“I wasn’t sure you’d be able to do it,” the professor quipped, his tone far too condescending for Felix’s liking.
The witch’s face flushed red as she struggled to maintain eye contact. “Thank you, sir.”
Thank you?Thank you?Felix let out a low growl, and the professor arched an eyebrow. He wanted to rip it off his face. Why would she say thank you to such a brazen insult? Felix would never stand for it.
Shame surged down the bond. Shame that wasn’t his.
Feeling her emotions wasn’t something he would like to get used to. Feelings in general were quite foreign to him; shoving them into a dark hole and beating them into submission was his preferred method.
Instead of letting the little witch’s emotion overwhelm him, he focused on something much simpler, like the witch professor in front of him, head on a platter. He imagined it in vivid detail, his instincts starting to kick in as his claws extended onto the dark wood. It had been a while since he had taken such simple pleasure in killing a witch, one that was far overdue. Simpler times.
In the last year, he had taken out a dozen witches who had been under diplomatic immunity. The last one had turned a human woman into a toad because she had said the wrong thing around a particularly angry witch. He wouldn’t mind adding a few more to that tally.
“What a fine familiar you’ve summoned.” The professor’s booming voice shook Felix out of his trance, his ears flattening against his head. “A cat will do you well.”
She only smiled back at him.
“Put a collar on him, and you can attend class, Miss Alarch,” the professor said.
Collar?
These witches wanted to collar him?
Over his dead fucking body. Or theirs. Preferably theirs.
The professor pulled out a black collar from under his desk, which had a nametag in the shape of a heart on it, ready for engraving. To Felix’s horror, the professor held his hand up to the collar, running his fingers along it to adjust it to be cat-sized. The hair on his back rose at the sight of it.
“Have you thought of a name for him?” The professor’s eyes didn’t leave what he was doing.
“Lucky,” she replied with no hesitation, the ghost of a smile forming on her face.
“You’re going to pay for that, witch,”he hissed into her mind.
From this angle, it looked like she was chewing her cheek as if not to laugh. This was no laughing matter. This was an atrocity. A collar. Leashed to a witch.
“Lovely choice,” the professor said with a strained smile as he engraved the name into the heart.
It was almost enough to tip Felix over the edge, to make him shift on the spot and rip both their hearts out of their chests for the sheer audacity of it.
The professor shuffled some papers around. “Make sure to tell your mother as well; she will be pleased to see you’ve finally gotten a familiar.”
She took the collar from the professor and moved to put it on him. His back arched, hair standing straight up in an almost mohawk-like fashion.
“Don’t you dare, witch,”he said into her mind.
But he couldn’t do anything in front of this professor. She knew it too and took advantage of the poor cat he was.Traitor.
She slipped the collar over his head to his displeased rumble. He truly was a pet now, and this collar signaled it to the world. How his brothers wouldlaugh.They had no idea the sacrifice he was making for them right now.
The professor dismissed them, and they walked down the steps to the entrance of the lecture hall, that damned collar announcing him with every step—jingle, jingle, jingle. Each note added to a murderous rage that simmered under the surface. At the bottom, the witch hesitated outside the threshold, fingers twitching at her side. Her peers stared as they passed her. First to her, then down to him, snickers and disbelief left in their wake.
“Having second thoughts, witch?”Felix asked.
She spoke under her breath. “About a thousand of them.”
Out of all the witches he had met, none of them was quite as anxious as she was. Most witches he met were cunning,salivating at the thought of killing him. This one seemed like she would tremble killing a fly.
“You’ve made your bed, witch, now you have to lie in it.”
