Shunned: a reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 1)

by Steffanie Holmes

  I can’t breathe. I can’t…

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A triumphant cry pulled me from the brink of passing out. Quinn dragged me through the door and slammed it shut behind him, just as something pounded against the wood.

  “What are you doing here?” Quinn’s voice came out in a ragged gasp. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”

  He wrapped an arm around me and helped me to my feet. My legs gave way beneath me, and I slid back to the ground. Pain shot through my arm as my elbow bent at a bad angle.

  “Fuck. Hazy, come on.” Quinn slipped his hands beneath me again, hoisting me back into his arms. My body lurched as he staggered down a darkened hallway. With the last ounce of strength I possessed, I clung to his cloak.

  His black cloak.

  Why is Quinn wearing a black cloak? Why is he dressed as a shadow?

  Quinn pounded up a staircase to a security door, flicking something at the lock. The door clicked open. He ducked through and kicked it closed behind him, sinking to the ground with me still cradled in his arms. “Shit,” he panted, laying me against the wall and rocking back. His face was white as a sheet, his eyes swollen and black and weeping. “I told you to be careful, to lay low. So you immediately go and snoop around in the one place where you shouldn’t be looking.”

  I tried to speak, to ask the questions I needed to ask, but Quinn mashed his lips to mine. My body didn’t question why a King was voluntarily kissing me again. I melted against him, sucking power and fortitude from the fire he stoked inside me. The moistness of his mouth drove out the foulness of that room, replacing it with something far sweeter, far more intoxicating. Quinn’s coconut and sugarcane taste brought up memories of fun and frivolity to push out the darkness. I drew strength from his presence so that I could face the horror I’d just encountered.

  This kiss – it wasn’t like the others we’d shared, where Quinn had been in control. This was wild, desperate, as if he needed something from me that he could only ask for with his mouth tight against mine.

  Well, whatever it was he needed, he wasn’t getting it from me until I had answers.

  “What… did I see… in there?” I gasped, pulling away. I had so many questions, but my throat wouldn’t cooperate.

  “I don’t know, Hazy, you tell me. I heard you screaming, so I came running after you.” Quinn rubbed his jaw. “You’ve left me smarting from that uppercut of yours. Ever thought about joining a boxing team?”

  “You didn’t… I screamed after…”

  Quinn’s face darkened. “Yeah, you got me. I was following you. Okay, up you get.”

  He rocked forward, swaying as he stood up, and staggered toward the end of the hall, which opened into the library’s reading room. Toward light and civilization and books.

  “Where are we going?” I gasped.

  “I’m taking you to Ayaz. If anyone is going to explain this, it’s gonna be him.”

  The last thing I wanted right now was to look into Ayaz’s dark, cruel eyes. “Why him?”

  “Because,” Quinn’s mouth set in a firm line. “He was once one of them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “You’re late—” Ayaz looked up from his cubicle where Quinn entered the reading room. He jumped back as Quinn sat me down on one of the tables. “Fuck! What happened?”

  “Hazy here was running late to meet you, so she thought she’d take a shortcut through the gymnasium. Something attacked her and she screamed and punched me in the jaw.”

  Something that might have been fear flickered through Ayaz’s dark eyes. He knelt down in front of me and started to press his fingers all over my body. “Are you hurt? Did you break anything?”

  “You’re not a doctor yet,” I muttered.

  “You can have a look at my jaw, though,” Quinn complained. “It really fucking hurts.”

  “Sort yourself out,” Ayaz continued his examination, probing my cheeks and running his hands over my neck, where I still had bruises from Trey’s attack at the party. Ayaz picked up my arm and pressed his finger to the burn on my wrist. Fire flared through my body, the dangerous heat that came over me whenever I was around the Kings – the kind of fire that could easily rage out of control.

  I snatched my hand away. “I’m fine.”

  I wasn’t, but I had more important things to worry about. My elbow still smarted from where I’d wrenched it, and I was afraid my heart would never return to normal. The adrenaline was starting to flee my body, and I shivered. Ayaz shrugged off his blazer and threw it over my shoulders. Despite myself, I sucked in a deep breath of his spicy scent, letting this second olfactory sensation scrub the horror from my nostrils.

  Quinn left and re-entered the room, Trey baying at his heels. The three of them crowded around me, touching me, stroking me, bombarding me with questions.

  “Give me some room,” I grumbled. They all stepped back, and I wished they hadn’t. My body ached to feel the warmth of them.

  Ayaz gripped my shoulders, studying me with his hard, dark eyes. “Listen, it’s really important that you tell me exactly what you saw and heard.”

  “It was so weird.” I rubbed my temple, where a headache bloomed. “I think whatever chemical is causing that smell gave me hallucinations.”

  “Maybe. But I need to know what happened, no matter how weird you think it is.”

  In between coughing and dry heaving, I related to them every detail I could remember about the gym – the scritching in the walls, the shadowy figures that scuttled under the bleachers on all fours and then crept across the court, the eerie light that seemed to come from beneath the court and formed the five-pointed star and eye of the school’s crest.

  “You seem positive that the scritching noise was rats,” Ayaz said. “But you didn’t actually see a rat.”

  “No, but it was exactly the same as the scritching in the walls. If that’s not rats, what could it be?”

  Quinn screwed up his face, as if he could think of lots of things it could be. “You’ve been hearing this scritching noise at night, right?”

  “Yeah. Don’t you?” Then I shook my head. “Of course you don’t. You sleep in the fancy dorms. It’s only us scholarship students who get the basement rat-hole rooms.”

  “Maybe not for much longer,” Trey growled. “That’s got to be some kind of health code violation. Maybe we could go to Headmistress West and—”

  Ayaz shook his head. “I tried that already.”

  That was right. I forgot that Ayaz had been a scholarship student. Supposedly, he’d slept in the same room I now occupied. I couldn’t picture it. Did his rise to the rank of King in the school have something in common with whatever happened to Loretta?

  “Did you get my books when you carried me out?” I asked Quinn. “I had something to show you.”

  “Nope, sorry. And neither of us are going back to get them, not if there are killer rats.”

  “Damn. I found something really odd.” I scrambled to remember the details of the newspaper clipping. “Did you know there used to be another school here?”

  Trey whistled his breath through his teeth. Quinn cocked his head to the side and flashed me a smile that was kind of tight-lipped. “That so?”

  “Yeah. I found all these newspaper articles in one of the boxes in the storage room on my floor.” I told them about chasing Loretta – or who I thought was Loretta – into the room, and finding them scattered everywhere. “Apparently, this place used to be called Miskatonic Preparatory, and it burned down in a tragic fire twenty years ago. It killed 245 students. Do people not know this or do you just not talk about it?”

  “You shouldn’t be reading these.” Trey looked murderous. “They’re not for your kind.”

  “My kind? I may have grown up in the Badlands, but I’m not a simpleton, Trey. So you guys knew about this fire and about Miskatonic Prep?”

  “Of course we do. It’s not a secret.” Trey said, sounding exasperated. “Some of our class has family who died that ni
ght. But the school has worked hard to distance itself from what happened, and our reputation is beyond reproach.”

  I shuddered. “So many people died. How is this place still open?”

  “You want to be in business one day?” Ayaz’s eyes sharpened. “This school is a valuable lesson for you – behold the power of rebranding. A new name, a new intake of students, a generation of powerful people who wanted to keep their status symbol alive. Miskatonic Prep was erased from history, and Derleth Academy rose from its ashes.”

  I glared at Quinn. “You said Ayaz would give me an explanation for what happened. I need to know.”

  The guys exchanged a heated look – some kind of challenge for supremacy. Ayaz lost. He stepped back and shook his head. “Sure, Hazel. It’s as you said, the chemical gives students hallucinations. That’s why the wing is closed.”

  “Shouldn’t the whole school be closed down? That staircase isn’t even closed off. What’s stopping any student wandering down there, like I did, like Quinn did, and getting themselves killed?”

  “They don’t want anyone on the outside to know about it, because the health board would shut the school down and that would be too much scandal for the families, especially after the fire.“

  “Why would that have anything to do with the fire?”

  “Some people – namely some of the families of the victims – feel as though the school was opened too quickly. The alumni want to keep the school open at all costs, but some people in our circles think the place is bad luck, haunted by the ghosts of those dead kids.”

  “That’s why there’s this whole mistrust of the scholarship students thing,” Quinn added. “Because it means there are students here the alumni don’t control. Any wrong move, any scandal, and the school’s reputation will be tarnished beyond repair.”

  “So if I go to the headmistress with this story…” I trailed off. I knew exactly what would happen. She’d deduct all my merit points for breaking the rules.

  Trey nodded, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “And why are you guys trying to help me?” I demanded. “How did you go from hating me to following me and giving me your merit points?”

  Trey grinned. “We just wanted to make this year more interesting.”

  I didn’t buy that, not for a minute. But I could see by the glance they shared that they’d already agreed not to tell me. I tried again. “And Loretta? You said she’d been kicked out. Why has she come back?”

  Another pointed glance between them. Quinn shrugged. “Yeah, we don’t get that, either. All I know is that Courtney made a case for her to the school board, and she was allowed back.”

  “Courtney? Why would she...” I rubbed my head. Pain throbbed against my skull. “I think I need to visit the nurse.”

  “Nope.” Trey scooped me into his arms. “We’re taking you to Ayaz’s room.”

  ‘I can’t go there. I’m not a monarch…”

  But it was too late. My vision swam as weariness and delayed terror washed over me. I sank into Trey’s arms. Quinn’s eyes widened as he reached out and clasped my hand. “Stay with us, Hazy. We’re not going to let them take you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ayaz’s room was on a similar scale to Trey’s, but it couldn’t be more different. I expected rich red and emerald and gold – the colors of a Middle Eastern sheik. I expected artwork on the walls – thick wooden frames housing the works of the masters. No prints – Ayaz could afford the real thing.

  Instead, the walls were a pale grey, completely devoid of decoration, and the Scandinavian-style furniture was simple and practical. A low bed stood on top of a dais. The stairs around the outside doubled as bookshelves. I longed to scan the titles, suspecting they might hold the only true hint of Ayaz in this room, but no way was I getting down on my hands and knees in front of Ayaz.

  Unless he asked me to.

  Whee, where did that thought come from? I rubbed my temple as my mind swam with vague images and sensations. I think… maybe that smell got to me worse than I thought…

  Trey laid me down on the bed, pulling off my shoes and blazer. He traced his fingers along the inside of my leg, dancing over my skin.

  “What are you doing?” I murmured.

  “I’m removing your stockings, so Ayaz can make sure you don’t have any rat bites on your legs, or… other things.”

  “Oh, okay.” I flopped back on the pillows, my head screaming. My shin sizzled with heat where his fingers trailed.

  Trey glanced at Quinn. “No protests? No threats? Dude, I’m seriously worried now. She’s given up fighting us.”

  The room spun. My eyelids fluttered shut. Good, that stopped the spinning.

  A warm hand pressed against my chest, over my heart, and I murmured in approval. That feels nice.

  “Hazel, can you hear me?”

  Yes, I can hear you. But I couldn’t seem to speak. Or move.

  “I think she’s out cold.” Quinn stroked my cheek. That feels nice, too. “Her breathing’s ragged, but regular. She doesn’t have a fever or anything.”

  “That’s a good sign,” Ayaz said. “It means they didn’t reach her mind.”

  What didn’t reach my mind? I grasped for consciousness, but it was a losing battle. I faded further into sleep, unable to speak or move, unsure if their words were real or part of a dream.

  “We should tell her the truth,” Quinn said. “She’s tough. She’s handled all that shit you bozos did to her. She can handle this.”

  “Us bozos?” The smirk in Trey’s voice was unmistakable. “If I recall, you were the one who lured her to that party.”

  “Don’t talk about that party,” Quinn growled.

  “You think she can handle the truth?” Ayaz muttered, his voice so dark it forced a shiver through my body. “You want to look into the void and claim that?”

  “Whoa, cool it, I’m just making a suggestion.” I imagined Quinn with his hands up in a gesture of surrender, his eyes with that mischievous glint that said yes, he meant every word. “You’d know better than me, Charity Boy.”

  “I told you not to call me that,” Ayaz growled. “I earned my place here, which is more than you can say.”

  “Can you both shut the fuck up?” That was Trey. “Of course we’re not going to tell her anything. She’ll just think we’re bullshitting her and do something even more dangerous.”

  “Her mother was killed in a fire,” Ayaz whispered. “And her best friend, too. Do we think that’s a coincidence?”

  There was silence for a few moments, and then Trey said, “It doesn’t matter. We’ve seen what they’re capable of. And now she’s caught their eye, and Courtney’s out for her blood. I don’t think we’ll be able to protect Hazel for much longer, especially not if she goes around telling people about Miskatonic Prep.”

  “She’s good at keeping secrets,” Quinn said. “I didn’t know about the fire.”

  “That’s because you never read her file.”

  “Of course I didn’t. Reading is for nerds like you.”

  “Her whole apartment building burned down in suspicious circumstances,” Trey said, his voice breathy. “According to the statement she gave police, some kids from a gang were threatening her friend, Homer or Milton or someone. They’d stolen something from him and she got into a brawl with them. The friend ran to Hazel’s apartment to tell her mother like a fucking coward. The gang followed him, and someone threw a molotov cocktail that got out of control, burned the building down.”

  That’s not what happened. That’s not—

  “She went after a whole gang?” Quinn whistled. “That sounds like our Hazy.”

  “Except it doesn’t explain why she had burns all over he hands,” Trey said. “As if she was the one who started the fire.”

  There was a few moments of silence, where I almost drifted away, then Quinn said, “What was she saying about following someone into the storage room?”

  “I’ve looked in all those
boxes,” Trey said. “There’s no newspaper clippings.”

  “Well, she wasn’t lying. How else did she know about Miskatonic?”

  “This person she said she saw, they must have planted them there. It’s like they led Hazel into that room, like they wanted her to know.”

  “You know what I’m thinking,” Quinn said. “I think it’s Zehra—”

  “No.” Ayaz growled. “It’s not.”

  “But couldn’t it—”

  “Zehra is gone,” Ayaz practically whispered, his voice choked with pain. “It’s not her.”

  What are they talking about? Who’s Zehra? What… but I couldn’t finish the thought before I slipped into darkness.

  Chapter Thirty

  My eyes flew open. For a moment, all I could see was darkness, and panic rose inside me. But then a row of candles flared to life – a clever magic trick – and I got my first glimpse at my surroundings.

  I stood in a wide, dark cavern, lit by the candles standing in niches around the walls and torches placed in a circular structure in the center of the room. The rock was grey with veins of some mineral twisting through it – the mineral glowed an odd color that seemed to disappear as my eyes tried to focus on it. I turned to the center of the cavern, where a wooden platform covered with a scaffold and ropes of different lengths had been erected, almost like a gallows. A shadow slid out from the cavern wall and floated toward the platform.

  Something about the place seemed familiar, like I’d been there before. A faint sound reached my ears. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Tiny feet scraping against stone. An unsettling presence hiding in the gloom.

  This is the cave from my dream. Only this time, it was lit up.

  But why am I here?

  As the candlelight flickered around the shadow, I resolved it into a robed figure, head bowed, hands clasped at the waist. I yelped and staggered backward. My arm flew out and brushed another figure who advanced toward the platform. More figures poured out of the shadows. As one they raised their arms, their fingers splayed, and let out a low, guttural sound that chilled my blood.