Chapter 66: Unofficial Match [1]
The corridor had emptied out by the time they stopped.
No students passing through. Just the two of them, the faint sound of celebration from somewhere distant, and a silence that Sierra was the first one to break.
Several seconds passed where she didn’t say anything.
Then her eyes filled.
"I’m sorry." Her voice came out cracked. "I’m really sorry for what I did to you."
Alden said nothing.
He stood there and listened with the same expression he’d been wearing since she said his name in the hallway.
"I know saying sorry won’t change what happened." She wiped at her cheek, but more tears followed. "But I mean it. I genuinely regret everything."
She took a breath that didn’t quite settle.
"Can we—" She stopped, cupped his hand in both of hers, and started speaking again. "Can we go back to how things were before?"
Alden frowned. "Sorry. What?"
"I asked if we could go back." Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "To how we were before all of this."
He looked at her for a moment.
Then he pulled his hand back from where she’d reached for it.
"No thanks. I’m good."
Sierra’s grip almost released.
Then her eyes caught a small glint, light catching metal.
She looked down at his left hand.
"Wait—" Her fingers closed around his hand before he could move it.
Her eyes went wide.
"You’re still wearing this?"
The ring. The matching pair they’d exchanged when they first started dating, the ones he’d kept on through everything.
A smile found its way through Sierra’s tears.
"You still like me, don’t you?" It wasn’t really a question. She stepped closer. "You kept it on this whole time. That has to mean something."
Alden looked down at the ring.
"Wait... what was this ring again?"
Sierra’s smile vanished.
"It’s—" She stared at him. "It’s the ring we exchanged. When we started dating."
"Oh." He looked at it for another second.
Then he pulled it off his finger.
"What?" Sierra’s eyes went wide. "What are you—?"
He placed it gently in her open palm.
"Here. Thank you."
"Why?" She stared at it. Then at him. "Why are you giving it back? What are you doing?"
"I didn’t remember what it was." He glanced at his now-empty finger. "If I had, I wouldn’t have kept wearing it."
Her fingers curled slowly around the ring.
Alden looked at her.
"I already gave you my answer." He said it simply. "No."
Sierra’s eyes trembled.
"I’m no longer interested." He stepped past her. "Please excuse me."
Her hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve.
"I’m sorry!" Her voice cracked again, more desperate now than before. "I know what I did was wrong. I know it. And I regret it — I really do. Please, Alden. Please just forgive me. I won’t ever—"
’This damn woman.’ His eyebrow twitched. He started to turn around.
"Oh, here you are, Alden~ I was looking for you."
Both of them turned.
Seris rested against the corridor wall a few paces away. Head tilted, she looked entirely at ease, knowing she had shown up at just the right second.
"Seris?" Alden’s expression changed before he could manage it.
The corner of his mouth moved.
’Wait—why did I smile?’ He forced his face neutral again.
’What was that.’
"S-Seris?" Sierra repeated, her eyes darting between the two of them. Alden addressed the Vice-President by her bare name. No ’Senior,’ no title at all. He said it as if they were very old friends.
Seris placed a hand over her mouth.
Her eyes shifted between them with obvious delight, like someone who had just walked into the room and immediately understood all of it.
"Oh my." The smile behind her hand was not subtle. "Did I interrupt something? It certainly looks like something."
"No. Nothing." Alden stepped away from Sierra’s grip and moved toward Seris. "What is it?"
"I have something to ask you." Seris glanced past him toward the corridor behind. "Shall we go somewhere less open? People could overhear."
She didn’t wait for the answer.
Her hand found his arm and she pulled him along with the natural confidence of someone who has never considered that this might not work.
He went.
Sierra stood in the corridor.
Her tears had stopped.
She watched them walk away, Seris’s arm looped through Alden’s as if they had done it a hundred times, until they turned the corner and disappeared.
’...What?
With the Vice-President?’
They’d made it far enough that the corridor behind them was empty in both directions.
Alden glanced sideways.
"You did that on purpose."
Seris continued walking with the expression of someone who has no idea what he’s referring to.
"Did what? I don’t follow."
"You followed me, appeared at that exact moment, grabbed my arm in front of her, and pulled me away." He kept his voice flat. "On purpose."
She finally looked at him.
"Maybe." The smile widened. "Or maybe not."
"I knew it." Alden exhaled through his nose. "Anyways thanks for that."
But his mouth had done something by the time he looked forward again. Something small and involuntary that he noticed about two seconds after it happened.
’Why did I like that?’
He didn’t have a good answer for it so he filed it somewhere he’d think about later and focused on walking.
"Anyway," Seris said after a moment, her tone shifting into something more conversational and still holding his arm, "You know something interesting about vampire blood? When they drink, they see what the other person experienced. Not everything, of course. Just what they saw from the moment they first set eyes on them."
’What is she even babbling about?’ Alden narrowed his eyes. "Get to the point."
"I’m thirsty."
His expression dropped immediately. "No."
"Heyy~" She tilted her head. "Aren’t you usually interested in negotiating something in return? You always have conditions."
"I don’t need anything right now." He shrugged. "If I need something from you, I’ll come to you and we’ll exchange. Until then, no."
Seris stopped walking.
He took one more step before realizing she wasn’t beside him anymore.
He turned.
She stepped directly in front of him. Reaching up, she caught his chin lightly between her fingers and tilted his face down, forcing his eyes to meet hers.
The smile on her face was mischievous.
"You’re quite selfish, you know."
Alden went still. Instead of pulling back, he just looked at her.
For a few seconds, something soft crossed his face. His cheeks grew warm despite himself.
Then he looked away.
"...Fine."
Seris blinked. Her hand released his chin.
"You agreed?"
She stepped back to his side and fell into step again, the genuine surprise doing something uncharacteristic to her composure.
"You didn’t argue. You didn’t add conditions. You just said fine." She glanced at him sidelong. "Did something happen to you? You’re in an oddly good mood."
Alden kept his eyes forward.
’What was I thinking.’
He frowned at the middle distance.
’Why did I agree that fast? She barely pushed at all. That’s not—
Strange.’
"No, what I mean to say was—"
BOOM.
Thunder rolled through the corridor. A flash of lightning lit the windows from outside.
Both of them stopped.
Augustus was standing ahead of them.
He wasn’t wearing the expression he wore in council meetings, or in the arena, or in any of the comfortable public spaces where his lazy grin was as reliable as gravity. That was gone.
In its place was a quiet, uneasy focus. His eyes were sharp, the look of a person tired of carrying everything by himself.
His eyes were on both of them.
He didn’t move.
When he spoke, his voice was exactly level.
"Why is it that I keep finding you two together?"