MY STEPBROTHERS, MY RUIN

Thalia's POV

The bathroom stall exploded inward.

Dorian's claws found my throat first, slamming me against the metal panel hard enough to dent it. My skull cracked against the edge. White-hot pain exploded behind my eyes.

"Happy birthday, hybrid," he growled, his wolf form massive in the confined space, brown fur bristling with anger. "We have a special present for you."

I couldn't breathe. His claws pressed into my windpipe, cutting off air, cutting off everything except the raw animal panic flooding my veins.

Damon's jaws clamped around my leg. His fangs punched through skin, grinding against bone.

I screamed.

"There it is," Dracula laughed, his black wolf form blocking the only exit. The bathroom door was locked. "Music to my ears."

Dorian released my throat and I collapsed, gasping, choking on my own spit and blood. The tile floor was freezing against my cheek. Above me, three fully-shifted wolves circled like sharks scenting blood.

Four hours earlier, they'd cornered me by the lockers.

"Eighteen today, right Thalia?" Dorian had said, he was still human and cruel. He'd ripped my Student Union President badge off my jacket and crushed it under his boot. "Old enough to know better. Still too stupid to leave."

Damon had shoved me into the lockers hard enough to rattle my teeth. "We've been planning something special. A birthday present you'll never forget."

Dracula's smile had been pure evil. "Meet us third floor bathroom. Last period. Be there, or we'll drag you there."

I'd known. God, I'd known what was coming. But what choice did I have? Run, and they'd hunt me through the school. Fight, and I'd lose, I always lost.

So I'd walked into my own death with my head held high.

Dorian's claws found my ribs. He didn't slash, he pressed, slowly increasing pressure until I felt my bones start to bend. The pain was insane.

"Feel that?" His voice was barely human. "That's what happens to hybrids who think they're special."

The pressure increased it made me scream.

My ribs snapped like breadsticks.

The pain was everything. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything except exist in this perfect moment of pain while Dorian stood over me, watching me break with those cold eyes of his.

Damon's jaws clamped around my thigh. Fangs sank deep, grinding against my femur. I tried to escape, but there was nowhere to go. The stall walls pressed in on all sides. His teeth were in my bone.

Dracula circled closer, his breath hot against my neck. "We promised you a birthday you'd never forget. Hope you're taking notes."

Through tears and blood, I caught my reflection in the cracked mirror mounted above the sink. A nightmare stared back at me. Dark hair plastered to my skull. Skin looked as pale as a corpse except where bruises were already purple-black.

"Look at the Student Union President now," Dorian snarled, shifting back to human form. Naked and not ashamed, he grabbed my hair and wrenched my head back, forcing me to meet his stare. "Where's all that intelligence now, hybrid? Where's that perfect GPA?"

"Still... smarter... than you," I choked out.

He slammed my face into the tile. My nose crunched. Blood exploded across the floor, hot and coppery and mine.

"Broken," Damon said, human now too, pulling his jeans on over his muscular frame. "That's what you are, Thalia. A broken, defective hybrid who can't shift. Eighteen years old and still human. It's pathetic."

Dracula leaned against the door, fully dressed, examining his nails like he hadn't just been mauling me in wolf form. "Your father's weak. Your mother's human trash. And you?" He laughed. "You're the punch line to a joke nobody finds funny anymore."

And then they left. The door slammed. The lock clicked open from outside.

I lay in my own blood, with a broken nose, about four cracked bones and bites marks on my legs and arms. Bruises everywhere.

But I was alive, and that meant I could still fight.

I dragged myself to the sink, leaving a smear of blood across the white tile. My reflection was a horror show. Blood streamed from my nose, my lip, the gash on my forehead. My shirt hung in tatters.

The hallway was a crowd of stares and whispers. Students pressed against lockers as I limped past, their eyes tracking my wounds like wolves watching prey bleed out.

Hybrid scum.

Did you see her face?

Why doesn't she just die already?

Each whisper was a stab to my chest. But I kept walking, kept my spine straight even though my ribs screamed with every breath.

The afternoon sun burned like acid when I finally pushed through the school's front doors. My vision swam. The world tilted. I caught myself against a brick wall and vomited blood onto the dead grass.

Home was six blocks away but it took me forty minutes to walk it.

Our house squatted at the end of the Street like something that was diseased, peeling paint, sagging porch, windows dark even in daylight. The lawn was yellow and dead.

But it was home. Dad would be inside, probably drunk on cheap whiskey, but he'd help me clean up. He'd tell me in his weak, trembling voice that things would get better. He'd lie, and I'd let him, because today I really needed that lie.

I pushed open the front door.

The living room was full of wolves.

Twenty pack members stood in a circle, their faces solemn, their scents heavy with false sympathy. All of them surrounding our threadbare couch like mourners at a wake.

Because that's what this was. A wake.

My father's body lay perfectly still on the couch, hands folded across his chest. Someone had dressed him in his one good shirt. Someone had closed his eyes.

But they couldn't hide the bruises around his throat.

The purple-black fingerprints that looked exactly like the ones now decorating my ribs.

"No," I whispered.

But he didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just lay there, perfectly still, while the world tilted sideways and my broken ribs screamed and blood from my nose dripped onto our carpet.

"No. No. No."

My legs gave out.

I hit the floor hard, and this time, I couldn't stop screaming.

My father's body. Laid out like he was sleeping. But he wasn't,he was dead.

My father was dead.