by Lola Gabriel
“Our child?” Raven echoed, grinning. Sadie understood the feeling. She wanted to say it over and over again, more proof of the bond between them, of the connection that had drawn them to each other. She could already imagine what the baby might look like, either a copy of one of their parents or a combination of them both. Would the baby have his father’s eyes, his beautiful smile?
“Our child,” Sadie said.
Raven took her in his arms and lifted her from the ground, spinning her around while she laughed with pure glee.
“My father can shove it!” he cried through Sadie’s laughter. “He’ll deal with it, or he’ll deal with it!”
Sadie wasn’t so sure it would be that easy, given that the man had sent someone to kill her, but she didn’t really care about Mr. Lancaster’s approval anyway. She had the approval of the only Lancaster that mattered to her, the one who was still holding her in his arms and grinning at her like she was the love of his life, like he couldn’t wait for them to spend the rest of their lives together.
Good, because neither could she.
Royal Vampire Dilemma
1
In hindsight, Ellen’s day started going wrong as soon as she hung up the phone.
She had just finished putting the last of her stuff in its rightful place in her new room at Elite Magic University when her cell rang, and although she was more tired than she had ever been, she couldn’t just ignore a call from her parents, especially since it was the first time Ellen was more than an hour away from home.
She took a deep breath and pressed the Answer button, pressing the phone against her ear.
“Hey, Mom,” she greeted.
“Hey, honey!” her mother replied. “How did the moving go?”
“Pretty good,” Ellen said. “I actually just got done arranging everything.”
“Already?” That was her father’s voice, which made Ellen realize that she must be on speaker. “Ellen, that’s wonderful!”
“You say that like you didn’t expect me to be done this quickly,” she joked.
“Oh, I didn’t, not at all,” her father said. “When I moved into my college dorm, it took me at least three days to set up all of my stuff.”
“Three days?” Ellen almost shrieked. “How much stuff could you have possibly taken with you? And don’t try to tell me you didn’t have the same luxuries we do today. I know you guys are not that old.”
“Why, thank you, Ellen,” he said, and Ellen rolled her eyes. “The answer, sweetie, is a lot. I thought I would need much more than I actually did, and I was also not the most focused or responsible student. If I had put my back into it, I could’ve been done in a single day.”
“I have no doubt,” she said. It was, truth be told, hard to imagine her father as such an irresponsible student, considering how organized he was nowadays. Then again, she supposed college and the years afterwards changed a person, even more if the person was immortal and stopped aging when they turned 28.
“Were you in the same boat, Mom?” Ellen asked, filled with curiosity.
“Yes, but I didn’t have as much stuff as your father did,” her mother answered. “It took me a few hours to put everything in its place. And it wasn’t so much because I was more organized, I just hated seeing all my boxes taking up the entire room.”
“Ugh, I can relate to that,” Ellen said, looking at the corner of her room, where she had stacked all of her empty boxes. She would find a place to throw them away or donate them, and hopefully before the end of the day. She couldn’t imagine that her roommate would enjoy having a bunch of boxes in a tall stack just sitting in the corner of their room. She herself wouldn’t, and she imagined her not-yet-present roommate would agree with that.
“So hey, have you met your roommate yet?” her mother asked, as if reading Ellen’s thoughts.
“No, she hasn’t arrived yet,” she said. “I don’t know if she’s arriving today or tomorrow, but I’m excited to meet her!”
“Oh, sweetie, I hope you guys get along,” her mother sighed. “Having a roommate is one of the best parts of the college experience. She can become your best friend, your confidante—”
“But it’s completely fine if you don’t get along,” her father added. “Don’t be afraid to ask to change rooms if it becomes an unbearable sort of situation, Ellen. You deserve to have the best time you can in this new stage in your life.”
“Okay, Dad, I won’t be afraid of asking to change rooms if I can’t stand my roommate,” Ellen said, though she doubted she would ever ask such a thing. Not because she was afraid to—her dad was right, she deserved to be in an environment where she could enjoy these next few years—but because she didn’t think there was any kind of issue that couldn’t be solved by talking it out.
“Dear, don’t jinx things for her!” her mother chided.
“I’m not! I’m just saying!”
“We’re sure everything will be okay with you and your roommate, honey,” she said, and Ellen chuckled to herself.
“Yeah, I think so, too.” She glanced at the time on her bedside alarm clock. “Well, it’s been fun talking to you guys, but I’ve got to run.”
“Oh, of course, sweetie, don’t let us stop you,” her father said, and she could almost hear the smile on his face as he spoke. Ellen truly hoped that they were proud of her for being a student at one of the most prestigious schools for immortals in the world. She didn’t really care about what other people thought of her, as she had been taught to be herself and not let others’ opinions affect her, but her parents were the exception.
“Call us on Monday to tell us how your first day was,” her mother cried.
“I will,” Ellen promised. “I love you guys.”
“We love you, too!” Their end of the line went dead, and Ellen exhaled a deep breath and glanced around her room.
She still couldn’t believe that she was actually here, at EMU. It was not an elitist school or anything, but thousands of immortals applied to it every year, and even though EMU sought to give all of its applicants an equal opportunity to have a place there, it could only accept a handful of students, utilizing all of its available buildings and other spaces to accommodate everyone.
Ellen turned her head to the door, hoping against all odds that her roommate would show up suddenly and they would immediately click and become friends. As childish as her expectations were, she couldn’t help wishing for them to be true. At the very least, she wanted to get along with her roommate.
Will she have a problem with me being an angel? Ellen wondered, the one question she hadn’t wanted to consider jumping to the front of her mind.
Angels were the species with the smallest population out of all the immortals. They were not in danger of going extinct or anything of the sort, but their numbers were considerably lower when compared to their fellow species. An angel child was nothing short of a miracle, as it required both parents to be angels. Though interspecies marriage had been a thing for several centuries, the children of those unions usually tended to take after the strongest genes rather than being a hybrid.
This was not the case when an angel was thrown into the mix. Even when the union was between two of them, the chances for them to have offspring were incredibly low, so the population had just started to dwindle. To protect themselves, they had evolved with a sort of defense bubble around them, keeping them from harm, though not for long. As a result, angels often caused mixed feelings among their fellow immortals.
Ellen exhaled again. She wasn’t looking for a confrontation with anyone, but the truth was that she had to be ready for it. Just because EMU was prestigious didn’t mean that all of its students were nice and kind. Ellen couldn’t let her guard down too much.
Okay, Ellen, just don’t spiral into paranoia, she told herself. She couldn’t go around looking over her shoulder during the next few years, now, could she? That would be ridiculous! She was here to complete her education and enjoy the new experiences college could brin
g her, not to be afraid of her classmates.
All right, now she just had to figure out what to do with the stack of boxes in the corner—
A loud thud against the wall behind her made Ellen jump slightly. She stood up from her bed and turned to the wall, waiting to see if a second thud would accompany the first one.
It did, nearly throwing the few posters Ellen had put up off the wall.
The next thud was even louder, and all of her posters fell to her bed.
Ellen clenched her fingers into fists. She had nothing against her neighbors messing around, but if they were going to be so unashamed about it, perhaps she should have a few words with them and ask them to please keep it down. The last thing she wanted was to be asleep and have her pictures falling on top of her in the middle of the night.
She left her room and headed to the next door on her right. There were no other girls in the hallway, which, she supposed, wasn’t all that strange. Most of the students who had already arrived were probably setting up their rooms, and Ellen would most likely see them later, once they had finished moving in.
Through the door, she heard muffled voices, but they sounded angry rather than pleased. She couldn’t exactly hear what they were saying, only that they were yelling. Was it an argument that had gotten out of control? Was it an actual fight?
Ellen knocked three times on the door, loud enough to get the attention of whoever was on the other side. “Um, excuse me? Would you mind keeping it down?”
When she received no direct response—the voices simply kept yelling amongst themselves—she knocked again, louder than before.
“Excuse me!” she said again. “I’m your next-door neighbor! Would you mind keeping it down?”
Instead of lowering their voices, the people inside the room increased the volume of their shouting, to the point where Ellen grew honestly concerned. Why wouldn’t they just answer the door? Was someone in trouble? Should she intervene?
She grabbed the knob and began to turn it. “Is everything okay in—”
Ellen saw the flames coming at her at the last second, and she barely had time to duck them before they flew right past her, scorching the edge of the door.
“WAIT, WAIT! SHAUNA, WAIT!” someone screamed.
Once the flames had gone out, Ellen looked at the occupants of the room. One of them, predictably, was a dragon student, given away by the fact that her head had morphed into a dragon snout, which was still smoking. The other student was holding an arm out toward the dragon, holding her back from spewing any more flames. They looked so much like each other that Ellen figured they must be twins.
“OH, MY GOD!” The dragon who had burned the door—Shauna—shifted her head back to its human form and rushed toward Ellen, who was still squatting in the entryway, afraid of moving. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! Oh my god, are you okay?!”
“I—yeah, I’m okay,” she said. Whatever fire may have gotten to her was repelled by her defense bubble. She didn’t want to know what would’ve happened if she hadn’t dodged in time; her shield was strong, but it only lasted for so long. It might not have been enough to protect her from a direct hit from a dragon.
“I’m so sorry!” Shauna repeated. “We didn’t hear you at the door!”
“I did!” her sister said. “I told you there was someone knocking, and you thought I was just making it up!”
“Stella, this is not about you!” Shauna helped Ellen to her feet, and then she looked at the door and gasped. “Oh, do you think that’ll get us in trouble?”
“Us?” Stella echoed. “I’m not the one who freaking spat fire at the door, Shauna!”
“I only spat fire at the door because you were pissing me off!”
Out of the corner of her eyes, Ellen glanced at the wall that connected their room to hers, and she saw two slight dips, like someone had punched the wall hard enough to make a dent in it, but not hard enough to break through.
So that was the thudding I heard, she realized.
The two sisters were still fighting with each other, blaming the other for the damage to their room, and Ellen didn’t think they were bound to stop any time soon. Maybe she should just leave them to their issues and slip a note beneath their scorched door, asking them to please not punch their wall any longer.
Ellen was just about to politely wave goodbye and silently walk out of the room when someone behind her said, “Excuse me, Ellen Williams?”
She turned around and came face to face with a woman whose presence made both Shauna and Stella shut up immediately. She had long auburn hair and rosy skin, and she was wearing an elegant black suit. Even if Ellen hadn’t read her nametag, which said Janie Summers, Head of Administration, she would’ve assumed the woman was important in the school.
“That’s me,” she said, raising her hand.
“May I speak to you?” Ms. Summers held out a hand, gesturing to the hallway, and Ellen realized she meant talking to her in private. She followed the woman out of the twins’ room and back to her own, where Ms. Summers turned to her with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Ms. Williams, but our system made a horrible mistake regarding your schedule.”
Ellen tensed. “What kind of mistake?”
“You see,” Ms. Summers said, “there’s a junior student called Elaine William, and our system accidentally got the two of you mixed up and gave each of you the other’s schedule. It was a terrible mistake that should not have happened, and our technicians are making sure it will not happen again, but I’m afraid you have to come with me so we can get this all sorted out.”
Ellen felt her excitement and energy leave her body before she shook her head to herself. This was only a minor setback and it could surely be arranged within a few minutes of her time.
“I’m truly sorry about this inconvenience,” Ms. Summers told her, perhaps reading her expression. “But we’ll work as quickly as we can so we don’t take away any more of your time, all right?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Ellen said, following the woman once more.
Accompanying Ms. Summers back to the administration office at least gave her the chance to look more closely at the campus where she would be spending her college years. The EMU campus was set in what had once been a giant forest inhabited by all sorts of creatures, and the people who had built the place had wanted to ensure that it would remain mostly intact. That meant that most of the ground was like that of a meadow, with stone paths leading to the different buildings so as not to disrupt nature more than it already was.
Ellen really felt like she was in a forest, though maybe one that wasn’t as lush as it had been thousands and thousands of years ago. She had always wanted to grow up in a place like this, but being born and raised in Manhattan didn’t really give her that opportunity. She was going to take advantage of the location of EMU. Of course, EMU was technically located in Manhattan, but when humans began taking over the land, the school and its grounds had been enchanted and hidden, and it was only accessible by immortals.
Ms. Summers’ office was quite spacious, with an elegant mahogany desk, a chair behind it, and two chairs in front of it, surrounded by shelves filled with books, documents, and scrolls that were most likely older than Ellen’s grandparents. Ms. Summers gestured for her to take a seat as she sat behind her desk.
“Ms. William will be here shortly, and then we can figure out this mess,” she said.
Ellen nodded her head. Just when she was about to ask if her schedule was all that different from her fellow student’s—since this felt like too much of a hassle for a few wrong classes—someone knocked on the open door of Ms. Summers’ office.
“Sorry to interrupt you, Ms. Summers,” said a voice that instantly caught Ellen’s attention. It was…she couldn’t find a word to describe it other than ageless, which felt ridiculous and stupid, yet she couldn’t help thinking it was the only term that fit it.
She looked over her shoulder at the person who had spoken and saw a young man with short bla
ck hair, dark brown eyes, and light brown skin. He was wearing a dark blue polo shirt with the letters EMU embroidered in gold thread on the left side of his chest, and the first thought that crossed Ellen’s head was that he was, perhaps, the hottest guy she had ever seen. His jawline was kind of sharp but not unbelievably so. His lips were a little bit cracked, like he had been in the sun for a very long time, and if Ellen had had some lip balm or something with her, she would have offered it to him.
His fist was still raised to the door, and he startled when he noticed Ellen. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were…um, busy.”
His dark brown eyes bore into Ellen’s, and she felt as though time had stopped around them, like it was only the two of them in a completely different space.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Rodriguez,” Ms. Summers said, bringing Ellen back into the situation at hand. “Ms. Williams and I are waiting for another student to arrive before we begin our business.”
Ellen shook her head and cleared her throat.
“Hi,” she said, turning around in her seat and holding out her hand. “I’m Ellen Williams.”
“Mr. Rodriguez” stared at her in complete silence, his cracked lips slightly parted, for what seemed like an eternity. The silence went on for so long that Ellen began to feel uncomfortable, but she thought that turning around and just ignoring him would be much ruder. She opened her mouth to break the ice at the same time that he spoke.
“Never mind, Ms. Summers. Thank you. Bye.” And then he whirled on his feet and vanished from sight.
Ellen gaped at the doorway, and whatever positive feelings she’d had regarding the cute stranger immediately vanished.
“How rude,” she muttered to herself.
Ms. Summers began to apologize on the guy’s behalf, saying that he was usually not like that and he must’ve been in some sort of hurry, but Ellen didn’t want to hear anything about it. If this guy couldn’t be polite enough to introduce himself after she had, or at least shake her hand, she’d rather not make his acquaintance.
