His Defiant Bride

From Bad To Worse

A few days earlier

"That would be all for today. Don't forget your homework. And please start preparing early for the midterms," Thea said as she watched her students hurriedly exit the classroom with a smile.

They were always in a hurry at this time of day, heading out to avoid the lunch rush in restaurants only to fall right into it.

When Thea had to deal with her first year students, she was always aware of how difficult it was for them to go through the course load in the beginning, which is why she tended to go easy on them. After all, biology is a deceptively complicated subject.

But now that the midterms were close she knew that she had to step up her game a little bit, hence her hungry and sugar deprived students at the end of each session.

Thea slowly gathered her materials, closed her laptop, and headed up to her office.

Just as she was about to walk into her office, she was intercepted by the figure of a woman with fluffy red curls dancing everywhere and a pen stuck into them in an attempt to keep the unruly mass out of the way.

"Thea! You need to hear this!" Said her friend as she vibrated with excitement looking up at her.

"Pen. Would you at least let me put down this material? It's really heavy," She said and her overly excited friend looked down at her hands her eyes widening as she realized that Thea was still carrying her laptop and books.

Pen, or Penelope Grace, was Thea's friend since their first days in college. Pen's passion had always been chemistry. Which matched her hair and her fiery temper. Whenever she was in the lab, she looked like those classical mad scientists who were always dealing with chemical explosions with how her hair was always strewn everywhere.

"Here let me help you with that," Pen said as she helped her carry a bunch of books into her office.

"So what made you run to me in such a hurry?" Thea asked.

"I just heard from my department head but it seems like the university is going to do a collaboration with Chim&Bio," Pen said excitedly.

"You mean the pharmaceutical company that makes biological drugs?" Thea asked.

"Yes! I heard that the Dean is having a meeting with them today," Pen said with a huge smile and Thea couldn't help but smile back at her.

She was so genuinely happy about this.

"That's great news. It's going to open up so many research opportunities for both of our departments..." Thea said as she opened up the mailbox on her computer.

She knew someone who was going to be elated to hear this. As she thought so with a smile she frowned when she saw that there was a mail there from the dean...

"Yes! But you don't sound so excited about this..." Pen said, eyeing her with her bright green gaze and Thea rolled her eyes at her friend.

"Of course I am. It's just that research is not my priority right now... I have an outreach program to run and my hands are already full with that... Besides, Robert must be happy about this too." She said with a smile,

"Oh, Robert again..." Pen said, rolling her eyes. She was always like that whenever Thea talked about her boyfriend. Not that Thea could say anything about that. Robert could be quite... competitive when it comes to work.

"You're so much better at this," Pen said with a sigh, "which is why you always fight with your grandfather. You know he's probably going to want you to lead up this research program," Pen said "My grandfather may be the dean, but he can't force me to..." Thea trailed off as she looked at the email she had just received.