I cleared the board of all my notes, focusing on the task as my room full of witches shuffled their belongings and prepared to head to

their next class. Forcing myself not to look at Willow, I couldn’t stop the growl that vibrated my chest when she spoke to Margot. Where the blonde witch had spoken quietly, murmuring at an appropriate level for speaking to someone who stood directly beside her, Willow carefully calculated her next words.

“Do we have any classes where Iban will be present?” she asked, and I could practically hear the threat in her voice. I didn’t know her well enough to know if she intended to follow through on it or if she planned to just continue to use him to push my buttons.

The Coven would do their best to entomb me if I killed off a male witch who’d sacrificed his magic to breed. They weren’t common, and as such, they were rewarded in other ways. Iban would be provided for by the Covenant until he made an appropriate match, given luxuries that even the other male members of the Coven weren’t afforded.

A private room at Hollow’s Grove so that he could entertain all manner of company if he chose. His pick of witches to mate with.

There was no doubt who he’d set his sights on. I just didn’t know if the Covenant had pushed him to make the match or if the interest was genuine. I supposed it didn’t matter, as Susannah would agree to it, regardless.

I smirked, realizing I wouldn’t need to risk her wrath to rid myself of the boy’s interference.

Willow would do that for me if she suspected that was his intention.

“Why do you teach history to witches?” Willow asked.

I turned to find her standing behind me. Her roommates lingered at the door, watching her cautiously as if she were a ticking bomb. I suspected her behavior was rather odd to them, given that they’d all been raised the same way—a way that was very much different from what I suspected of Willow’s upbringing.

“Who better to teach history than someone who was alive to see it?” I asked, dropping the eraser to the ledge at the base of the chalkboard. I crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for the next inevitable question.

“It seems an odd choice, given your obvious bias against the Coven,” she said, her bottom lip twitching ever-so-slightly. I noted the act, realizing she’d done it whenever she considered something that didn’t make sense to her. A twitch when she attempted to solve a riddle.

Whatever Willow’s life had been, one thing was clear. She was not purely driven by whatever her mother had taught her. She was not indoctrinated in the same way the witches of the Coven were from the time they were born.

There was an element of justice within her. A desire to know the truth that couldn’t be denied. I had a feeling whatever her mother had raised her to believe, she’d also given her the gift of thinking for herself.

It was a gift many were not afforded.

“Name me one person who would not have a bias in teaching history,” I said, laughing as her mismatched eyes glimmered with malice. She knew I was right, and she smiled to confirm it, turning her gaze to the window at the side of the room.

“I merely meant that it is interesting that the Covenant allows you to teach—”

“The Covenant does not control me. I do things for the good of Crystal Hollow, because seeing it preserved serves my purpose. Whatever you were told about the hierarchy of power here, consider the bias of the source. Of course, witches would believe they sit at the top and run the show,” I answered, grinning at the way that bottom lip twitched again.

“Maybe you should consider that history is always written by the victor. I find it very hard to believe that Susannah is okay with you sharing history and implying that perhaps you got the better end of the deal that was struck between the devil and Charlotte Hecate,” Willow said, her brow rising in challenge.

“Perhaps, but I’ve given her no reason to take issue with my method of teaching. I stick to the facts and do not embellish. It is better for all of us involved that way. Allows witches like Susannah to continue to think herself the victor, while my kind know how to be patient,” I said, approaching my desk. I leaned my ass against it, reaching down to grasp the edge as Willow’s gaze dropped to my revealed forearms.

That lip twitched, and I suspected this one had nothing to do with how to unravel a mystery and everything to do with how to get what she wanted. “You don’t seem particularly patient to me,” she said, tipping her head

to the side as she approached my desk. None of my other students would have dared to come so close, and her friends at the door exchanged a quick look and scampered off accordingly. She stepped between my spread legs, reaching up and adjusting my tie with a casual ease that shouldn’t have been there.

“A witch’s life is a blip compared to mine. I have watched countless of your kind wither and die. When this generation of witches I’m teaching is dead and gone, I will still be here,” I said, grasping her wrist and slowly pulling her hand away from my tie.

“Not all witches die,” she said with a shrug, not fighting to loosen herself from my grip. I held her carefully, cautiously. I didn’t want to hurt her, even if the idea of seeing her skin covered in bites and bruises from more pleasurable endeavors did fill me with an odd warmth.

“I hardly think we can consider the Covenant alive,” I argued, staring at the way her mouth parted slightly when she smiled. The strong bow of her lips was enticing, drawing my gaze down to the pink of them every time they moved.

“I wasn’t talking about them,” she murmured, biting her lip as if she could feel the heat of my stare.

Disbelief flooded my veins, forcing me to turn my attention back to those strange, mismatched eyes. “What was your mother doing teaching you about Charlotte Hecate?”

The witch who had first struck the bargain with the devil had been granted immortality to oversee her Coven, to rule over them, but she hadn’t wanted the authority. She’d given her leadership role to the Covenant, raising them from the grave as they had been her mentors in life.

A mistake that had cost her greatly when they tore the flesh from her bones and buried it. Somewhere in the gardens, her flesh had been buried—

unable to rot because of the immortality that had been granted to her.

Her spirit, and her magic, lived on in the bones that had been passed down to her descendants. It was why the keeper of the bones, the chosen of the Hecate line, guarded them with her life. Why her relatives had done everything in their power to protect her, where other houses were embroiled in competition.

“She did not die,” she said, and the solemnity in her voice told me that she knew that had not been a blessing. That she’d spent an eternity unable to heal herself; her body separated and scattered. The finger bones that remained in the pouch the Hecate line had carried with them were but a fragment of her, and even those bones could not allow her to be with her family in death.

It was cruel, perhaps the most heinous of acts committed by the Covenant in their thirst for power.

“You are not Charlotte Hecate, Witchling,” I said.

The warning hung between us, unspoken. There was no point in reminding her that she should not endeavor to be like the witch who had suffered endlessly.

“No,” she said, leaning forward.

I gripped her wrist harder, feeling her fingers flex beneath the strength of my grip as she pushed it to the side and bent her head back, staring up at me. I leaned toward her, meeting her halfway, drawn in by the mischievous glimmer in that stare. Her tongue ran over her bottom teeth lightly as she paused with her mouth just a breath from mine.

“But I am brazen enough to make a deal with the devil like she did.”

Her words sent a chill through me, understanding that the young thing didn’t have the first clue what she was dealing with. What kind of horror those words and that promise could bring upon her life. I held very still as she brushed her lips against mine, huffing a slight laugh as her scent filled my lungs.

“You’re very easy to seduce for someone who has such patience,” she said, and my eyes drifted closed as the hum she emitted seemed to sink inside me.

Like a siren calling me to the sea, there was something unnatural in that noise. In the voice that was more of a song than spoken words.

“Patience has nothing to do with us.”

She raised her hand at the same moment I did, touching the side of my neck with her open palm. The heat of her skin was like a brand, thriving and alive in ways that my Vessel had never been.

It had been an eternity since I’d felt that warmth inside of me, since the warmth of any bedmate seemed to penetrate the cold of my flesh.

Yet one touch from her and my eyes drifted closed.

She pursed her lips against mine, the lightest kiss I thought I’d ever received. I felt the touch down to my toes, as if she could breathe life into me, when the one who’d formed this body had been in charge of the dead.

If Charlotte Hecate was death itself, Willow Madizza felt like life.

She pulled back just enough, her point made when it felt like she’d turned me to Jell-O in her hands. My eyes fluttered open slowly, staring down into her eyes that I had the distinct feeling she’d never bothered to close.

“There is no us,” she said, her voice the softest of murmurs. Something cruel lived in that whisper, the harsh edges hinting at the rejection I’d given her earlier.

I thrust my hand into her hair, gripping it and tugging her head back as I bared my fangs at the sudden change in her expression.

“This feels like there is,” I growled, grinding forward until she could feel my cock straining against my slacks.

She shuddered, a ragged breath leaving her as she glared up at me.

“I am not a toy. Why would I settle for the scraps of your attention when I could have another on his knees and ready to give me anything I asked for with nothing more than a word?” she asked, but her body swayed forward, pushing into my touch rather than moving away from it.

“Then why are you here?” I asked, tugging her head to the side so that I could lean forward, dragging my lips over the side of her throat. She shuddered, and I smiled against the skin, letting her feel the press of my fangs.

“To show you exactly what he’ll have that you won’t. So that when you next come into my room while I’m sleeping, you might at least hesitate before you decide to pretend you do not want me the next day,” she said.

Every bone in my body stilled.

I pulled back, staring down at her in surprise. “You were asleep,” I said, not even bothering to pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about.

There was a confidence in her words and the way she spoke them, leaving me with the reality that she had no doubt I’d been there.

“I was,” she agreed, not offering any more information as I studied that guarded stare of hers. “That does not mean I could not smell you all over me when I woke. The roses confirmed what I already suspected.”

“The roses? They spoke to you?” I asked, wondering when the last time I’d heard of a Green communing with nature had been.

“They’ll speak to any Green. Most are just too ignorant to listen,” she said, twisting her head in my grip as if she could pull free, but I refused to release her. “I wonder what the Covenant would think if they were to discover you violated me in my sleep.”

“I did no such thing,” I argued.

“Right. Taking off my clothes while I slept was entirely innocent—”

“You looked uncomfortable, but I did not touch you beyond that. Make no mistake, I want you to scream my name the first time I fuck you, not sleep through it, Witchling,” I said with a snarl, dropping my head back to her neck. The need to feed on her was overwhelming, growing with each moment she spent pissing me off. I wanted to remind her what I was.

Who I was.

“If you ever touch me, I’ll be sure to think of anyone but you. I won’t be able to enjoy it otherwise,” she said, making me snap at her throat. She shuddered in my hold as my teeth grazed her skin, and a callous chuckle slipped free as I raised my mouth to her ear.

“Then be sure to scream his name for me. I’d like to know who I need to hunt down the next time I’m hungry,” I whispered, reveling in her shocked gasp as she shoved both her hands against my chest and pushed.

“Headmaster Thorne!” The cold voice came as a reprimand, striking across the space between us. I pulled my head back from the curtain of Willow’s hair, raising my glare to the door where the Covenant stood with an apple clutched in her bony hand. “Need I remind you that you are not to feed on the students outside of the Reaping?”

“She’s willing,” I said, turning my glare to the witchling held in my grasp.

She smirked, holding my stare and knowing she held the power in that moment. While Susannah couldn’t get rid of me, she could make my pursuit of Willow far more difficult.

“Is that true, Miss Madizza?” Susannah asked as Iban stepped around the corner. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. I wondered what he’d seen that had driven him to seek the help of the Covenant.

I hoped he’d seen Willow writhing against my cock with my mouth at her throat.

All traces of arrogance fled from Willow’s face as she turned against my hold, glancing back at her ancestor.

“I didn’t give him consent to feed from me,” she said, pushing against my chest once more.

With the audience watching, I relented and released her.

She turned her back on me, striding toward Susannah and plucking the apple out of her hand. The Covenant couldn’t eat it, but they’d been her favorite in life, and she could often be found with one in her grip, as if it reminded her of life.

She turned an eerie stare toward Willow as the younger witch raised it to her mouth, sinking her teeth into it slowly as she smirked back at me. I dropped both hands to the edge of the desk once more, the wood cracking beneath the force of my grip. It was all that offered me any control, all that stopped me from finding out what those little, vicious teeth felt like at my throat.

Then she strode forward, walking through the doors as Iban followed at her heel. Only when he was through the doors did she raise her free hand, flicking her wrist and sending the doors slamming shut without looking back once.

Her exit was slightly dramatic, but I had to give her points for flair. “That one is trouble,” Susannah admitted, dropping her arm to her side

now that she possessed no apple to look upon.

I nodded, not bothering to argue the point. I’d thought the same more than once.

“All the more reason for you to stay away from her. Keep your teeth to yourself and your dick in your pants where my granddaughter is concerned. Whatever this is between you two ends here,” she snapped, turning her back on me as if that was the end of it.

“And if I don’t agree?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as I stood from my perch on the edge of the desk.

The Covenant froze, turning to face me as her jaw clenched. “You know the rules.”

“I can wait until the Reaping,” I said, shrugging as the heat of her stare struck me. There was a warning there, one that I chose not to heed.

“You intend to invoke dominium?” the Covenant asked, clasping her hands in front of her. “I have plans for Willow. I will not tolerate you getting in my way.”

“Dominium is my right. You cannot stop me,” I answered, grinning as I approached her. If anything, knowing how vehemently she opposed my claim of ownership over Willow only drove me to enact it more.

“A right which you have not claimed in centuries! Why her? Why now?” she asked, her fury rising. Her magic might have been taken from her in its natural state, but she still possessed raw magic that had been given by all the houses of the Coven to bring her back.

Combined with Charlotte’s magic to reanimate what was already dead, it enabled her to be more than just a shell.

“I like the way she tastes,” I said, shoving my hands into the pockets of my slacks.

“This is a mistake,” the Covenant said, backing away a step. She didn’t try to dissuade me, just moved toward the doors, which she blew open with a burst of air.

“Susannah?” I asked as she stepped over the threshold. “She’s not to know.”

“You don’t want her to know that you’ve invoked dominium over her?” she asked, her brow furrowing as she tried to work out exactly what game I was playing.

She’d never know, or if she did, she’d already have one foot in a grave she wouldn’t escape a second time.

“I’ll inform her when I’m ready,” I said, waiting until she gave her nod.

She couldn’t argue with me, not in this.

Willow was mine.