by Rhea Watson
Root Rot Academy
Term 3
Rhea Watson
Copyright 2021 Rhea Watson
Published by Rhea Watson, Amazon Edition. All rights reserved.
License Notes
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Paperback ISBN: PENDING
Cover Art: Anika @ Ravenborn Covers
Proofreader: One Love Editing
Content Warning
Please note that the Root Rot trilogy includes content that may not be suitable for all readers. Across all three full-length novels, you’ll find a Why Choose romance, graphic violence, coarse language, and detailed steamy, steamy steam.
Of the three, this book features the most graphic violence.
Contents
1. Jack
2. Bjorn
3. Alecto
4. Gavriel
5. Alecto
6. Bjorn
7. Jack
8. Alecto
9. Gavriel
10. Alecto
11. Bjorn
12. Jack
13. Alecto
14. Gavriel
15. Alecto
16. Bjorn
17. Alecto
18. Bjorn
19. Alecto
20. Gavriel
21. Bjorn
22. Jack
23. Gavriel
24. Alecto
25. Jack
26. Alecto
27. Bjorn
28. Alecto
29. Alecto
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Dedicated to the first breath of spring and fiery Beltanes.
1
Jack
“Jack?”
Awareness returned in drips and drabs, but as I clawed my way out of the black, invisible hands clutching my ankles and dragging me down, down, down, I was vaguely aware of Seamus Norman’s usual peppermint-accented cologne. The gentle but persistent hand on my shoulder. The starchy restraint of infirmary linens tucked tight around my aching body.
Just let me sleep.
Never in my life had I been so exhausted.
The cave, the sirens, the pain of my Achilles tendons being severed with something rough and jagged—drips and drabs, too. Fleeting images dancing across my mind’s eye, my medically induced sleep deep but plagued with visions of the past. Alecto’s frightened eyes. Alice with a knife to her throat. Screams reverberating around the cave amidst the brilliant flashes of unrestrained magic. Even now, as I pried my eyes open with a groan, the light show continued behind my lids.
Screams ever present.
Haunting.
When I finally blinked back at the world around me, holed up in the largest infirmary suite reserved for staff, Seamus’s outline crystalized first. Statuesque and model handsome, blond and blue-eyed, the head healer peered down at me with an array of frown lines etched across a usually smooth forehead.
“Easy,” he whispered when I sucked in a sharp, shallow breath. Despite the dim lighting, the windows charmed to reflect a rosy sunrise, I squinted against the assault, longing for the cozy comfort of darkness. Whatever he had given me dulled the agony in my wrists, both of which remained bandaged in white gauze, the honeyed scent of the healing balm tickling my nostrils and making my throat tight. This time, my effort to roll my ankles was successful; the warlock had fixed my cut tendons. I might even be able to walk again, stride these halls as I once had—
More silhouettes filled the space, and I pushed up against my healer’s wishes, scanning the crowd with a frown. The movement left me dizzy, the sparsely furnished room spinning for a moment.
Why the bloody hell did I have an audience?
For that was what it was—a crowd of warlocks and witches, not a shifter or other supernatural creature among them judging by the auras. Dark robes, most of them traditional, the sort my coven might wear for formal events—only ours would all be designer labels.
Nearly there, this lot.
I zeroed in on a familiar face.
Lewis Lowell, a low-ranking member of the high council of academies.
Another wealthy London-based coven, the Lowells had been trying and failing to unseat the Clemontes for decades. About seven years my junior, I’d recognize that receding sandy-blond hairline anywhere, Lewis’s features birdlike and severe. As if deciding I had had enough time to acclimate, he strode forth clutching a leather briefcase, shiny and new, his long, bony fingers white-knuckling the handle. Iris floated along behind him, expressionless, never once meeting my curious gaze. The rest, faces I didn’t recognize, stayed by the door, fanned out like the imposing front line of an invading army.
Wonderful.
“Jack Clemonte,” Lewis started, his cheeks a splotchy pink when my eyebrow arched. Because, well, the pup had purposefully deepened his voice as if to garner an air of authority. Ridiculous. Never mind that I had known him since boyhood and had seen him pissed off his face at society events, falling all over his brothers, spilling his drinks on socialite witches who refused to give him the time of day.
What a delicious moment for him—to approach me in hospital robes, weak and beaten and stuck in this bed.
“It gives me no pleasure to deliver this to you in the infirmary,” the warlock insisted as he popped his briefcase on the end of the bed, barely missing my bandaged ankle under the layers of thin linens. He unlocked it with a shaky hand, rooted around long enough for me to suspect this was an act—as if he thought he had me on bated breath—and then produced a yellowing envelope with a very thick, regal wax seal at the back.
My empty stomach dropped, unleashing a storm of nausea that had my mouth filling with saliva.
I needn’t open it to know what this entailed, but I did so anyway, only after propping myself further upright with Seamus’s assistance, supported by a trio of pillows. Inside was a single parchment, typed in a legible scrawl that left no room for debate. At the bottom, only Lewis’s signature.
And Iris bloody Prewett.
“You…” I scrunched the parchment, fire overtaking the churn in my core. This wasn’t the entirety of the high council of academies passing down a termination, but a single warlock who, as far as I was aware, had minimal authority at best. “You are letting me go?”
“Two students have died on your watch this year alone,” Lewis remarked, suddenly adopting the same tone I’d use on a fussy first year. “We cannot let this continue.”
I glared up at him, and while he held my venom for a moment, the twiggy warlock soon busied himself with his briefcase, rearranging its contents before snapping it shut.
“I demand a proper hearing,” I growled, holding the crumpled termination letter up like it meant nothing—because it was fucking garbage. Only it had the stamp and seal of the high council, which… carried enough weight for them to forcibly remove me from the grounds if I didn’t honor it. “I haven’t been given the opportunity to plead my case before the entirety of the high council—”
“Jack, I have the authority to speak for my brethren on the c
ouncil—”
“Alice Jameson’s death wasn’t—”
“The fact that you want to sit there and argue the technicalities of a child’s death is… appalling, frankly,” Lewis said with a sniff. He fiddled with his cuffs, sporting the traditional bell sleeve that snapped around his wrist, sunset orange and shimmering gold—the colors of his coven crest. When his green gaze flicked my way, we both knew he had me. After all, how could I make a stance on the manner of Alice’s death, news that had shaken me to my core when it was delivered, news that prompted Seamus to drug me in the first place when I fought tooth and nail to get out of this very bed so I could attend to the aftermath.
All that mattered was that a student had died under my care—and it wasn’t the first time.
Not even my professors were safe, Bjorn’s kidnapping a black mark on my permanent file.
Still. I had rights. Legally, I could fight the termination, plead my case to all the members of the high council and request a vote. Professors and support staff had no such liberties, but I was a headmaster, highest-ranking official in a system held in great esteem by all supernatural communities. They owed me a hearing—even if I was doomed to fail, the evidence stacked around me finally crashing down.
And while it was a necessary evil, to argue Alice’s death technically wasn’t my fault made me feel dirty.
Weak.
A failure of epic proportions.
The shame of the Clemonte coven, just as I’d always feared.
“Madame Prewett will take over as interim headmistress while we sort out this administrative disaster you’ve left us,” Lewis told me dryly, finally picking up his briefcase and cocking his head to the side, once more regarding me as I might some petulant teenager sent to my office for the third time that week. “We will also be searching for a suitable replacement, as you can imagine, and will not be requesting your recommendation.”
“All headmasters—”
“Headmasters who are fired have no say in their successor,” the warlock drawled, edges of his mouth quirked as whispers skittered through the audience by the door. Seamus stood off to the side in his white healer’s uniform, slumped against the stone wall near a false window, arms crossed and head bowed, aura a staticky distraction. With a quick glance back at Iris, Lewis smoothed a hand down his cloak and flashed me a thin smile. “You have until midnight tonight to vacate the grounds, or we will remove you.”
And with that, the peanut gallery departed, Iris bringing up the rear in one of her enormous black hoop skirts, her blouse crisp and ironed and painfully white. Seamus waited until she was over the threshold before grabbing the door and slamming it shut.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” he said roughly, and I waved him off with a scowl.
“Don’t be.” After all, this was my fault. Sure, I hadn’t forced poor Fiona to meet the sun, nor had I played matchmaker between a student and a siren. Seven hells, I hadn’t even been aware there was a portal into the castle—but I had pushed for the removal of the protective ward three years ago. Indirectly, all this fell on my shoulders. The high council had every right to discipline me, but this wasn’t the way. A typed note with two measly signatures, only one from the council, was bollocks.
The Clemonte legal department would tear it to shreds in minutes.
But that didn’t help me here and now.
And it certainly didn’t help those I was being forced to abandon by midnight.
“Seamus,” I rasped, “don’t let them hurt one student in my absence.”
Because they would. With Iris running the place, even if the next headmaster shared my rehabilitative stance on reform school education, punishments would return. Beatings. Whippings. Public humiliation in front of their peers. Magical torture to keep the unruliest in line. All legal under a reform school charter.
All pointless.
I had been a sadist since the awakening of my sexual appetite, but only with those who consented to pain.
Pain was for fun.
Not real life.
In the real world, it solved nothing. It only made our students hard and bitter and broken.
“You know they will,” I muttered as Seamus crossed the room with a frown. “You know it’ll be like it was before.”
“That’s out of my hands, Jack.” He gritted his teeth, muscles along that rugged, clean-shaven jawline dancing through a clench. “I can’t stop it. None of us can—we don’t have the authority.”
Of course. Professors and support staff had no real power over the manhandling of Root Rot’s students. Before my arrival, den mothers and security outranked everyone, and Seamus’s job, along with his legion of perpetually shell-shocked nurses, was to mend bones and stop the bleeding.
Not take a stance.
Anyone who spoke up under the last regime was fired—terminated for a difference of opinion. Sure, they were given glowing letters of recommendation if they performed their job adequately. The punishment-style system still valued professors and their role in our world, but if they couldn’t handle the way things were here, then they should just leave.
Be replaced by someone who had no problem handing children over to real sadists.
Not on my watch.
Even if they kicked me out, I’d come back swinging.
Father would be disappointed with this turn of events, embarrassed by the besmirchment of our coven name in the social rags—but he knew we had enemies.
And he knew I gave a shit, that I worked myself to the bone, just like him, to further our legacy.
That I would never intentionally undermine him.
So, fine. Show me the door come midnight, but I wasn’t going far.
“I should get up,” I said, throwing the linens back. “Pack my things.”
Seamus materialized beside me, but I waved him off again.
“No, I can do it myself.”
And I could—in theory. I managed to swing my legs over, wearing a rather fetching hospital gown and bandages, but as soon as I stood, the weight of all the realms hit. Seamus caught me by the elbow the instant I buckled, but I braced on the bed, determined to do this alone, born from the same stubborn bull bloodline as my father.
For whom I was already mentally drafting a speech, one I would need to deliver as soon as they marched me out the front gates. Before I said a word to the high council, I would have to plead my case to him.
Only it was difficult to think. Not impossible, but more of a struggle than usual, fatigue etched deep in my bones.
“I’ll brew something this afternoon to help with the transition,” Seamus insisted. That and the 11:36 reading on the bedside table’s clock finally oriented me to the time, though I still had no clue if the siren incident had happened last night or the night before—or Saturday a week ago. It didn’t matter. As it stood, I had the day to prepare for what was bound to be a public walk of shame in front of all my staff, something to cement Iris’s power no matter how temporary.
“Thank you.” I offered him a tired smile. As self-absorbed as the warlock could be sometimes, Seamus Norman was one of the good ones. Young, professional, passionate—a bright future ahead of him, yet he had chosen Root Rot over all his other offers. Sure, my considerable salary increase had probably made things easier, but he did his best for this academy and its students.
Please, stay and fight.
As the healer undid the knots at the back of my gown, then fetched a baggy beige sweater and track pants someone must have dug out of my wardrobe at some point, my mind drifted to Alecto.
No. Not drifted.
Raced, all else falling to the wayside for a few precious moments. I needed to see her before they kicked me out—needed to make sure she was all right. She was the first person I asked for once I regained consciousness, and while I knew she was alive, that wasn’t good enough. The physical toll that night had taken on me no doubt paled in comparison to her. After all, I had just sprawled across that altar, freezing cold, bleeding out, leaving her to resc
ue Alice—and herself—alone.
Not my finest hour, but it was the best decision I could have made in the heat of the moment. If the siren king focused on his sacrifice, Alecto and Alice had a shot at escape.
But Alice was dead.
And there was no telling what all this had done to my little one.
I needed to see for myself. Needed to examine her from top to bottom, sift through those amber orbs and find the truth.
I…
I needed to hold her.
Not just for her sake, but for mine. Given our hectic schedules and the usual end-of-term chaos, we had only arranged a few playdates as Dom and submissive. They had been a pleasure, of course, both of us exploring the other slowly, peeling back the layers that would encompass our private partnership. Unlike all the pain subs who came before her, however, aftercare had actually been my favorite part of the session. Tending to the needs of past subs after a scene was a responsibility, yes, but also a chore.
With Alecto, it came naturally.
Embracing her.
Cuddling her.
Slowing her world down and coaxing her out of subspace with decadent food and earned compliments and gentle massages at the nape of her neck…
I’d never felt more at peace.
So, maybe it was greedy, selfish, to want her now—to burden her with my problems after such a traumatic event. But… I needed to hold her. Remind her she was mine, and not just by contract. Take a little for myself, breathe in that cozy vanilla scent, bury my face in her curls, borrow some of her fire to bolster my spirit against the trials to come.