•••
Arlette’s carriage tore through the streets of the Leopold Territory until she was back on the road proper and was driving toward Lochxen.
Neither she nor Caius had said a word to each other since they left the Leopold Estate and she had spent that silence thinking on the things that just happened. Most especially, the authority he had granted her, wondering exactly how she should feel about it.
She had been given a massive amount of responsibility, a lot of control over forces she had been subservient to for years and she should be feeling elated at the mont. Only, she didn’t.
She had told Caius once that she disliked the assignnt she had been given to beco a Professor at Lochxen. This felt a lot like that assignnt; It felt like the death of a life of excitent.
It felt like her glory days were now behind her. Straddled with the responsibility of managent, she felt she’d never again step out of her comfort zone, brave a lot of dangers, accomplish... sothing more than teaching a bunch of snobby kids.
She closed her eyes as she had that thought. The carriage never once strayed from the road due to her lack of sight as her reflexes served her well enough to drive without it.
Just then, she felt like she was back in her office at Lochxen. She was sitting at her desk, sifting through notes she had prepared to teach and then she stood up, picked the necessary ones, and took the portal Gate to her classroom. She looked at the students’ faces, smiled to herself at the frustrations most of them had as they struggled with Alchemy.
She smiled even more at the studious expressions the few of them had as they took in her words and followed her instructions to amazing results.
’Ah, who am I kidding?’ Arlette asked herself as a smile spread across her lips.
As far as Lochxen was concerned, she would be lying if she said she hated it. If anything, that scared her the most. Teaching was a boring job. It was ant to only be her cover so she could beco a part of the Lochxen Faculty and serve as a way in for ’Ophiuchus’ when a mont arrived that they needed it.
It was a necessary evil and she had been briefed about it when she had been given the Assignnt. She wasn’t ant to enjoy it. But she had started to.
She had told Caius on the day they had been together in her ho for the first ti that the actual teaching she did in class, she actually liked. It was the rest, the preparations for those classes, that she despised. And she also hated that she was getting used to it.
In the ti since she had said that, she didn’t even think she hated the preparations anymore. She found herself actively trying to find ways to make her lessons more accessible to the class at large like she was trying to keep more of them when the eventual mont ca she’d have to dismiss those who lacked the talent for it.
’How did that happen?’ Arlette asked herself.
How had she allowed herself to care? How had she allowed herself to enjoy the mundane? How had she allowed herself to enjoy stability?
And that sparked another question in her head;
When exactly did she start to detest stability?
It could have been when she lost everyone she had ever called family and beca a Vagabond.
When you spend a couple of decades fending for yourself, never staying in one place because everywhere seems to reject you, you develop a pleasure in that life.
Also, the fact that she developed a habit of sneaking looks into or outright stealing the Dark Church’s sacred books to increase her understanding of the Goddess Anyxyl—an interest she had picked up in her years of wandering—and got the church so angry, they sent their Adepts after her certainly furthered her vagrant lifestyle.
In any case, when she was initiated into ’Ophiuchus’, her way of life was set. So the fact that the organization always had missions to undertake all over the Empire, and never let her ever call a place ’ho’, was fine by her.
But Lochxen was a change to that.
For the first ti in Decades, her life was stretched out in front of her and she only saw one location. Take away the mission itself and you’re left with her actually holding a job and going back to the sa ho after every day of working that job.
She didn’t even spend the weekends outside the academy because, where would she go? Her life, her mission, was at Lochxen.
And... she didn’t hate it. Not completely. Not anymore.
Just weeks of stability were returning her to the ti, before her decades of Vagrant life, when she had actually had a ho. When she had had structure.
Again, Arlette, still with her eyes closed, found herself in her classroom. Only the faces of the students seed to dim and she saw just Caius’s.
His face glowed compared to the rest, and it didn’t even really feel like an exaggeration caused by her mind, because, really, whose face could ever compare to his?
Arlette asked herself, How much had he influenced her changed stance on stability?
To think she had sparked their first interaction because she wanted to nurse him into ally. Now she felt he had nursed her instead.
Now she didn’t just want to be the exception to his ’terrible’ Vampiric Traits; She wanted to be part of it. She wanted to be his partner. She wanted to serve whatever goals he had.
If there was one thing today had made clear to her, it was that he had a vision. His acquisition of the Leopold Coven and, by extension, ’Ophiuchius’, was not random.
And to help that goal, if the part she had to play was to manage the Criminal Organization she once served, she happily would.
Arlette opened her eyes then and a smile spread across her face.
Her heart beat fast. Her blood pumped hard in her veins in excitent she had never felt in all her decades of Vagrant life and dangerous missions.
A death to her life of excitent? Hell No.
It had little to do with the task she now had of managent and everything to do with Caius himself.
He... excited her.
When they’re together, when he sinks his fangs into her, when he runs his hands all over her body and she gets to do the sa to his, her heart would always skip a beat with joy.
Teaching at Lochxen was a re tease to the life of stability.
Caius was the fulfillnt and perfection of it.
To be with him, as far as Arlette was concerned, was stability. Wherever his crazy sches and adventures led them—because she was now intent on being by his side through it all—that would be her ho.
They pulled into Lochxen through the Gate available only to Professors and in minutes, they were walking into Arlette’s ho.
Caius had barely taken five steps when Arlette pulled him into a kiss and pushed him with that kiss until his back hit the door that led deeper into her ho.
Caius paused and didn’t exactly reciprocate imdiately.
"Are you alright?" He asked when she left his lips to kiss his neck.
He had felt sothing from her while they were in the Carriage. He would have broken the silence that perated but he felt she needed ti to work through whatever it was.
And while a kiss was a positive reaction that could have indicated a positive outco to her introspection, he still wanted to ask.
Arlette pulled back and stared at his face, her hand brushing through his hair as her lips spread into the widest smile possible.
"Never been better," she said.
"Oh," Caius said and smiled as well, "Alright then."
Arlette claid his lips again and this ti, he was an active participant. His hands went on her hips, pulling her lower half against his body before one of his hands rose to her back, went flat against the middle of it to pull her upper half against him as well.
And then Arlette pulled away from his lips and pecked his cheek before attacking his neck with a Vampire-like ferociousness. Nipping at his skin with her teeth.
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