by Sophie Lark
As I suspected, Lola has been increasingly aggressive since I embarrassed her in that Interrogation class. It was just a stupid exercise, it didn’t even count for grades, and yet she seems to have taken it as a grave insult. I suppose the insult is that I dared to show her up, when I’m supposed to be a pathetic nobody.
Well, I’m not that pathetic anymore. I’m actually doing pretty damn well in most of my classes.
And I’m not really a nobody anymore, either. Of course, I’d prefer to do without the kind of fame that comes from following Dean all over campus like his own personal butler, but it’s definitely made me stand out.
Anna and Chay have asked me twenty times if I’m okay, and if I want them to tell Dean to fuck off for me. I beg them to leave it alone.
“He’s not bothering me,” I say, unable to meet the combined weight of the girls’ concerned gaze. “We’re just . . . friends.”
“Friends?” Chay says in disbelief.
“If he’s threatening you—” Anna says.
“No!” I lie. “He’s not. We just, uh, like studying together.”
It’s ridiculously weak, but what can they do? There’s no law against making somebody carry your books around.
Lola is less easily appeased. She and Dixie Davis have taken to harassing Rakel and me every chance they get. Which is pretty damn often, considering we sleep within twenty feet of each other.
“What happened to southern hospitality?” Rakel grumbles after Dixie shoulder-checks her so hard that Rakel’s textbooks and papers scatter halfway across the Undercroft.
“I thought you said you were gonna pop her eyeballs out like cherry tomatoes the next time she did that?” I tease Rakel.
“Well they’re both so damn tall!” She scowls, furious at the injustice of genetics. “If we had one single bicep between the two of us, that might be helpful . . .”
“I don’t know which one’s meaner,” I say.
“Definitely Lola,” Rakel says. “She’s the boss of those two, which means that however nasty Dixie can get, Lola must be worse. She’s just a touch more subtle.”
“Not very subtle,” I say, remembering how Lola tore up my paper on banking regulations five minutes after I completed it. “Between the papers she ruins, and the ones Dean makes me write, I’m gonna need a double hand transplant before the semester is over.”
“Care to tell me why you’re writing all those papers for the Albino Asshole?” Rakel inquires for the hundredth time.
“No,” I say flatly, “so you can quit asking.”
“Well, I wish your master would let you eat lunch with me once in a while. I actually sat with Perry Saunders yesterday. That’s how desperate I was.”
“Perry’s nice!”
“She asked me if witches are real.”
“Well?” I say, trying not to laugh. “Are they?”
“I can’t believe her father works for the Malina. If he’s anything like Perry, I’d expect Marko Moroz to barbecue his kidneys out of pure annoyance.”
“He isn’t like Perry,” I assure Rakel. “I met him once in Monaco. He’s more like my father. And Perry’s mom was a famous equestrienne.”
“That explains a lot.” Rakel nods. “Perry has major horse-girl energy.”
Since Rakel is descended from Vikings, I’m sure pursuits short of pillaging seem rather tame to her.
Rakel’s parents run an underground gambling ring in Reykjavik. Once Rakel graduates, she hopes to expand their operations to include online poker and sports betting.
“We’ll need the money,” she tells me. “My older brother Gunnar thinks he’s the emperor of Iceland and he spends like it, too. He’s crashed three cars this year.”
“Maybe the next one will kill him,” I joke, already knowing how much Rakel loathes him.
“We can only hope,” she sighs.
I have to part ways with her to hurry up to the dining hall so Dean doesn’t give me shit. I just know he’s getting bored with the relatively minor torments of making me his Sherpa and busboy. He’ll be looking for a reason to punish me.
Indeed, his eyes lock on mine the second I step through the doorway. He snaps his fingers and points at the empty chair he’s saved at his side.
I haven’t even had a chance to get my food yet.
I stomp over to him, sitting down, but immediately saying, “I have to get my lunch.”
“No,” Dean says coldly, “You have to get here on time if you want to eat.”
“I’m starving,” I hiss.
“Not as hungry as you’re going to be if you keep whining.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means I’ll tie you up in the ice house and leave you there for a week if you annoy me.”
I want to scream with frustration. I am so fucking sick of Dean’s petty tyranny.
Not to mention, his chicken and peas smell delicious. Almost all the food we eat at Kingmakers comes from the greenhouses or the farms on the island. It’s always fresh and expertly prepared by the kitchen staff.
Dean has two rolls on his plate. I reach out to take one. He slaps the back of my hand, quicker than I can blink.
“I’m hungry!” I complain even louder.
“I’ve got something you can swallow,” Valon sneers.
I start to retort, but Dean is too quick.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he barks at Valon.
“What the hell?” Valon says, glowering. “I was just joking.”
“Your jokes are stupid.”
Dean stares Valon down, daring him to respond.
Valon shifts in his seat but keeps quiet.
“It’s tedious bringing your little pet over here if you’re not going to share,” Bram drawls, leaning back in his chair. He lets his wolfish eyes roam over me, not caring that Dean’s face is getting darker by the moment.
“She belongs to me, not you,” Dean says. His voice is all the more deadly for how soft it’s become.
I sit silent and mutinous next to Dean, feeling like a pressure cooker reaching its boiling point. I know what he’s trying to do. He’s seeing how far he can push me—escalating from telling me when and what I can eat to not letting me eat at all.
You would think I’d get used to Dean, with all this time spent glued to his side, but you don’t get used to him—not at all. He doesn’t become less intimidating, or less striking. In fact, every day I notice more of his strange beauty—the soft curve of his lips above the broad, rigid lines of his jaw. The carved muscle of his forearms, and his fists like white marble. The swoop of pale blond hair that hangs over his left eyebrow, and then the soft, velvety texture at the nape of his neck where the glittering silver hair is shaved short.
And then, most insidious of all, his scent . . .
Every time Dean shifts in his chair, I smell the subtle amalgam of his signature. Dean’s scent is clean and warm like rain-washed earth, with a mild sweetness like vanilla, and then something sharp and enticing, an intense thread of testosterone and aggression that stings in my throat.
It takes me over every time I’m within his sphere of personal space. It makes my head swim. And sometimes later, when I’m down in my room in the Undercroft, I’ll catch the scent of Dean lingering on my clothes and my heart begins to race.
I might be noticing it more today because of my hunger.
Jasper Webb has finished loading his tray with food. He’s walking toward his usual table that once held Rocco Prince, Wade Dyer, and a dozen other friends.
Now only Dax Volker sits there, sullen and surly.
Rocco and Wade are dead, and the rest of their clique dispersed around the dining hall, welcomed into other groups.
I know it shouldn’t bother me, but the sight of all those empty seats at Dax’s table makes my guts churn. I look at the blank chair where Rocco used to hold court. It’s my fault he’s not there anymore. My fault he’ll never be there again.
Rocco was a sadist, a monster.
Yet t
he finality of forever eats at me.
I killed him. I’m a murderer. And I can’t seem to feel okay about that, no matter how much he deserved it.
Dean nods to Jasper, inviting him to sit at our table.
“No!” I squeak. “I hate him!”
Too late. Jasper’s already sliding into place across from me, fixing me with his pale green stare.
“Hello, Cat,” he says.
I shiver. I didn’t know that Jasper knew my name. I suppose it makes sense—he must have been on the receiving end of all Rocco’s sadistic plans for my sister.
Jasper held my sister down while Rocco threatened to cut out her eye. He was part of the fight that resulted in Wade’s death and the execution of Ozzy’s mother. I hate him more than anyone at this table. Maybe even more than Dean.
“Don’t talk to me, you fucking animal,” I hiss at him across the table.
“Oooh,” Valon chortles, mocking me. “Watch out, Jasper. Kitty’s got claws.”
“I don’t hold a grudge against you,” Jasper informs me with cold insouciance.
“Oh, you don’t have a grudge against me?” I scoff. “How benevolent. Unfortunately, I have a bit of a grudge against you for torturing my sister for that lunatic Rocco!”
“Quiet,” Dean says to me, placing a warning hand on my thigh. His touch makes me shiver, even through the thick material of my skirt.
It won’t stop me. Dean may have decided that Jasper is his friend and welcome at this table, but I disagree.
“You disgust me,” I hiss at Jasper.
Jasper takes a bite of his peas, chewing calmly.
“I saved your sister’s life,” he says after he swallows.
“You don’t get credit for that!” I cry. “When you chase someone up on a wall, and scare them into jumping off, you’re not a hero for grabbing their ankle!”
“Well.” Jasper shrugs. “She’d be pretty dead if I didn’t.”
I leap to my feet, incandescent with rage.
“You’re a fucking psychopath just like Rocco! All of you are psychopaths! A bunch of vicious, conniving, bullying ASSHOLES!”
“Sit down!” Dean snaps, grabbing my arm to jerk me back into my seat.
This time, I’m too quick for him. I twist my wrist free and snatch up his tray of food instead. Then I dump it right in his lap.
Dean bolts up. The rage in his eyes hits me like a bucket of cold water to the face. My burning anger is doused in an instant. All that’s left is terror.
Dean’s going to fucking kill me for that.
He seizes my wrist in a manacle grip and drags me out of the dining hall.
Nobody tries to stop him.
Dean drags me from the dining hall all the way to the Octagon Tower. He pulls me up the steps like a child, yanking my arm so hard that my feet barely touch the ground as I try to keep pace with his much longer strides.
I twist and pull my hand, trying to free it from his grip. My wrist might as well be welded to his fingers.
Not until this moment have I truly felt Dean’s immense strength. He’s half-carried me across campus and up three flights of stairs and he isn’t even breathing hard. He overpowers me without effort. We aren’t even the same species.
As he hauls me down the hallway, we pass Erik Edman, another Junior Heir. He raises a blond eyebrow at the sight of us but says nothing as Dean wrenches open his bedroom door. It’s clear that Erik is too intimidated by Dean to speak a word, let alone report us.
I’m not sure which outcome I’d prefer at this point. I don’t want to get in trouble for going into Dean’s room. Even less do I want to be trapped in that small space alone with him when he looks angry enough to rip my head off my shoulders.
Dean slams the door behind us and starts tearing off his dirty clothes, his trousers stained from the chicken and peas I dropped in his lap. He rips off his pants, not caring if the material tears, balling them up and flinging them in the corner like they’re diseased.
I stand awkwardly by the door, wanting to run but pinned in place by Dean’s bizarre atavistic reaction. Though his shirt is only marred by one or two tiny spatters, he rips that off too, a button pinging against the window as he flings the shirt into the corner.
Only once he’s stripped to his boxer shorts does he turn to face me, chest heaving with anger, every muscle standing out on his frame.
He looks like a furious god, like Zeus in all his anger, pale and shaking with eyes like churning storm clouds.
“How fucking dare you,” he seethes.
“That was your fault!” I squeal. “You pushed me and pushed me!”
He crosses the room in three strides, seizing me by the throat right under my jaw, so his thumb forces my chin up to look at him.
“And I’ll keep pushing you,” he hisses. “I’ll twist you and stretch you and bend you till you break. And you’ll do as I fucking say, or you’ll suffer the consequences.”
“I don’t care!” I cry, my voice compressed by his hand on my throat. “I won’t sit at a table with Jasper! I hate him! And I hate you!”
“You’ll sit on his lap if I order it,” Dean says, his face close to mine.
He has to bend down to my level. His eyes are terrifying at this proximity, long and narrow with pinpoint pupils, like a beast. Heat radiates off his bare chest.
“I own you, Cat. Don’t you ever fucking forget it.”
I shove Dean with all my strength. It barely moves him a millimeter.
“I’ll throw you off that same fucking wall if you keep pushing me!” I shout.
Dean lets out a long, slow breath.
“Now we’re coming to the truth of it, aren’t we, Cat?” He releases my neck, but he doesn’t step back. He stands very close, looking down at me. “Are you planning to kill me, too, little kitten?”
“N-no,” I stammer, guiltily digging my fingernails into my opposite arm. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I think you did.”
“No! I just . . . you’re so fucking unreasonable!”
“And that’s what you meant, isn’t it, kitten? You spoke in anger, and it’s supposed to sound like a joke. But the implicit threat is there underneath. You’re reminding me that you did in fact kill Rocco Prince, and you’ll do it again if I make you mad enough. If I make things hard on you. If I scare you, if you think I’d spill your secret . . . I’ll become a threat that has to be eliminated, just like Rocco.”
There’s a difference between someone insulting you with lies, and someone peeling back the cover over an ugly truth. One is much more unpleasant than the other.
Dean has found my deepest, most painful place, and he’s driving a spike into the aching flesh.
My sister thinks I’m a good person. Anna and Chay do, too.
Dean knows the truth.
“No,” I say numbly. “That isn’t true.”
“We both know it is,” Dean says softly, his eyes fixed on mine.
“No!” I shake my head until my curls are a dark whirl in front of my eyes. “I wouldn’t do that. I had to kill Rocco. I had no choice!”
“You don’t have to defend it to me,” Dean says. “I agree with you. Zoe never would have done it. Miles might have, but he hesitated. He wanted to find the more humane way. Only you saw what had to be done. You murdered Rocco. I would have done the same.”
Dean believes we have something in common. He thinks I did something admirable.
It makes me want to vomit.
“No!” I cry, backing away from him. “I’m not like you.”
Dean laughs quietly.
“You think there’s a difference between you and me, because you did it for Zoe? There’s no fucking difference. All mafia crime is committed on that premise. We’re all doing what we think needs to be done for the good of the family. It’s the core ideology of our world. You can justify each individual action any way you like, but the difference between a civilian and mafiosi is that we put the good of our family above the law.”
&n
bsp; Dean is advancing toward me again. I keep trying to retreat, until my back hits the wall.
My stomach is churning.
I hate what he’s saying.
I’m not like my father, or Dean’s father, or Dean himself. I’m not like the Chancellor or Professor Penmark. I may have come to enjoy Kingmakers, some of the time, but that doesn’t mean I belong here! It doesn’t mean I’m one of them.
Dean reaches out one of those deadly, pale hands. This time he draws the back of his fingers softly down my cheek, each point of contact an electric spark.
“What you did to Rocco proves that you’re as mafia as the rest of us. Maybe even more.”
“I’M NOT!” I cry, slapping his hand away. And then, when he won’t back up, when he keeps me trapped against the wall, I shove him again, raging against his immovable body.
“You want to hit me, Cat?” he growls, pinning me to the wall with his arms on either side of my face. “Go ahead and do it, then.”
I don’t understand this game.
I don’t understand any of his games.
All I know is that I’m trapped, and I’ve never liked small spaces. Never liked confinement.
“Hit me,” he hisses. “You think you have the balls to throw me off the wall? You can’t even raise one little paw to touch me.”
“Fuck you!” I shout back at him.
“Do it,” he says, getting right in my face. “Fucking do it, you little coward.”
I slap him hard across the face, my hand whipping out before I can stop myself.
The sharp CRACK! echoes in the room. A livid pink mark jumps into being on his pale cheek.
“Hit me again,” Dean says, his eyes glittering bright.
I hesitate.
“HIT ME!”
I slap him again, even harder. So hard that my hand stings.
A bright bead of blood rises on his lower lip.
Dean seizes me by the back of the neck and kisses me hard. I taste the blood on his lip, like salt and iron.
I bite that lower lip, seizing it between my teeth and gnawing and sucking on it until my whole mouth fills with the taste of metal.
Dean lifts me up and slams me against the wall, holding me up at a height where he can kiss me without bending. His tongue plunges in and out of my mouth and those full lips swallow me whole.
