by Watson, Rhea
Maybe.
It seemed rather at home beside my bed.
While I had a few places in mind that could provide privacy and safety for Alecto and me, I didn’t descend into my usual racing thoughts as soon as the lights cut out. No pros and cons list. No this or that. No admonishments, and certainly no ruminating over the failures of the day.
Not the usual routine at all.
Instead, as soon as my head hit the pillow, the T-shirt Alecto had worn draped over my ornate headboard, I was out.
Snoring like a chainsaw.
Dead to the world… with a smile on my face.
15
Bjorn
Eleven long bells chimed from the staffroom’s grandfather clock.
But you’d need a vampire’s supersonic hearing to detect them over the cacophony of this year’s New Year’s Eve party.
Eleven o’clock—one hour to midnight. It had been chaos since things started at nine, and even though it was just a Tuesday and we all had classes tomorrow, no holidays permitted midway through the second term like other academies, I had a feeling no one would be calling it a night anytime soon.
Instead, tomorrow morning they would be forced to drag their hungover, exhausted shells down to the dining hall for breakfast, or maybe lunch at the rate some of my colleagues were drinking. Little did any of the students know, but tomorrow was a guaranteed easy day—a write-off of epic proportions for everyone but me.
And Jack, actually, who was still nursing the same bourbon in his usual crystal tumbler, circulating the fringes of tonight’s party with a look in his eye that suggested he would rather be anywhere but here.
Anywhere but surrounded by pissed, sloppy professors who had turned our sacred table into an epic—and very much ongoing—beer pong tournament.
Like Jack, I clung to the outskirts, leaning against a cool windowpane and watching it all unfold at a distance. This term had really cemented the cavernous pit between myself and the rest of them, and not even the spirit of December 31, the promise of a new year, new me, could change that.
While Samhain was the supernatural new year for many witches and warlocks, the rest of us still recognized the last night of December as the night to party before another year rolled in. Drinking, feasting, and dancing now plagued the staffroom, along with shrieking laughter and boisterous arguments that fell like artillery fire on my ears.
In an age gone by, this had been my scene.
Replace the stone walls and beautiful glass windows for wooden halls and raging fires and furs scattered across the floor and this would have been a typical night in my ancestral village.
And I’d have been in the thick of it, drunk and merry, singing and fighting and gambling.
Centuries later, I stood off to the side—watching.
After a quick sip from my thermos, a tepid AB-negative trickling down my throat and warming my belly, I glanced to the far right of the room—to the one witch I had been trying not to watch all night.
Alecto looked magnificent in green. While sequins and glittery embellishments had become the norm for New Year’s Eve attire, hers stood out as the most original. A lot of gold and silver around here, whereas my flatmate strode confidently amongst them in a shimmery pine-green dress that cut off around her upper thighs, the hemline tastefully jagged for visual interest. That asymmetry also appeared on the ends of her sleeves, which crept down to her delicate forearms. Formfitting, this outfit was unlike all the others she had worn this year: short, stylish, youthful. Rigid squared-off shoulders and a high neckline up to the hollow of her throat. All legs in that, hers made ever longer by the black heels.
Hair wild and free, curls flying everywhere, unfettered and untamed.
A smoky eye and a nude lip.
She was exquisite.
And she hadn’t looked at me. Not once.
Things had been off between us since Yule, the rhythm around our flat unnatural and forced. Worst of all, it was my doing. No denial here—no pointing the finger at her. I was the one acting like a child. Me. My fault. But I couldn’t help it: seeing her with Cedar that night, the night I intended to change everything, had made me question things. Try as I might, the two of them together, bickering, him with flowers and her yanking her hand out of mine, brought the insecurities of the last century into startling focus.
I had always been a confident man, even more sure of myself as a vampire.
Until the last few decades. Until vampire prejudice really took its toll. Until colleagues shunned me and students tried to kill me and everyone snickered about my innate weaknesses behind closed doors.
I could handle it.
For the sake of my orphaned vampire students, I had to take the bullshit in stride.
But throw Alecto into the mix, a witch whose absence rocked my whole world, and I was fucked.
Clueless and fumbling through things like I was just a teenager myself.
We stumbled around in this relationship purgatory together, her and me, and I hated it. No other woman had set me off like this before, made me spiral and question everything.
A deeply insecure part of me had decided she was just entertaining me that night.
Trying to keep the peace in our flat.
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe she had planned to kiss me despite her dalliance with Cedar—
I glared up at my forehead, lost in thought, and then blinked down at my thermos when the metal warped under my slowly tightening fist. Right. This was reason enough not to change our dynamic, because I couldn’t fucking stand this—the not knowing, the questions, the festering sore that oozed all over our relationship.
One that hurt worse with every day I acted like a twat.
Usually I could swallow my pride and push down the hurt.
But it was like Alecto Clarke had changed my brain chemistry.
Bewitched me with all that vanilla and laughter, cozy conversations and movie marathons…
With her constant presence, her willingness, her eagerness, to stand by my side and glare down the haters.
I felt so deeply at this point—too deeply—that one wrong move and I was lost.
I—
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
Speak of the fucking devil. Ash Cedar strolled into the corner of my eye, blocking Alecto entirely, and I pushed off the window to rise to my full height. Draped in traditional robes, from the heavy brocade cloak to the stupid creased trousers that laced in the front, he radiated warlock snobbery in garnet, black, and gold, all the while reeking of butterscotch ale.
Nauseating, really.
“Green certainly is her color,” he mused, head cocked as he stared openly at my flatmate, not bothering to hide the way his coal-black eyes swept along her figure. Across the party, Alecto was in the midst of being dragged into another round of tequila shots; from the strained smile and the wave of her hands, she didn’t want to partake, but one of the nurses shoved a shot glass into her hand anyway, protests falling on deaf ears.
Ash Cedar never talked to me. Never. Rarely ever acknowledged me, even if we were the only two in the room, but tonight he addressed me like we were fucking friends. Everything about his stance implied he basked in my discomfort, from the easy smile to the obvious leer, diving into my personal bubble and practically shoving his drink in my face. Stiff from top to bottom, I merely took a long sip of my own, the slosh of blood making the warlock grimace.
“Tonight is a really big night for us,” he remarked with a wistful sigh.
“What?” Fuck’s sake. I should have walked away—clearly he was doing this to rile me up, the fucking prick, but apparently I was a glutton for punishment these days.
“First kisses…” Cedar toasted me with his half-drunk mug. “You remember them for the rest of your life.”
Jaw clenched, I busied myself with the rest of the room, frosting over at the insinuation and doing nothing to hide it.
“We’ve been dancing around this for months now,” the warlock carried on, �
�but tonight is perfect. At midnight, Alecto and I will make it official in front of everyone.”
I sank my fangs into my tongue, hard enough to draw spurts of thick, cold blood, and said nothing.
“As her friend, I do hope we have your support.”
Then the fucker clapped me on the arm and waited, gripping my bicep, grinning up at me like he knew he had finally won the war. Once again, doubt reared its ugly head. Alecto had never mentioned Ash Cedar before, and we talked about everything. From students to her escapades with Gavriel, we shared our lives on the flat’s couch with no holds barred.
Open dialogue came naturally.
I should just ask her.
But maybe she had sensed my feelings ages ago and kept her truer affections—not just passing flings in the greenhouse—to herself.
Maybe she still had secrets.
I had no qualms that she’d slept with Gavriel—or that she remained attracted to him, her heart pounding whenever he was around, her temper rising, the spark between them deadly but exhilarating. Throw in Jack Clemonte, a warlock she seemed to share some strange, unspoken connection with, and we had quite the lovely little harem of males developing around Alecto Clarke. Both men had their pros and cons, but when I thought about it—the rare time I bothered, because her interest in them had never affected me before—Jack and Gavriel could do her some good.
And she could offer them the same.
A different perspective. A spot of growth. A fearless voice to call them on their haughty shit.
She did it with me all the time.
Ash Cedar offered her nothing but traditional values and prejudices and boring one-sided prattling…
They just didn’t make sense.
He had always rubbed me the wrong way, his pleasant façade in public just a mask that he peeled off in private around those he considered lesser.
Frankly, the thought of her wanting him made me question not only her character, but her judgment.
Which wasn’t fair—but here we were.
Cedar’s smile stretched wider, all teeth, a male trying to warn a rival away from his mate, and he then clapped me on the arm. He might have tried to make this one a hard hit, swinging fast and slapping firm, but it felt like nothing.
Like a toddler swatting ineffectually at a full-grown man, desperate to prove he too was strong.
“Thank you,” the warlock crooned. “Your silence speaks volumes, old man.”
As suddenly as he appeared, Ash Cedar left, drifting back to the party, sauntering through the throngs with his head held high.
“What the fuck was that about?” And cue Gavriel to take Cedar’s place at my side, popping into my personal space just as abruptly and bringing with him a whiskey cloud to smother the lingering syrupy butterscotch in the air. I glanced down, the fae and warlock roughly the same height, and then shook my head.
“Nothing.” My growl had Gavriel smirking. “Just Cedar being a cock like always.”
We both watched him guffaw with some of the aging warlock professors in the sitting area, lording over them on the couch and lapping up all the attention. Gavriel scoffed, arms crossed, his plum suit immaculate, right down to the snug vest, the silver tie, the polished oxfords, and the squared-off shoulders—but his expression gave away just how shit-faced he was already. Glossy, unfocused eyes. Flushed cheeks. Disdain out in the open for everyone tonight.
“Fucking wanker,” he muttered. If I didn’t watch him, things could take a messy turn. No idea what had set him off, but when he flicked those bleary eyes to the door, then up to the ceiling, I had a feeling I’d hear all about it—in excruciating detail—very soon.
As the distance between me and Alecto grew in the last ten days, so too had a routine I now shared with Gavriel: drinking and smoking on the staff tower roof. The night after Yule, I’d caught him clumsily climbing through the window on the top-floor landing, and while I stopped him, literally wrestled his drunk ass back inside, worried he was too pissed to remember to flap those black fae wings should he fall, I eventually agreed to accompany him out and up.
At first, I’d just wanted to keep him alive.
But then we started talking.
Talking turned to grousing, and suddenly I was up there nightly with him, usually around one in the morning, for a bitchfest that went on a good hour before we called it. It was our little secret, the first I shared with a colleague who wasn’t Alecto, and I… liked it.
The fae and I had a lot in common: two ancient warriors stuck in the present, trapped in the modern world where no one wielded a sword anymore to settle their problems. Not only that, but we old oaks were surrounded by saplings who didn’t understand us, couldn’t connect with us, and rarely made an effort to try.
Venting with someone who wasn’t Alecto had felt freeing.
I’d even started to look forward to it.
I just hadn’t expected he would bail on tonight’s festivities so early, but as he crudely loosened his tie and scowled at everyone in a five-foot radius, something told me he needed a little space and a nonjudgmental ear.
No telling what the problem was beyond the standard frustrations, but when I caught the fae studying Alecto, lingering on her face, her curves, her bare legs, I suddenly wondered if we shared more than our warrior past.
“Yes,” I told him, capping my thermos with its twisting lid and motioning to the door. “You good to fly?”
Usually the fae spirited me to the tower’s top, but if he was too out of it—or had beat me to it—I could climb up there, too.
Rather not damage the suit though, midnight black and impeccably tailored, one the few pieces in my collection that had cost a pretty penny.
“Yeah, yeah, ’m fine,” Gavriel rasped. Uh-huh. Sure. Definitely going to be a climbing night, what with him stinking of whiskey and swiping a full bottle from the bar table on his way to the door. I followed with a shake of my head, not caring if we missed the midnight celebrations in forty minutes.
I had no desire to watch Alecto kiss someone else tonight as twelve bells thundered through the party, Ash Cedar or otherwise, and from the glare Gavriel hurled at her over his shoulder before we left, he didn’t either.
16
Alecto
“Oh my gods… Is Gavriel talking to that painting?”
By two in the morning on the first of January, the shenanigans had finally dipped from a boil to a simmer. Music lowered, straight liquor switched to mixed drinks and water, we had crossed the threshold into the new year—and still had classes in the morning. If it had been a Friday or Saturday, the Root Rot staffroom would have been howling at this hour, but many had trickled out after midnight, leaving only the die-hard partiers behind.
And me.
Because… Well, Bjorn had bailed on midnight. No New Year’s Eve hugs or kisses on the cheek—nothing. And he had been super standoffish since the run-in with Benedict on Yule. Which sucked. The vampire was basically my best friend at this point, the one I’d been searching for all my life without ever realizing it, and now it just… It sucked.
The heart complicated everything. Because I was smitten with my best friend, and now he was ignoring me, and I didn’t want to go back to the flat where I knew he’d be awake and we would have yet another awkward run-in of us faking it until I went to bed.
Worst of all, I had no idea how to fix it. I might have shared everything with him, but Benedict Hammond was still a secret just for me. If I couldn’t tell Bjorn the truth, I refused to tell him a lie. So, we would stay stuck in this stupid fucking limbo until he got over whatever had set him off in the first place, or until I found a way to tell him without actually telling him and just—
Ugh. Gods. Coming down from tequila shots and champagne was the worst. I’d stopped drinking two hours ago and already the hangover headache was scratching behind my eyes. Those who had stayed behind nursed drinks to taper off, a bunch of us—nurses and faculty, the younger generation who out-partied the oldies at the last rag
er—currently slumped around the table we used for meetings and grading.
Tonight, it had hosted a beer pong tournament.
And was now sticky with dried beer, red plastic cups scattered everywhere, upturned and on their sides and way too reminiscent of my post-grad academy days.
While most of us were at the table, a few of the sophisticated bunch sat on the couches by the hearth. A flirty pair whispered at the window. Jack had just gone to bed, exchanging a lingering, heated look with me on the way out that almost made me moan out loud.
Almost.
I wasn’t that drunk anymore.
Just tipsy.
And headachy.
And tired.
And annoyed that Benedict fucking Hammond wouldn’t stop trying to get my attention. Seated amongst the conversationalists on the couches, he glanced my way every so often, pointed and obvious, trying to catch and hold my gaze like he had earned that right. During the midnight countdown, he had shouldered toward me as everyone cloistered together to ring in the new year, but I had grabbed Sonia, one of my nurse friends and a failed conquest of Gavriel’s, and kissed her before he could even try.
Just a silly peck, one we both giggled through and shotgunned our champagne flutes after.
Meanwhile, Benedict had had that determined twinkle in his eye I’d seen on drunk men at bars, like they were being subtle as they stumbled along and slobbered all over me, sloppy, breath reeking of booze.
Nope.
Nope.
Not on my darkest day would I let that happen, Hammond.
“Oh, he is—he’s talking to the painting.”
Giggles erupted around me, dragging me out of my thoughts.
“What a messy drunk.”
“He’s messy everything tonight.”
More giggles and snickers, whispers rising about Gavriel this and Gavriel that, more than half the women around me notches on his bedpost—myself included. Guzzling down the last of my water, I twisted in my seat, eyes heavy, head pounding, and found the source of their amusement.
