by Watson, Rhea
Falling.
Falling fast without a parachute.
And loving every second of it.
13
Alecto
I had no idea where this was headed—or what had come over me in the dining hall. Tonight had just been such a shitshow, and not because anything went wrong, per se. All things considered, Yule had gone off without a hitch: solid speech from Jack, epic dinner with individual teeny Yule log cakes for dessert, then a dance in a transformed dining hall that looked like an ice queen’s palace.
But the kids had been miserable, totally unimpressed with the music choices, the early curfew, and the grossly watered-down eggnog. From the moment Iris had announced she and her admin cronies would be organizing things, nixing the student council who usually put on the larger sabbat celebrations, I’d expected as much. Iris Prewett might have been the bitchiest witch I had ever met in a professional setting, but at least she stayed consistent—always ready to meet your expectations, good or bad.
Trapped behind the drinks table all night, I found no amount of smiling or joking with my kids made a difference. By the end of it, when the lights came up and the music died, I was just… exhausted. From the performance, pretending this was on par with Samhain when it was clearly a snoozefest. From the weather, the highlands drowning in frigid rain for the last three weeks. From midterms and a new batch of moody, surly, angry kids whose covens or packs hadn’t wanted to deal with during the holidays.
From Benedict Hammond sniffing around me at every turn.
From pretending to be flattered at the attention, if only to keep him on the line.
Just—wiped out.
Then along came Bjorn and it all disappeared. This man trailing after me in the dimly lit staff tower stairwell, this vampire holding up my dress not so he could sneak a peek but so it didn’t drag through the dust—he was everything I wanted at the end of a shit day. His smile. His warmth. The way his eyes still managed to be soft and cozy and welcoming despite being the iciest of blues.
At a time like this, I just wanted him to hold me.
Whisper in my ear. Crack a joke that only we were in on. Smile. Look at me like he always did when he thought I didn’t notice.
He was the port in the storm, my constant safety net, my fuzzy, weighted blanket.
Most of all, in nothing more than a look, Bjorn made me feel like the center of the universe—the center of his universe.
No one had ever done that before. Not past flings. Not previous boyfriends. Not my grandparents, who loved me unconditionally but were never very warm.
They saw too much of my parents in me, maybe, having my mom’s eyes and my dad’s laugh. I never went without, but I never quite got what I needed emotionally, either.
Enter Bjorn—who looked at me like I was the sun, eyes full of wonder. Who waltzed without music, who swept me away from the dining hall with his hand snug on my lower back, our friendship on the backburner for something more.
I’d pushed it all down—the physical attraction, the soulmate potential I saw in him. Fought it. Pretended it wasn’t there. Told myself over and over again that friendships were forever, while flings with your roommate screwed everything up.
But this didn’t feel wrong.
It didn’t feel like we were screwing everything up with our fingers loosely entwined, me leading the way up the winding staircase, a breathtaking vampire at my back.
There to catch me if I fell.
That was Bjorn.
I would never risk him, but as the air crackled all around us, tense with excitement and promise and anticipation…
This felt right.
So, fuck it.
Maybe we went back to the flat and cuddled on the couch until I fell asleep.
Maybe he kissed me up against the door.
Maybe I hauled him into my room and kept him all to myself until sunset tomorrow.
Whatever happened, happened.
Things had always come naturally to us. We hadn’t said anything since leaving the dining hall, cleanup duties forgotten, and, frankly, we hadn’t needed to say anything. Comfortable in the electricity, we had drifted to the staff tower together, our hands seeking each other out on the stairs.
And now we were almost at the fourth floor, almost home, and gone were the fears of the past, the anxieties about the future. He put me in the now; it was one of the greatest gifts this vampire could ever give—and he had no fucking clue how much it meant to me.
Heart in my throat, I led him slowly around the final turn, the soft click of my heels echoing off the stone. Anytime I glanced back, just a little peek over my shoulder, I found his gaze on my ass.
Fair enough.
Despite the flouncy tulle, I was adding an extra sway in my hips—because that was where this night had taken us.
Up these stairs, right onto the landing, and—
Oh, fuck.
I staggered to a sudden stop, one foot caught on the last step, eyes wide and heart hammering.
Benedict Hammond leaned on our flat door, swathed in a fitted white suit that felt strangely modern for his traditional tastes, clutching a bouquet of long-stemmed white roses.
Uh. What. The fuck.
His thin lips twitched into a sneer, and, glowering, he pushed off the door and marched straight for me.
And for the first time since I had stumbled into him in this very stairwell, I held my ground without forcing myself to, standing tall and wearing a confused, albeit startled, expression that only seemed to piss him off more.
“Where the hell have you been, Alecto?”
The accusation—because it sure as fuck wasn’t a question, no matter the inflection at the end—threw me for a loop, and I jerked my hand out of Bjorn’s as I climbed onto the landing. “W-what?”
“Tonight was supposed to be something special,” Benedict snarled, jostling the roses as if to prove a point. “I thought we were finally on the same page.”
“I… What?”
“I’ll give you two a moment,” Bjorn muttered as he sidestepped this farce and headed for the door. Head down. Back to me. Sounding weird and off and put out and no. Benedict did not get to ruin this for us.
“No, Bjorn,” I sputtered, reaching out for him, “wait—”
But he was already inside, the door closing softly behind him. Fury thrummed through my veins with every raging beat of my heart, because how the fuck could he leave me out here with Benedict? How could he look at this absurd situation, assume the fucking worst, and walk away?
Bjorn was better than that.
Benedict, meanwhile, hadn’t so much as glanced his way, and he didn’t seem fazed by the vampire’s absence. Instead, he stalked into my eyeline, right into my face, and shoved the rose bouquet into my numb hands. I instinctively grabbed hold of them, pleased that the stems had lost their thorns at some point.
“I waited all night for you,” Benedict sneered. He swept a hand over his slicked-back hair, dark eyes darting around like he didn’t want an audience for this particular conversation.
Same, asshole.
Also, it was barely pushing eleven o’clock.
Fucking chill.
“I…” Want to slit your throat and watch you bleed out. “I literally have no idea what is happening right now.”
I mean, I hadn’t been blackout drunk lately, so there was no way I would have forgotten a conversation about us meeting up privately for Yule.
Because drunk or not, I never would have agreed to it.
Not only was this warlock bigot a murdering psychopath, but he was a delusional murdering psychopath.
Great.
“You know what’s happening between us,” Benedict whispered heatedly as he shoved a trembling finger in my face. His mouth arced into a manic smile, but his black eyes burned bright and hot enough to make my knees wobble—to remind me that as much as I hated him, there was a reason to fear him, too. “Don’t deny it. We’ve been dancing around this for weeks now, and here y
ou are, holding some vampire’s hand—”
“Please leave.” It took every ounce of self-control I had not to scream it in his face. As desperate as I was to argue, to deny this ridiculous claim and state—for a fact—that we hadn’t made plans of any kind for tonight, there was no point. He was too worked up, already foaming at the mouth, and nothing I said or did now would change that.
Well.
If I fell to my knees and begged for forgiveness, that would probably make all this stop.
Apologize profusely, maybe even kiss him.
But then I’d vomit up that slightly too-sweet Yule log dessert cake—and I liked this dress.
Bjorn was the only man I wanted to kiss tonight, and this scumbag had chased him away with his fucking psychosis.
Jaw clenched tight enough to make the muscles flare, Benedict just glared down at me. In the last five and a half months, I had learned a lot about the warlock who’d torn my world to shreds. Tonight, I could add another adjective to the list: bully. From the way he invaded my personal space, used his size to intimidate, chewed me out in front of my roommate for no reason other than his fragile ego had been bruised and his delusion shattered—Benedict Hammond was a fucking bully.
I didn’t put up with bullies. Not in my classroom, and certainly not at my front door.
“Now,” I said firmly, stepping aside and pointing to the shadowy stairwell beyond the landing. “Leave—now.”
“We can be so much more, Alecto,” he told me with a shake of his head and a patronizing sigh. His voice might have softened as he meandered toward the steps, but his aura sizzled out a warning like an electric barbed-wire fence. Touch him and I was toast. “A warlock of my prestige, a witch of your talent and beauty—we could really be something.”
A few steps down, he rounded in place and planted a hand on the wall, pausing as if giving me one last chance to realize my mistake. I might have started to shake, my insides a furious mess, but I held my ground, expression frosty and body itching for a fight. Ten painfully long seconds later, Benedict shook his head again and turned away.
“I’m so disappointed in you.”
I stood there, trembling and listening to his footsteps on the stone, each one an assault. Misty-eyed with righteous fury, when I finally blinked, hot wet tracks sliced down my cheeks.
“Fuck you.” Whether he heard that or not was anyone’s guess, the curse leaving my lips like a wolf’s low warning growl, but the footsteps stopped—briefly—then started up again. A moment later, the portrait door four floors down slammed shut.
Like he had any right to be angry at me, disappointed with me. If anything, I owned every drop of rage and disappointment with both the men involved in this interaction, and, still clutching the white roses, I stormed into our flat like a hurricane.
Silence and Bjorn’s closed bedroom door greeted me. No lights in the bathroom. No glow of the TV. No socked feet dangling over the edge of the couch. Still shell-shocked, I went straight over and tapped my knuckles on his door.
Nothing. No response, not even a floorboard creak.
What the fuck?
Was there something in the air tonight that made Root Rot men behave irrationally? One that turned them into idiots who just refused to listen?
I knocked again, louder and firmer this time, but couldn’t bring myself to call his name. He knew it was me. He could probably hear my heartbeat whumping between my ears, pounding in my throat. Still shaking, I glared down at the roses, furious—but also suddenly terrified of what had just happened. Benedict’s rage over nothing threw a wrench in my plans to string him along, because maybe all my tepid smiles and fake laughs had hooked him harder than I’d thought.
And Bjorn wasn’t here to save me this time. No raft. No life preserver. No weighted blanket at the end of a shit day. He was just… gone.
As much as he gave me with his attention, he could take, too, and with a snap of his fingers, my world could fall apart.
Did he think Benedict and I were some secret couple?
As if I wouldn’t have already told him—
Maybe the argument had given him the chance to rethink things. Maybe he was doing what I should have done in the dining hall: put a stop to this before we changed, before we chose the dead-end road to nowhere. Second thoughts, regrets, doubts, a desire not to ruin what we had—all valid. All things he was allowed to feel, of course.
There were so many logical, rational reasons not to push beyond our friendship.
If I lost him because of bullshit like this, I might never recover.
As a friend, he would always be there.
Crossing that line was a risk—one that didn’t always pay off.
But he wasn’t just a friend. Not anymore. I had never felt this way about my friends… Never craved them like I craved him.
And I’d thought he felt the same…
Maybe I had read it wrong.
Maybe he had wanted to give in to the physical attraction, then realized his mistake.
Maybe we were both just caught up in the magic of Yule.
So many maybes and nothing for certain.
I refused to knock a third time. Instead, I wanted to hurl this bouquet into the potbelly stove we never used and set it on fire.
But it wasn’t the roses’ fault—they’d just had the misfortune of being picked by a psychopath. So, angry, bitter tears still streaking silently down my face, I put them on the desk in my bedroom.
Then just stood there, again, chest starting to shudder through every breath, another meltdown on the horizon. So much pent-up emotion—jogging wasn’t enough to leech out the poison. Neither was vodka or movie nights with Bjorn.
Sex with Gavriel wasn’t healthy, but even if I went there tonight, it wouldn’t be enough to shut it all off.
Make it stop.
So, I left the flat. Climbed up to the eleventh floor in my sparkly silver heels, taking yet another risk for the night. I needed a hard reset after—that.
Needed to center myself.
Find my bearings.
And…
Jack lived on the eleventh floor, right below the staffroom, him and Iris neighbors, and as I stood on the landing, glancing between two doors, Flat A and B, a little voice told me to walk away. We hadn’t discussed the spanking. Hadn’t agreed to meet again. Hadn’t pushed professional boundaries.
But I couldn’t take another breakdown. Couldn’t sob in the shower or wail into my pillow, frustrated and furious and guilt-stricken and so horribly alone.
With his rough hand, I could skip all that. Find my normal again without the usual pain.
Or, more accurately, with pain.
I had no idea which apartment belonged to the headmaster, but it seemed odd that his assistant would get Flat A, rumored to be the larger of the two on every floor. So that was where I went. Briefly, I eyed the copper plate, like I needed to confirm over and over again that this was, in fact, Flat A, and slowly raised my fist…
Then threw caution to the wind and knocked.
14
Jack
For the first time in a dreadfully long time, I had called it a day before midnight.
Barely after eleven and I’d already changed out of my suit, folded and put it away, and completed my bedtime routine. Flossed, water-picked, and brushed my teeth. Washed my face and patted it dry with a fresh towel. Just moisturizing left to go and then… bed.
How I’d fall asleep after such a bloody awful night was beyond me, but I was determined to try. Iris had been so ridiculous about Yule in the weeks leading up to it, bragging about the night like it would be the event to put all others to shame. Her girls had even shirked most of their actual work all week to meet their mistress’s demands, and then—that. A horrid night where no one looked happy, accompanied by piano and nothing but sugar cookies as far as the eye could see. Miserable students cloistered at the tables, very few willing to stand an arm’s length apart and sway on an empty dance floor, while annoyed faculty man
ned the workstations as Iris flitted around nitpicking them all night.
And I had… watched.
And I hated that.
Unfortunately, Iris had nestled deep into the pockets of the high council long ago, which meant a power imbalance had slowly but surely blossomed between us since Samhain. Any slight step out of line and she could report me, add that final strike to my file and have me sacked by the new year.
In all other scenarios, of course I would overrule her, but I hadn’t thought twice about giving her free rein over an equinox celebration. We were of the same supernatural tribe, after all, and initially I thought she would understand the significance of making tonight something special.
A brief spark in the darkness.
A shining light in the bleak, miserable days of winter in the highlands.
But no.
She had to screw it up royally enough that the student body would dread every future sabbat.
On top of everything, she had the nerve to strut around afterward like the night had been a roaring success.
Ridiculous.
I could barely hold my tongue at that point.
Yet that wasn’t what had sent me off. Standing in front of my gilded en suite bathroom mirror now, I scooped a dollop of moisturizer from its tin, then got to work on massaging it into my face, my stubble, and my neck. Every so often, I caught my reflection’s gaze in the mirror, and a white-hot jolt of shame flashed through me.
I had left the dining hall because of Bjorn and Alecto.
Watching them rock on the dance floor, knowing what a terrible little dancer that witch was after having personally led her through a waltz on Samhain—it had done something to me.
At first, a strange warm and fuzzy feeling swelled in my chest. As desperate as I was to put her on her knees at my feet and rope a collar around her neck, I wasn’t in a place to give her that: public affection, intimate glances, a protective embrace that frightened off potential suitors.
But Bjorn could. After all, there were no rules about interfaculty relationships.
He could give her what she needed and more.
