All Chapters of The Alpha’s college Mate : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Clara's POVThe vial sat on the windowsill where Dr. Gail had propped it, and I couldn't stop looking at my own blood.It wasn't red anymore. In the slant of morning light it shimmered the silver of a fish's belly, and every few seconds a slow ribbon curled up from the bottom and unwound, as though something in there were stretching."Is that normal?" I asked. "Be honest. I have a habit of asking that and then getting worse news.""No," Gail said. "It isn't."Lucan stood in the doorway of the little upstairs room they'd turned into a clinic, one hand braced on the frame, his mother a step behind him. The window light caught his face, and for a second his eyes looked gray, flat and cool as river stones. Then he blinked and they were only tired again. I filed it away with everything else I couldn't afford to think about yet."The blood I drew in the cell was red," Gail said, turning the vial between two careful fingers. "This was red in the syringe, too. It turned within minutes of meet

Clara's POVI was standing in the doorway of the great room when Draven said the name, and I would have given a great deal to have been anywhere else.I'd come down because the clinic walls had started to feel like they were breathing, and because Lucan had left the door open and I could hear the low, careful voices below. I'd made it halfway across the threshold with my hand on the frame. Nobody had noticed me yet. Draven's finger rested at the bottom of the ledger page, and his voice was quiet enough to carry."Adan Blackridge."Eliza's teacup rattled against its saucer. The sound was tiny, but she was the least rattled woman I knew. She set the cup down with both hands, and when I saw her face, the color had drained out of it entirely, leaving her skin the shade of old paper."Blackridge," Jasmine repeated slowly. "Like the Academy?""The Academy is his grandfather's," Draven said. "Endowed, named, and funded. The family has been writing the school's checks for eighty years." He tu

Clara's POV Lucan wouldn't tell me why he was leaving. He stood in the doorway of room 214 with Milo's shadow hovering behind him, one hand braced on the frame, and said only, "East line. An hour, maybe less. Stay with Jasmine. Don't go anywhere alone." Then he kissed my forehead, hard and quick, the way a man does when he's counting seconds, and I listened to his boots take the stairs two at a time. I'd lived in this room since October. I knew that now, because I had written 214 on the inside of my left wrist in blue ballpoint and checked it four times on the walk over. The radiator clanked. The rabbit-shaped stain bloomed above the window. Everything sat exactly where I'd left it, and I stood in the middle of it feeling like a guest. "He didn't say sorry," Jasmine said from the bed, where she'd dropped sideways with her boots dangling. "That means it's bad." "He doesn't apologize when he's scared. He just gets quieter." I picked at the edge of the ink on my wrist. "Jas.

Clara’s POV I found Lucan’s door ajar and his mother’s voice already inside it. I’d left Jasmine at the foot of the stairs with a lie about needing air. My nails were still crusted with dirt from the practice field, and I’d carried the ghost of three gray wolves up three flights. I only meant to see him, to put my forehead against his chest and ask what thirty-six meant. Then I saw him on the floor. Lucan sat with his back against the bed, a leather journal open across his knees. His face was wet. He wasn’t hiding it, and that frightened me more than the wolves had. Eliza stood over him with a braid of red thread coiled in her palm. “Come in, Clara,” she said, without turning. “Close the door. You should hear this too.” I closed it. Lucan scrubbed his sleeve across his eyes and held out a hand without a word, and I folded down beside him until our shoulders touched. He smelled of ethanol and clove, and under that, grief that wasn’t mine to name. Eliza dragged the desk ch

Clara’s POV Lucan parked across the street from St. Brennan’s and cut the engine, and neither of us moved for a full minute. Seven stories of pale brick rose out of the lot that had been empty yesterday. Sodium lights hummed over the ambulance bay. Through the glass doors, a security guard was stirring a paper cup of coffee with the end of a pen. Nobody else on Marlow Street looked twice at the building, the way nobody looks twice at a stop sign. “You don’t have to go in,” Lucan said. “I know.” I pulled the red ribbon out of my hair and tied it again, tighter. “That’s why I’m going.” He walked me to the doors and stopped just short of them, one hand shoved into his coat pocket, the other flexing at his side. I’d learned to read that gesture. It meant I’m not going to hold your hand where a stranger can see. It meant he wanted to very badly. “Ten minutes,” I said. “Then I’ll text you.” “Five.” “Lucan.” “Seven.” His mouth tipped. “That’s my final offer.” The guard lo