He has a beautiful smile
Charlotte
I dipped my head in apology and stepped inside. I couldn't believe the man from last night was actually my professor. Thank goodness I hadn't let my smart mouth do the thinking last night.
He didn't talk down to me or make an example of me in front of everyone the way I had expected. Instead he looked at me softly, the same way he had last night, and smiled. "Take a seat, Ms. Callahan," he said, then turned back to the board.
He is nice, I noted to myself.
I started looking for somewhere to sit. The students in the rows closest to the door shifted as though I was a plague as I moved past, and that didn't go without nasty comments.
Why is she here?
Isn't she that human?
A human isn't supposed to be here.
What's she taking this class for?
She's polluting the air just by being in the room.
I kept my eyes forward and pretended I hadn't heard anything, focusing instead on the rows near the back where there were empty seats. I was almost there when something caught my foot.
The movement was sudden, and I knew it wasn't my clumsiness because there was nothing on the ground to trip on. My balance shifted forward and I pitched toward the desk ahead of me, catching myself on its edge before I fully lost my footing. My palm stung from the impact, and I stayed bent over the desk for a second, jaw tight with anger.
A few quiet snickers rippled through the room.
"Watch where you're going, bitch," a guy near the aisle said loudly.
I straightened slowly and looked directly at him. He stared back at me with complete innocence while two of his friends leaned away from their desks, trying to hide their laughter. I exhaled through my nose and kept walking.
Reacting would only give them what they wanted.
I reached the back row and slid into the seat closest to the window. The cool air drifting through the glass was the first thing that had felt remotely fresh since I stepped inside this building.
As I settled my bag on the desk, I noticed a familiar figure a few seats away.
My attic roommate.
She was sitting quietly with her notebook already open in front of her, her posture straight, her expression distant. I lifted my hand in a small wave — a simple acknowledgement, nothing more than a silent attempt at being friendly.
She glanced in my direction for half a second. Then she turned her head away like she hadn't seen me at all. I held my hand in the air one beat too long before lowering it slowly, hoping nobody had seen me do that.
Way to embarrass yourself, Charlotte.
A nearby student snickered and started mumbling, and I wanted to disappear. I focused on pulling my book from my bag instead. The professor stopped writing on the board and turned to the class, and in one quiet voice said, "Enough." Everyone in the class actually flinched and ducked their heads a little.
I was shocked. I looked from the Fae to them and shivered. What was that? His eyes found mine and he smiled softly at me, as though he hadn't just silenced the entire room. Then he turned back to the board and wrote the title of the lesson in neat, precise letters.
History of the Supernatural 101.
Then he began speaking. His voice filled the classroom easily, steady — the kind of voice that made it simple to follow even when you were trying very hard not to think about anything else. He really did have an alluring voice.
I opened my notebook and began writing everything down.
"There were many supernatural species," he explained. Wolves, vampires, goblins, fae, and dozens of other branches that had emerged over time. Their origins, according to the oldest records, began with a single race that had consumed a forbidden fruit they had never been meant to touch, and from that single act of disobedience, everything changed. The fruit didn't kill them the way it was supposed to. Instead, it rewired them from the inside out, reshaping their biology, their senses, their instincts, and their very relationship with the world around them. Some grew stronger, faster, and more predatory. Some developed an affinity with darkness, others with nature, and others with blood. The split didn't happen overnight — it took generations, centuries of slow divergence, before the species we know today fully emerged from that single corrupted root. No one could say with certainty which branch came first or which was closest to the original. The records were incomplete, he said, and then he paused and added quietly that the incompleteness was not accidental.
So there were revelations like this in the supernatural world too. I nodded, then looked around to see other students doing everything except paying attention. A few had their heads resting on their arms, clearly asleep. Others whispered to each other about things that had nothing to do with the lesson. Someone behind me flicked a folded piece of paper across the room and laughed quietly when it hit the back of another student's head.
They had clearly heard all of this before, every word of it, and they were bored with the story of where they came from — the way every human knows about evolution.
But I kept writing.
My stomach had been cramping since I sat down, a tight twisting sensation that kept pulling my focus away from the board no matter how hard I tried to hold onto it.
I hadn't eaten since before I came through the portal, and everything I had packed from home had been useless the moment I arrived because nothing from the human world was allowed inside Morsvalley Academy. That meant the bread and fruit I had carried for the journey had been confiscated.
I pressed my forearm firmly against my stomach when it twisted again, breathed through it, and hoped the sound it made wasn't travelling.
That would be humiliating. I'd rather die than have my stomach make a mockery of me here.
I forced myself to focus on the professor's voice instead. It was easier to listen than it was to think about how empty my stomach felt.
His lecture moved smoothly, each explanation leading naturally into the next, and despite the hunger gnawing steadily at me, I found myself absorbed in the information.
When the bell finally rang, I was almost caught off guard by it. I hadn't realised how much time had passed.
Students began gathering their things immediately, chairs scraping against the floor as they stood and filed toward the door. I packed my notebook slowly and pushed myself to my feet.
Three more classes.
I could do three more classes. I told myself that as I walked out into the corridor.
But with every step, the hollow ache in my stomach seemed to deepen, and by the time the next class ended, the hunger had already begun to feel worse.