Wretched: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Wicked Brotherhood Book 3)

by Eden Beck

  She scoffs. “Oh, I still want Bleakwood to shut down.”

  “I knew it.” I drop the shirt and turn to her, looking her full in the face.

  Headmistress Robin leans casually against the wall, looking incredibly out-of-place in her designer turtleneck and pencil skirt, her immaculately-done nails, all surrounded by the worn and chipped wallpaper of my utility room. She toys with a silver necklace on a tiny chain.

  “Bleakwood, in my opinion, is past the point of saving. It should absolutely be shut down.”

  “How can you say that?” I snap. “Why did you lie, earlier? Just to look good to my parents?”

  She doesn’t answer for a long moment, instead choosing to stare idly at the washing machine.

  “You do realize,” I say, “that I can’t trust you anymore, right?”

  I think about The Brotherhood, the entire year I spent desperately hoping not to be discovered, going as far as throwing myself down a flight of stairs to get out of lacrosse locker rooms.

  “I don’t care what you have to say anymore. You keep saying one thing and then doing another. I know you want Bleakwood shut down, but why would I? You might be stuck in this feud between the schools, but I’m not. I’m leaving Bleakwood in a few months and I’d like to get into college. Me, all the boys at school—if Bleakwood shuts down, we’ll lose our spots. You know this, and yet … yet you still show up at my house like you think that’s going to make me change my mind?”

  I draw myself upward. “You don’t have any blackmail left over me,” I say. “Unless you needed reminding, you already went and exposed me.”

  Robin lets out a derisive laugh. “Those other boys will get into colleges just fine, no matter what. Most, if not all, of them have had their names down for certain colleges since they were born. They’ll be just fine.”

  I open my mouth to argue—what about me, the student there on merit, who hasn’t had her name down for a college—but Headmistress Robin interrupts my thoughts.

  “Besides, what makes you think I’m definitely here to, as you call it, blackmail you?”

  It’s my turn to scoff. “You’re certainly not here to appeal to my better nature.”

  “And what if I am? Don’t you think I have plenty of personal reasons to want the school shut down? And that, if I am here, there must be something I’m willing to exchange for your help?”

  My mouth snaps shut, my arguments evaporating. She barely seems to be talking to me anymore; instead, her eyes seem focused on something a thousand miles away.

  “You’re the first girl they’ve ever let in,” she muses, talking more to herself than to me. “But that doesn’t mean you’re the first girl who’s ever tried.”

  I stay perfectly still, afraid that if I move, I’ll remind her that I’m listening.

  “Maybe a while back, another girl tried,” she continues in a voice barely above a whisper. “Maybe a girl who was forced to go to a less prestigious school. Whose career isn’t nearly as good as it could’ve been if she’d gone to Bleakwood. Maybe someone whose career peaked … as a dean of a middling all-girls school. Who could’ve been somewhere much higher up if she’d had a better school on her applications.” Her hand balls into a fist on her chest. “Maybe a girl who wants revenge.”

  I watch her carefully, not sure what to do. She stands there silently for a few more minutes; and then, she shakes her head as if to clear it and straightens up, pushing herself off the wall.

  “You should understand that,” she says, quietly this time. “Wanting revenge.”

  I watch her for a long moment before speaking. “I don’t need revenge, anymore,” I say, though that’s not entirely true. I know it the moment I speak the word myself, and Jasper’s face rises unbidden in my mind’s eye.

  I feel my expression shift ever so slightly, and I know, in that moment, that Headmistress Robin sees it too.

  “Well, if you change your mind,” she says, leaning closer, “just know that there are other ways to be sure you’ll get into the school of your choosing. If you help me close Bleakwood, if you let yourself get your revenge, then I’ll be sure you’re not left out in the cold.”

  I stare at her for a long moment. “I’m going to need a more specific promise than that if you’re literally asking me to discredit my own school,” I say.

  “Very well then,” she says, nodding once. “If you help me close Bleakwood, I can guarantee you a spot at any top university of your choice.”

  She looks surprised when I don’t immediately promise to help her—when instead, I just scoff again.

  “Right. Well, I think I’ll take my chances,” I say.

  She looks away, a flash of disappointment crossing her face. It’s gone by the time she steps to the door, her bag slinging up over her shoulder.

  “Well, if that should change,” she says, “you know where to find me. This is your choice to make, not mine. You’re the only one who can do this.”

  She lets out a sigh. “If you can ever get past those damned investigators.”

  At least we agree on one thing.

  “Okay,” I reply, but she’s already turning her back and slipping out of the room. “But I won’t.”

  I’m about to let her leave, when suddenly I stop her again.

  “Hold up,” I say, my mind racing for a moment. “What’s to stop me from reporting you to the investigators?”

  She blinks at me, genuine surprise on her face. That rushing sensation heightens as I realize this hasn’t actually crossed her mind before.

  “I … I don’t recommend that, Alex,” she says.

  “Well, I don’t recommend you drop by my house uninvited again,” I say.

  She thinks on this for a moment before nodding once and slipping out, but not before I catch a glimpse of the sour expression on her face. Even as the door shuts behind her, I feel my own creeping sensation of doubt.

  What have I just done?

  We haven’t been on the same side, sure, but did I just make an enemy of her?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Headmistress Robin’s visit casts a pall over the rest of break. Try as I might to forget her visit, it’s useless.

  Her appearing up at the door has done what it was meant to do. It’s served as a reminder that what happens at Bleakwood does not actually stay at Bleakwood.

  What happens this year will follow me forever.

  As if I really needed any reminding.

  My return to school is early this year. I don’t know if it was an accident on the school’s part, or if the flights were just cheaper this way—but I find myself stepping out of the train in the village at the base of the mountain two days before school is due to start.

  And two days before anyone I know is due to be back.

  Without anything but a giant empty bedroom and an even bigger empty school waiting for me at the top of the mountain, I head to the tavern instead, my rolling suitcase bouncing noisily behind me.

  For how close this village is to the school, I haven’t explored it nearly as much as I should have over the last year and a half. Once the investigators are back in a matter of days, it won’t be an option again—so I relish the opportunity for a change of scenery.

  And a beer.

  I so badly need a beer to numb these thoughts that have been rattling around inside my brain over the last few weeks.

  If only Heath and Beck were here early too. I could use a little—alone—time with them before we once again return to life under the magnifying lens of the school investigators.

  It’s early evening so the tavern is pretty full, but I don’t notice anyone I recognize … which I take as a good sign. No students, but no investigators on break either. It’s perfectly legal for me to drink here in Switzerland, but I don’t need to give them any more ammo against me or Bleakwood than they already have.

  I leave my suitcase in the doorway and head toward the bar since anyone who were to rifle through it is going to be sorely disappointed to find only school un
iforms and even more oversized hoodies stolen from Caleb when he wasn’t looking.

  The bartender addresses me in Swiss German, and I’m still not very good at it yet—which I blame on the ban keeping us from venturing out to the village these last months—so I falter as I ask for a beer.

  “Ah,” he says knowingly. “English would be better?” he adds, a thick accent clinging to his words.

  “Yes,” I sigh in relief.

  “Bleakwood?” he asks after a moment, a slight frown creasing his forehead. “Student?”

  “Uh—yeah,” I stammer, suddenly wondering if I should have kept fumbling through my Romansch, or at the very least a little German. I’m about to open my mouth to apologize for being such a stereotypical American, expecting everyone else to speak English for me, when the bartender cuts me off.

  He points toward the stairs. “It’s already started. You can go up.”

  I blink at him. “Sorry, what?”

  He nods up towards a set of stairs in the corner again. “Everyone else is already here. Just up the stairs to the left.”

  I still have no idea what he’s talking about, but rather than stand here blinking at him like an idiot, I take the beer he pushes my way and—with lack of anything better to do, and my curiously peaking—head towards the stairs.

  Is there some sort of party I don’t know about? Was it another one of those things planned in the dorms that I missed out on?

  Suppose I’m about to find out.

  The stairs are wooden but not creaky. I haven’t been up here before, I knew that the term “tavern” implied there were rooms for rent, but I guess I never really thought about it. After all, I’ve never needed to.

  The stairway takes me to a long hallway with the same wooden flooring of the bar downstairs. It’s kind of cute and quaint, but though the sounds of the bar are muted up here, I don’t hear anything that sounds like Bleakwood students making the best of a little unsupervised debauchery.

  I pause near the top of the stairwell, immediately wondering if this is a mistake.

  I’m about to just leave when, true to the bartender’s word, I hear a low murmur coming from the door at the end of the hall to my left. Upon further inspection—meaning when I peer at it closely from my position at the top of the stairs—I see that the door is slightly ajar.

  I don’t have to go barging in, but a little peek just to see what’s going on couldn’t hurt, could it?

  Curiosity overcomes me. I slip up close to the door and peer through the crack, careful to keep my face out of sight, and am immediately glad I didn’t just barge in … because whatever is going on in this room definitely looks like an invitation-only event.

  If that invitation was written in Latin and came with a dagger for blood-oath taking.

  I freeze, half out of that same curiosity, and half out of fear.

  Candles flicker from various tabletops inside. Smoke from incense wafts up in curling tendrils. There’s a group of people in there, all standing in a circle and wearing … cloaks? Hoods? Does anyone even own cloaks anymore?

  On the other side of the room there’s a low table with some sort of urn in the center and candles spread all around it. Three figures stand behind the table, one of them stepping forward to lower his hood.

  And immediately, any momentary thoughts of slipping away vanish the moment I see exactly who it is beneath the hood.

  It’s Jasper.

  “Now that we’re all here,” he says in a low, serious voice, “we can begin.”

  Immediately, my stomach drops. This can’t be anything good. My eyes dart to the urn, which looks vaguely familiar, though I can’t get a super clear view of it in the flickering candlelight. But one of the guys behind Jasper steps forward and opens the top, and with a sickening lurch I realize exactly what it is.

  The ashes of the founders of Bleakwood.

  Ashes I am all too familiar with.

  My first day in the school well over a year ago now, I didn’t have the good sense to clear the floor when others did, and a handful of those ashes got dumped on me, marking me as The Brotherhood’s bitch. It’s what got me involved with them in the first place.

  And now, Jasper stands in front of that same urn, three hooded figures kneeling in front of him. Even still, it isn’t those figures that concern me.

  It’s the other two, those standing beside Jasper.

  I don’t need to see their faces to know who they are, but I still stand, holding my breath, as each one of them takes off his hood in turn.

  Heath first.

  Then Beck.

  They stand behind Jasper as he lifts the urn, holds it aloft, and lets it fall to shatter on the ground—coating them, and the hooded boys in front of him—in ash.

  The Wicked Brotherhood is together again.

  And from the looks of it, a new Brotherhood is being formed before my very eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They promised me they were finished with Jasper.

  Heath and Beck … they promised.

  They weren’t supposed to be even speaking anymore—let alone participating in secret rituals for the fraternity that had them bullying me relentlessly last year. After everything they said, after everything we’ve been through … this, this is what I come up here to find.

  No sooner has the ash settled on their new batch of bullies than the glass of beer in my hand slips to shatter on the ground in front of me. The sound of the breaking glass reverberates long after the dull crash of the breaking urn—meaning that while I remain frozen in the doorway, three pairs of eyes snap to meet mine in the door.

  My own horror is momentarily mirrored in the faces of Jasper, Heath, and Beck before I come back to my senses and bolt.

  My heart is pounding so loud in my ears that it almost drowns out the cries following me down the stairs and out onto the street. I move in blind panic, both only seeing the path directly in front of me as well as not seeing anything at all.

  Nothing but the scene I witnessed up above, playing over and over in the forefront of my mind.

  Jasper. Heath. Beck.

  The Brotherhood, once again united—and continuing the wicked tradition of their ancestors.

  I don’t stop moving until I get to the very edge of the street. I teeter there for a second, a car honking loudly at me as it swerves out of the way to avoid me if I fall off the curb.

  “Alex!”

  My name pierces my swirling thoughts, but all it serves to do is jolt me back to my senses long enough for me to wave down a cab already passing by. It screeches to a halt beside me and I hop in just as the boys run into each other at the doorway to the tavern.

  “Alex, wait!” Jasper calls, shoving his way to the front of the trio.

  I get the briefest glimpse of his pale, white face staring at me as I pull the door to the taxi shut with a slam.

  “Go!” I shout in English—and the taxi driver understands.

  His eyes flicker up to the mirror, land on the three frantic looking boys tumbling out of the tavern, and immediately presses his foot to the gas. The car lurches forward with a screech, the movement so sudden that I have to brace myself in the back seat.

  As soon as the car is out of reach of the boys, the driver’s gaze once again flickers up to meet mine in the mirror.

  “Hopeless admirers?” He asks in a thick accent.

  “Something like that,” I gasp, my breaths still struggling to return to my lungs. I lean forward and direct the driver up the mountain towards Bleakwood before falling back into the worn leather seats.

  My heartbeat doesn’t slow for the entire ride, not even when we finally pull up to the school looming at the top of the mountain, paying the driver, or the many skipped steps on the way up to the privacy of my own room.

  It doesn’t slow until I’ve pulled the door shut locked behind me and thrown myself on the overused old mattress and buried my face so deep into the covers that no one else will hear my screams.

  Or so I think.


  It isn’t until well after the sun has set on the other side of the mountains and left my room cast in the blue light of twilight that I extricate myself from the blankets enough to hear the soft knocking at my door.

  I sit up and catch sight of my face in the reflection of the glass. My face is swollen and red from crying, my hair a matted mess, and my clothes hopelessly wrinkled. This is the last way I want The Brotherhood to see me.

  The knocking continues relentlessly.

  “Alex? Alex … please, we just want to talk,” the voice says from the other side of the door. It’s muffled, but I can still tell who it belongs to.

  “Leave me alone, Heath,” I croak, drawing my knees up to my chest and fixing the old wooden door with a death stare. “I don’t want to see you.”

  There’s a moment of silence that follows. “Well … we have your things.”

  My things. Of course. I left my suitcase down at the tavern in my momentary moment of panic.

  I swallow hard, trying—without much success—to keep the hours spent crying from creeping back into my voice.

  “Then leave it outside. I’ll get it later.”

  “Okay—” Heath starts, but I hear a loud shuffle and a couple muted “ow” sounds from the other side of the door before Jasper’s voice rasps out above his.

  “No, Alex,” he growls, his voice gruff … but not necessarily rough. There’s a softness to it, despite the command in his tone. “If you won’t talk to them, you can at least talk to me. Yell at me if you like. Just … just don’t shut them out because of me.”

  This, this is what makes something break inside me.

  No, not break. That isn’t the right word.

  At the sound of Jasper’s voice, something in me snaps.

  I see the moment the brightness alights in my eyes, when my posture straightens and my face arranges itself into frightful features.

  All melancholy melts from my voice, replaced instead with high, screeching fury.

  “Because of you?”

  I jerk the covers off my legs and leap to my feet. In just three strides I’m at the door, throwing it open so quickly that all three boys go tumbling back into the hallway.