by Rhea Watson
All controlled, of course. Managed and corralled by unseen spellwork that kept the flames impressive and alluring, but also safe. So far, despite the dramatics, it held firm within its boundaries, gobbling up a year’s worth of annoyances and sorrows and lost dreams from staff and students alike.
Security patrolled the line, my team prepping for an all-hands-on-deck night tomorrow. Den mothers escorted students back to the castle in small groups, where they were permitted to enjoy the rest of their night until curfew like always.
And it was going… well.
I said nothing, of course. Gave nothing away in my expression. Even as hope and satisfaction hummed in my chest, I watched on with the same neutral-verging-on-stern mask I always wore at mass campus gatherings. If they all thought I missed nothing—and I usually didn’t—then it would be less tempting to step out of line.
A strangely calm quiet blanketed the line. Even though not everyone celebrated the rituals, the sabbats, the yearly equinoxes, they indulged in the events for a break in the monotony, and—I hoped—they got something from them. Peace. Contemplation. The feeling of a fresh start once the fire destroyed the injustices hanging from them like anchors, like iron chains around their ankles that forced them to trudge through quicksand in their everyday lives.
If we could lift some of that here at Root Rot Academy through our rehabilitative programs, our classes, our supportive den mothers, rituals like these, then I considered that a raging success. Where my philosophy had always differed from my predecessors was that I saw this reform school as a place to help, nurture, and foster growth.
They saw it as a place to punish, break, and beat children into submission.
No more. Not under my watch.
Swathed in one of my usual black suits, a heavy obsidian trench hanging down to my knees to block out the bite of the highlands, I scanned the line once more and found it peppered with professors. Most seemed quite content chatting with students; Ash Cedar had a gaggle of third-year girls around him giggling up a storm as he regaled them with one of the many extravagant—no doubt exaggerated—stories he had up his sleeve. Those managing the fire rotated out, many eager to hurl their grievances into the inferno as well.
Even those who had organized this very event, apparently.
Loitering at the front of the line, Alecto hesitated before stepping into the unseen ring of protection around the flames. Lately, I’d tried my best not to focus on her, to let my gaze linger where it shouldn’t, but tonight I couldn’t help myself: something was off.
Noticeably so.
White-hot irritation flashed through me, followed by a cool, oozing disappointment over that fact that I knew her body language so bloody well that I could tell from a glance something was wrong. Even in a modern, fashionable little outfit, I saw right down to her core.
Beneath the sleek black caplet, her shoulders rounded as if to make herself smaller. The onyx pencil skirt herded her knees together, but they moved at an unsteady clip, wobbly all the way down to her ankles in their low-heeled boots. A pair of luxe bloodred leather gloves might have adorned her hands, but I zeroed in on them right away, how they twisted around the folded parchment in her fist. Fidgety. Anxious. Nervous.
Like she wanted to be anywhere but here.
Alecto barely looked at the fire as she approached it, head tucked, folding in on herself as she crept up to the blaze alone and hurled her grievances inside. Then she was off like a shot, practically sprinting to the left, following the trail of those who came before her. Hair free and loose, she used the curls like a shield, hiding herself from the world.
But she couldn’t hide from me.
All of it—the shrinking, the stumbling, the fiddling hands and darting eyes—caught my attention like a wolf who’d just spotted the elk stumble.
She was afraid.
Not obvious to outside observers, those around us too infatuated with the fire, with the event itself, to notice. While quiet, a far cry from the shrieking chaos of the last football game the other week, students chatted amongst themselves, confident with the professors waiting alongside them in line as though they were all on even footing, if only for an hour.
No one was looking for the oddities.
No one seemed to care.
No one noticed her but me.
And Cedar, actually. The warlock’s dark gaze tracked her as she crossed the pitch, but when it flitted in my direction, he flashed a pleasant smile and turned back to the third years cloistered around him, Alecto seemingly forgotten.
If only I could switch off like that.
Instead, I moved. Brisk and surefooted, I strolled right into her path. She bypassed the den mothers waiting to escort the next group back to the castle, as if to return alone. Head down, she nearly barreled right into me again, only to divert course at the last moment.
For the first time, she didn’t fall immediately under my thrall.
She was lost to me, retreated deep inside.
Purposefully ignoring me.
My Dom instincts kicked into high gear immediately, try as I might to quell them, and I stopped, watching her retreating form, then cleared my throat.
“Alecto.”
Soft enough not to draw any attention, I tailored my tone, injecting it with authority, with a thinly veiled promise of punishment if she didn’t instantly halt and come back to me.
She did, a true submissive blissfully unaware of her potential, but tonight she did so with a heavy sigh. It carried on the wind, her annoyance, her frustration, and when she rounded in place, I saw it in her face.
Displeasure.
She had never looked at me like that before.
Alecto tended to look at me like I was the sun to her moon.
This was—new. Different.
A slight quirk of my brow beckoned her to me, but not as close as I would have liked. She stalked back, still unsteady in her heels, then stopped with a good six feet of distance between us.
So be it.
“I’ve never met a witch who feared the flames before,” I rumbled, alert, heightened to her every physical response to that statement. Her cheeks hollowed and outrage flared in her liquid-gold gaze.
“I’m not afraid.” Her body said otherwise, her voice wavering, her hands twisting around themselves. When she caught me looking, she forced them apart and let them hang in fists at her sides. “And even if I was, it’s none of your business.”
What—did you just say? I caught those five little words that every submissive feared, trying to swallow them down instead. They burned bright, scorching in my throat and simmering in my chest, fighting, desperate to fly free and strike her. We stared at each other for a dreadfully long beat, locked in a time warp as the world blurred around us, and when Alecto blinked, it was like she suddenly realized what had just come out of her mouth.
The tone she had taken with me.
The fuck you in her eyes.
Her gloved hand shot up as if to clamp over her lips, but she stopped halfway, sucking in a stuttering breath and backtracking.
“Excuse me, Headmaster,” she muttered, chin dropped, dark lashes splayed with her lowered gaze, voice soft and pliant and wildly manipulative. Subs were so skilled at that, knowing what their Dominants expected—thinking they could make us forget insubordination by pretending they had been good all along.
Alecto flitted toward the castle without another word, and I let her—even though every impulse fired on overdrive, body desperate to chase after her. Drag her somewhere private. Bend her over a desk and spank her ass raw for her insolence.
Deliver a punishment she would feel for days after, every time she sat a reminder to watch her tone.
After, in the cuddly quiet all Doms needed to master before they swept anyone under their wing, I’d ask what had been wrong with the fire. Discover the root cause, the source of her fear and anxiety and palpable discomfort.
Then I would make it better.
Fix it.
I mi
ght have been a sadist, but I was a caregiver, too. First the pain, then the solution.
Subs in the past had worshipped me for it.
This one vanished into the night without ever realizing the relief I could have offered—and the distraction she would have provided me.
I could barely stand it.
Couldn’t focus in her absence, couldn’t see past the red of a sadist who yearned to make a disrespectful little subby squeal.
As I stood at the edge of the athletic field, polished oxfords half on the turf and half on the trampled natural grass, I felt all my precious control slipping away. I gritted through it as best I could, body rigid but mind hazy, images of her slithering around my skull, mimicking her insolence by refusing to just go.
So I left instead. After asking Iris to man the fort—“Something in the office requires my attention.”—I was off. Gone. Power walking through familiar corridors and up winding stairwells, I left the first truly successful event of the academic year behind for a headmaster’s sanctuary. No prying eyes in these four walls. No curious onlookers who might have seen the interaction with Alecto and extrapolated from there.
I slammed the door shut behind me, locking it before falling back against the solid wood, mouth twisted in a snarl and heart hammering like a war drum against my chest.
This is so bloody unacceptable.
The thoughts, feelings, desire…
Unacceptable, Headmaster Clemonte.
If the council could see you now, you’d be locked up.
All the other bullshit fell away in that moment, administrative and professional and personal. She rose above all else, coaxing my inner Dom to play, to rear his sadistic head after so many years of staying quiet.
It was only as I pushed off the door that I realized I was shaking, fury and fear mingling. Loss of control pissed me off—and terrified me. I was never out of control, but it was gone. Poof. Floating away on the bonfire’s smoke, lost in the starless sky.
A few steps toward my desk and suddenly everything became infinitely worse: I had a fucking erection. The hard-on to end all hard-ons. Collapsing into my chair, the one I perched on to discipline students and negotiate with Iris and respond to endless council criticism over my decisions… Always so authoritative, this chair. Professional. Lordly.
I felt none of that as I undid my belt and yanked down my zipper, dragged out my traitorous cock and pumped it with a too-tight fist. It needed lubricant, but I leaned into the pain, eyes clenched as I tried desperately to get rid of this.
Only behind my lids, I saw her.
Folded over my desk, maybe even tied down, legs spread before me. Red, bruised ass cheeks and a tearstained face peeking over her shoulder, her hair wild and her mouth gagged.
Other fantasies eluded me no matter how I chased them in the heat of the moment; all roads led back to Alecto Clarke.
I came to the image of her thighs—caned, pinstriped with perfectly straight red lines up and down the backs. Spilled myself all over my fist with her whisper tickling my ears. Yes, sir, Headmaster. Jerked and twitched through a heart-stopping climax at the memory of her smell, the thought of the vanilla mingling with sweat and tears and—
“Fuck.”
When it was all over, I hated myself. Made myself sit in the mess, weak and spent, limbs pulsing with the aftershocks of an orgasm that would stay with me for years.
Eventually, as I dragged my useless body out of the chair and went for my wand to hide the evidence of my latest failure, I caught my reflection in the nearby window.
And as I glowered at a man I didn’t recognize anymore, self-loathing, disgust, and disappointment didn’t even begin to describe how I felt about him.
24
Bjorn
“Right, two seconds.” I finally relinquished the clipboard, the one Alecto and I had fussed over for an eternity, full of spreadsheets and checklists and all the notes taken at every after-dinner meeting, to the head of the student-run Samhain committee—an owl shifter named Heron, which… was just a lot to unpack, name-wise. “I’m going to fetch the roses for the centerpieces.”
They had been drying in my classroom for the last four and a half weeks, harvested the same night the theme for Samhain’s gala had been chosen: silk and thorns. Hard and soft. Light and dark. It fit with all the symbolism associated with the night anyway, and Alecto had had two rosebushes ready for trimming—win-win. They’d been hanging along the exterior wall for ages, dusted regularly and crisping up nicely to add a pop of color to the floral and crystal centerpieces in the middle of all the small round tables that had replaced the massive ones in the dining hall.
An hour before the ball kicked off, the Root Rot dining hall was a thing of the past. Not only had a few other professors magically removed the regular tables, but it had been decorated within an inch of its life by our crew. Red, gold, black, and white filled the ordinarily grey-stone hall, with twinkling lights throughout and the windows enchanted to look like a midnight sky.
They’d love it.
All of them.
For once, the entire student body was on their best behavior. Last night’s bonfire had been flawless, which Jack had loved and a stiff-lipped Iris Prewett couldn’t find a thing to complain about, proving miracles did exist. The goodwill continued into today, all students gifted with a half-day of classes by the headmaster, followed by a scrumptious feast in the early evening, after which they were sent off to prepare for the main event.
“I can handle things here, Professor,” Heron insisted, cradling the clipboard to her chest and staring at me with her usual intense, buggy eyes. “It looks fantastic.”
Grinning, I briefly took in what had once been our nondescript, boring dining hall with a nod. “It really does.” I then ducked down to meet her eyeline. “I’m so proud of all of you.”
Her cheeks flushed bright crimson, her heart suddenly thundering. “Thank you, Professor.”
“Okay.” Don’t touch her. Even the simplest innocent shoulder touch gave teenage girls ideas I had learned long ago not to encourage. “If I get held up, let everyone go change in fifteen minutes.”
There was no reason I wouldn’t be back in a flash, but with Alecto already sequestered in our flat, someone had to call the shots around here. That was the deal we had worked out in advance: it took me five minutes to throw my head-to-toe red three-piece suit on, all fitted and tailored and tapered just right, so she had the final hour to get into her gown and do—well, everything. Hair, nails, makeup, whatever she needed. Our committee, meanwhile, had agreed to sacrifice their outfit prep time to make sure the hall looked spectacular.
Not quite as selfless as it looked, mind you: each of our kids craved a glowing letter from Jack that detailed their efforts tonight. Something so personal from the headmaster would go a long way at other academies once their reform sentences were complete, and I knew most intended to use it as a letter of recommendation—one of many required—for postsecondary applications.
No one else would have been willing to sacrifice time getting ready. Students had discussed outfits all week in just about every class, the rest of us lamenting the distraction leading up to Samhain. Still, this was a stressful time of year with end-of-term exams, the Mabon incident still fresh in everyone’s minds; I’d take giddy chatter about dresses and masks and costumes over insolence and bitterness any day.
Shoes clicking crisply with every step, I hurried out of the hall, scanning everything along the way—not a hair out of place. The committee had some of Root Rot’s most intense suck-up perfectionists, which meant by the time nine o’clock struck in just a precious forty minutes, this place would really shine. As soon as I crossed through the huge arched doorway, the rest of the castle’s ordinariness hit like a ton of bricks, the dining hall like a magical kingdom at my back, a luxurious fae court that those of this world could only dream of witnessing. Torches flickered on either side of the open doorway, along with the pair of security guards assigned to monitor i
t all night. I offered them a head dip each, then took a hard left toward my classroom.
Grinning, here and there, at the floating carved pumpkins, their ghoulish faces illuminated with a bright orange glow courtesy of a glamor charm, not candles, because in theory no one would be around to monitor them.
Just another of Alecto’s brilliant ideas to make the night more festive.
Well. Not brilliant, per se. Carved pumpkins on Halloween were almost expected, at least in the human realm, but they certainly added some fun to the night.
It would hopefully be a night to remember—if only because of Alecto’s gown. Fuck, she looked scrumptious in that gold number. As I slowed to a casual saunter, lost in my head at the memory, the cling of the fabric came to mind—the look in her eye as she wore it, confident and secure and powerful, even with the tension simmering between us. I genuinely couldn’t wait to walk her onto the dance floor in thirty-five short minutes for the opening waltz, the most breathtaking woman in the room all mine.
The most breathtaking witch with two left feet, mind you.
Even with a week’s worth of practice in our flat, the couch and coffee table shoved aside to give us more room, and as beautiful as she was, as witty and sharp and talented, Alecto Clarke was a shit dancer. By now, she had the basic moves down, only occasionally stomping on my feet, but that didn’t matter. Lost in a swirl of fabric and faculty, I’d take charge—lead her with care so she looked like the most effortless dancer on the floor.
A giddy prickle whispered through my chest, like the long, languid caress of fingertips down my ribs. I really wanted to wow her this evening. Planning Samhain had really strengthened our connection, and maybe, just maybe, it would fuck everything up… but I planned to kiss her tonight.
Not out in the open, of course.
Somewhere private and secluded—and only if she seemed receptive to it. Perhaps outside in the biting cold, as she caught her breath after hours of chaperoning and putting out all the little fires we had already considered and prepared for, I’d whisk her aside, her eyes like pools of gold, twinkling in the starlight…