Mila:
All good, girl. I’ve been texting Danny pics of my kooch to study – totally diagrammed that shit too. Next time I see him, maybe he’ll be a better lay. Pray for me!
I laughed, replying with a row of prayer hands then I brought up my dad’s number and pressed call, hoping upon hope that he’d answer at last.
The line was dead. And I finally accepted he must have ditched his phone. What I would have given to hear his voice now and fall into the familiar rise and fall of it. He’d know exactly what to do in this situation. He’d tell me what I needed to hear so I could be okay again. But I didn’t have him here. I only had myself to rely on.
I laid back down on Saint’s pillows and my mind arrowed in on my body again. I didn’t feel right, but maybe that didn’t mean I was sick. Or maybe it did. And the virus was coming for me like a silent storm. At least my other enemies in this house were in plain sight, made of flesh and blood and bone. This one was invisible and it didn’t care who I was or what I was made of. Weak or strong. Young or old. If it was in me, there was already a sixty percent chance I was going to die. And so help me, I wasn’t ready for that.
I startled awake in the silence, my fingers flexing then clenching into a fist as my heart pounded in alarm. Something was wrong. Seriously fucking wrong.
My eyes snapped open and I found myself staring at the fireplace which lay cold and empty, so clean that it was hard to believe we ever burned anything in it.
Where the fuck am I?
I pushed myself upright and frowned around at the open living space in the centre of The Temple as the memories flooded back in on me and my heart leapt right up into my throat.
This couldn’t be happening. I refused to believe it.
Panic welled up in me and my ears began to ring as I clawed my hands into my hair and tried to force myself to breathe.
My muscles were trembling, violent energy dancing beneath my skin with a desperate cry for an outlet as I tried to focus on anything other than the terrifying truth of what had happened.
I bowed my head and gripped my hair so tightly that my scalp screamed in pain as I tried to deal with the reality of having my routine so thoroughly sabotaged.
I focused on the memories of how I’d scrubbed every fucking thing in The Temple from the grey brick walls to the flagstones, to the stained glass windows and the font. There had been beauty in that work. So pure and real that just remembering the way I’d traced the lines of the mortar with the scrubbing brush helped my heart rate to settle. The Temple had never been so clean. So pure. It had been tainted beyond recognition by those fucking looters who ransacked it, but now it was free of sin. Innocent. Virginal.
A shaky breath escaped me as the voices clawed at the back of my skull. They whispered dark threats in my ears and promised failure on all sides.
My mind was drawn to the walk I’d taken down into the catacombs to deal with the body. How the cold of that place had crept over my skin. How silent it had been when the wind dropped and how loud when it howled through the cavernous system.
My memories zeroed in on the look on that fucking rapist’s face as it was frozen in pain and death. His glassy eyes had stared at me with the accusation that I was the devil incarnate. And there, in the memory of that look in his dead eyes, I found an inch of peace to settle me.
The cold hilt of the blade in my hand and the surge of power that had charged through my muscles as I’d driven it into him. That was true control. The power over life and death. Real, honest, justice which made my soul sing with purity. And so, the sinners shall be punished.
And better than that. I hadn’t been alone in my moment of salvation. I’d been surrounded by my brothers. United in the purest of acts to protect the girl who we’d taken for our own.
I wondered if she knew she owned me now too? If she understood how that act had bound me to her even more thoroughly. That death had been a sacrifice we’d lain at her altar as we professed our unending devotion to our idol.
Tatum Rivers. My temptation, my sweet torture, my endless agony and now maybe she would be my salvation too. Not that she knew it yet. But she’d bought herself a band of demons and paid for them in blood. Until last night I’d believed there were only two people I’d kill for in this world, but I hadn’t hesitated for a moment when the time had come for me to prove my devotion to her. Our Night Bound beauty.
I focused on the work it had taken to dispose of the body. To clean up the blood. The purity left in its wake. And I slowly began to relax. I could get through this. I could survive the disruption to my ritual if I just focused on that. I could face the fact that I’d been awake all night and slept during the day-
My muscles began to tremble again as I let myself wonder what time it was. I didn’t even know how I was to going to survive this day with everything off schedule. I’d just woken up and now what? Was I going to eat dinner like a fucking animal? Maybe I should just forgo food rather than eat it out of sequence…
A sound like a pure drop of heaven reached me as the first note of Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy spilled from the speakers and I fell still as the music reached out and brushed its fingers along my aching soul.
A warm body came to sit beside me, a muscular arm pressing against mine and I exhaled slowly as the music built around us and the tension in my posture slowly slackened.
I released my grip on my hair, my scalp tingling from the rough treatment as I tried to keep my mind on the beauty of what we’d done last night and away from the chaos of today. Of my ritual burning down and falling apart and the demon in me taking the excuse to have free rein and-
I leaned against my brother as he stayed beside me and the music surrounded me in its sweet embrace. I didn’t know which brother it was. Only that he was here. That both of them were always here.
I cracked my eyes open and found myself looking at Kyan’s tattooed forearm, my gaze catching on one particular piece of ink as the stalking wolf seemed to look me dead in the eye. At its back, two more wolves lingered in the shadows beneath a full moon and my fractured soul knitted over a little as I fought to hold the worst of me back.
“It’s just like any other day,” Kyan said in a low voice. “So get the fuck up because it’s time for your work out.”
I narrowed my eyes as I turned to look at him and he levelled me with a dark look which said he saw my demon and raised me his devil. If I wanted to vent my inner turmoil on him, he was willing. But he was also willing to help me shackle myself to my routine again.
“I need to lock it down,” I rasped, my throat raw and parched as the taste of smoke lingered on my tongue and the acrid stench of bleach hung thickly in the air.
My gaze shifted from his and I hunted out the clock on the wall even though I knew it would be my undoing. If it was nineteen minutes past something, or even just anything other than six am, I was going to lose my shit. And I knew it wasn’t six am. The light beyond the stained glass window was bright and the sun hung low in the sky like it was mid afternoon. I’d probably only slept for a few hours. I never managed more than that. I was always half expecting someone to burst in on me the moment I let my guard down, toss me in the closet, or the trunk of a car, or the pool.
That hasn’t happened in years.
Never say never though.
He can’t find me here.
He can reach me anywhere.
I blew a breath out through my nose, expelling the voices and focusing on the task at hand. The clock. Except there was no clock. No incessant tick tick tick. The wall where it should hang was bare even though I knew I’d cleaned it and re-hung it last night.
My gaze slid to the kitchenette where the time should have flashed on the oven display, but there was a roughly cut square of duct tape concealing it.
“It’s six am,” Kyan growled. “And you’re going to be late for your workout if you don’t move your ass.”
My lips parted as a lick of anger danced along my spine. It wasn’t six am, it
was more like four pm, or four thirty seven, or fucking four seventeen, or-
Kyan turned to face me, catching my gaze in his dark brown eyes as he gripped my head between his hands. “It’s six am,” he snarled, glaring at me as he demanded I agree.
My muscles coiled with tension and my upper lip peeled back as I tried to recoil from him, but his grip only tightened and his gaze only darkened.
“What time is it, Saint?” Kyan demanded.
My lips parted on a string of insults and demands of my own where I was going to tell him to stop trying to treat me like a fucking infant and let me handle my own shit as my day went to hell. But there was a small piece of me that wanted to just relent, to stop fighting the gift he was trying to give me and allow him to paint this pretty fantasy for me where I could descend into the peace of my routine and just…be.
It was a heap of shit, it was a pretty lie, it was downright insulting that he thought I needed it and yet…I really fucking needed it. I needed the soothing balm of my ritual to strip away the chaos that had reigned yesterday. I needed time to process the mountainous changes that carnage had brought upon my world. And I needed to allow my control to slip in this one small instance so that I might have even the slightest chance in regaining it over everything else.
“It’s six am,” I breathed and Kyan’s eyes lit with triumph.
“Then let’s go work out until you bust a fucking lung.” He stood and offered me a hand which I took, allowing him to heave me to my feet.
My gaze trailed to the balcony above us where the lights were out and there was no sign of Tatum. I guessed she’d taken to my bed to recover and the thought of her christening my sheets with her presence sent an ache through me.
I wanted to see how she looked in there. Tangled in my bed like a temptress with all of that blonde hair, loose and wild. I’d never had a girl in my bed before. I’d never really spent any time in a bed with a girl. Obviously I never stayed the night with anyone and risked fucking up my routine. But once I’d started fucking girls, I’d soon figured out that I didn’t like tangling myself up in someone else’s body, being spontaneous, letting them trail their hands all over me without warning. No. By the fourth time I’d fucked a girl, I’d done away with that. I liked them either on their knees where I could grip their hair and control their movements, or bent over something so that I could blow their mind and take what I wanted without them touching me at random intervals and throwing off my pleasure with fucking impulses.
But when I thought about taking Tatum like that, it didn’t appeal. If she ever decided to let me into her panties, I wanted to see the look in her blue eyes as I pushed inside her, bathe in the moment when I claimed her and watch as I drove her to ruin. Maybe Kyan was onto something when he spoke about tying girls up. That would definitely make it easier for me to achieve both desires.
Not that there was a lot of point in me indulging in any kind of fantasy about the girl in my bed. There was no way she’d want anything to do with me any time soon. But she made it fucking difficult not to think about it.
Kyan led the way down to the gym in the crypt and I followed him in silence as I tried to slip into the routine I’d practiced so many times. I just had to forget that in reality it wasn’t morning.
I fell still in the middle of the room, closing my eyes as I fought against the need to crumble. To split apart and rip into the world and drown my chaos in fury and-
Mozart spilled from the speakers and surrounded me in pure, dulcet tones which made the itch beneath my skin settle a little and I released a slow breath as I let the music permeate my soul.
“Do you think you can match me on the bench?” Kyan taunted as the sound of him racking weights reached me and I cracked my eyes open.
He was smirking in a way that said he didn’t believe I could and my lip curled back at the dare in his eyes.
“Do you think you can match me?” I countered as I moved to join him.
There were no windows down here so it was easier to believe his lies and pretend it was morning. With a deep breath, I forced myself to accept them and moved to join him on the bench.
We pushed ourselves like the demons of hell would come and drag us down to join with them unless we surpassed every physical protest our bodies had to offer.
We moved between machines and ended up at the punching bag where I followed Kyan’s lead and beat the living shit out of the thing without wearing gloves. My knuckles were rubbed raw and cracked open and the sting of my wounds lit a fire in me. But I needed the outlet. I needed the pain in punishment for my failure. I needed to dive into it and find bliss in the knowledge that it was mine and mine alone.
When we finally fell still, panting, sweating and bleeding, Kyan pulled me into his arms and gripped a fist full of my hair as he crushed me against him.
“The devil won’t win today, Saint,” he growled fiercely, determined to make it so, even when I felt doubt creeping over my skin.
“Let’s hope not,” I agreed, embracing him and hoping he knew how much I appreciated what he was doing for me with this farce.
We headed upstairs and I hesitated as I realised I couldn’t go to my en-suite for my shower, my jaw ticking as I looked towards Kyan and Blake’s rooms instead.
“Hot water is hot water,” Kyan said, clapping a hand on my shoulder and steering me towards his room without giving me the chance to complain about it.
The music shifted to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G and Kyan set the water running for me before stepping back into his room.
My posture was tight as I stripped off and stepped beneath the flow of the shower, cranking the dial until it was scalding me.
I pressed my palms to the tiles and let the water beat down over me as I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing in and out.
My whole body ached from the intensity of our workout and my darkest nature had retreated as fatigue plagued me. But my mind was firing on all cylinders, thoughts of every new issue we were facing scrolling through my brain one after the other.
I followed the line of each thread of thought as I came up with ways to deal with all of our issues.
There could be no stone left unturned. The Hades Virus had reared its ugly head at our gates and I refused to be beaten back by it.
This school had every reason to be a safe haven for us to ride out the storm while we awaited the inevitable vaccination. All I had to do was make sure it was secured, locked down and impenetrable.
I finally shut off the water, drying myself quickly and dressing in the black sweatpants Kyan had left out for me. They were mine. Perfectly folded, clean. He must have slipped up to my closet to retrieve them and I should have chewed him out for risking getting so close to Tatum while she might be incubating, but the idea of borrowing clothes had been making me anxious all over again and the simple gesture sent relief flooding right through me.
I passed Kyan as he headed in for his own shower and he clapped me on the shoulder before he closed the door between us. I hated that he could see how close I was to cracking, but loved that he knew what I needed to hold it together.
Tomorrow, I’d reclaim full control of myself and no doubt he’d go right back to fucking with my ritual. But today, he stood by me and helped me contain the beast which my flesh housed. And if that wasn’t love then I’d never grasp the concept of it. If he could look into the eyes of the monster inside me and help me to feed it, contain it and even accept it as who I was, then what more could I ever ask of him?
As I made it back into the central room of The Temple, the scent of eggs made my stomach growl and I found Blake sitting at the table in his usual spot, devouring a stack of pancakes with my usual breakfast of eggs, toast and avocado waiting for me beside him.
It was so…routine, my heart ached for it.
Just like any other morning.
“Morning,” he said, his lips twitching around a mouthful of syrup coated, carb loaded, sugar.
My gaze fell on the window fo
r a moment and the sun which was clearly on its descent towards the horizon before I dismissed it and took my place beside him.
I glanced up and found Tatum watching us with interest, her long, blonde hair trailing over one shoulder as her legs dangled between the railings on the balcony.
There was a question in her big, blue eyes but her lips remained sealed on it.
As the first bite of my food graced my tastebuds, everything just slipped right into place. The echoes of chaos faded from my mind and I was able to fully focus on what mattered, what we needed to do.
I devoured my meal in silence and Kyan appeared with a towel wrapped around his waist as I was finishing up, grabbing his plate of heavily fried heart attack out of the oven where Blake had left it to keep warm.
He fell on his breakfast like a savage, using a combination of his fork and a slice of toast which he held in his goddamn hand to shovel the food into his mouth as fast as possible.
“Monroe is in,” I said firmly, setting my knife and fork down. “But I’m not forcing his hand as far as joining us goes, he needs to choose that for himself. I’ll put in the necessary phone calls with Mother today and get her to smooth over the transition into his new role as headmaster. She’s got half of the other school board members terrified of her and the rest can be bought if needs be. Brown’s reputation can burn along with his job. That asshole left us all to fight for this place while he hid away from the violence like a fucking coward. I’ll make sure he never teaches again. Hell, I’ll make sure he never works again. Not anywhere that matters anyway. He’ll be lucky to get a job serving fries in a diner when I’m through with him.”
“I’d like to see that,” Blake joked.
“Monroe isn’t like one of your usual stooges,” Kyan said around a mouthful of food which half fell out of his mouth, back onto his plate. I sneered at him and he smirked, swallowing before he went on. “He won’t just fall into line because you demand it. You’ll have to work with him if you want him to dance to your tune. And I guarantee he won’t just fall in and move to your beat.”
Kings of Lockdown: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 2) Page 3