Chapter 3

Iris' pov~

The male dormitory building does not look different from the outside but it feels different the moment we step through the front doors.

The female dorms had a particular kind of energy, comfortable and communal.

This building has none of that. There's so much noise over here and there are guys everywhere.

I notice the way the students in the common room all look up at exactly the same moment when I walk in.

I have been looked at before. I have mismatched eyes and a tendency to walk into rooms like I own them so I am not a stranger to attention but this is different.

This is a whole room of supernatural men are assessing me.

I look back at every single one of them. I make eye contact with the ones who stare longest and I hold it until they are the ones who look away. Miss Odera is moving quickly through the common room toward the corridor beyond it and I follow her at my own pace, completely unbothered.

She stops outside a door on the third floor and knocks before I can ask her anything else about the two significant roommates she has been pointedly vague about.

The boy in the doorway is tall. That is the first thing I notice. Tall and broad shouldered with dark hair and the kind of face that would be straightforwardly attractive if it were smiling.

His expression moves fast, surprise first, then irritation, then probably anger. He does all of that in about two seconds and then he looks at Miss Odera like she is the one responsible for whatever he is feeling.

"What is this," he says. It is not really a question.

Miss Odera explains the situation with the female dorms in her calm voice. She is very professional about it. She uses words like academy policy and temporary arrangement and I appreciate her commitment to the bit.

While she is talking I look at him with my silver eye doing its quiet reading and what I get is complicated. There is irritation sitting right on the surface, that part is obvious, but underneath it something is moving that I cannot fully name. It is paying very close attention to me in a way that has nothing to do with the housing announcement.

Interesting.

He looks back at me when Miss Odera finishes talking and I smile at him. Pleasantly. "No," he says, looking back at Miss Odera.

"I am afraid it is not optional," she says, still pleasant, still professional.

"There are other rooms in this building."

"None with vacancy."

He looks at me again like I am a problem. I tilt my head slightly and keep smiling. He does not look pleased. He looks like he has his panties in a twist.

Then a voice comes from somewhere inside the room. "Caelum." Just the one word, quiet and even, and the boy in the doorway, Caelum, goes slightly still.

The second roommate appears behind him and this one is different in every way. Where Caelum is all coiled tension and visible irritation, this one is still. Not the unsettling stillness of the vampires I saw earlier, just a particular kind of calm that feels deliberate.

He is lean with dark eyes and marks on the backs of his hands that I recognize as mage markings, though his are subtle, fine lines that do not move the way the girl outside the library's did.

He looks at me and I feel it differently from how I felt Caelum looking at me. Caelum's attention is reactive. This one's attention is like he already knew I was going to be standing here and he is simply confirming it. There is no surprise in his face at all and that, more than anything else in the last sixty seconds, is what makes me actually pay attention.

"Let her in," he says to Caelum. Then to Miss Odera, "We have it from here."

Caelum turns to look at him with an angry expression. Miss Odera takes the opening, hands me a small card with what I assume is room information, tells me breakfast is at seven, and excuses herself. I watch her go and then I look back at the doorway where Caelum has not moved.

I raise my eyebrows at him. He steps aside and I walk in.

The room is bigger than I expected. Three beds, three desks, three wardrobes, one bathroom door on the far wall.

It is not cozy but it is not miserable either. Someone has put actual effort into their side of the room, books stacked in a specific order, a lamp that is not the standard issue one.

The other occupied side is neater, almost aggressively so.

I drop my bag on the unclaimed bed and turn around to find both of them watching me. Caelum is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, working very hard at something neutral and not quite getting there. The other one is sitting at his desk now, relaxed, watching me.

"So," I say, looking between them. "Which one of you wants to tell me the wifi password first."

Caelum blinks. "The what."

"Never mind, I will figure it out." I sit on the edge of my bed and look around the room properly. "Okay, introductions. I am Iris. I have two eyes that do not match, I was kidnapped this morning, and I am currently being very mature about it. You are?"

The quiet one almost smiles. Almost. "Ren," he says.

I look at Caelum. He looks back at me. "Caelum," he says finally, like it costs him something.

"Caelum," I repeat, testing it. "That is a very serious name. Does it come with a serious personality or is that just tonight?"

His eyes narrow slightly. "You should know that this arrangement is temporary."

"You should know that you already said no and it did not work." I lean back on my hands and look at him with my most cheerful expression. "So we can either be roommates who get along or roommates who do not but either way we are roommates, so." I shrug. "Your choice."

Ren is watching this exchange from his desk with an amused smile on his face.

I look at Ren. "What are you?" I ask. "Your marks look different from the mage I saw earlier."

"Shadow mage," he says.

"And brooding over there?"

"Wolf," Caelum says flatly, answering for himself.

That explains so much.

"Alpha?"

A pause. "Yes."

I nod slowly. That explains the territorial air of the whole building actually. I look back at Ren. "You do not seem surprised that I am here."

"I am not particularly surprised by most things," he says.

"That is not what I asked."

He looks at me steadily and says nothing. I am about to push on it when I catch something with my silver eye. For a split second his eyes are not the dark color they were a moment ago. They are gold and are fixed on me with an intensity that has nothing to do with irritation about the housing situation. Then he blinks and they are dark again and his face is back to normal.

He did not mean for me to see that. I am almost certain of it.

I look up and find both of them watching me. I smile like everything is fine like I did not just see what I saw.

"So," I say lightly, "which side of the bathroom counter is mine?"

But my heart is going fast and none of this, I am starting to understand, is a coincidence at all.