting alone under a full moon while she does whatever it is she’s doing.

“Almost done!” she shouts through the door.

I bite back my retort. Because Celeste never cares that my father considers dinner to be a plate of hastily microwaved nachos served with a very loud side of police reports screaming through his radio, and I never care that she went through a minor shoplifting phase in middle school. She brings me her mom’s leftovers for lunch, and I make sure she steers clear of every Target within a thirty-mile radius of us. She sits front row at all my volleyball games wearing my number in bright red on her cheek, and I put on black lipstick and ripped tights for her favorite concerts.

So—while I’d like to whip around, kick down the door, and pull her to the car by her electric-colored hair—I force myself to sweetly and not at all aggressively say, “I already ordered our movie tickets.”

She doesn’t answer, and silence falls around me again. Weird. The crickets have stopped chirping. I resist the urge to glance back at the lemon tree. It’s a squirrel. Only a squirrel. But my nape still prickles as if I’m being watched.

Just as I’ve worked up the nerve to go investigate, however, Celeste finally returns. She helps me to my feet with a giant grin on her lips, giving me an up-close view of the massive purple hickey on her neck and banishing all thoughts of vicious, man-eating squirrels.

“Here.” She lifts a tiny porcelain plate, pretty and pink with bows trimming the edge and the most hideous, quickly made mud pie slopped atop it. A single lit candle sticks out from the pile of dirt, grass, and acorns. “Happy birthday, Vanessa.”

I stare at it with furrowed brows. Surprisingly, it’s not the earthly mess that confuses me. It’s the date. “My birthday isn’t until Tuesday. You’re early.”

“I know,” she sings. “But we have to celebrate now! It’s Friday, and there just so happens to be a big beach party tonight. What are the chances?” Her long lashes flutter in an elaborate show of innocence, as if this hasn’t been planned since she called me and begged to hang out tonight. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d peel off the tank top she let me borrow and strangle her with it.

“No.”

She lowers the plate a little and pouts her lip. “Vanessa Hart—”

“No.”

“—you only turn seventeen once. You have to celebrate it. What better way than drinking warm booze on the beach with sixty of your closest friends?”

My lips twitch. “I don’t even have five friends.”

“All the more reason!” She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “But we were invited, Vanessa, and what is an invitation if not a promise for the best night of your goddamned life?”

The candle burns longer, brighter, between us. Purple wax drips onto a halo of dandelions. The same color purple as the streaks in my hair. She really makes it impossible to hate her. “Last time we went out, you drank almost an entire bottle of tequila yourself and came home missing your underwear.”

“That was years ago!” she says with a laugh. The sound is feather soft with a sharp bite at the core, and so inherently Celeste—so familiar—that I think I could trace it in the stars.

“That was two nights ago,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’m not being wrenched into any more of your salacious affairs.”

“You sound a lot like Brenda right now, Vanessa.” Her manicured nail points to her front door, midnight blue and threatening. “As in my mother, whose favorite hobby is church followed by shopping at Costco. This is your seventeenth birthday. Don’t you want to live a little?”

I take the plate from her, but she won’t let me blow out my candle. Instead, she covers it with her hand.

“I know you hated the last party we went to, and socializing basically turns you into an extreme-risk analyst, albeit one with a nice ass, but listen to me.” She grabs my chin with her free hand and angles it down until she has my full attention. “One day, you’re going to work in a beautiful office overlooking the ocean and you’re going to have the world’s hottest husband and two adorable kids. You’ll spend your weekends taking cooking classes and critiquing the latest movies in between his shifts at the hospital—”

“Just to be clear,” I say, “my future husband is a doctor?”

“A heart surgeon, and part-time male model,” she explains, before continuing. “You’ll have the life of your dreams, and it’ll be a goddamned nightmare for me to lose you to suburbia. For now, however—for tonight—you are young and hot and basically seventeen. We are not wasting this Friday on extra-buttered popcorn. We are going to Max Cayden’s party, and you are going to ram your tongue down his throat.”

Oh god. A shiver runs through me, and I bite my lip. “You didn’t say it was Max’s party.”

She grins wickedly. “Got your attention now, huh, bitch?”

I blush, remembering the time he’d helped me up off the floor in the middle of a volleyball game. I’d slipped on the hardwood after a bad serve—the other team’s fault—and he’d been on the sidelines. It was divine destiny that he’d offered me a hand, and traitorous hormones that made me not score a single point for the rest of the stupid game. It wasn’t fair that his eyes were so blue. In fact, it was supremely distracting.

I pull the plate away from Celeste and back up until I hit her car. Leaning against it for support, I shut my eyes and sigh. There’s no way I can go to a party hosted by Max. I’ll make a complete ass out of myself. Even if I’m confident in front of Celeste—particular, stubborn, often controlling, and wholly myself—I can’t be that way in front of a boy I hardly know. I can’t be that way in front of Max.

Celeste rests against the yellow hood of her ancient Volkswagen Beetle. “I can’t live with another year of you being too afraid to chase after what you really want. You are so… full of life, Vanessa. If only you’d let anyone aside from me and the girls on your volleyball team see it.” Then, less gentle, she says, “You’re getting laid if it’s the last thing I do, and if your wish is for that to be with Max, so be it.”

I turn toward her with a scowl. “Grant—”

“Grant Austin does not count, and I don’t need to remind you why. Or maybe I do, and it starts with, just the ti—”

“Okay!” I blurt, lifting the plate of mud to my face to hide my ever-reddening cheeks. “Okay, I will go to Max’s stupid party if you promise to never say those words again.”

“Ha! I win.” She beams at me and flicks the purple in my hair. “Make your wish so we can get this show on the road. I heard Max’s big sister is home from college and she’s supplying the liquor.”

My stomach flips anxiously. Liquor. Max. A party. Three things at which I’ve never been adept. I swallow roughly and wish I could wipe my clammy palms on my skirt. “Are you sure this isn’t a stupid idea?”

“Would I ever lead you down a bad path?” she says.

I raise my brows and say, “Missing underwear and a whole bottle of tequila? Your mom almost locking you out?”

She laughs as if she doesn’t have a single care in the world. “And wasn’t that the best time we’ve had recently? Come on. No take backs. I promise not to lose my panties.”

Her brown eyes meet mine, and they’re so full of hope that I can’t bring myself to say no. Even though I want to. Even though I’m not sure I should want to. In the end, it doesn’t matter anyway. Celeste is like my North Star. Or maybe we’re more like the Gemini constellation—twins. Where she goes, I go, and where I go, she goes. Always.

I glance at the burning candle. The flame has nearly run halfway down the wax, purple speckling the dirt cake and painting a much nicer picture than before. Every year since first grade—when my father was called into his station on my birthday and there were no cake and presents, just a very annoyed babysitter who immediately sent me to bed—Celeste has made me a birthday cake of mud and sticks and twigs and whatever else she can find in her backyard. She used to walk it to my house after school.

This year is different, though, and all of a sudden, with the candle casting shadows between us, I feel different. Older, maybe. Taller. As if I can almost see over the fence of childhood and into the future. Celeste might not want the same, but normalcy—two parents and a house with a white picket fence and a schedule that’s reliable and unchanging—it’s all I want. My mom left when I was so little, I can’t remember a time when I had more than just my father. My father and Celeste. The other officers at his precinct. A few girls on my volleyball team. Grant Austin last summer for a month.

That’s it. That’s been my whole circle my entire life.

A car barrels down the street, flooding the lemon tree with light. Nothing is there. Of course nothing is there. This tight, jittery feeling in my stomach is for another reason entirely, and perhaps Celeste is right. Perhaps I’m ready for something else now. Something new.

Celeste grabs my hand and squeezes. “Make a wish, Vanessa.”

When I close my eyes and blow out the candle, I do.

I wish for more.

Celeste drives us to the party in her car. The yellow paint is mostly rusted on the outside, making us a bronze blur in the night as we race over the Bridge of Lions, toward Anastasia Island.

St. Augustine is made up of two parts, each as historical and haunted as the other. There’s downtown, on the mainland, with closely huddled cobbled streets hosting ghost tours, pirate museums, and a castle abandoned long ago. In sunshine, it looks like the perfect vacation spot. Pastel flowers peek over the edges of pink walls, and Spanish-style tiled roofs shade most of the square. At night, however, that’s when you can feel its age. It’s the oldest occupied European settlement in the United States—of course, that doesn’t count for much when all the land in the US was already settled by the people who lived here first—but I do think it explains the magnitude of hauntings. Before Plymouth, before Jamestown, the Spanish colonized this coast. This city.

St. Augustine is a land of bloodshed like any other, and there are more than enough ghost-tour companies waiting to snatch your money and tell you all about it.

Anastasia Island is across the bridge, and it’s less well known. Sure, tourists will visit, and the ghost tours won’t exclude it from their stops. But when you think St. Augustine, you don’t think about the island or the red-tipped lighthouse, or the refurbished mansions that pop up after every hurricane, standing proud and modern on an ancient beach, almost as if challenging the next storm to come and do its worst.

Celeste and I never visit the island. It’s where the rich kids live—the ones who drive luxury cars paid for by their parents and go to school in fancy universities along the coast. They don’t really waste time talking to us townies.

Celeste knocks on her steering wheel three times as we cross the river and make it onto the island. A superstition that she’ll no doubt take to her grave. “Five minutes,” she says, popping in a different CD without even bothering to glance at the stereo system. The music blares, too loud and far too bass heavy for the heart already thumping painfully between my ribs. “You ready?”

“To pee my pants? Sure thing.” I lean my head against the half-open window, wishing her air-conditioning did more than just blow warm air at us through dusty old vents.

“It’s just a party, Ness.”

“To you,” I say. “You excel at parties. You’re funny and charming, and everybody loves you. I just… I always end up standing there and babbling until people leave.”

She slams on the car’s feeble brakes as we run into a red light. Whipping her head around, smacking me in the face with her hair in the process, she glares at me. “You do not make people leave.”

“I wasn’t saying—”

“I don’t care what you were saying. I have a very close relationship with your subconscious, and she can be a mega bitch sometimes. You do not make people leave.” The light turns green, but she doesn’t hit the gas pedal. Even when the car behind us honks, she continues staring at me. Her brow crinkles, and a droplet of sweat slides over her nose, down to her petal-pink lips. “I love you, Vanessa.”

“I love you too,” I say easily. Because it is. Easy. The easiest thing I’ve ever said in the world. I love Celeste as if she’s my own flesh and blood, or maybe even more than that.

“Good. Promise me you’ll try to have a good time. Let loose. Be fun.”

“Saying be fun implies that I am not already fun.”

“Well, if the gigantic shoe fits.” She throws her head back with one of her tinkling laughs as I smack her in the arm. Finally, she presses down on the gas pedal.

“A size ten is not gigantic. You’re just a pixie.”

“I’d rather be a pixie than Bigfoot.”

I yank my purse onto my lap and stick out my tongue. “I hate you.”

“You love me.”

I do. But it’s not necessary to say it again, and even if I did, she wouldn’t hear me. She cranks up the music until we’re in definite risk of noise pollution, screaming along to lyrics that don’t match the ribbons in her hair or the glitter on her cheeks. That’s Celeste, though. She contains multitudes. And I contain—“Two lip glosses, a pack of gum, a can of mace, and one sterling silver Swiss Army knife courtesy of one very worried father,” I yell, listing out the contents of my purse until she lowers the music. “Oh, and a granola bar. Do you think we need anything else?” I hold up the snack by the edge of its crinkled packaging. Celeste glances at it as she takes the wrong turn.

“I think we sound prepared for the apocalypse rather than a casual chill hang.”

“Hey, watch the road. The public beach is way farther down.”

She flashes me a devious grin. “Who said anything about a public beach?” We continue down a skinny road shaded by tall oak trees and turn into the unlit parking lot of a black-and-white-striped lighthouse.

“Celeste,” I warn, a bad feeling rotting in my gut.

She turns off the engine. “You wouldn’t have said yes if I’d told you.”

“What happened to ‘casual chill hang’? We can’t party at the lighthouse! There will be alarms and cops, and we’ll be thrown in jail before our top schools can even reject us.”

“Says the girl fondling the knife.”

I throw the knife in my purse and sit up straight, refusing to undo my seat belt even as Celeste opens her door. I thought last Wednesday when we went to Brooklyn Davies’s house—a boy Celeste swears she’s in no way into—was as wild as we’d ever get. She drank, she smoked, she went missing for an hour in a sea of people.… That was supposed to be the apex.

“I’m pretty sure this is a felony.”

“First of all,” Celeste begins, “we aren’t partying in the lighthouse, just out back on the boat ramp. Brooklyn’s dad works here. It’s totally legal.”

“Oh, and there’s that name again. Are we stalking Brooklyn now? I thought Max was throwing the party.”

“He is. With Brooklyn.”

“They don’t even share a class.”

“So you’ve memorized Max’s schedule already? I knew you could use your powers for evil. Think of everything we might accomplish if you grew a pair.” She steals my purse and leaps out of the car with a yelp. Slamming the door shut, her pale frame fades out of view as soon as she takes a few steps. I clamber after her.

“This is not what I consider a good birthday!”

“I want to live, Vanessa. I want to be free!” She twirls in a circle, arms thrown wide. “Are you going to join me or what?”

I hesitate. One foot planted ahead of me and the other behind me. It’d be so easy to turn around and sit in the car until the cops come. She’d be busted, but it wouldn’t be for anything she doesn’t deserve. On the other hand… I think of Max and blowing out my candle.

I wanted more. I wished for more.

“Live,” she demands. “You’re only seventeen once.”

“Fine.” I step forward. “But I’m blaming you if any bad shit goes down.”

With a squeal of delight, she pulls me past the lighthouse, down the block, and through a tangle of bramble before we find the ramp on the shore. Our arms intertwined, she shoves my purse into my chest, and I take it greedily with my free hand. Cling to it like a life raft as we step over uneasy terrain.

Being here reminds me of falling asleep. That space between nothing and dreams, when you go from deep silence to an explosion of imagination, thoughts, and feelings without ever realizing it’s happening.

The creaky wooden bridge is abandoned, hidden beneath overarching trees whose swaying limbs and rattling branches disguise the sound of the Atlantic. And then, the bridge ends.

The party begins, and that bad feeling in my gut stays.

Sweaty bodies fill every crevice of the open space. Sand shuffles between our toes, invading our shoes and grating against our skin. The salty air feels heavier at night, like a blanket drawing closer. Tempting under the moonlight with rays of gold glittering atop an endless ocean of black. Phones illuminate what the moon can’t, set up on coolers and kegs and rainbow beach chairs that all look more like a kaleidoscope of shadows.

I don’t know where to go at first, so I continue clinging to Celeste as she parts the crowd of our classmates and heads straight for the coolers near the shore. She doesn’t stare at the ground when she walks, doesn’t falter as we hit a dip in the sand. Just marches with her back straight and her chin tipped up, her face bathing in moonlight. I wish I could say the same for me.

I’ve been to parties before—bonfires on the beach and house parties—but nothing like this. Not at a party this large and loud that it’s as if I’m drowning in noise and scent and flickering bright lights. They illuminate the faces of my classmates, my teammates, and some kids I don’t recognize. Beautiful kids. Rich kids, with designer brands dripping from perfectly broad shoulders and muscled arms. Their heads turn in our direction, as if… as if they’re watching us.

Doing a double take, I nearly step on Celeste’s sandal and send us both sprawling to the ground. A redhead in a black leather skirt laughs as I straighten, and my stomach pitches as I realize she saw—they all did. I can feel their eyes continue to follow us as Celeste sneers, flipping them her middle finger, before leading me away. And I don’t know where to look. I don’t know what to do. My limbs feel foreign, heavier than usual. Do I smile, or is that weird? If I frown, will my classmates think I’m a bitch? If I start to move to the booming beat of EDM, will I look like a goddamned idiot? Or will I look like Celeste—a tiny pixie swaying gracefully to the music?

My brain might explode before we get arrested, and honestly that feels preferable right now. Celeste squeezes my hand as if she can read my thoughts, her heated skin burning through most of my nerves. Most, but not all of them. “It’s just like your games,” she shouts so I can hear. “With eleven other girls on the court, you’re always the one in control. And do you know why?”

“No,” I try to shout back, but it comes out a half squeak.

“Because on the court, you don’t think. You just are.” She pushes a lock of my brown hair behind my ear, smoothing out the purple tangled within it. “Your body knows what to do. Stop letting your mind derail it and listen to your bones.”

She’s right. I don’t overthink on the court. But out there, it’s just me and a ball. Obstacles in the shape of girls and a single net. Here, it’s… well, there are the girls on my team who I desperately need to impress to win captain next year. Max Cayden is supposedly here somewhere, and that makes me want to throw up a little—or a lot.