My gaze slid to Tatum and the way her eyes lit said she relished the idea of me not having it easy with Monroe. No doubt she’d take pleasure in any little bit of difficulty I came up against after the things I’d done to her.
“I know,” I agreed. “But we’re bound in blood now. He may have objections but he’s not a fool. I’m sure I can negotiate a middle ground with him that will satisfy us all. But first I need to secure his position in the school. Then he needs to decide if he really is all in with us or not.”
“What does that mean?” Blake asked.
“I haven’t decided yet. But there’s an idea curling through my mind which wants my attention…I’ll let you know once I’ve made my decision on it.”
Kyan huffed irritably as I refused to continue along that line of the conversation, but he knew better than to push me on an idea before I’d had time to consider every outcome of it. I wasn’t the kind of predator to dive in with teeth bared and claws drawn, ready to battle in blood for what I wanted. I was the snake in the grass who lay waiting for prey to walk into my trap. No one ever saw me coming until I struck and once my venom was in them, there was no anti-venom unless I saw fit to dole it out.
“The more pressing issue is securing the school,” I went on. “I’ll have a full sweep done. Any and every person within these walls will need to isolate until the forty eight hours is up. Anyone who turns out to be infected will be escorted beyond the wall to seek treatment in a hospital. We need to make sure this place is clean and free of infection. Then we make sure those fucking gates stay locked. I’ll get Father to make a donation to the school so that they can hire more guards. A fucking army of them, armed with guns to keep people the fuck out of here.”
“Then what?” Kyan asked. “Are we just gonna stay locked down in here until they get an antidote?”
“Yes,” I replied crisply. “No matter how long it takes. Once this school is secured, we keep it that way. No one comes in. No one goes out.”
“And what about Tatum?” Blake asked in a low voice, his gaze flicking up to her where she sat watching, listening, waiting.
“What about her?” I asked.
“What if she turns out to be sick?”
“She’s not sick,” Kyan snarled, thumping his fist down on the table so that the cutlery clattered on the plates.
I raised my eyes to the girl we owned and she looked back at me steadily as she waited for my verdict.
“Tatum belongs to us,” I said simply and her eyes flared with a fierce denial at my words, but she didn’t voice her protests. “So she stays with us. No matter what. Until the end.”
Kyan chuckled darkly at my words, leaning back and slinging an arm over the empty chair beside him.
“How are you feeling, baby?” he called.
“Fine,” she replied, but the beat of hesitation she’d offered up first revealed her doubts.
“Check your temperature again,” I commanded.
The petulant look she offered me said she didn’t appreciate that, but she scooped up the thermometer all the same and stuck it in her mouth.
The three of us waited in silence for her to reveal the result and the moment the thermometer bleeped, she drew it from her lips and looked down at the display.
“Still normal,” she said, her shoulders sagging in relief and the three of us expelled breaths at the same time.
I glanced at the other Night Keepers and Kyan laughed darkly, getting to his feet.
“I look forward to getting you back in my bed again soon, then,” he said, tossing her a wink before pulling the towel from around his waist, using it to dry his hair as he stalked from the room and giving all of us an eyeful of his junk.
Blake swore at him half-heartedly as he laughed, but my attention stayed on our girl.
I didn’t miss the way Tatum’s gaze trailed him, clinging to his muscular frame like she wouldn’t mind getting a closer look at what he had to offer.
My heart pounded at the look in her eyes, my grip tightening on the edge of the table as I took in the hunger in her and a dark part of me ached to make her look at me that way too.
Kyan headed into his room and as the door snapped closed behind him, her gaze flicked back to meet mine. I expected her to balk or blush under my scrutiny as she realised that she’d been caught out, but she just raised an eyebrow at me as if challenging me to comment.
I held my tongue and she got to her feet, moving away from the balcony and out of sight as she retreated further into my room.
I grunted in frustration. Ignoring the little tendrils of jealousy which were coiling beneath my flesh as I got to my feet and gathered the plates to clean them in the sink.
Once I was finished, I intended to play out the rest of my usual day as if the timings weren’t all off and as a bonus, I doubted there would be time for me to sleep for any more than a few hours before my alarm would announce another day had begun.
In the meantime, I had plans to consolidate and work to do to ensure my grip on this school stayed firm.
The moment we could be sure that the Hades Virus wasn’t lurking within our walls, we needed to get back to classes, to normalcy, to our lives. And I intended to make sure that happened as soon as humanly possible.
I’m not fucking sick!
I laid in the exquisitely soft sheets of Saint’s bed, gazing up at the arching wooden roof with relief spilling into every corner of my body. The quarantine period was over. And I’d made it. Somehow, impossibly, despite the odds stacked against me, I hadn’t caught the virus.
These forty eight hours in quarantine had given me a lot of time to think. About the Night Keepers, about the vow, about the murder. I had so many thoughts whirling in my brain and no one to share them with. I considered messaging Mila, but when I went to do it, I hesitated. This was my fight. Me against them. And I had to decide how them helping me down in the tunnels had changed things. Or if it had at all.
How were they even going to behave now? What they’d done for me…did that mean they didn’t hate me anymore? Did it mean I was free to go the second this was over?
No…somehow, in my gut I knew I wasn’t getting out of here that easily. But maybe they would treat me with respect at last. Or was that too much to hope for?
The incredible rush of relief I got at knowing I wasn’t ill was muddied by the knowledge that I was still a prisoner. But at least I wasn’t a sick one. In fact, I was the opposite of sick, I was humming with life, energy buzzing through my veins like a swarm of bees in search of pollen. But I had no idea where to direct all of it.
“Maybe I should wake her,” Blake’s voice reached me from downstairs and I held my breath as I listened.
“No,” Saint growled. “She can have a morning off from her chores, then later things can return to normal.”
My skin prickled with heat and my upper lip curled back. Heat flared along my spine as rage dipped me in a pit of lava. Of course Saint expected things to return to normal. I didn’t get a say. But I wasn’t prepared to let that lie. Whether he wanted to admit to it or not, things had changed. Irreversibly. I just wasn’t sure how yet. Had they killed for me because they cared, or done it because they’d seen another way to bind me to them?
“You think she’s going to fall back into line just like that?” Blake scoffed.
“Yes,” Saint clipped. “Just like that. And I’m not going to waste another second speaking about it.”
They fell quiet and I took a slow breath as I tried to calm my angry heart. I guessed I had my answer.
I fumed in bed for a while longer before pushing the covers back and heading to the shower. I’d spent plenty of time rummaging through Saint’s room, hunting for who knew what. Maybe I was just curious about what the devil kept in his drawers. Turned out, not a lot. But anything he did keep was neatly displayed, perfectly aligned. There was a small metal security box in his closet which I guessed he kept cash in, that was about as exciting as his storage places got. If Saint had secrets
, they weren’t hidden in drawers or cupboards. No, they were locked up tight inside his head and only a miracle would get me the key to that box. And I wasn’t sure it was a place I wanted to ever venture anyway.
Saint’s bathroom was pristine. White tiles covered the walls and floor and everything gleamed. His apple shower gel was lined up neatly beside his shampoo and conditioner while my shower products stood at the foot of the unit, half of them fallen over. Tarnishing his perfection brought a smile to my lips. I’d spent a fair bit of time yesterday evening adjusting things around his room. I’d swapped the lampshades on his nightstands then pointed each one at a slightly off-centre angle, swapped the contents of both bedside drawers, though mimicking exactly how he’d kept the things in each, and spent a decent amount of time fucking up the order of his records in the rack beneath his fancy ass record player. I could have just wrecked the whole room, but Saint would have just had his maid tidy it. This way, he’d have to seek out each change I’d made as it drove him to insanity, gnawing directly at the heart of his insecurities. He needed things in order. So I would be chaos.
When I was washed, I headed to his closet, tossing my damp towel in the direction of the laundry basket – and missing – before pulling on some grey silk underwear, a white crop top and a pair of high waisted jeans.
Then I headed to the balcony, about to call out to them to say my quarantine period was up when I spotted them all standing at the foot of the stairs. Blake rested his shoulder against Kyan’s while Saint clutched the railing, his knuckles turning white with how tight he gripped it.
My heart juddered and my lips parted, but I quickly schooled my expression before they read my emotions from my face. They looked worried, hopeful, desperate. And the craziest part of me wanted to rush down into their arms. For an eternal moment, I ached to be surrounded by their flesh and muscles, like a wolf re-joining its pack after getting lost in the forest.
I shook off that lucid fantasy and folded my arms, gazing coolly between them, recalling each of their crimes and ignoring the one, hugely redeeming thing they’d done for me. One good deed didn’t cancel out a thousand bad ones. These men were wicked to the bone. And their reasons for helping me could only be born of sin.
“You want me to stay here,” I stated, because it was obvious from their possessive expressions even if I hadn’t overheard Saint and Blake talking. I tried to keep the anger from my voice, but it slid into it like poison.
“All I want right now is for you to come the fuck downstairs, baby,” Kyan growled, his eyes hungry and demanding.
My throat tightened as my gaze trailed down to his bare, inked chest before sliding onto Blake and the way his muscles flexed against his tight T-shirt, then to Saint whose short-sleeved button down and black jeans made him look like hell’s version of an Abercrombie and Fitch model.
“Don’t keep us waiting, Cinders,” Blake said, his voice rough, his gaze penetrating.
My teeth dug into my bottom lip as I hung suspended in the aching tension building between all four of us. I found a piece of my soul longing for the fifth member of our blood-bound party. I hadn’t seen Monroe since the night it had happened, but he’d texted every day to check I wasn’t sick. Beyond that, I had no idea what he was thinking. And I desperately needed to know. He’d answered my questions with simple responses which meant nothing at all. I’m fine. I’m good. Just rest and let me know if anything changes.
I took a step down the stairs and they all shifted, muscles bunching, fingers flexing like they were trying to restrain themselves from coming closer. Though they could have. They knew I wasn’t sick. But they were letting me call the shots for some reason. Which meant one thing and one thing only: the power levels between us all had altered. Though I wasn’t quite sure how yet. So I had to tread lightly. But I was sure as hell going to work it to my advantage. However long this may last.
“So I suppose you all want things to just go back to the way they were?” I asked, letting a healthy measure of ice slide into my tone as I remained above them on the stairs.
“What did you expect?” Saint asked frostily.
“She knows things have changed,” Blake growled. “Don’t you, Tatum? You can feel it.”
My throat thickened as the hairs rose on the back of my neck. For a second, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the golden boy with his darkest green eyes like two lakes of liquid emeralds.
I can feel it alright.
But what I was feeling exactly, I couldn’t be sure. It felt like my soul was floating from my body and I wondered whether it was about to be accepted into heaven or hell.
Maybe I underestimated them. Maybe they do care for me. Maybe things really will change…
“Yeah,” I confirmed and Saint’s spine straightened.
“You’re still ours,” he said in a voice that was powerful and rang right through to the core of my being.
I let that fact settle over me and one simple answer shone clearly in my mind. Something I was entirely sure was true and yet seemed impossible at the same time.
“I know,” I said, lifting my chin. “But you’re all mine now, too.”
None of them denied it and I let a twisted smile spread across my lips at confirming it.
“Come down here,” Kyan demanded, his expression telling me he was about to come and get me himself if I didn’t move.
I tried to quiet my rampant heartbeat as I padded downstairs barefoot, the kiss of the cool wood against my feet sending a shiver through me.
I reached the ground floor and was surprised when Saint stepped towards me. His arm wrapped around my waist and he tugged me into his hard body, his mouth falling against my ear and making every part of my flesh tingle with fear and pulse with excitement.
“Welcome back, Barbie.” There was something of a threat in those words that made my heart clench and my knees feel unsteady as I remembered all that this beast had done to me. Things I wasn’t going to forget. Things I wanted justice for.
Blake yanked me out of his arms, crushing me to his chest and I was lost to the familiarity of his muscles folding around me, his spiced cologne dragging me back to that incredible night we’d spent together. I was practically panting as my hands slid over his powerful frame, brushing along his broad shoulders and grazing against the tattoo on the back of his neck. My heart thrummed in time with his, my pulse skipping everywhere under my skin with the memory of the pleasure he’d delivered me, how right it had felt to be in his arms that night. But then I recalled staring down the barrel of a gun, that same beautiful face twisted into hate behind it, and a dagger of fear sliced through me.
I pulled away and my eyes fell on Kyan who was watching me like a bird of prey. He cocked his head to one side, his eyes drawing me in, but he made no move to pull me close. I could tell he wanted me to go to him so I did, lured by the devilish glint in his eyes and the smile that quirked up the corner of his mouth. He was toxic and dangerous, lethal and twisted. And he was mine. Just like the others.
I moved into his personal space and his hands snared me, crushing me to his bare chest, the heat of his body like a furnace against my skin. He smelled of gasoline and the promise of danger. It spoke to me on a base level that reminded me of the times I’d spent out in the woods fending for myself. There was something so simple about survival, and yet something so enticingly exciting about it too. Kyan was that feeling embodied.
He buried his nose in my hair, his hands clutching me tight enough to almost pull me off of the floor, forcing me to move onto the very tips of my toes.
He released me at last and I backed away from them all, needing some space to collect my thoughts.
“So what now?” I asked, surveying their expressions closely, but I couldn’t read anything from them.
A prickling sensation ran up my spine. A warning.
My grasp on the inch of control I held was slipping away as they moved toward me shoulder to shoulder, and I forced myself to remain rooted in place.
&nbs
p; Something’s wrong.
“Now…you’re not going to let that pretty little brain of yours get carried away with ideas of things changing, Barbie doll,” Saint said in a tone that made my heart clench in my chest. He moved forward, reaching out to pinch my chin between his finger and thumb and I glared up at him with a heaviness weighing down my entire body. It was decided; I was going to hell. My soul had been claimed by these three demons and no good deed would ever make them grow wings. “I can see defiance in your eyes as blindingly bright as the sun,” he growled.
I slapped his hand away from my chin, baring my teeth in anger and confirming his words.
“Did you just hit me, Plague?” His eyes narrowed sharply, looking like arrow slits, my death awaiting me beyond them.
“Yes,” I said, my voice stronger than I felt. “Don’t touch me.”
“It looks like you’ve spent forty eight hours in quarantine growing a backbone. But every spine breaks, some just need to be kicked harder,” Saint said, making a chill rush through every inch of my body.
I pressed my lips together, my hands balling into fists as I tried to keep them from shaking. Saint snatched my arm, dragging me across the room and I sensed Kyan and Blake following like shadows. Saint glanced at my face, a hopeful glint in his eyes like he was waiting for the moment I started begging for mercy, but I clamped my lips tightly together. I wasn’t going to cower. I was going to take whatever he had to give and show him my backbone was made of iron.
A swelling flame roared in my chest and I gilded myself in its strength. I would not be broken. I would gaze into the eyes of my monsters and I would not blink.
Saint led me down into the crypt and my heart started to pound like crazy as he kept walking through the gym and under the arch that led further underground. He kept glancing at me, hunting my face for fear and I refused to let an inch of it show despite the wave of terror crashing through my chest. He guided me past the mass of food stores and further into the tunnels as my skin tingled with the memories of being chased down here by Merl. I tried to crush those thoughts away, but they held onto me with sharp claws. I was never going to be free of them.
Kings of Lockdown: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 2) Page 4