My Three Complicated Mates

RAYNA'S POVThe next time I opened my eyes, at least four faces were staring down at me.What the fuck had happened to me? I felt a hand on my arm and I was made to sit up."Phew." A boy with black hair dyed at the tip heaved a sigh of relief. "I thought she was dead."Dead???The nurse came up to me and gently touched my forehead, causing me to yelp in pain."What happened to me?" I asked, trying to sit up. My head felt like I was being hit repeatedly with a sledge hammer, even as I squinted to lessen the pain."You fainted,” said the boy with the frosted tips. He held up the ball as evidence, like I needed a visual aid. "Right after hitting Tio, it was pretty funny.”“Funny," I repeated. "I'm not sure that's the right word here..."The nurse pressed something cold to the side of my skull and I hissed. "You have a contusion from hitting your head on the pavement," she said. "Sit still for twenty minutes or I'll call your parents."No!I didn't have parents. I had a mother who used a

RAYNA'S POV"Rayna!" The voice came again, louder this time. I spun round but it was just me and four walls and a ceiling that wouldn't stay still."Who's there?" I called out but there was no answer. I moved to the window and closed it to stop the noise. Outside it was windy and the branches of the tree next to my window kept hitting it.“Rayna!” I heard the voice again.“Whoever you are, this is not funny!” I turned frantically around the room. But It was just me.Suddenly it felt like hands had clamped down right around my throat. I couldn't breathe. The same way mother's hand used to find it when words weren't enough for her anymore. I was six years old the first time she did that. The pressure tightened and the room spun. I fell to the floor, hitting my head hard and then it was gone — all of it — and so was I.—I felt the cold floor against my cheek and the morning light sparkling through the window.I lay still for a moment, taking stock of everything slowly. From my Head ba

RAYNA'S POV“I... I didn't,” I stuttered, my voice cracking as I shook my head, taking a blind step backward away from the hand Mother had just raised.A gasp wheezed out of me as the stinging heat of the slap burned across my left cheek, a sharp, familiar agony that had defined my entire childhood.It didn't make me shrink down into myself like it always did before though. It just made the blood roar louder in my ears as I felt my muscles curl tighter.“Don't you dare lie to me!” Mother shrieked, her chest heaving beneath her expensive woolen coat as she pointed a manicured, trembling finger right at my nose.“You've been ungrateful and deceitful since the day you were born! You ruin everything you touch, and now you come here, dragging our family name into the mud, pretending to be your sister! Have you no shame?! You should be embarrassed, Rayna!”“Please do not hit her again, Mrs. Collins,” the vice principal said.Beside our mom, Michelle stood with her arms tightly crossed over

RAYNA'S POVI woke up in a hazy daze, lying flat on my back in my own bed, tucked securely beneath the heavy blankets. I blinked sluggishly, my mind sluggish and disoriented.“Ugh,” I groaned softly as I tried to retrace the steps of how I'd gotten from the bathroom floor back into bed. I certainly didn't remember crawling under the sheets…Then my eyes snapped wide open. The memory of the golden mirror, the burning wrist, and the voice rushed back like a physical blow. I bolted upright with a gasp…only to yelp in sheer terror as a dark shadow shifted in the corner of my room.“Just lay back down and sleep, Rayna,” a low, smooth voice murmured.I blinked hard, straining against the shadows until the dark figure standing near my desk suddenly came into focus, so clear It was as though the lights were on.It was one of them.“Hey, calm down…” he held out a hand, “it's me...”“Zed?” I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. “What are you... how did you even get

RAYNA'S POVThe heavy doors of the main entrance to the administrative block slammed shut behind me, effectively cutting off Michelle's venomous threats and Tio's infuriating, mocking smirk.I had no idea how I walked away from them without tripping but I did. And now I stood in the large, echoing foyer, pressing the heels of my hands hard against my burning eyes then slowly lowering them as I stared at the large picture frames of past students and probably past and present academic leaders.I refused to cry. I had spent twenty years letting my mother's ill treatments weigh me down, and I wasn't about to break down in the middle of a hallway because my pampered stepsister had decided to show up and play the righteous victim after I did what I had to do to escape them.Deep breath in. Slow breath out.I dropped my hands, squared my shoulders, and glared at the empty, marbled lobby. The only problem was that Elmor College wasn't just a school, it felt more like a labyrinth designed by a