Alex
Bitter coffee scents the air as Toby slides two paper cups full of ink-colored liquid across the counter. I grab one while he pours a copious amount of sugar in his cup and wait for him to finish with the carafe of cream.
It’s Friday, and normally I’m in the lab, but today I needed to make myself available to sign for a supply delivery coming from Aurorium, and Toby took that as an opportunity to turn my down-time into an entire event.
We used to be roommates back when I lived in the dungeon-like dormitory beneath the ice. Unlike everyone else, I loved it down there–the darkness of it all. The shuddering pipes and crackling ice against feet of concrete felt like home, but when I was offered an apartment after I graduated with my master’s and planned to pursue a PhD, I took it, mostly because Toby begged for me to take it–and to take him with me when I finally breached the surface. So I did.
We don’t live together now, but for whatever reason, I’m leaning against the counter in the campus coffee shop while he flips through a grocery list he made on his phone.
“We need hand soap and towels for the lab…. Do you think the commissary is going to have any in-season vegetables?” He brings his coffee cup to his lips.
“I highly doubt it.”
He frowns and rolls his eyes to the windows behind us. It’s well into the afternoon and pitch black, long past the mere minutes of blue hour, or civil twilight, we get a day this far north. “Meat? The hunting here has sucked lately.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
He growls. “You’ve never been a fun person to take grocery shopping.”
“Why not take Abby with you then?” I resist the urge to remind him he’s technically holding me against my will, but if I say that out loud, he’ll just smile, tease me, maybe even turn this into a whole thing and bring up my strange dietary habits from our time as undergrads, when I wouldn’t come near the pizza and the blended and fried raw garbage he called chicken nuggets. He only recently switched to real food.
“Abby is honestly worse of a shopping companion than you. She buys everything on a whim. It’s chaos. Meanwhile, you spend an atrocious amount of time reading the labels on everything and not even buying anything. What do you eat these days, huh? Your precious black coffee and what, protein bars?”
“It’s a well-balanced meal.”
“You’re insane, Alex.”
“The best scientists are.”
He huffs a laugh and sips his coffee then turns back to the counter to pour more sugar into his cup. I wince, shaking my head and biting my tongue against the flurry of warnings that come to mind about glucose and its effects on wolves like Toby, but then he claps the plastic lid back on his cup and says, “Ready for shopping?”
I reluctantly nod, falling into step with him. The little cafe near the commons connects to the library by a glass bridge, but we bypass the archways leading into LU’s massive library and head to the elevators. The commissary is perched just a story above ice level and serves as a quick stop for things like toiletries and groceries for the students who live in the dorms beneath the ground, as well as the graduate-level students, researchers, and professors above.
I rarely come here. I watch Toby scan the shelves as he moves through the tight, crowded aisles. Even after over a decade in Lunaria, in the Allied Kingdoms, all of this still feels foreign to me. I follow along as Toby does his shopping.
“Oh, cereal!” Toby steers his cart, which is full of soap and whatever decent looking meat and vegetables he could get his hands on around a sharp corner, and I stop short.
Skye Abbot is tucked against one of the shelves. She nods along to whatever Maisie, the insufferable faculty administrator, is gesturing about. Skye’s eyes are slightly glazed over and remain that way when Maisie walks away, but then she blinks, and those violet irises sharpen on Abby, who’s arguing with her about something.
I step into the aisle to follow Toby, each step calculated and determined to squeeze past her without being noticed.
I met her before the party the other night, but she doesn’t remember. I suppose it’s best if it stays that way.
But when Toby’s hand grips my forearm and drags me to a stop, I’m forced to face them. Face her. The one person I told myself I’d avoid like the plague.
She’s… not just a shifter. It’s evident in her scent, the way she carries herself and the sharpening of those eyes when her gaze locks on mine and narrows into a glare.
There’re other kinds of shifters, or at least, there used to be, according to what I’ve learned during my decade in the Kingdoms. Perhaps she’s a… cat shifter? If those exist? She moves like one, especially as she slowly follows my fingers to pry Toby’s grip from my thermal shirt.
“Babe,” Toby beams, but Abby, like usual, snarls at him.
* * *
Skye
After years of not once seeing the man around campus, all of a sudden he’s in front of me all the time. He’s here now, turning to us as Abby snaps at Toby, who looks like being under Abby’s wrath is exactly where he wants to be at any given moment.
I’ve never seen someone more in love. Abby, on the other hand, is still on the fence about her feelings. That, or she thoroughly enjoys torturing the poor man every second of every day.
“You were really about to just walk right by me and not say anything?” Abby snaps, gripping the basket like a weapon. “Asshole!”
“Babe, I literally just talked to you on the phone!”
“You could have said you were coming to the commissary. We could have come together!”
“I didn’t know I was going to be up here until we ran out of hand soap in the lab washroom,” he grumbles. His rich, light brown hair is slicked back from wearing a beanie most of the time. His hazel eyes briefly meet mine, and he nods, murmuring, “Hey, Skye.”
“Hey, Toby.” I give him a quick, apologetic smile. Abby can be… a lot. But he knows that. They’ve been playing this game for years.
They’re mates. Fated mates. Their dynamic is strange, to say the least.
Dr. Scarlett is just standing here, watching the scene play out, his expression totally unreadable. He catches me staring but says nothing, just arches a brow while Abby continues to rail into Toby for the simple fact that they ran into each other in public.
“This day couldn’t get any worse,” Abby huffs, shoving the basket into my unready arms. I drop it, and Dr. Scarlett catches it before it hits the ground, handing it back to me without a single word.
“What else is going on because this can’t just be about me shopping!” Toby grips Abby’s shoulder. “Come on, Abigail.”
“Skye just got her fancy professor condo, so she has to move out–”
“I haven’t decided–”
“You don’t get to decide! I knew it was going to happen. There’s never been enough apartments for the postdocs. You know that!” She’s pouting now, a trick I know all too well. Toby can’t help but melt at the sight of her puppy dog expression.
I roll my eyes, accidentally catching Dr. Scarlett’s gaze, and this time he smiles… a bit. No teeth, but he’s obviously enjoying the show. The slight curve of his lips softens his features to something almost… handsome. Maybe even a little warm and approachable, but barely.
“Babe, that's great news!”
“What? Skye is moving out, and that’s great news to you? Fuck you, Toby!”
He shakes her. “I’m supposed to be getting a new roommate, but we can room together now!”
Dr. Scarlett and I both wait in shockingly companionable silence for Abby’s reaction, which is likely to be explosive.
She wipes her eyes, which are dry, and looks at our sorry group, then realizes her arch nemesis is standing there, looking down at her.
“What are you doing here?”
“Picking up supplies for the lab,” Dr. Scarlett deadpans so dryly it makes the temperature in the commissary drop by ten degrees.
“You know what, Skye? You’ll be neighbors," Toby cuts in, looking between me and Dr. Scarlett. “Alex lives in The Pillars.”
Great. Just super. “Again, I literally just found out there’s a place opening up, so–”
Dr. Scarlett’s watch beeps aggressively. Toby stiffens, leaning in to see the alert lighting up the doctor’s wrist.
“Shit. Uh, Abby, I’m gonna call you late–”
“Don’t bother!” Abby snaps, but Toby presses a rushed kiss to her forehead that she doesn’t fight and hustles down the aisle with Alex.
I stare at the way Alex’s muscles shift under the fabric of his thermal shirt and dark jeans, the former of which aren’t bright yellow. No, they're deep navy blue and tight enough to show off the broadness of his chest and shoulders.
“Ew,” Abby scowls.
“What?”
“Why are you looking at Dr. Scarlett like that?”
“Like what?” I hiss, my cheeks flaring with heat.
“Toby thinks he’s the Goddess’s gift to the world, and I don’t get it. Sure, he’s a looker, but he’s also a fucking demon, Skye!”
“I wasn’t–I wasn’t checking him out!” I whisper-snarl, glancing around to make sure we weren’t overheard.
“Sure. Babe, I saw it.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing I’m being forced to move out.”
She rolls her eyes and drapes an arm over my shoulder. “Would it be too soon to move in with Toby?”
“You’ve known you were mates for five years and have been fighting just as long.”
“It’s foreplay.” She shrugs, laughing when I make a gagging noise that has her smiling from ear to ear. “I guess we should get some cardboard boxes while we’re here, huh?”
Abby turns back to the shelves to browse the meager selection of granola bars. I take a shallow breath and turn to look down the aisle, unsure if the prickling on the back of my neck is just nerves or my powers making it very clear I’m being watched.
Alex is looking right at me, unabashedly, like he isn’t bothered in the slightest that I just caught him staring.
I do a very dumb thing. At least, I might look back on this moment and think it was the stupidest, most ridiculous event in my entire life thus far… I smile at him. Just the smallest upward tilt of my lips, and at first, his reaction edges on outright confusion.
He blinks, reaches up to scrub the back of his neck, and gives me a similar kind of smile that’s quickly erased when Toby, standing at one of the checkout lanes, motions for Alex’s wallet.
Alex pays for… all of it. Toby’s groceries and the soap.
“What are you looking at? Oh, my Goddess, Skye!”
I quickly look away and meet Abby’s eyes just as she cackles.
“What? I–I wasn’t–”
“Do you think he’s hot?”
“Al–Dr. Scarlett?”
“Obviously! Who else?”
“I don’t know how to answer that question.”
“Oh, girl,” she murmurs, roping her arm around mine. “Look, date anyone else. I really don’t care if you bring home a date with four sets of eyes and six fingers on each hand because that would be way easier to digest than you having the hots for the man making my life so much harder than it needs to be.”
I glance back at the checkout line in time to see Toby and Alex disappear from view into the nearest skybridge and finally feel like I can breathe. “He seems nice enough.”
“You haven’t been in his lab.”
“I–I might be consulting with the biology department soon. I’m not sure–”
A crackle of static splits the air before an announcement blares over the intercom.
“Good afternoon, Lunaria University. This is a campus-wide weather warning. I repeat, this is a campus-wide weather warning. All outdoor spaces, including the bubble labs, will shut down at 5:00 P.M. this evening because of inclement weather. All outdoor spaces, including surface-level labs, exterior access for shifting purposes, and exterior access to ice roads will close at 5:00 P.M. because of–”
“Jeez. I wonder what the hell that’s about?” Abby blinks up at the ceiling like the owner of the dry, monotone female voice who’s been haunting us since undergrad is hanging from the rafters.
“Winds of 100 miles an hour expected until Saturday at 6:00 P.M.,” she drones on.
“Great,” I whisper, clutching the basket a little closer. “Our windows are going to be flexing and popping all night.”
“With a high temperature of negative sixty and wind chills of negative 90.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” Abby rushes out, laughing nervously. “I’m going into industry.”
“Will the ice labs be closed tomorrow, too?”
“Oh, absolutely not!” She lets out another signature cackle and nearly brings herself to tears. “It’s a whole other world down there, and Dr. Scarlett doesn’t listen to a Goddess-damned thing the university's emergency alert system says. Never. But the good news is we can still go out tomorrow night. Right? Right?” She nudges my shoulder three times until I give her a stiff nod.
But my mind wanders, my powers simmering, still on high alert.
Because of him? Why?