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

by Eden Beck

  I glare down at them, drawing myself up even further as I reach out and snatch my suitcase back into my room with a thundering clatter.

  “How dare you?” I snap, fixing each one of them in turn with a withering glare until my gaze finally, at long last, comes to rest on the worst offender of all.

  Jasper looks pathetic, scrabbling to get back to his feet from where he’s fallen back on the stone floor. His eyes are wide, his face upturned to look into mine. The usually perfectly coiffed hair atop his head has fallen into his eyes, giving him a softer, boyish look.

  For a moment, he doesn’t look like the striking head of an ancient fraternity. A bully. A tormenter and a liar.

  He just looks like a scared boy.

  And somehow, that just serves to make me angrier.

  “No,” I say, stamping my foot. “You don’t get to be upset. Only I get to be upset. You’re the one who’s gone and ruined everything.”

  One hand still rests on the edge of the door, poised to slam it in their faces. Jasper makes a motion for Heath and Beck to stay back while he slowly straightens up to his feet.

  “I know what you think you say back there,” he says, quietly, “but it isn’t what it looked like.”

  “So, you’re telling me you … the current Brotherhood … weren’t initiating the next Brotherhood?”

  He blinks at me wordlessly for a moment, “Well … well, maybe it was what it looked like. But … but wait!”

  I stop myself halfway from slamming the door in their faces right away.

  “What? What more could you possibly have to say to me?”

  Jasper’s jaw works. Behind him, I can see the beseeching faces of Heath and Beck. Beck, especially, looks between me and Jasper, an uncertain look on his face.

  He doesn’t know if he should trust Jasper with this, I realize.

  Well, too bad. He should have thought of that before he jumped right back into bed with this boy. Right after hopping into bed with me.

  “Alex,” Jasper starts, “I know you hate me. I understand that. But you have to understand that The Brotherhood, it’s out of our control. It’s a tradition we have to uphold. We don’t have a choice in the matter.”

  I throw up both my hands. “No choice in the matter? You’re talking like you’ve been blackmailed into it.”

  “Well, I mean … only a little,” Heath says quietly, from where he rests on the floor.

  My gaze snaps over to him. “What?”

  He averts his gaze, choosing instead to look to Jasper and Beck for reassurance. “Well, that’s what it is, isn’t it?” he says, then looks back at me. “We have to share a family secret when we join.”

  “See?” Beck suddenly scrabbles to get something out of the pocket of his coat. He takes out three envelopes, freshly sealed with hot wax, and holds them out to me.

  I recognize the envelope immediately, a sudden shadow falling over me.

  Those envelopes exactly match the envelope I stole for Headmistress Robin last year.

  Who’s secret did I give her? I wonder. Which of these boys stands to lose more than the others should that information come out?

  Still, my grip on the door—and my resolution—only strengthens.

  “So … so what I saw down there was you blackmailing three new students into The Brotherhood?” I ask. The look they share between the three of them confirms my thoughts. My lips turn up into a snarl. “And that was somehow supposed to make me be more understanding?”

  Jasper’s face searches mine, and I see the moment something shifts in him. His face takes on a stoic look, a protective look as he takes a half step towards me.

  “Alex, this is my fault.” He swallows hard. “I understand if you hate me, if you never want to talk to me again … but these two, Heath and Beck, don’t make them suffer just because they’re stuck in The Brotherhood with me.”

  “If only you’d taken that sort of responsibility before, maybe we wouldn’t be in this position,” I snap at him. A sudden rush of adrenaline runs through me, making me throw my head back and let out a strangled laugh. “After everything you did to me, and you never once apologized like this to me?”

  I shake my head. “But now that your precious Brotherhood is at risk … now, now you fight for it.”

  I have to take a breath, a deep, chest-rattling breath, before I continue. “You keep acting like you’re all stuck in this Brotherhood, but you’re not. Jasper, you could just end this thing now.”

  “And would that solve things?”

  It isn’t Jasper who asks, it’s Heath. He’s quiet, his posture defeated … but something in his eyes, it’s hopeful, I think.

  My lips part, but I have to pause.

  Would that solve things?

  “Not everything,” I say, after a moment, “but it would be a start.”

  Beck and Heath share a glance, but before either of them can answer, Jasper does it for them. And his words seal the last nail in the coffin.

  “That’s not possible,” he says, his voice suddenly dry and detached. “Only I can dissolve The Brotherhood, and Alex … as much as I care for you, I can’t do that.”

  Both Heath and Beck freeze, their gaze frozen on Jasper. But neither of them objects.

  I just look between the three of them, the sick feeling in my stomach growing until it almost overwhelms me.

  “Well then, I guess you must not care for me at all,” I say, barely able to keep my voice steady. I have to take a second to compose myself, to straighten myself up and tighten my grip on the door. “So, there we have it. Until you agree to end this tradition, until you dissolve The Brotherhood, then I want nothing to do with any of you.”

  I keep my eyes on Jasper, because I don’t think I can keep my resolve if I look at the other two.

  I stand in the door for a moment, feeling the color drain from my face as bile churns in my empty stomach.

  But even after a lengthy moment of silence, Jasper does not object.

  None of them do.

  “Very well,” Jasper says, straightening himself up once more to match my posture. He towers over me, his face a mask of unreadable emotion. “If that’s what you want.”

  What I want?

  I feel rage swell in me again, but before it can come pouring out of me, Jasper just motions to the other two and, without another word, he turns on his heel and strides off down the hallway.

  Heath and Beck hesitate only a moment before following him.

  As soon as they leave, I sink down to the ground with my back still to the door—no longer able to keep the rage turned to sobs from wracking my chest.

  What a fool I’ve been.

  It was always going to come back to this.

  They were always going to choose The Brotherhood over me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I’ve seen what happens when I keep things from Rafael, but finding the time … and the right place, given the circumstances … to tell him about my latest discovery about The Brotherhood turns out to be a challenge.

  Not least of all because as soon as I step foot into the main hallway on my way to breakfast on the first day back to class, I see the posters. I probably would have seen them sooner if I’d been able to get myself to leave my room over the last two days.

  The annual competition against the girls’ school is upon us, and I already know what that means … even before I hear my name read over the intercom halfway through the breakfast line.

  Rafael finds my eyes in the crowd from where he’s seated beside Neville at our old table. His posture is erect, his shoulders pushed back and his head swiveling from side to side to look for the rest of The Brotherhood before I think to do the same.

  But it doesn’t matter. I know they won’t be here, even before my own gaze falls on their own empty table. The table where they’ll surely all be returning to now that I’ve been pushed out in favor of their stupid “tradition”.

  I eye the breakfast line for just one second before I turn on my heel a
nd storm out. Of course, this is happening right now.

  And of course, it’s going to have to happen right in front of the dean. I don’t know how I expected anything else from Bleakwood.

  I don’t know how I expected I’d be able to stay away from them.

  I’m only a few steps out into the hallway before I hear the scuffle of feet behind me.

  “So, dean’s office already, huh?”

  I glance back to find Rafael standing in the doorway, one hand still resting on the door jamb.

  He must see the look on my face because he does a sudden glance over his own shoulder before stepping the rest of the way out after me. He waits until he hears the click of the doors shutting behind him before he speaks again.

  “What is it? Are you in trouble?”

  None of the humor from a moment before remains in his voice.

  “It’s nothing,” I start, but I catch myself avoiding looking into his eyes and know that answer isn’t going to stand. “Nothing I can’t handle, anyway.”

  “You sure about that? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Rafael’s voice has gone quiet. “You know you can tell me anything, right?” he says. “I kept your secrets before. I can do it again.”

  I feel a sudden pang of gratitude in my stomach. Here, all these months, I’ve been secretly pouting because I lost my roommate, but I forgot that I never lost my friend.

  Things might be different, but he’s still here. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

  I reach out one hand and squeeze Rafael’s. “I’ll tell you everything later. I promise.”

  Rafael looks intrigued, but he doesn’t hold me up. He also doesn’t leave until he’s made me make a blood oath to tell him—on pain of death, mind you—later tonight as soon as we’re alone together.

  It’s that small bit of reassurance that carries me the rest of the way to the dean’s office, and then again keeps my knees from giving out entirely as soon as I step inside and straight into Jasper’s waiting arms.

  It’s the scent of him that overwhelms me first.

  It’s pine and sandalwood and something not unlike soap made from goat’s milk.

  I reach out and dig my fingers into the fabric of his uniform shirt to try to pry myself off of him, but instead I find myself dragging myself out of the image of him shirtless in Greece. Where his family took holiday, or so I’ve heard. Where he undoubtedly got the soap that’s now making my head spin as I finally manage to extricate myself from him.

  And then here he is, right in front of me, right in front of me, so close that I can hear how his breathing has picked up at the touch of me. At the sight of me as he glares down at me with those eyes so blue, I can practically see the Greek sea still reflected in them.

  “Ah, glad to see you could join us, Alex,” the dean says, but not before clearing his throat loudly and with enough gusto that if I didn’t know better I would think he was choking to death on his own spit.

  Fortunately for me, it’s disgusting enough to finally pull me out of the picture of Greece and shirtless, stupid Jasper and back into where I actually stand in the stuffy, sweaty dean’s office.

  It doesn’t stop me from having to keep from glancing at Heath and Beck out of my peripherals, each one of them obviously twitching for their own chance at me.

  Boys.

  “As you all know,” the dean says, clearing his throat once more before guesting to a fourth guest in the room—the investigator who’s been hounding me, Ms. Ada—that I hadn’t noticed before, “it’s time for the annual challenge against the girl’s school. A tradition,” he adds, after glancing once more at the investigator, “like many others here at Bleakwood that we are proud to continue to uphold. You know. In light of everything else.”

  Here, he fixes me with a stare as if I introduced the Black Death to Bleakwood, and not a single pair of boobs and a vagina.

  Last year, a look like that would have made me squirm where I stand. But now, after those same things Dean Withers seems determined to remind us we’re “in light of”, all it does is annoy me.

  I rock back on my heel and cross my arms across my chest. While I don’t look directly at Ms. Ada, I do notice how her own posture straightens as if she’s about to be listening very closely to whatever it is I have to say.

  And that is something that Dean Withers takes note of, too.

  Maybe these investigators here won’t be so bad, after all. Not now that I have nothing to hide from their ever-watchful gaze.

  With my newfound confidence, I find the words to ask, “And why am I included here, again?” I look over my shoulders at Jasper, Heath, and Beck for one second before looking back. “I’m not a member of The Brotherhood.”

  Just the mention of it by name makes Withers outwardly cringe. In turn, Ms. Ada’s eyes light up beside him, and I swear she leans forward just a bit. I can practically imagine her eye actually lighting up as she begins to record the scene unfolding before her like some kind of robot.

  A robot that will just as quickly ruin my life as it will Jasper, Heath, and Beck’s, I have to remind myself.

  Dean Withers is too quick to answer, however. He holds out his arms to either side, a gesture that could be viewed as welcoming if you didn’t see the way the rest of his face twists down.

  “But of course, you practically are! What kind of school would we be if we didn’t include our very first girl in our most time-honored tradition?”

  Before I can even say anything, it’s Ms. Ada that sits forward slighting again and looks at Withers directly. “Are you saying you’re going to add Alex to The Brotherhood? The same fraternity that we’ve been hearing ever so much about?”

  I’m not the only one to immediately balk.

  Heath is the first one to break. “But … but she’s a girl!”

  I try to shoot him a look to silence him, but it’s too late. Dean Withers is left stammering at his desk. I, meanwhile, feel suddenly lightheaded.

  “No!” I blurt out, stumbling a half step forward towards the investigator’s chair. I glance back once more at the faces behind me, all three both shocked and in horror, before I look back to her. As much as I’d love to betray The Brotherhood to this degree right now, I also can’t imagine anything I’d hate more than actually being considered one of them.

  But I can’t exactly tell this woman that, not any of them. So, I too find myself stammering for a reply.

  Thankfully, my outburst has given Withers the perfect excuse to backpedal without looking like he’s actually the one doing it.

  “Ah, see!” he says, “It’s not what the girl wants.”

  “But I just think—”

  “I think,” Dean Withers says, his voice taking on a tone this time that makes even the investigator sit back a bit in her seat, “that your role here is silent oversight, not decision making.”

  Ms. Ada sits back the rest of the way in her seat, her lips pursing.

  “However, I do think that settles it,” Dean Withers adds hastily. He gestures first at me, then at the three boys standing breathless behind me. “Alex will join The Brotherhood in the competition as their unofficial fourth member. Call her an honorary member, if you will,” he adds, a slight sneer pulling up at the corner of his mouth.

  I open my mouth to disagree, but I see the look on Ms. Ada’s face and I know this is a battle I’ve already lost.

  “I suppose if Alex is happy with that compromise, then I don’t see anyone else having an issue,” she says. “But if Alex isn’t happy, then she really should be initiated into—”

  “No!” I blurt out again, feeling heat and bile rise at the back of my throat. “I don’t want that. I—I’ll join, fine. But I don’t want to be an official member.”

  “No,” Dean Withers reminds me. “An honorary one.”

  Dean Withers and Ms. Ada try to go over how the next few events are going to play out this time around, but I’m not paying any attention. It’s everything I can do just to keep from showing how much I’m f
alling apart.

  Honorary member of The Brotherhood.

  I know what he really means.

  I’m back to being The Brotherhood’s bitch. Just like I’ve always been.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “He said what?”

  I let out a guffaw as I lean back against the tower wall and take a swig of the pilfered wine Rafael somehow managed to get ahold of from the kitchens.

  Now that Neville has moved into my old spot in the dorm, we had to find other places to be alone. This time, the quest for privacy has led us to the top of the old bell tower. Unlike the one I took a tumble out of last year, the one towering over Bleakwood is surprisingly well maintained … if thankfully abandoned.

  The air is crisp and our breaths like clouds in the night air.

  Though it’s not nearly as peaceful as you might imagine. Not, anyway, where I’m concerned.

  “Ah shit!” I splutter, snapping forward and spewing a mouthful of droplets over the railing and down over the empty rooftops and courtyards below. “You said this was wine!”

  “Sorry, Alex, but Sherry is wine,” Rafael says, taking the bottle from me before I can have the good sense to chuck it as far as I can. He takes a swig himself and swallows without making so much as a face. “And around here, on such short notice, it’s as good as it’s gonna get.”

  It takes me a second to catch my breath since I’m pretty sure I inhaled some of the wine. The Brotherhood would never drink this, no matter how dire the circumstances.

  Good thing we’re not The Brotherhood.

  Even if one of us is an honorary member.

  “God, what are we even doing?” I croak out at long last. I lean back on my heels as my hands grip the wrought-iron railing. All down below, the dark slate roof has been more than dusted with snow. The moonlight, when it decides to make an appearance, catches off the frozen drifts and sets the whole night aglitter.

  “I don’t know about me,” Rafael says after a hasty glance at me, “but from what you’ve been telling me, it sounds to me like you’re gonna be doing Jasper one of these days. Or Heath. Or Beck.”