Daughter of Stars and Nightmares (The Eternal Bond Saga book 1)

Life's a Beach

Screams mingled with the alarm clock as it blared. It took a moment for the haze of the nightmare to lift before Julia's arm shot out and slapped the alarm off.

Julia didn't get up; instead she lay in bed as her mind tried clawing back the details of the dream as all of its intricate facets started to fade away. Warm salty tears cascaded down her face. She scrubbed them away, cursing the fact she could never remember the details of the dreams that plagued her. Julia kicked the tangled sheets off and rolled out of bed determined not to let anything get her down. Today was the first day of her senior year; putting her one-step closer to her goal of leaving Havenswood.

Ryland Parks High school

Julia strolled down the third floor hallways of the beautiful four story modern high school building to her class. Looking around at the snotty cliques made her long to be back in Europe.

A smile ghosted her lips when she remembered how April Morgana the leader of one of the shapeshifter cliques boasting about knowing everything there was to know about European supernatural society. How over there they were the worst for segregation and formality. That if you were not of pureblood, from a noble lineage then no one would give you the time of day let alone speak to you. April used to tease Julia about the fact that in a school filled with magic she couldn't even conjure something simple. And seeing as Julia was less than useless she should just stay in Havenswood and get a job picking up trash because that was all she was good for.

However, Julia's summer in Europe had proven that April was full of it. Julia and her friends had been welcomed everywhere they went and no one even cared that Julia couldn't use her powers. In fact, the people they spent time with were more interested in helping her to harness what little powers she had.

Julia sighed longingly remembering those happy days and thought, high school is far worse, as she looked around the bleak yet brightly coloured halls.

Ryland Parks High was a school with a strict hierarchy and bullies like April were ruthless at making sure everyone knew where they stood in the pecking order. At the top were the full blood light fae. Then came the full-blooded witches and warlocks, divided by their abilities; the more elements and magic a person could use the more popular they were. After that, there were the shapeshifters, inugamis and other yokai.

Under the full bloods were all the mixed bloods: light fae and witches, light fae and yokai or witches and shifters, yokai and witches and so on. Below them were those unfortunates that were mixed with humans, and at the bottom were the ones, like Julia, that had little or no powers.

Julia knew that if it wasn't for her strong group of friends, who stuck together no matter what, she would've been a lonely outcast.

As Abby, Ella and Kuro walked off to their first period class Julia waved goodbye to three of the four that made up her group of misfits. Abby and Ella Shadowmist were twins; they were half-shifter, half-light fae. Unfortunately for them, they had no faerie magic. Their father was an elf, one of the worker races of light fae. Elves were master artisans, but they had no magic other than the ability to craft anything. Despite this, the twins were powerful shifters.

Kuro Kaminari was a pureblood inugami from Japan. He met Ella when they were fourteen. Her mom had taken the twins to Japan to learn about yokai and how to transform into them. It was love at first sight, and much to the annoyance of his clan and her parents, he followed her back to Havenswood.

Julia turned and looked out the windows at the dense woodland that bordered the school and thought, thank the gods this is my last year in this crummy town. The minute I graduate, I am out of here and I don't care where I go as long as it's far away from here.