Chapter 1 #2
I might be flattered by those pretty words if they weren’t coming from Elliot Cross, Highcrest campus playboy and resident Crescent man-whore.
From the tip of his tail to the top of his ears, Elliot is almost 6’6.
” A height I can’t even match in my platforms. Add in his midnight complexion, face full of piercings, and glittering smile, and he’s undoubtedly the finest thing lurking around this campus.
Unfortunately for all of us, he’s fully aware of this.
Which means he also flirts with anything that moves.
If you’re smart, you give him a ‘No’ and a ‘Goodbye.’ Preferably in that order.
But four years in, it’s a bit late for that.
I let out a heavy sigh.
“What do you want?”
He chuckles, flipping around to watch me as he moves backward through the crowd. Hands stuffed in his pockets, tail wagging.
He manages to avoid any collisions as he maneuvers, but his grin withers as he realizes his pony tricks aren’t working on me tonight.
It’s impressive, but not at all original.
“I can’t check on you?” he asks.
Check on me? Yeah, right. Elliot doesn’t check on me. Not unless he wants something.
“What do you want?” I repeat.
He frowns, suddenly serious.
“What’s with the attitude, baby? You hungry?”
My teeth grind, and I roll my neck to keep a knot from forming.
I’m always hungry.
“No,” I snap. “But I might just find room if you don’t stop calling me that.”
Elliot raises his hands in defense, smirking as he spins to fall in step beside me.
“Alright, chill. I just wanted to know if you and Elsie were coming Saturday night.”
“Coming where?”
His ears flatten, and he cocks his head, nearly tripping up the steps to Trinity Hall. I bite my lip to keep from laughing at him.
“Yes. We’ll be there,” I say, once he’s collected himself.
As if we’d ever miss it. Kitty would probably kill us.
Elliot nods, the stupid grin returning to his face before he darts ahead of me, taking the remaining steps in threes.
He props the door open with his foot while he waits for me at the top, and when I don’t quicken my pace, he starts to grumble.
“Come on, Ashbourne. I don’t have all night.”
I laugh and drag my feet a little, just because I can. But when the bell strikes, signaling it’s five ’til, I swallow my pride and hurry up the last few steps. Only to be greeted by nearly a dozen faces on the other side, all of whom stop what they’re doing to stare at me idling in the doorway.
Fates, you’d think these people would have something better to do.
Don’t they have class? Lives of their own to worry about?
As the thought crosses my mind, I notice the boy closest to the door is still holding his girlfriend’s hand as he gapes at me. It would be concerning if not for the fact that she is also staring.
Gods, do we have to do this every day?
Elliot pokes his head around me, confused why I haven’t stepped into the building. But his unspoken question is quickly answered as he notices the many faces staring back at me.
“Hells,” he mutters under his breath. “These fucking idiots.”
“The fuck are you lookin’ at?” he shouts, voice echoing through the rotunda on the other side.
It takes a second for the question to register. But once they recognize the speaker, they scatter like rats.
Scrambling around each other, they rush to appear busy or uninterested, and I can’t help but smile as they disappear down the adjoining hallways.
I should try that sometime, although it probably wouldn’t work. They’re afraid of me. Just not in the same way they’re afraid of him.
He turns back to me, beaming with pride and flashing his four diamond-encrusted canines.
“Piece of cake,” he says.
“Thanks, Cross.”
He leans down as I pass under his outstretched arm, stealing a quick kiss to my cheek.
“Anytime, baby.”
I catch the door before it swings shut, and whirl on him. But he’s already halfway down the steps when I shout, “Stop calling me that!”
He howls in answer, dismissing my irritation, and I shake my head as I watch him drape an arm around another passing target.
This one melts as soon as he smiles at her.
Poor thing. She must be new.
* * *
The midnight bell is still chiming when I enter the lecture hall, and Professor Argent, known for his rather relaxed approach to teaching, is still sitting with his feet propped on his desk and a scroll held too close to his face. It lowers as the bell goes quiet.
“Ms. Ashbourne.” His ancient voice drones my name, and I cringe when his scarlet gaze locks onto mine. “Nice of you to join us.”
“I’m not late,” I say, wishing I were better at enchantments so I could disappear for the rest of class.
Professor Argent may seem docile for a four-hundred-year-old vampire, but his centuries-long tenure has made him quite bold. Which somehow means he’s developed a bad habit of staring at me for too long, like he’s forgotten how to blink over the years.
I’ve considered draining him a thousand times, but I have a strict ‘Do Not Eat the Faculty’ policy.
“Yes, you are not late,” he mutters, “…today.”
He tilts his head, dismissing me, and my teeth grind as I make my way to my seat.
It’s a long walk, made longer by the fact that I can feel his eyes on me the whole way. But this is just the beginning.
For the next hour and forty minutes, he will look at me at least thirty times—I’ve counted before—and unless, by some miraculous stroke of fate, his eyes fall out of his head before I get to my seat, he’s guaranteed to meet his quota.
“Gods, he’s disgusting,” I grumble, dropping my things on the desk.
There isn’t much room left, on account of the pile of books Kitty carries around. But I manage to carve out a small space for myself, scooting her portable archive to the edges.
Her face flushes at my comment.
“Shh, he can hear you.”
“Good,” Elsie mutters from her position beside her, lip curling in Argent’s direction.
She hates this class. Not because of Argent’s lingering stares, although they don’t help matters, but mainly because Elsie could teach this class with her eyes closed and her hands tied behind her back.
As her clan’s next priestess, Elsie had earned an A rank by the time we were fifteen.
Now, nearly seven years later, she’s the only S-ranked enchantress at Highcrest.
Why they didn’t let her test out of this stupid class, I have no clue, but I’m grateful she didn’t. Without her, there’d be no one to commiserate with.
Kitty swats Elsie beneath the table, blushing up to her ears, and I laugh.
“Kitty, you of all people have no reason to be afraid of Argent,” I say.
She fusses with her glasses, pushing them further up the bridge of her nose as she peers past the rows of students to glimpse at the decrepit, old vampire.
He now stands with his back to the class, chalking out a diagram on the blackboard.
“I know,” Kitty mutters. “But we don’t need to provoke him.”
Elsie’s eyes roll as she fishes a nail file out of her bag.
“Why not? I’d like to see Dame sink his claws into him,” she says, filing her pinky.
When she’s satisfied, she passes it to Kitty, who uses it to buff out the chip in her right thumbnail.
“Please.” Kitty’s lips purse. “As if he’d ever risk an inquiry over Argent.”
Elsie shrugs, and Kitty passes the file down so I can even out my left hand.
“Maybe we could bribe Elliot to do it,” Elsie suggests.
“Hm.” I chuckle. “He’d probably do it for free.”
The three of us laugh in agreement, and Argent clears his throat at the front of the lecture hall, prompting us to lower our voices.
“Any news about Saturday?” Elsie whispers, leaning back in her chair.
A small pillow manifests around her neck as she makes herself comfortable, preparing to spend the rest of the lesson utterly ignoring Argent’s lecture.
“No,” Kitty replies. “Dame’s still on the fence.”
“Ugh, he’s such a buzzkill,” Elsie says.
Kitty nods, damning her brother to his lifelong reputation of “fun sucker.” Which I’m not entirely sure is a fair assessment.
Damien, as hardheaded as he can be, is nothing if not diplomatic. It’s probably the reason the Crescent council chose him as gen-alpha to begin with.
“Dame’s not a buzzkill. He’s just pragmatic,” I add. “Tell him the sirens will cover for the Crescents the next time they sneak into Divine’s playhouse if he lets them sing on Saturday.”
“You think that would work?” Kitty asks, twisting one of her golden curls around her finger.
“Yeah, why not?” I shrug. “The sirens aren’t fickle. If he lets them feed, they won’t forget it. And I’m sure he’s tired of taking hits from the Inquisition over a bunch of horny boys.”
“Yeah,” Kitty says. “This year’s batch is rowdier than the last.”
I toss the nail file back in Elsie’s bag as she crosses her arms.
“I still say he’s a buzzkill. A hot buzzkill, but still a buzzkill.”
Kitty’s face contorts, her nose scrunching and her ears pinning to the side of her head.
“Ew, Els.” She knees her. “You know the rules.”
“I know, I know. Sorry. But look at you. You’re twins, what do you expect?”
That manages to bring another blush to Kitty’s cheeks, and I shake my head as she pretends to be shy. But Elsie and I know better, and we both giggle as a low growl rumbles in Kitty’s throat.
Shy, my ass.
Elsie makes the wise choice to abandon her compliments about Dame, and instead, they fall into a long-winded conversation about the pack’s new first years.
I keep an ear tuned in, but I’m ultimately grateful for the few moments I go unnoticed.
With Argent demonstrating a string of enchantments at the front, and everyone else doing their best to keep up, there are a few precious moments when no one is staring. And they go by much too quickly.
I feel as if I’ve barely blinked twice when the bell tower tolls, and the tired day students start to filter out of the room.
Ordinarily, we’d split off here.
Kitty for the library, Elsie for her “tutoring,” and me for a late-night snack. But it’s Thursday, which means there’s only one thing on the agenda tonight.
We link hands once we make it outside, and Elsie winks us across campus, dropping us in the center of our little living room.
We kick our shoes off by the door, and Elsie makes a beeline for her pajamas while Kitty and I rifle through the fridge.
There isn’t much of anything in here. I mostly eat men, and Elsie doesn’t cook, but there’s always a roll of cookie dough at the back for Kitty, and a few bottles of brew for watching trashy movies on Thursdays.
“Oh, gods, I’m starving,” Kitty announces, snatching up the cookie dough and brew before we all reconvene on the sofa.
“Whose turn is it?” Elsie asks.
“Mine!” Kitty shouts, ripping a chunk of dough off the roll and eating it as she hunts for the remote.
She finds it lodged under Elsie’s left buttcheek, and Elsie yelps as Kitty pinches her to move.
“I already know what I want to watch,” Kitty declares, clicking through the screens.
She navigates with speed, ultimately landing on a red and black image of a young woman dripping in blood.
“Oh, come on…” Elsie groans. “What’s wrong with you two? Can’t you ever pick something happy?”
“I picked something happy last week,” I correct. To which, Elsie cuts me a sideways glance.
“You call that happy?” she says. “I cried my eyes out.”
“He confessed his love for her, what’s not happy about that?”
“Yeah, and then he died!” Elsie shouts.
I shrug.
“Exactly. A perfect ending.”
Kitty interrupts our little debate, holding the remote out like a scepter.
“We’re watching this because it’s my turn. And those are the rules.”
Elsie chuckles, reaching for her brew.
“Okay, Damien…”
Kitty’s eyes narrow, and I snatch the remote and press play just in time to distract her from Elsie’s pointed remarks.
We settle in with Elsie in the middle and Kitty shouting at the screen for the first twenty minutes.
She falls asleep about halfway through, and Elsie bails the minute Kitty starts to snore.
I hold out until the end just to see what happens, and when the credits roll, I hit mute and leave the TV on for when Kitty wakes up. She doesn’t like waking up in the dark.
I do my best not to disturb her as I sneak off to my room, shutting the door softly before collapsing onto the bed to count the stars on my ceiling. They twinkle gently overhead, the simple enchantment lighting the room in a soft glow as I silently sound off the numbers.
I’m not sure how many there are. Two hundred? Maybe four? But I make it all the way to eighty-nine before the pit in my stomach starts to swell, and I realize no amount of stars is going to solve my problem tonight.
I know what’s keeping me awake—I’m hungry. Really hungry.
I could feel my stomach hollowing out about halfway through Argent’s lecture, but I was hoping it would pass before I went to bed. Honestly, I still am.
I lie there for a while longer, listening to Mother’s voice in my mind as she tells me I shouldn’t be hungry, that I’m greedy. Or that if I just go to sleep, it will be gone come morning. But eventually, I manage to remind myself that none of that is true, and I reach for my phone.
He answers on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“What are you doing?”
Before he can say anything, a voice cuts in, feminine and sultry, answering my question for him.
“Who’s that?” it asks.
“My mother,” Elliot answers.
I shake my head.
“You’re disgusting,” I say.
He laughs.
“Yeah, yeah. We know. What do you want, princess?”
In the background, the other voice starts to grumble, muttering something about pigs.
We both ignore it.
“I’m hungry,” I say plainly.
There’s a brief pause followed by muffled shuffling before he answers.
“I’m busy,” he says. But his words are punctuated by the sound of a slamming door, and I laugh a little.
“Not anymore.”
“Damn you, Ashbourne. She was really hot.”
“Is that a yes?”
He chuckles, the deep tenor of his voice sounding more like a growl than a laugh.
“Ask me nicely, and maybe it is.”
“Ugh.”
They always ruin it.