First Words
764 Words
Lucian was at the administration office before breakfast.
He stood in the narrow corridor outside the door, hands in his jacket pockets, jaw tight. The office was not open yet. A small sign said OPENS AT 7:30 AM. The clock on the wall said 7:14. So he had to wait.
He was good at looking calm when he was not calm. His father had taught him that. "Your face is a message", his father always said. "Control what it says".
His face looked unbothered but his stomach said something else entirely.
At exactly 7:27, a thin woman with silver-streaked hair unlocked the office door and walked in without looking at him. He followed.
"Alpha Lucian of Silvercrest," she said, sitting down and opening a large brown folder without any surprise. She had clearly been expecting him. "Please sit."
He sat.
She placed a single sheet of paper on the desk between them. He read it quickly. It was a Proximity Concern Form. Filed by a teacher named Professor Aldric. It noted that a future Alpha had been observed repeatedly seeking the company of a student from a low-status pack background, and that this may create political complications for the academy.
Lucian read it twice.
Then he looked up. "Who authorised this form?"
"Professor Aldric"
"Who authorised him to file it?"
The woman blinked. "The academy has a responsibility to..."
"I sat beside someone in a study hall," Lucian said. His voice was quiet. Perfectly controlled. "That is all. If the academy files reports every time two students sit near each other, you are going to need a lot more paper."
He stood up, picked up the form, folded it once, and placed it back on the desk.
"Don't send this to my father," he said. "There is nothing to report."
He walked out angrily.
He walked to the dining hall, collected a bowl of porridge he did not want, and sat across from Marcus and Dara. Marcus took one look at his face and said nothing. That was how Lucian knew it was bad. Marcus always said something.
Dara slid a cup of tea toward him silently and hedrank it.
By the time the morning bell rang for first class, the anger had settled into something quieter and more uncomfortable. Because underneath the anger was a question he did not want to examine too closely.
Lucian and Irene met again when he was walking to the library and she was coming out of it, and they almost walked directly into each other at the door.
She stepped back quickly. He stepped back too.
They looked at each other.
Up close she was not what he expected. He had only seen her sitting down, bent over a book. Standing, she was taller than he thought. Her grey shirt had a small ink stain near the left cuff. Her dark eyes went slightly wide when she saw who she had almost collided with, then went carefully neutral again very fast.
"Sorry," she said. She moved to step around him.
"Wait," he said.
She stopped. Looked at him with that steady careful gaze.
Lucian realised he had absolutely no plan for what came after wait.
"I'm Lucian," he said. Which was possibly the most unnecessary introduction he had ever given, since everyone at the academy already knew exactly who he was.
"I know," she said.
"And you're..."
"Irene." She said simply.
"Irene," he repeated.
She looked at him like she was waiting for the actual point of this conversation.
"I just wanted to..." he stopped. Started again. "The study hall. Tomorrow. I might sit there again."
Irene looked at him for a long moment.
"You're telling me?" she said. "Or asking me?"
Lucian opened his mouth and closed it.
The almost-smile at the corner of her mouth got slightly more serious about becoming a real one.
"You can sit where you want," she said finally. "It's not my table."
She stepped around him and walked away down the corridor, braids swinging, ink-stained cuff disappearing into the crowd.
Lucian stood at the library door for a moment longer than necessary.
Then he went inside, sat at the nearest table, and opened a book he did not read for forty minutes.
That evening, a message arrived under his dormitory door. No envelope. Just a folded note.
He opened it.
It was the Proximity Concern Form. The one he had left on the administrator's desk that morning.
At the bottom, in small neat handwriting that was not his own, someone had added four words.
She filed one too.
- Writer
