Half-Blooded | The Dark Child Prophecy Series [✔️]

Chapter One: I Wish I Was the Moon

I snuck around to the back of the gardens, using the tall hedges as cover. My shoes were gone and I had also managed to lose my shirt. Thankfully, the guards always had extra uniforms in the outer barracks building. Sneaking in and out without being seen hadn't been easy. I pulled at the borrowed turtleneck that clung to my throat, like I couldn't breathe. My mother would kill me if she saw me. My jeans were shredded and my socks were gone. I peeked around the corner to look at the inner gardens near my bedroom window. I hesitantly pushed a lock of my unruly blonde hair behind an ear and continued to survey my best route back into the manor house.

If Mom doesn't kill me, Marcus will, I thought, able to picture my stepfather's disapproving look. Or Luce. Or Jenny... I'm so dead.

No one in sight, I hurried along the inner garden wall to the back of the house, praying I could sneak in with no one the wiser I had left the property. Even at twenty-four, my family was overly protective. I was one of only two girls in our generation. However, my cousin Krystal was royalty. I was grateful not to have the same social pressures; but being a child of the United States coven leader, I was expected to be the perfect daughter and skilled politician. And I bore those responsibilities begrudgingly, at best. My brother, Adrian, could be the heir apparent to our mother's position. I didn't want it.

I paused beneath my window, staring up at the third floor. I glanced at my hands, wondering if I could will them into claws and scale the wall. But the very idea made me sick. I would have to creep in through the kitchens and use the old servants' stairs to get upstairs. With any luck, I could shower, dress, and go about my night as if I had never left.

Good luck, Seren.

Unlike my mother, brother, and the rest of my living family, I was different. My father was Avalon J. Mezdor, the famed Hybrid and Prodigy of the Shadow Stalker coven. He had passed when I was a child, leaving me to navigate my flaw all by myself. I was the new Hybrid: half-vampire and half-werewolf. Each month, I secretly left the coven house to let my inner animal out. And it was a routine I was ashamed of.

I ran along the brick wall before entering the back kitchen patio. I pushed through the heavy exterior door, doing my best to be invisible. The staff usually greeted me with polite courteousness as the boss's daughter, but tonight they only sent me uncertain and wary glances. The night of the full moon was always heavy on our minds. Appreciative I didn't have to put on any forced smiles, I rounded past the walk-in freezer and the long wall of spider burners. I snuck into the pantry and grabbed the box of cookies stashed behind containers of cereal and headed for the servants' stair. My favorite chef knew me well. I rounded up the old, creaky steps to the second floor past some of the coven members' living quarters.

Once I made it down the hall, I bounced up the steps for the coven elite quarters that took up the third floor. Before I got all the way to the landing, I ducked down into a crouch on the stairs, peeking around to see if anyone was in the hall. All it would take was for one of my brothers, Luce's wife, or any of my mother's leaders to see me, and my cover would be blown.

Maybe I can pretend I've been locked in my room with a headache for the past twenty-four hours.

I watched my sister-in-law leave her suite, an open spell book in her hands. She was humming, not watching where she was going as she headed for the grand staircase to go down to dinner. Once she had rounded the corner for the main stairs, I made a break for it. I scurried down the hall and got all the way to my door. The moment my fingers wrapped around the brass knob, I heard one of the other doors open.

"Serenity Kay, where have you been?"

Busted.

I glanced over my shoulder to find my stepfather, Marcus Augustus. He was standing in the doorway to the private den that was nestled between his and my mother's suite and Adrian's.