Becoming Null

The four hulking Valkar brothers stand menacingly before me, blocking out the dim light of the room. They look like absolute, terrifying gods sculpted from pure wrath and privilege, with their rippling muscles and glowing, predatory eyes. Zavros smirks wickedly, his grip still incredibly tight on my chin, forcing my head up. Beside him, his identical twin, Kavros, glares at me with the exact same intense, fiery anger from our violent physical encounter at the gym. Standing quietly behind them is a timid brother with glowing grey eyes, alongside a slightly slimmer, long-haired brother wearing a deeply arrogant sneer.

With a blinding, supernatural speed that my human eyes can barely process, Kavros darts forward. Before I can even flinch, he bolts his massive, muscular arms tightly around my body, completely locking me in place against his rock-hard chest. I wriggle furiously, trying to kick my way out, but there is absolutely no give in his suffocating, iron hold.

The other brothers casually flip through a pile of physical photos of my mother. Zavros shakes his head in sheer disbelief. "That conniving bitch," he sneers, placing his hands on his hips. "She really strategized this whole thing. Strategically married Thorne just to get her kid into Lunisriver, and now she's repeating the process."

The long-haired brother pauses his inspection of the photos to rake his skin-crawling, disgusted gaze over my struggling body. It is a look of absolute revulsion. "At least her mother had looks," he mocks smoothly, tossing the pictures to the timid brother. "This chick looks like she just crawled out of a raw sewer."

"Oh, fuck you!" I shout, my voice echoing loudly. Struggling furiously against Kavros's iron, suffocating grip, I spit back, "My mother didn't trap anyone! She and Alaric actually love each other."

Zavros merely scoffs, his glowing eyes dripping with pure condescension. "Please. Thorne isn't dumb enough to genuinely fall for a gold-digging whore."

Seeing pure red at the severe insult to my only family, my survival instincts violently take over. I resort to my absolute only available weapon: my teeth. I whip my head down and sink my teeth violently into the thick, dense muscle of Kavros's arm belted tightly across my chest. Warm, metallic blood instantly floods my mouth, coating my tongue in a sickening copper taste.

The sudden, sharp pain forces Kavros to yelp and immediately drop his hold on me. I scramble frantically backward, my hands scraping the floor until I have my enemies dead ahead of me. The other brothers look on in complete, disgusted shock. The long-haired one scoffs, mocking that I might have just infected Kavros with a filthy scavenger disease.

Kavros violently shakes off his bleeding arm, glaring down at me with a presence that is terrifyingly menacing. The blood drips slowly from the deep teeth marks. He announces to his brothers with a low, rumbling growl, "Boys, I think we have ourselves another Null."

Zavros's lips stretch into a wide, cruel smile as he explicitly explains my new, horrific reality. "As a Null—the absolute lowest, most degraded tier of the school population—you will be completely shunned by the entire student body and banished to live in the freezing, dirt-floor basement."

"You can't possibly expect me to go along with that," I snap, stubbornly refusing to accept their privileged, elitist dictates.

Kavros simply states, "We don't think. We know."

Absolutely sick to death of dealing with these arrogant, abusive men, I reach deep into my pocket. My fingers wrap securely around the cold, reassuring handle of the iron dagger Nyssa gave me. Feigning a staggering, pathetic weakness to lower their guard, I slump my shoulders. Then, I suddenly lunge forward at Kavros. I yank the blade out and slash the heavy iron through the air, pressing the offensive. I back him dangerously close to the stone wall, entirely convinced I have him cornered.

But exactly as I move to deliver my final, desperate blow, my wrist is caught mid-air. In a brutal, violent blur, I am launched entirely off my feet, flying helplessly through the air and slamming agonizingly onto my back. The impact violently knocks the wind from my lungs.

Kavros's full, crushing body weight instantly pins me to the hard floor, his knee digging heavily into my thigh as the cold metal of my own dagger is pressed firmly and dangerously against my throbbing neck.

"You're so young," Kavros coos directly into my ear, his hot breath brushing my skin and betraying my body with an unwanted, deeply humiliating flush of arousal. My nipples pebble hard against my shirt, a mortifying biological reaction to his overwhelming Alpha proximity. He whispers darkly that it's not a weapon that makes a hunter, but skill—something I clearly lack.

My pride shatters into a million jagged pieces as I am confronted with the harsh reality that my fiercely guarded physical power is absolutely nothing against the sheer, genetic strength embedded in their Alpha blood.

Zavros steps over me, taunting from above that I am already completely ruined, looking entirely pathetic on the floor. Refusing to shed a single tear, I bite the inside of my cheek, turn my head, and spit directly at his expensive shoes. It is a defiant act that only makes the brothers laugh harder at my utter misery.

Two pairs of hands roughly drag me to my feet, forcefully shoving a drab, ugly grey vest over my head. Kavros pulls out his phone, snapping a humiliating photo of my disheveled, mud-stained state. He turns the screen to show me, his lips curled into a malicious smirk as he uploads it to Instagram. The bold caption declares me a *SEWER RAT* and warns the entire school of the newest Null.

"Welcome to the miserable world of The Nulls," Kavros declares smoothly.

I look up from my deep humiliation and make direct eye contact with Kaelar, who has been silently watching this entire brutal execution from the shadows. The timid brother tuts softly, the innocent facade completely melting away as he breaks into a smile so profoundly devious and deeply satisfied, it sends a violent, icy shudder cascading down my spine.