Alpha's Witch Mate, Vampire's Obsession

Ivy's POV Nobody warns you that moving back to your dead mother's hometown comes with its own special flavor of awkward. Not the "forgot everyone's names" kind. The kind where every third adult in town looks at you like they're doing long division in their head, trying to figure out exactly which dead relative you resemble. "You have her eyes," said the woman at the grocery store, apropos of absolutely nothing, while I was just trying to buy cereal. "Thanks," I said, the way you say thanks to a stranger who has just informed you that you look like your dead mother. Normal. Cool. Very fine about it. My grandmother had been weird about this move from the second she announced it, packing boxes with this tight, distracted energy, like she was bracing for something instead of just relocating two states over. When I asked why now, after twenty-two years of never once mentioning Everdale existed, she gave me a vague answer about "the gathering" and "obligations" and changed the subject so fast I nearly got whiplash. I decided not to push. Grandma had earned the right to a few unexplained mysteries after raising me solo. I figured I'd get the full story eventually, probably over tea, probably with more crying than either of us wanted. I did not expect the full story to involve werewolves. But we'll get there. Everdale Community College was smaller than my old school and cozier in the way small towns always are. Everyone already knew everyone, which meant I stood out immediately as new blood. I got approximately eleven variations of "oh, you're Marguerite's granddaughter" before first period even started, and one girl in my history class actually gasped audibly when I introduced myself, like I was a mildly famous person she hadn't expected to see in real life. "Sorry," she said, catching herself. "It's just everyone talks about your family. In, like, a nice way! Mostly." "Mostly," I repeated. "Anyway!" She recovered fast, thank god, and stuck out a hand. "I'm Talia. You're going to want a tour, because this school makes zero sense architecturally, and also because you need to know which buildings to avoid during finals season unless you enjoy emotional breakdowns happening near you." "Ivy," I said, shaking her hand. "And thank you, genuinely, I already got lost twice on the way to this class." I liked Talia immediately. She talked like she'd already decided we were friends and simply hadn't told me yet. She also, as it turned out, had opinions. "Okay, so," she said, steering me down a crowded hallway with the confidence of someone giving a campus TED talk, "two things you need to know before you have an unfortunate accidental crush and embarrass yourself. One: Damien Ashworth." She pointed her chin toward the far end of the hallway, where a very tall, very broad-shouldered man stood near the entrance, arms crossed, watching the crowd of students shuffle past like he was cataloguing every single one of them. Dark hair. Sharp jaw. The kind of stillness that made three separate girls near the lockers straighten up and lower their voices without seeming to notice they were doing it. "Ashworth family. Old name, old land—they've been here as long as anyone can remember, the same as a couple of other old families in town. Nobody's totally sure what he does here exactly; he's not faculty, not staff, just sort of... around, and somehow everyone treats it like that's completely normal. Twenty-five, terrifyingly composed, and I have never once seen him raise his voice, which is somehow scarier than if he did. Half the school's in love with him. The other half is scared to breathe too loud around him. Honestly? Same energy." "Noted," I said, filing this under things I will absolutely think about later against my will. "Two," Talia continued, undeterred, "Professor Alexios Voss." She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, glancing around like the walls themselves might be gossiping. "Teaches two philosophy electives. Twenty-something, allegedly, though there's a rumor he's been teaching here since before either of our moms graduated, which is obviously not true, but that's the vibe he gives off. Pale. Weirdly graceful. Never eats lunch in the cafeteria, ever, which half the school has decided means he's either extremely private or possibly a vampire." I laughed. Actually laughed, right there in the hallway, loud enough that a passing freshman gave me a startled look. "A vampire," I repeated. "Very normal school gossip." "You'll understand once you see him," Talia said, entirely serious. "He's unsettling in a way that's, like, deeply, deeply hot. I don't make the rules." I did, in fact, see him twenty minutes later, crossing the quad with the unhurried, deliberate walk of someone who'd never once been late to anything in his life, pale, dark-haired, moving through a crowd of chattering students like he was mildly allergic to all of them. And okay. Fine. Talia hadn't been exaggerating. He looked up. For exactly one second, one single, entirely too long second, his gaze landed directly on mine across the quad, and something about it made every hair on my arms stand straight up, sharp and sudden, like static before a storm. Then he looked away, unbothered, like nothing had happened at all. I told myself it was nothing. New town, new school, overactive imagination courtesy of way too little sleep and way too many "you have her eyes" comments before nine a.m. I almost believed it, right up until that night, when I woke up at 3 a.m. to find every light bulb in my bedroom humming, faint and steady, like something underneath my skin had finally noticed it was being watched back.