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

by Eden Beck

  A crunch that is just as quickly followed by blinding, head-splitting pain as all goes black around me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Not for the first time, I find myself holed up in Bleakwood’s infirmary. And also not for the first time, I find myself with unwelcome visitors.

  As soon as I blink my eyes open, the blackness swimming away to give way to the brightly lit infirmary ceiling, I’m met with a face as well.

  A face that is, quite possibly, the last face I want to see. And also the one I expect the least.

  It’s Olive.

  I sit up so quickly that I nearly slam our heads together. She lurches back out of my space even as I cringe and squeeze my eyes back shut as the blackness threatens to overtake my vision again. A splitting headache resurges between my eyes from where it never quite disappeared. It just wanes from dull to debilitating.

  “Careful now!” Nurse Weber cries as her footsteps carry her scuttling back over to my side. “You just took quite the fall. From what Olive here tells me, you must’ve gotten thrown a good three meters off that horse.”

  The horse.

  Now I remember.

  Nurse Weber rustles around to grab more pillows to stuff behind me so I can prop myself up. I open my eyes more slowly this time, but though I find my eyes have adjusted more to the light, they still have not adjusted to the smug look on Olive’s face right here in front of me.

  It only looks smug to me, of course. To Nurse Weber, it probably looks contrite.

  “I can take over from here,” Olive says, brightly, as Weber reaches for another pillow.

  She pauses a second, looking between the two of us with a questioning look on her face. I open my mouth to tell her I’d rather she didn’t, but Olive just launches into a breathless conversation about how she cared for her grandmother after she fell from a horse. It isn’t believable, not to anyone present, but she goes on for so long that Nurse Weber has no choice but to excuse herself or suffer the same head-splitting injury as me.

  Just as I knew she would, Olive’s false story comes to an immediately, jarring halt the moment Nurse Weber lets the door swing shut behind her with the promise that she’ll be back as soon as she’s grabbed something from the supply closet. Thanks to Olive’s most recent babbling, it’s a trip that’s almost guaranteed to take longer than normal.

  “So,” Olive says, lips pursing together as she leans in closer to examine me, “we find ourselves alone together at long last.”

  “I thought you never came back to Harrows,” I blurt out, wincing immediately from the pain that blossoms once again at the spot between my eyebrows.

  How hard did I hit my head exactly?

  All I remember was the scent of the horse’s sweat mingling with my own, the way my thighs began to lose their grip, how … how …

  I suddenly jerk my head back up to stare at Olive, open mouthed.

  The shudder that wracked through my horse the moment something hit it in the flank from behind.

  “You—you did this.”

  She doesn’t even try to hide the glee from her face when she replies, “I’d like to see you try to prove it.”

  I stutter for a second, looking for words but only finding, as my memories of the even slowly return to me, that she’s probably right. Even if I could prove it, what would actually happen?

  Would Headmistress Robin expel her? Probably not.

  She’d probably just think to actually use her as a weapon against me.

  “So this is what you do as soon as you come back? Sabotage me?”

  “Like you sabotaged me?” she snaps, any prettiness still left in her face draining away as her face screws up in a snarl. “You embarrassed me in front of the entire school! You made a fool out of me.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I say, knowing full well the words sound hollow on my lips. I have been sorry about that. But right now, right here on this bed, one hand raised to press the tender, bandaged wrapping that covers the back half of my head, I’m not particularly sorry anymore. “But I hope we’re even now.”

  “Not even close.”

  Olive’s eyes burn with a fury that doesn’t become her.

  “You got Jasper, didn’t you?” I snap back. My vision spins again, and I have to close my eyes, even though it goes against every instinct in my body. It doesn’t feel right being blind in the presence of a predator. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  In the brief silence that follows, I wonder what it is that crosses her mind. Does she imagine how easy it would be to be done with me here? She could smother me with a pillow and no one would be the wiser. They’d chalk it up to some sort of delayed reaction to being thrown.

  Or she could stab me with a scalpel, go the less subtle route.

  But after a moment of that silence, she just lets out the smallest, nearly inaudible sigh.

  “It’s not what I thought it would be,” she admits. “It’s … it’s not like before.”

  Now, my eyes fly open. I ignore the piercing pain of the light just so I can catch a glimpse of the expression on her face.

  But, like her words, it’s unreadable.

  “What do you—”

  I’m cut off as Nurse Weber makes her return. And this time, she’s not alone.

  She’s attended by the dean.

  Of all the times I’ve found myself in the dean’s office this year, this is by far the most memorable. Not least of all, it’s made so by the fact that this time I am wheeled inside.

  Nurse Weber wanted me to be dragged down here in the hospital bed, but I was not having it.

  I thought that getting up and out of the bed would be difficult, but somehow the movement serves to make my head actually swim a little less. A short-term improvement it seems, however, since my splitting headache returns as soon as the door is thrown open in front of me and the angry mix of voices dies down at my sight.

  I’ve never seen the office so packed.

  Not only is the dean present, but so is Headmistress Robin, nearly half a dozen investigators in their distinctive suits, the entirety of the girls’ team, and, of course, The Brotherhood.

  Jasper. Heath. Beck. The moment they lay eyes on me, I see the way they fidget to come to my side. Heath’s eyes grow especially wide and almost dewy. Beck fidgets worse than the other two, so much so that it appears almost for a second that he’s completely lost control of one of his legs. Jasper just looks furious. With himself. With me. With everything.

  Who really knows with him?

  Every time I think I know him, I’m somehow wrong.

  “What do you think you’re doing, wheeling her in for this?” Ms. Ada cries out as I’m squeezed into the already packed space.

  “I thought she deserved to hear what’s going on,” Dean Withers says. He pinches the bridge of his nose as if he too is experiencing the excruciating pain following his being thrown ten feet by a horse. “This does affect her too, you know.”

  Maybe more than everyone else.

  I find myself swiveling in my chair to get a better look at everyone around me. Faces are downturned and angry. Whatever is being discussed here, it doesn’t bode well for any of us.

  And bodes even worse when it’s Headmistress Robin who speaks, her teeth clamped together so tight that it’s almost impossible to understand what she says.

  “Thanks to that little stunt you pulled,” she says to me, “the investigators here have decided it’s best to shut down the whole event altogether.”

  There’s a look shining in her eyes that’s akin, I think, to murderous rage.

  “My fault?” I snap, ignoring the way just speaking makes me want to gauge my own eyeballs out from the pressure. I find myself leaning in closer. “Are you sure you want to go accusing me of that when it was one of your own who caused me to be thrown from the horse in the first place?”

  There’s a collective gasp around the room.

  If any eyes weren’t on me before, they are now.

  De
an Withers takes three steps out from behind his desk. “Are you saying …”

  “I’m saying,” I growl, turning to fix Olive with a glare … only to suddenly find myself stammering. “I’m saying … I’m saying …”

  My words falter completely.

  I was so ready to give Olive up, to expose what she did. But looking at her now, I realize that isn’t what I want to do.

  Sure, she should be punished for what she did.

  But so should I.

  In a way, this makes us even. But me turning her in, ratting her out, it tips the balances in my favor … and for what? She’ll not be expelled. I know Headmistress Robin wouldn’t do that.

  Or even if she did, what would that actually do to her? Like Jasper, like Heath, like Beck, it would just be a minor setback. It wouldn’t actually do anything.

  It wouldn’t do anything other than leave me with a gnawing sense of guilt long after the short-term satisfaction of ratting her out.

  So I just clamp my mouth shut and look up into the dean’s face. “I … I’d rather not say.”

  He throws up his arms and storms back to the other side of his desk.

  “Well if she won’t say …”

  “Make her say.”

  Jasper’s voice cuts out above all the rest. He storms past me, right up to the edge of the desk. I can’t see his face, but I can see the way the muscles strain in the back of his shirt, the way he presses his full weight forward until the desk creaks beneath it.

  “I want to know who did this to her. Maybe you don’t care, maybe you don’t think it matters, but I do.”

  Something flutters deep in the pit of my stomach.

  Dean Withers just fixes first him, and then me, with a tired look. “I think we both know that Miss Trevellian is her own keeper,” he says, resignedly. “If she says she won’t give up who did it …”

  “And I won’t,” I snap back, momentarily causing all eyes to turn on me again.

  “ … then there’s nothing I can do about it,” the dean says.

  Jasper’s head whips back and forth between me and the dean so quickly that he looks in danger of getting whiplash. Before that can happen, however, he shoves himself up off the desk, turns on his heel, and storms out of the office.

  There’s a silence that follows for a moment, and in that silence, I suddenly clamber up out of my chair myself and stumble out after him—despite the cries of the nurse and her desperate, but futile—attempts to get me back into it.

  He’s halfway down the hall already. I know I won’t catch up to him, not with the way the walls and floor seem to have gotten uneven and wavy since the last time I was down here, so I do the only thing I can.

  I call after him.

  “Jasper!”

  He turns to look at me, his face a mask of rage and fury, but no sooner has his name left my lips than I find myself collapsing onto the floor.

  He’s upon me in an instant.

  His hands cradle my head as my vision starts to drift in and out again. His touch is surprisingly gentle, his voice—trying to reassure me—is soft.

  But that fury, that light in his eyes, it only burns brighter.

  “Who did this to you?” he growls, his face so close to mine that I notice for the first time a freckle in his left eye. “If you won’t tell them, then at least tell me.”

  I feel my lips part, but out of the corner of my vision, I see Dean Withers and Nurse Weber staggering out of the room and quickly bearing down on us.

  I look back up to meet Jasper’s gaze, and just shake my head ever so slightly.

  “If you can’t figure that out for yourself, then it doesn’t matter anyway.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The only good that comes from my near neck-breaking fall from the mare is that this damned competition is finally called off.

  Those running the investigation were already prepared to end the dance too, but somehow someone—and I have a feeling it was Olive, of all people—convinced them to at least allow the ball to continue on.

  This, I don’t learn for several days until I’m finally allowed visitors again.

  “Are you kidding me?” I snap, sitting up suddenly. I feel only the slightest twinge when I do it, but I have to hide any sign of the pain or else I know Nurse Weber is going to insist on sending me away to stay at a proper hospital.

  Rafael just gives me a look. “I mean, is that really such a bad thing?”

  “Maybe not for you,” I say, groaning as I fall forward into my own hands. “But there’s no way I’m going to that dance.”

  “Oh, I very much think you will,” Dean Withers’ voice announces from the doorway.

  All three of us—Rafael, Nurse Weber, and I—start and turn to watch as he strides in. He has a determined look on his face and a printed sheet of paper in his hands.

  “I—” I start, but he just holds up one hand.

  “You’ve already done quite enough, Miss Trevellian,” he growls. “The investigation committee has half a mind to shut us down after that little stunt you pulled. It wouldn’t look very good for us if you, our only female student, didn’t bother to attend.”

  Stunt I pulled?

  If I don’t bother to attend? There’s no mention of what would happen if I found myself physically unable to attend thanks to the very same injury I’m supposed to have brought upon myself.

  “But I don’t have a dress,” I splutter, looking down at myself in the oversized hospital gown I’ve been wearing for days now.

  Dean Withers just presses his lips together and gives Rafael a look. “Can I be assured that you’ll make sure she looks at least presentable?”

  It’s Rafael’s turn to splutter for words. “If … if you really think …”

  “I do.” The dean fixes Nurse Weber with a look of her own. “And don’t you even think of objecting. If for any reason Alex is unable to attend the dance this weekend, you likely won’t be the only one in this room who will find themselves without a job.”

  And just like that, Dean Withers storms out without further words.

  Rafael and I just exchange a look before I let out another rumbling growl and bury my face into the middle of his chest.

  “I should have just gotten The Brotherhood expelled when I had the chance,” I say. “Then, at the very least, I wouldn’t have to watch Jasper dance with Olive as if the whole last year didn’t even happen.”

  I’m not allowed out of the infirmary again until Bleakwood is able to get a proper doctor up to take a look at me, and even then I have to practically fight tooth and nail with Nurse Weber to move back into my own room by early Saturday morning.

  And by then, the competition—and my part in it—is already nearly forgotten.

  All that’s on anyone’s lips is the dance.

  Everyone else’s but mine even when, thanks to Dean Withers, I have no choice other than to go.

  So with special permission to help me get ready, I find myself in my solitary dorm room for the first time in a week. And for once, I’m actually grateful for the extra space because the moment Rafael steps foot in the doorway, the suitcase he’s carrying practically explodes across every available surface. Everything from the dressers to the bed to the floor itself is covered in what looks to be great bolts of fabric.

  “Sorry,” he hisses as he bends over to fuss over the fluffiest tulle skirt I’ve ever seen, “this is all I could get on such short notice.”

  I just balk. “I guess the very least I could do is take a shower.”

  “Not even close,” Rafael snaps before shooing me into the bathroom along with an armload of hair products and some very specific instructions on how to use them. “If the dean is forcing me to be your fairy godmother, then fuck me if you show up at that dance as anything other than Cinderella.”

  I soon find myself standing wet and entirely naked in the middle of a platform Rafael somehow erected in the center of my room while I was bathing. Admittedly, it did take longer than normal sinc
e every sudden movement still seems to make my head swim—though whether that’s from nerves or the accident, I’m not sure anymore.

  Rafael falls into a kind of manic silence as he pokes and prods me and has me try on dress after dress after dress … only for each one to make him purse his lips after a couple seconds before he has me tear it off and watch as he tosses, yet another, into the reject pile.

  I’d have started to be concerned by now if I hadn’t seen the additional three suitcases he had Neville drop off outside. And unless I heard wrong, he sent Neville away with the instructions to fetch another.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you constantly look like you’re sucking on sour candy?” Rafael says once he’s finished most viciously ripping a gorgeous red gown off of me like it caused him some kind of personal offence.

  “No,” I say, “but thanks. Now that’s all I’m going to think about for the rest of the night.”

  “Well, if it gets that look off your face, then glad I could be of service,” he mutters before suddenly glancing up at me from where he’s gone back to crouching at my feet, another bundle of fabric already in his hands. “What has gotten into you, by the way? We’re going to a dance, not a funeral.”

  “It’s … it’s stupid.”

  I look away in embarrassment, but not before Rafael sees the look on his face.

  “Oh, now I have to know.”

  I let out the smallest sigh. “It’s … it’s because I don’t have a date.”

  Heat rises to my cheeks, making them burn hot.

  If I had truly wanted a date to this dance, I know I could have made it happen. I’m the only girl in an all-boys’ school, after all, but in the rush of the last three weeks—with everything else going on—the thought never once crossed my mind.

  And I guess I’m terrifying enough that no one outside of The Brotherhood dared ask themselves.

  Or maybe none of them wanted to ask.