I swore to hate My Vampire Husband

Selene Ardent POV

I have imagined my first morning at Blackthorn college in a hundred possible ways.

On some days, I had to walk through the gates like I owned the world, chin high, boots sharp against the stone path, black coat trailing behind her like a warning. As if she did not want to be in college anymore.

But for others? I slipped in unnoticed, just another girl with too many thoughts and not enough patience, hoping to survive the day without drawing any kind of unwanted attention. But the reality was, I quickly learned, that it was never kind enough to follow the imagination I have made in my mind before everything went downhill.

The first thing I had noticed about Blackthorn College was how offensively grand it was. Like someone's birthday party was celebrated by them to thank them for being gifted with such students.

The campus stretched like an old aristocrat showing off inherited wealth, tall iron gates, ivy strangling ancient brick walls, gothic towers clawing into the pale morning sky.

It looked less like a college and more like the kind of place people got murdered in expensive coats. Beautiful in a cold, arrogant sort of way. But it was not awkward for me because I did not like the college; it was like a jail to me.

I paused just beyond the gates, one hand gripping the strap of my satchel, my silver rings cold against my fair skin.

All the students moved around me in clusters, laughing, yawning, dragging luggage, sipping coffee like they did not have any care in the world. Rich boys were in pressed jackets. Girls were in polished boots and expensive perfume and their mouths were filled with flavoured chewing gums. Everyone looked like they belonged to some fashion centre and not only that they were crazy rich.

I, in my dark jeans, fitted black turtleneck from two years back. It is now so short that it fits me like a crop top, and a worn leather jacket looked like I belonged in a dump yard entirely. I was poor. And I realised.

I exhaled slowly, pushing a strand of dark hair away from my face and took a breath in.

“Great,” I muttered under my breath. “A cemetery with tuition.” I said and looked forward and looked upward.

The gravel path crunched under my boots as I moved deeper into the campus, all the eyes scanning everything with instinctive caution.

Personally I never had been the kind of girl who entered a room without measuring exits, faces, and possible threats. It was a habit. Like any survival carved itself into my bone faster than kindness ever could be.

The morning air smelled like those wet stones, old books, and rain still clinging to the trees. A bell rang somewhere in the distance but the sound was echoing. All the students shuffled faster.

I had just reached the main courtyard when someone slammed into my shoulder hard enough to nearly send me stumbling sideways and break my leg.

And my satchel slipped.

And books spilled on the ground.

A paper folder hit the ground and scattered loose sheets across the stone.

I froze for exactly one second.

And my temper snapped too soon.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I snapped, my voice sharp enough to cut his skin.

The guy who had just crashed into me stopped short.

Tall. Broad shoulders. Dark hair falling messily over his forehead. He looked like the sort of boy magazines would call unfairly attractive and handsome and professors would call it a wasted potential.

One hand still held a phone, the other half-raised like he had only just realized he had bulldozed into another human being from another planet.

He blinked at me.

Then at the mess on the ground.

Then back at me.

“Sorry,” he said automatically, distracted, like the word had left his mouth on instinct and not sincerity and he just kneeled and started getting all the loose sheets.

I stared at him.

“Sorry?” I repeated, incredulous. “You nearly dislocated my shoulder and that is what you have got up with?”

The boy lowered his phone.

Up close, his eyes were a striking gray, annoyingly calm for someone who had just ruined my morning. He seemed like he did not care about anyone else but only him.

“I said sorry.” He said.

“And I said what the hell is wrong with you?” I shot back. “Are your eyes decorative, or do they actually work?”

A few nearby students slowed down their walk to their classes.

Of course they did. Nothing entertained people faster than public conflict. And now I was the one in between.

The boy glanced around at the gathering attention, then looked at me again, this time fully. He was running his eyes on my clothes and face.

Really watched me.

I hated the brief flicker of surprise in his face, the kind men got when they expected meekness and found teeth instead. I hated his stare.

His mouth twitched.

That, more than the collision, irritated me. It was irritating to me that I curled my hands on the ground sitting like a helpless girl.

“Do you always greet people by trying to flatten them?” I demanded an explanation out of his smirking mouth.

“Only the dramatic ones.”

I stared at him for half a beat.

Then he gave a short, humorless laugh.

“Oh, good. He talks. I was beginning to think arrogance had rendered you medically stupid and you were speaking nonsense.”

A quiet sound came from somewhere in the forming crowd, someone trying to cover his failing not to laugh.

The guy's brows lifted.

He slipped his phone into his pocket and crouched, gathering the papers that had scattered across the courtyard stones in front of me.

I was offended enough to set something on fire and punch anyone in front of me.

“I do not need your help.”

“Clearly,” he said dryly, collecting another page. “You had this situation very under control.”

Selene Ardent’s POV CONTINUES

I took myself up and stepped forward and snatched the papers from his hands.

“Touch my things again and lose all the fingers.”

That got a reaction.

Not fear.

Interest.

His gaze lifted to mine, and for the first time the laziness in his expression sharpened like a knife.

There it was, I thought. A pulse ached under the polish of my skin. Something less careless than he pretended his face was showing and I could not point it out.

He stood, slow and deliberate.

Most people stepping into tension with me either puffed themselves up or got backed away from my face.

He did neither. He was standing up straight to my face.

Instead, he looked at me like I was some kind of puzzle he had not decided whether to solve or set on fire or to crush it through his thumb which he actually could.

“Noted,” he said.

I shoved the papers back into my folders, jaw too tight.