บททั้งหมดของ Falling for my Vampire Captain : บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

Calen’s POVThe campus fair was Jeff’s idea.He’d signed us both up for volunteer shifts without asking, which was exactly the kind of thing Jeff did and exactly the kind of thing I never had the energy to argue with. So there I was on a Wednesday afternoon, standing behind a table covered in pamphlets, talking to first-years who were mostly there for the free tote bags.Karl had a council meeting. Mike was helping Jeff run the table two spots down. The afternoon was ordinary in the specific way that ordinary afternoons had started to feel like a gift rather than a default.Webb appeared at my table at half past three.He didn’t approach the way most people approached a table at an event like this, browsing, slowing down, reaching for something before making eye contact. He walked directly to me with the clear intention of someone who’d known exactly where I’d be and had timed his arrival accordingly. He picked up one of the pamphlets, looked at it without reading it, and set it back

Karl’s POVI went downstairs.Not because I’d decided to, exactly. More because standing at the window watching Webb’s car sit outside my building felt like a choice I was making by default, and I’ve never been comfortable with default choices. I pulled on my jacket, took the stairs rather than the lift, and pushed through the front door into the evening air.Webb saw me coming. He was out of the car before I reached the pavement, unhurried, straightening his jacket with the automatic precision of someone for whom appearance was a form of communication.“Walk with me,” he said.The street was quiet enough for conversation but public enough that neither of us was going to do anything that required privacy. I matched his pace and waited, because Webb was clearly a man who structured his sentences in advance and didn’t appreciate being rushed through them.“I’ll skip the greeting,” he said after half a block. “You’re an intelligent person. I assume you’d prefer I did.”“Correct.”“Your a

Karl’s POVThe training pool was still wet from where Mike had gone down.Jeff was crouched beside him when we arrived, one hand on Mike’s shoulder, his face doing the thing it did when he was terrified and trying not to show it. Mike was conscious but barely, sitting with his back against the pool wall, his skin carrying that grey undertone I recognised immediately because I’d seen it before.On Morrison.“He just dropped,” Jeff said, looking up at me. “Mid-stroke. I pulled him out.”I crouched in front of Mike and got a proper look at him. His eyes were tracking but slowly. His breathing was shallow in the specific way that meant his body was working harder than it should have been to maintain basic functions. When I put a hand on his forearm, the temperature was wrong, too cold for a vampire who’d been in heated water thirty seconds ago.“How long has this been building,” I said quietly.Mike’s jaw moved. “Few days. Thought it was…” He stopped, steadied himself. “Thought it would p

Karl’s POVI’d requested the meeting myself. Going in as the person who called the meeting rather than the person summoned to one changed the narrative of everything that followed. It meant I controlled the meeting, which in council politics was frequently the only advantage worth having.The room they used for formal meetings was in the townhouse on the west side, the same building where they’d celebrated my appointment weeks ago. It looked different configured for business. The round table that encouraged the fiction of equal standing. Seven chairs, six of them filled when I walked in. Webb sat between the two council members I’d seen at the pool deck, his expression arranged into the careful neutrality of someone who’d been briefed that this was coming and had decided composed was his best available posture.Cassiel was at the far end. He hadn’t looked directly at me since I’d entered the room.I remained standing.“I’ll be efficient,” I said. “Webb has been running a coordinated o

Karl’s POVCalen had warned me about his father.‘He’s traditional. He’ll be stiff. Don’t take it personally.’ The kind of warning that tells you more about the person giving it than about the situation being described, because Calen had spent enough of his life absorbing his father’s discomfort quietly that it had started to read to him as just a personality trait rather than something worth examining.I noticed that. I didn’t say anything about it.They arrived on the morning of graduation, his parents, driving up in a sensible car that his father parked with the precise, unhurried movements of a man who treated practical tasks as expressions of character. David Reed was broad-shouldered and greying at the temples, with the kind of face that had probably been open once and had gradually arranged itself into something more guarded over the years. His handshake was firm and brief and he looked at me the way men of his particular generation sometimes looked at things they’d already dec