The First Breaking - Mary Langley

They told her the system would keep her safe.

They lied.

In 1800s New Orleans, the daughters of the most powerful supernatural bloodlines are sent behind the iron gates of an elite academy where monsters are not merely educated-but controlled.

Clarisa Raby was never meant to belong there.

An olive-skinned Creole vampire with unstable abilities and no powerful family to protect her, Clarisa enters the academy already marked as lesser. Bullied by students, dismissed by faculty, and trapped within a hierarchy designed to break girls like her, she quickly learns that survival depends on obedience.

But Clarisa was never made for obedience.

Because beneath the academy lies something ancient-something woven into the very foundation of the school itself. A force that watches from beneath the corridors and calls to Clarisa in whispers no one else can hear.

And the more the system tries to control her...

The more it begins to unravel.

Caught between violent rivalries, buried secrets, and a dangerous connection to the entity beneath the academy, Clarisa finds herself drawn to the mysterious fae student Jean Baptiste-a boy with his own scars, his own history with the system, and truths that may destroy everything she believes about the school.

Including what she is becoming.

As the academy descends into chaos and the hidden purpose behind its existence begins to emerge, Clarisa must make an impossible choice:

Submit to the system that was built to contain monsters...

Or destroy it before it consumes everyone inside.

Because some girls are taught to obey.

Some are taught to endure.

But Clarisa Raby-

Was born to break everything.