They Sold Me as a Brood Bride, So I Enrolled in the Boys' Alpha College novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Gate

Her name is already in the college gate-book, the term's first scrum puts Cadoc Vaughan's hand flat on her bound chest, and that night he sets his slate token on her bunk and says hello.

The gate of Craig Cadarn College hung open on its chain at dawn.

The chain was off its hook.

It lay coiled on the slate step beneath the gatepost, and I could not make myself believe it.

"It's meant to be locked," I said.

"It's been left for you," Elis said.

He pointed to the gate-book chained beside the post, open on a lectern under a tin roof.

The newest line was in the Warden's copperplate: Gwyn Treharne, cousin, northern valley. Admitted.

The ink was dry.

Nobody had told me my name was already in it.

"Who wrote that?" I asked.

"The Warden, I'd think."

"When?"

Elis looked at the sky as though he had been asked the time.

"I have to go back before the gate rule catches me," he said. "Drink the flask at dusk. Three days to a dose, no more."

He gripped my shoulders and looked at my cropped head, and I think he nearly said sorry.

He said, "Don't run into Cadoc Vaughan. He's loud."

Then he was gone down the quarry road with my life in his boot.

I stood in a grey jacket two sizes too big, with my chest bound so tight I could feel my own ribs, and walked through the gate.

Three hundred boys were crossing the quad.

It was the first day of term and the whole school was on the gravel for the Hall scrum.

Nobody had warned me about the scrum.

It is the oldest tradition at Craig Cadarn, and it is a fight.

Each student takes a flag and fights to hold it for the length of an hour, and the new boys go in last, with the old boys already loose.

I was shoved into it from behind before I had found a place to stand.

A shoulder took me in the kidney and a boot went over my ankle.

I smelled sweat and wet gravel and a hundred wolves in the first heat of their year.

None of them looked twice at me.

The blocker was working.

I smelled of nothing but cousin and slate and a little rain, a boy with no rank and no weather, and I was wild with relief for one stupid breath.

Then somebody caught me by the front of the jacket and swung me against a wall.

It was a big hand.

It landed flat on my chest, low, over the binding, and it held me there.

I looked up into amber eyes.

He was six foot two, with a captain's black jacket and gold hair to his collar, and he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I hated that I noticed.

A slate token hung on a cord at his throat.

His thumb sat in the dip under my collarbone, and his palm pressed my breastbone, and I felt the heat go through the cloth.

His nostrils flared.

I watched it happen.

He leaned in, an inch, no more, and breathed me in.

He went completely still.

"Name," he said.

It was a deep voice, with a laugh somewhere under it that did not reach his face.

"Gwyn," I said, in the voice I had practised in the car, low and flat. "Treharne."

"Treharne."

His hand did not move.

All around us the scrum raged on, and nobody noticed the Captain of the Hall holding a new boy against a wall.

His thumb moved once, a very small stroke over the bone.

"Who sent you?" he said.

"The Warden's book says I'm a cousin," I said.

"I can read the book."

"Then you know," I said, and I did not look away.

His eyes dropped for a second to my mouth.

I did not like what my body did.

I felt the heat of him in my stomach and low in my legs, a pull like a hook set under my ribs.

It was only the mate-sense, a pull to be near, I told myself.

It was not a thing I wanted.

I wanted the flag.

A shove from the side broke us apart.

It was a hard, mean shove, with an elbow in it, and I went down onto the gravel on my palms.

Standing over me were two big third-years with the same long jaw.

The older one put his boot on my wrist.

"New cousin," he said. "I'm a Penhallow. You'll remember that."

The younger one laughed.

Penhallow.

Of course.

Of course the man who had bought me had sent his sons to the one school where I had run.

Cadoc Vaughan took the older Penhallow by the back of his collar and lifted him off the ground one-handed.

"It's term day," Cadoc said, pleasantly. "Fight with the flag."

The older Penhallow went red.

He dropped to his feet and walked away, and his brother followed.

Cadoc stood looking down at me.

He did not offer a hand.

He said, "Dorm."

That night I lay in the east dormitory with my back to the wall.

Six iron bunks, two other first-years snoring, and a window that did not shut against the cold.

I had not slept.

I had dosed myself at dusk from Elis's flask and I could taste the bitter on my tongue.

The door opened without a sound.

I knew who it was before I saw him.

The pull under my ribs told me.

Cadoc Vaughan crossed the floor in his socks and stopped at the foot of my bunk.

He did not say a word.

He took the slate token from its cord at his throat and set it on my blanket, and he stood there while I stared at it.

Grey-blue slate, thumb-sized, with a nick in one corner.

It was the colour of the paperweight on my father's desk.

I did not understand why that frightened me.

"Hello," Cadoc said.

He said it softly, with his eyes on my face, and I knew he had known from the first breath on the gravel.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend