Page 25 of Marrying My Professor

He stays there for a moment, both of us panting in the dark. Then he gently pulls himself free. I slump back on my heels, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, my chest heaving. My cheeks are wet with tears and spit.

He tucks himself away, his movements slow, satisfied. Then he’s bending down, his hands cupping my face. He kisses me, deep and thorough, tasting himself on my lips. It’s possessive. Primal.

When he pulls back, his thumb brushes a tear from my cheek. His voice is back to that controlled, authoritative rumble, but it’s softer now. Laced with smoke.

“I want your cute ass in my class on Tuesday. Do I make myself clear?”

I swallow hard. My throat is sore, my body is humming, and I’ve never been more his. I look up at his shadowed face.

“Yes, sir.”

8

ALEXANDER

The bronze elevator descends into the bowels of Belgrave, and I adjust my cufflinks—platinum, engraved with a serpent that coils around itself—and watch the numbers tick down past the lobby, past the basement, into spaces that don't exist on any blueprint the university keeps on file.

My reflection stares back at me from the polished doors: tailored charcoal suit, white shirt open at the collar because I refuse to wear their ceremonial ties, jaw tight enough to crack teeth. I look like Alexander Draven, tenured professor of ethics and law, a man who chose this life.

That's the lie I've perfected over the last eight years.

The truth is simpler and far uglier: Atticus Drexel died in a boating accident eight years ago. The papers said so. His family buried an empty casket. And the Veritas Order found him three months later in Prague, dragged him back across an ocean, and gave him a new name, a new face in the faculty directory, and a very specific leash.

Serve your ten years at Belgrave, or we'll make sure the death sticks this time.

I have two years left. Seven hundred and thirty days until I can disappear for real, until I can become someone the Order can't find, can't use, can't bind. But tonight, like every third Thursday, I descend into the earth and pretend I'm still one of them.

The elevator shudders to a stop. The doors slide open.

The Veritas hall stretches before me in all its gothic excess: vaulted ceilings ribbed with dark wood, walls lined with portraits of dead men whose eyes seem to track movement, bronze sconces casting long shadows that flicker like living things. The air smells of old leather, expensive cologne, and the faint metallic tang of ambition gone rancid.

I hate this place.

I hate the men who built it, the boys who worship it, the system that feeds on desperation and calls it tradition. But I play my part. I always do. Because the alternative is a bullet, a blade, or something slower that the Ashen Serpents would cook up in one of their candlelit rooms.

"Draven." The voice comes from my left, smooth and amused. "Fashionably late, as always."

I turn. Marcus Hale leans against the doorframe of the antechamber, arms crossed, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. He's dressed in the full regalia: black suit, red silk tie knotted tight, a gold crow's skull pinned to his lapel. Sovereign Bastards, through and through. Old money, older cruelty, the kind of man who inherited his seat at the table before he could walk, and he doesn’t let you forget that fact.

"Marcus," I say, nodding once. "Still overcompensating with the accessories, I see."

His laugh is short, sharp. "Says the man who can't be bothered to wear the pin."

I don't dignify that with a response. The serpent cufflinks are enough. I don't need to advertise which faction claimed me first, not when everyone in this room already knows my history. The Ashen Serpents are the only club that hold their members against their will, because most members become a member by accidentally finding out one of the forbidden secrets of the Veritas. Once you find out you either join, or die, and when I was seventeen I chose to join. Stupid kid.

Marcus pushes off the doorframe and falls into step beside me. We move through the corridor together, our footsteps echoing in sync. He's one of the few I can stomach in this place. Not a friend—the Order doesn't do friendship—but an ally of sorts. He was one of the few higher ups in the elite to bargain for me not to be killed when I tried to escape eight years ago, and for that I owe him my lie.

"How's the academic life treating you?" he asks, voice pitched low.

"Riveting," I deadpan. "Nothing quite like lecturing twenty-year-olds on the philosophical implications of legal corruption while actively participating in it."

“The irony must be delicious,” he beams, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

“It’s choking me,” I reply without missing a beat.

He glances at me sidelong, eyes narrowing as he assesses. “Two more years.”

“Seven hundred and thirty days,” I say, precise.