by Rhea Watson
Even in all the simplicity, Jack exuded authority and dignity, stamped with an upper-class air that not even his sweats could dampen. If anything, the casual attire made him even hotter.
Like he needed that.
Like I needed that, already a blushing, floundering moron anytime we slipped into prolonged eye contact. Nothing like a gorgeous boss—a totally put-together adult, at that—to reduce you to a schoolgirl with a super-embarrassing crush on her professor. Ugh.
“Apologies on my behalf,” Jack insisted, pressing a hand to his heart like some chivalrous knight in an age gone by. “I wasn’t aware anyone else ran at this godsforsaken hour, honestly.”
He then smoothed that big hand over his buzzed hair, not an ounce of sweat on him. Either he had just started his run, or… Well, the man possessed such effortless control over everything—maybe he had just taught his body not to devolve into a sweaty, disgusting mess.
Enter me, a sweaty, disgusting mess in a too-big yellow T-shirt, sports bra straps cutting into my shoulders, and leggings that were once black, now faded enough that it was a risk to bend over in brightly colored underwear.
“Trying to avoid the h-herd,” I managed, forcing a smile and peppering some huffy chuckles between my absolutely disgraceful wheezes. His black gaze flecked with gold dropped to the hand digging into my side stitch, brows furrowing.
“You… all right?”
Heat flared all over, and I waved him off with a ditzy nod. “Oh, totally. Just b-been a while since I ran… I think I pushed too hard.”
Jack’s head bobbed ever so slightly as he scrutinized me from top to bottom. “Right. Well, maybe you should take it easy.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine,” I insisted, all the while wishing the ground would swallow me up—or I’d brought my wand and could legally get away with altering my boss’s memory. Instead, I tried to dart around him, desperate to end this interaction before I did something else that would make him think less of me. “I can just go—”
“No.” The word cracked like thunder between us, and I stilled, arms falling limp at my sides. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t shouldered in front of me or used his massive frame in an effective body block. It was his voice that stopped me, the authority it carried paired with the intensity in his dark eyes that made me want to do precisely what he said. Clearing his throat, Jack licked his full lips and glanced over his shoulder with a sigh. “No, I’m going to run back with you.”
“Oh…” Was this rock bottom? Everything in my life coalescing into this—my boss thinking I was so weak I couldn’t make it back to the castle without an escort. “That’s not… You don’t have to.” I struggled to even my breathing. “Really, I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t going much farther anyway,” he said, that whip-sharp intensity replaced with a softness that just oozed over my aching muscles. Warmth suddenly cradled his every word like a hug, and as soon as he offered me that great, beaming smile, I just wanted to melt to my knees at his feet and thank him for…
For…
His attention?
Ugh. Why was I like this around him?
“We can cool down together,” Jack offered when I said nothing, just toed at the dirt and stared at my feet, humiliation scorching through my entire face. He didn’t need to cool down. He was doing this for me—pitying me, some baby prof who needed his guidance. This really was the week that kept on giving.
“Headmaster, I—”
“Miss Clarke,” he rumbled, and my eyes snapped up at his tone. Teetering between hard and soft, silk and steel, it demanded my attention. “It’s really no trouble. Please. We’ll go together.”
Why, after everything, did I feel safe around him? Embarrassed, ashamed, small—sure. But standing in front of him now was like bracing in the eye of the hurricane, the storm raging all around while the center—Jack—was the one source of calm. Given his sheer size, his intensity, his gravitas, the authority he held over me and my career, never mind the weight he pulled in the witch community, I ought to be terrified of screwing up in front of Jack Clemonte.
“Okay.” Instead, as I fell in line beside him, both of us starting a painfully slow jog, I felt secure in the chaos—in all my mistakes.
We took the worn footpaths together, though when the path forked, Jack herded me toward the easier of the two trails, ones that had less of an incline or a more leisurely turn. Eventually, as the Root Rot castle loomed in the distance, my mind rebelled, insisting that I didn’t need a babysitter, that I could make my own decisions, and I pushed harder. Ran faster. Threw the cooldown playbook out the window and challenged myself to do better.
What it got me was a flare of pain and a shortness of breath that echoed between us.
“Easy,” Jack ordered, and I suddenly realized I’d pulled way out ahead of him. Teeth gritted, I slowed just enough to fall back into his enormous shadow, my form waning on the next curve. Only a step above walking, Jack shook his head down at me. “Focus on your breathing, Alecto. Get it back under control.”
Rebellion quashed, I did as I was told—and suddenly things were just a little bit easier. Steps were more fluid, my form improved, my tread lightened. A half hour later, however, I was back to where I’d been when we first bumped into each other: beaten. While Jack did walk the final hill before campus, the grey stone walls all bright and glittery in the morning sunshine, I dragged the whole way, my jog nothing more than a shamble.
“Good,” he praised when I huffed and puffed up to the top. “Excellent. Nearly there.”
And it was his praise that kept me going. Pushed me. Refused to let me walk.
“How’s your side?” Although a touch breathy, Jack remained in total control as we descended the hill, unfazed by the last forty minutes. I shrugged, the stitch back with a vengeance and stabby as ever.
“Better-ish.”
“Then we’ll walk the rest of the way,” Jack told me, bulldozing clear through my lie and stopping in his tracks. I kept going, practically tiptoeing along at this point, desperate to reach the back gate in the northwest corner, only to fold over a few paces later, gulping down air and in a world of hurt.
“I can do it—”
“We’ll walk,” he said firmly. Gasping, bent over and holding my aching side, I peered back at him, his figure somehow even more imposing upside down. While I usually had more fight in me, I conceded that, yeah, I needed the break. I couldn’t make it. Just another failure here at Root Rot. Jack waited for me to straighten before taking off at a glacial pace, my dismal putter forcing him to move at a stop and go along the path.
To his credit, he didn’t seem bothered, too distracted with his kingdom at the end of the trail, only occasionally glancing down at me—as if to make sure I was still there, that I hadn’t collapsed into the whispering grasses.
Just avoiding a lawsuit, my headmaster. After all, I was under his command. He was responsible for my well-being, same as our kids, and having a professor pass out from exhaustion was definitely a headache he wouldn’t want to deal with.
Begrudgingly, I accepted that walking was for the best. Panting, hurting, I’d need to ice my shin when I got back to my room, maybe even take a trip to the infirmary to cut down on the weeks of healing time I had accrued on this one stupid run. With everything that was going on in my world, it had been easy to get lost inside my own head, to push hard and fast without realizing.
But I hadn’t been lost with Jack.
I had focused on my breathing, on my pace, on staying beside him. For a blissful forty minutes, despite the physical pain, everything had cleared up. The guilt was quiet. The anger subdued. No matter how shit I felt shuffling back to the castle, at least I had been able to exist, just for a little while, and get out of my own way.
I ought to thank him for that.
I let him bypass me instead, headed for the code box at the black spired gate to punch in the combination. Hands on my hips, my huffing and puffing finally down to acceptable levels, I lifted my gaze from J
ack’s rippling back—that cotton tee hid absolutely nothing—to the top of the ten-foot stone walls. Identical in texture to the castle, rough and fire-forged, they stood tall and imposing—but not impossible to scale with enough gumption.
“Do… Do kids ever try to climb the wall?” If so, I had a few prickly vines in mind to put an end to it. Similar to barbed wire in the way they sliced into flesh, at least the pretty greenery would fit with Jack’s vision for the new Root Rot.
“Yes,” he remarked. A beat later, the combination box beeped, deep and loud and kind of angry, and the gate unbolted. My boss went for one of the iron flourishes, the metal swirled like Victorian lace, and popped it open. “That’s why we have security.”
The second his dark gaze fell to me, I was breathless all over again. Sweaty. Disheveled. Hurt. Just the vibe I wanted to give off in front of my headmaster. Swallowing hard, I nodded and forced a smile that felt a little manic. “Right.”
Jack opened the gate the rest of the way, hinges silent, iron whooshing, and then gestured for me to reenter the campus grounds first. I obliged, hopping to without hesitation, and scurried past him with my head down, embarrassment roiling in my belly and putting off breakfast for at least an hour.
“You all right to get back to your flat?”
I limped around to find him loitering on the other side of the wall, gate in hand, tall and broad as an oak tree, sturdy as a mountain.
Gods, I must have looked so pathetic by comparison. Tucking a few wayward flyways behind my ears, I motioned toward the looming castle with a flick of my eyes. “You’re not… coming?”
“My weekend runs are usually quite the undertaking,” Jack mused, the edges of his mouth kicked up, his black eyes unnecessarily kind. “I’ve barely started.”
He held up a huge hand when I tripped over myself to apologize for fucking that up for him, and I snapped my lips shut, cheeks hot.
“I just wanted to make sure you got back safely without injuring yourself further,” he insisted, and all that humiliation shifted somewhat, replaced with something I didn’t understand. Relief? No. Contentment? Not quite. It was… He… He made me feel—taken care of. My grandparents adored me, but they were both light on physical affection, on declarations of love and ego-bolstering compliments. I hadn’t ever really felt looked after before, mind, body, and spirit. Coddled and spoiled and the center of someone’s world, even if it was just for a minute or two. Jack managed that with a smile and a few choice words. When he spoke next, however, his voice had a steely edge to it, and he pointed to my right leg. “Now… Go ice that knee.”
I hadn’t even noticed just how messed up it was until now, those fucking shin splints screaming the loudest, but a quick glance down confirmed that beneath my leggings, my knee was swollen and grumpy, same as everything else. Great. Lips pursed, I straightened and nodded again.
“Yes, sir.”
For the first time since I’d run headlong into him, Jack’s face twisted into something unreadable, something dark and wanting and gut-droppingly dangerous. There in a flash, gone in a second, I’d barely had time to catalogue it, brain still processing when he slammed the gate shut, its clang echoing through the grounds, and left. Just… turned and set off without a word, leaving me standing there wondering how I had screwed this up as well.
Ugh. Heart hammering again, I limped up to the castle.
Every millisecond of his last expression on replay, anxiety peaked, dissection mode fully engaged.
12
Gavriel
On the twenty-first day of September for the last two years, give or take a day depending on the planet’s orbital cycle, we all congregated in the dining hall so Jack Clemonte could drone on and on and fucking on about the importance of Mabon. The first day of autumn, the sabbat to usher in the darker side of the year, possessed great importance to the supernatural community of this realm, and, desperate to make Root Rot Academy just like every other school, Jack was obsessed with celebrating.
Each sabbat involved some ritual or another, but there were obviously more important dates in the year. Lammas—the first day of August—signified the summer harvest; dinner had turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet, with sushi stations and a whole suckling pig and desserts that replenished the moment their tray emptied. Students loved Lammas, and I could hardly blame them. Mabon, meanwhile, had a more serious undertone, and while many of the witches and warlocks really got into the spirit, the rest of us were forced to just sit and… endure.
Listen to yet another one of Jack’s tedious speeches. Honestly, the man must get off on the sound of his own voice; this year’s felt especially long and we had barely gotten into the historical significance of the sabbat.
Most supernatural academies threw themselves into the celebrations, but they weren’t working with a student body made entirely of bruised apples. Prewett and many in the old guard despised the resurgence of sabbat celebrations once Jack became headmaster, whispering behind his back that these brats didn’t deserve a chance to celebrate. While I certainly wasn’t Team Misery, I had no interest in being thrust into another culture’s religious worship, either.
Still. The wine was good, and I didn’t have to do anything, unlike the impending Samhain festivities that required everyone at Root Rot to participate. That was the big deal of the year. October 31 was the one to watch, and if I knew Jackie boy like I thought I did, he would once again attempt to outdo all other academies in terms of grandeur and offerings.
The kids liked that one, at the very least. Lots of activity. Usually some sort of dance. Good food and permission granted to those over sixteen to partake in drastically watered-down Samhain wine. For a night, it was like they forgot they were screw-ups. I got it. I did. Sentiment heard—loud and clear. I just didn’t have to revel in it like everyone else.
“Now, please, pick up your candles,” Jack boomed from his podium in front of the staff table, the dining hall lit by firelight alone tonight, the enchanted windows charmed to a permanent sunset. On cue, the entire student body went for the unused white wax candles beside their plates, and I rolled my eyes, doing the same. Jack nodded, and just staring at the back of his head, I saw that proud, patronizing smile. “Ignite your wicks—honor the light.”
Fat, round black candles dotted all the tables, a trio of flames flickering in the waxy puddles at their heads, and as instructed, students leaned forth to take from the fire. To my right, Ash Cedar stretched to reach our shared candle, bumping me in the process and just missing my very full chalice. Warlock fuck. He fought to secure a seat next to Jack at all these ceremonies, beating out many of the grey-haired lecturers who saw themselves as above us.
Never mind that I surpassed their ages tenfold—and looked much better doing it.
Twirling the newborn candlestick between my fingers, I waited until the alchemy professor on my other side—I rarely bothered learning the names of the new ones, not when their tenure was usually short, and only if I wanted to fuck them at some point—lit his wick, then finally eased forward to do the same. I’d gotten an earful Jack’s first year for not participating in the rituals, like my noncompliance might encourage students to do the same, and from there on out I went through the motions as ordered, knowing that when it was over, I could stuff my face, capping the night off with wine and women—or however I saw fit.
As I waited for the virgin wick to spark, I caught a familiar lovely profile down the table doing the same, her smile soft, her arm extended to reach the nearest black candle.
Oh, Alecto Clarke. Still so furious with my antics that she had outright ignored me for the last month. The delectable little witch should be honored: I rarely double-dipped in the academy inkpot, and if I did, it wasn’t about them. The second round was for me, to scratch an itch, to lift the boredom, to vent my frustrations, but in the greenhouse, amidst a tempest, I had made it about her. Made her come like a fucking champion so that she squealed.
Sure, I could have just asked for the her
bs in question, but we had done such a solid job avoiding each other until that point that I hadn’t seen the need. After all, I had been helping myself to the school’s plentiful stock for years.
This was just the first time I’d been caught.
Her gaze flickered my way as her candle caught fire, flames dancing in her eyes, sparking in the strange amber pools that were more common to fae folk than those of this world. As my stubborn fuck of a candle refused to light, I lobbed her a sharp grin. To her credit, Alecto hadn’t immediately tattled on me to Jack for stealing after our last run-in.
That had been quite the surprise.
And I rather liked surprises. They were so rare these days, so fleeting inside this castle.
Lips pursed, Alecto cupped her candleflame as she settled back into her seat, my eyeline temporarily empty—filled a moment later by Bjorn. From the slight lift of his blond brow, he had watched the whole interaction unfold, and I toasted the vampire with my candle, the wick black but still unlit. As I shoved it back into the flame, the last of the lot to get my fire going while Jack glared daggers into my forehead, Bjorn returned my smirk with one of his own before murmuring something to the witch at his side.
Like surprises, I enjoyed Bjorn Asulf. He didn’t play the academy social games, nor did he bother with the childish drama that plagued Root Rot’s faculty no matter who we brought on that year. Generally, the old vampire kept to himself—not necessarily because he wanted to, but because the rest of these insignificant fucks didn’t realize what they were overlooking.