Chapter 115-School break (2)

Chapter 115: 115-School break (2)

Maisa approached the barrier that separated the vampire territory from the human world. The last time, she had been in a hurry and hadn’t taken a look at it.

Calling it a wall would have been wrong. There were no stones, gates, towers, or soldiers standing guard along its length. The boundary was far older and far more powerful than anything that could be built with ordinary hands.

It was made of magic, an ancient one at that. The kind of magic that existed before most living vampires had ever drawn their first breath, before the current royal families had inherited their thrones, before the academy had been built and before the territories had been divided into the worlds everyone now knew.

The boundary stretched invisibly across the land, woven into the earth itself like an enormous spell. To ordinary eyes, there was almost nothing to see, but Maisa could feel it.

Power hummed through the air. It was ancient and absolute. Its purpose had never been merely to separate vampires from humans.

It existed to enforce laws older than most living vampires could comprehend, the laws that kept the two territories apart and prevented one species from trespassing into another’s domain. That’s why hunters can never find vampires unless they walk into human territory.

Beyond it lay the human world rested her old world. Maisa stood silently, staring into the distance.

Somewhere beyond that invisible boundary were humans going about their ordinary lives, unaware of the supernatural world existing so close to them and beyond that were hunters who had spent generations protecting humanity from creatures like her.

"The books say that Zissa and Vonvaki had created the magic barrier. Just how powerful were they?" She wondered.

The two whitebloods had built so many things and founded many magical territories in the vampire nation and left an unrivalled legacy behind. Forever was remembered as the first mother and father of the vampire nation just like Adam and Eve were for humans.

She glanced at the great beyond. The feeling of what lay beyond the barrier made her chest tighten.

She remembered the life she had once known; the people she had loved, the places she had grown up in, the home she had believed she would always return to at a different time in her life.

All of it existed on the other side, and yet she could no longer simply walk back. Not as she was now, a vampire.

Worse, she was the daughter of a family known for hunting vampires. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

Maisa slowly lifted her hand, stopping just short of the invisible boundary. "A vampire walking into human territory fully conscious is asking for death," she clenched her fists. "I know that risks, but... I have to see her."

She could feel the ancient magic humming beneath her fingertips without ever touching it. Fear settled heavily inside her chest.

What if someone recognized her? What if her family found her? What if they discovered what she had become? What if Evelyn didn’t want to see her?

Maisa swallowed, and then she thought about the woman who had secured her place at Veris Academy. The woman who had never abandoned her and who deserved to know that she was alive and doing well in the world she had opened for her.

She stepped forward, and the barrier rippled, feeling her presence. Maisa closed her eyes and crossed.

A strange sensation swept over her body. It felt as though the world itself had turned upside down for a brief moment, and right after that feeling was gone.

Maisa opened her eyes. The vampire territory was behind her while the human world stretched ahead. And when she looked back, all she saw was endless forest that gave nothing away of the supernatural world hidden away there.

She stood beneath ordinary trees, listening to ordinary birds, breathing air that didn’t carry the faint scent of vampire magic.

It felt strange and almost nostalgic.

Maisa adjusted her bag. "I have to lay low and not draw any attention to me," she uttered, stern. "I most certainly can’t afford to run into hunters and their troubles."

She wasn’t going back to her family. That would be suicidal and she wasn’t ready for that. She was going to see her aunt Evelyn and have a few peaceful days with her and ask around about the questions that bothered her.

What had happened after Maisa disappeared? What had her family done? Had they searched for her? Had Rayne found anything about the vampire who attacked her? Did her father still believe she was alive?

Maisa started walking. Every step carried her farther from Veris Academy and farther from the vampire world, away from the four girls who had become bound to her heart.

She didn’t know what waited at the end of the road. She only knew that, for the first time since becoming a vampire, she was going home, or at least she hoped it still felt like one.

Maisa kicked a pebble along the path, watching it bounce across the ground before disappearing into the grass. She kicked another, slower this time, her footsteps carrying her farther from the boundary.

She figured that a few days with her aunt would help her. Maybe being somewhere familiar would lift her spirits and fill the strange emptiness that had settled inside her.

An emptiness that hadn’t been there before. It occupied the exact space her mates had once filled so loudly.

Their presence had become impossible to ignore. Varitreya’s commanding aura, Addessa’s sharp remarks, Lumi’s warmth, and Zolani’s kindness. They had each carved out a place in Maisa’s life so quickly that she hadn’t realized how much she had grown accustomed to having them around until they were suddenly gone.

Now, the silence felt enormous. "Will they come back to school after the break?"

The question slipped from her lips before she could stop it. Maisa didn’t know, and that was the problem. They hadn’t communicated with her at all.

Her mates were the most unpredictable vampires she had ever known. When they came close to her, they did it completely. There was no hesitation, no distance, and no half-hearted affection.

They could be overwhelming when they were together, their personalities colliding and somehow fitting into one another at the same time. But whenever one of them decided to leave, strange, they all left.

It was almost as though the bond itself pulled them in the same direction.

Maisa frowned, kicking another pebble harder. She didn’t understand it. One moment, they could surround her so completely that she barely had room to breathe, and the next, they could vanish from her life and leave behind a silence she didn’t know how to fill.

She wrapped her arms around herself and continued walking. Maybe the break would give everyone time to calm down, and when school resumed, they would return, and everything would feel normal again.

"Maybe..."

But deep down, Maisa couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that something had changed and she had no idea whether her mates would be waiting for her when the break was over or whether she would have to return to Veris Academy alone with only Sapphire by her side.