Ciel didn't stop walking until the crowd noise faded completely behind him.
He turned a corner, found a stretch of path between two buildings where nobody was standing, and stopped. He leaned against the wall and let out the breath he had been holding for what felt like the last ten minutes of his life.
His heart was doing something loud and irregular that he was choosing not to acknowledge.
He tipped his head back against the wall and stared at the sky for a moment.
Ryiot's scent...
That was the thing that had nearly undone him and he was only now, with distance between them, allowing himself to examine it. When Ryiot had leaned in and inhaled and Ciel had felt the full weight of his pheromones pressing at the edges of his awareness - something in Ciel's carefully maintained biology had lurched toward it.
Dark amber. Smoke. Heavy and pervasive and deeply, humiliatingly protective in the way it had flooded his senses.
His suppressant had held. Barely.
He knew what would have happened if it hadn't. He'd read enough, learned enough from his father's quiet and thorough education, to know exactly what an omega did in the presence of a compatible alpha's concentrated pheromones without pharmaceutical intervention.
The submissive tilt. The exposed throat...
The thought made his stomach turn.
He pushed off the wall and started walking again. Slower now, thinking.
"Over my dead body."
He said it quietly, to no one, to the empty path ahead of him. Over his dead body would he soften or submit or tilt his chin down for someone who had stood in his family's yard with cold eyes and given orders like his parents' lives were an administrative inconvenience.
He thought about his mother's laugh, which he hadn't heard in two years and would never hear again then spat on the ground.
As if Ryiot were there. As if the contempt needed somewhere to land.
Then he straightened his bag on his shoulder and kept walking.
He would work double shifts if he had to. He would eat less, sleep less, do whatever was necessary to keep the suppressant doses coming.
"Useless alpha," he thought, and the word sat in his mouth like something satisfying.
He turned toward the hostel.
~~~~~~~~
The room was quiet when he pushed the door open.
Lawrence was on his bunk, flat on his back, phone held above his face at the particular angle of someone who had been in that position for a significant portion of the afternoon. He glanced up when Ciel came in, offered a sound that was approximately a greeting, and returned to his screen.
Ciel returned it with a sound that was approximately the same.
They had been roommates for exactly one day. Long enough to establish names and which bunk belonged to whom, not long enough for much else.
Lawrence was a beta - Ciel had observed that within the first thirty seconds of meeting him, with the particular relief of someone who had been bracing for something harder, which meant the room was one of the few spaces on campus where Ciel's guard could drop by approximately fifty percent.
He dropped his bag at the foot of his bunk and started pulling out his work clothes. He had a shift in two hours. Enough time to shower and eat something small and get across the city without running.
He was reaching for his towel when he heard Lawrence sit up.
He didn't think anything of it. Then he heard the sound of someone walking the room and stopped.
Lawrence was standing beside him. Phone in hand, holding it up, looking between the screen and Ciel's face with the focused expression of someone doing a comparison they weren't sure about.
Ciel's brows furrowed in confusion as he asked; "What are you doing?"
Lawrence looked at the phone, looked at Ciel then looked at the phone again.
Then a sound escaped his throat - the specific noise of someone who has just confirmed something they weren't sure they believed, and he grabbed Ciel's arm.
"It's you!" He shook the arm slightly. "It's actually you! My roommate is campus news!"
Ciel looked at the phone.
The footage was shaky but the faces were clear enough. Ryiot. His men. And Ciel, chin up, saying things to Ryiot Vantrell's face that the caption below described, with evident disbelief, as "unhinged or suicidal, developing story."
The comments were in the thousands already.
Ciel took the phone. Scrolled for like four seconds, then handed it back.
"So unnecessary!" he said, and turned back to his towel.
"Ciel." Lawrence's voice had changed. The excitement had drained out of it and left something more serious behind.
He was looking at Ciel with an expression that sat somewhere between concern and the particular exhaustion of someone about to explain something they shouldn't have to explain.
"You've been marked."
The word hit Ciel in the chest like a physical blow. He turned around sharply.
"Over my dead body will any useless Alpha mark me!" He gritted out.
Lawrence looked at him for a moment, with his lips parted. Then he looked between the phone and Ciel with the expression of someone deciding whether to push it.
"No literally but you've been marked by danger." He expatiated then sat back down on his bunk, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
Ciel scoffed when he understood what he meant.
"You really don't know that man, Ciel." Lawrence began, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Ryiot Vantrell runs the most powerful mafia operation in this city. Not rumour, actual fact, everyone here knows it, nobody says it out loud. He funds this university. Half the campus boys running packages at night? His people. The east basement that's always locked?" He lowered his voice without deciding to. "That's where he brings people he's unhappy with. Not to talk."
Ciel said nothing.
"He's not a vampire," Lawrence continued; "But there are people on this campus who will tell you they've seen him drink blood just to prove a point."
Ciel picked up his towel. "Is that the worst he can do?"
Lawrence's jaw loosened slightly.
"I'm not afraid of him," Ciel said simply. "I wasn't afraid of him this afternoon. I won't be afraid of him tomorrow." He slung the towel over his shoulder. "He's just a man who has spent so long watching people flinch that he's forgotten not everyone does."
Lawrence stared at him in disbelief.
"I should start preparing your funeral," he said finally, but it came out sounding more like 'I genuinely cannot tell if you're brave or crazy.'
Ciel shrugged nonchalantly then walked towards the bathroom but before he could enter, a knock came on the room door.
Not a polite knock - Three heavy impacts on the door that landed in the room like a declaration.
Lawrence flinched so hard he nearly dropped his phone.
Ciel stopped.
The second knock came before either of them moved - louder, with the particular weight of someone accustomed to doors opening for them.
Lawrence looked at Ciel. His face had gone pale and Ciel could guess what he was definitely thinking of.
Ryiot Vantrell already there to punish him?
"Let him come!" Ciel scoffed inwardly then walked to the door and opened it.
Ciel had no idea what was waiting behind the door.
The man on the other side was not Ryiot. He was not any of Ryiot's men. He was fiftyish, heavyset, in the administrative shirt of a university hostel warden.
He looked at Ciel then said;
"You are Ciel Calloway," It wasn't a question.
"Yes,"
The warden nodded once.
"You'll need to vacate the room." He announced and the words landed in the quiet of the corridor with terrible simplicity.
Lawrence made a sound from somewhere behind Ciel.
"I'm sorry, why?" Ciel asked. His voice came out even despite the shock and dread in him and he was proud of that.
"Before 6pm this evening." The warden added as if Ciel hadn't said anything.
"On what grounds?" Ciel demanded firmly.
The warden looked at him, his lips curving slightly as if to say Ciel was really gutsy.
"Aren't you prepared for some consequences when you were acting on whim earlier?" The warden muttered more to himself but Ciel heard him and he instantly figured it out.
"That son of a bitch!"
He knew this wasn't about any rule violation. No administrative error that could be corrected with a form and a conversation.
It was just a phone call, made quietly, from somewhere across campus, by a man with cold dark eyes and an expression that had settled back into blankness while he watched Ciel walk away.
"Before 6pm! And make sure I do not see you anywhere around the hostel or else..." The warden didn't need to complete that. Ciel could tell by the hardness of the man's face.
Ciel gritted his teeth and the warden turned around and left.
Lawrence had risen from his bunk. He was standing in the middle of the room with his phone in his hand and his mouth slightly open, looking at Ciel sympathetically.
Ciel stood in the open doorway as he thought;
"Where will I go?"
He had no money - he was just going to start the part-time job. No friend, no family.
And from the forecast earlier that morning, the night was going to be very cold.