Sauter (Ironside Academy, #3)(72)

“You’ll do whatever I tell you to do.”

The silence that stretched between them was heavy, making her clothes feel too hot and cumbersome.

“W-What will you tell me to do?” She tried to peer past the mask of his calm composure. She was finally beginning to feel little trickles of their emotion. Drips of discomfort and feelings of being trapped. They were being forced into this by the Track Team, and they didn’t like it.

“To not touch anyone, talk to anyone, or look at anyone except me.” Kalen’s voice had lowered to a growl, the words delivered to her with some sort of weighted, grave subtext.

“Isobel.” Mikel drew her attention immediately, and she turned her head his way. “Do you think you can do that?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t really have any friends here anyway, except Theodore and Kilian. And Cian. And Gabriel, I guess. And maybe Teak and Charlie, but they aren’t even students.”

Both of them seemed mildly amused at her listing out everyone she might consider a friend.

“You won’t be permitted to play.” Mikel emphasised the words carefully. “Or to experiment.”

A sudden image of Kalen wrapping her wrists with rope dropped like a cement block into her mind, crushing all rational thought. Her skin grew sensitive and hot, and the dull ache in her stomach briefly turned into a sharper pinch.

“How is that fair?” she managed to get out, her voice strangled. “Do the others get to do whatever they want?”

“Elijah, Gabriel, and I do not have sex in the rooms,” Kalen rumbled.

“But you do other things.” She hated that she didn’t know the specifics of what those things were. It made her sound so inexperienced. “What if I want to h-humiliate someone?”

“Try it out.” Kalen leaned back, folding thick, muscled arms over his chest, his posture relaxed as he settled a hard stare on her. “Insult me.”

“You’re bossy,” she said immediately.

“You can do better than that,” Mikel goaded. “What else?”

“He’s …” She trailed off, chewing on her lip.

Wonderful. Kalen is wonderful. He saved her life.

“Say it to me, Carter.” Kalen’s voice was deepening, her surname slipping out like a whip.

“You’re not very good at modulating your tone.” Wow. Way to go, Isobel. That’ll teach him.

Kalen drew all the way forward, his arms uncrossing, his hand cupping her chin, his scent digging into her pores. “Degradation isn’t your thing, princess.” Despite the pitiful insult she had slung at him, his voice had turned into a very pleasant rumble, the pet name making her brain short-circuit as she tried to remember why it sounded familiar and where she had heard it before.

The first time he taught her to climb.

His touch was soft, barely brushing her skin as his thumb skirted along her jaw. “You prefer to be praised, isn’t that right?”

She found herself nodding, not entirely sure she understood what she was agreeing to.

Praise sounded good. Better than humiliation, anyway.

The purr of his voice combined with the intensity in his eyes was making her dizzy, his smoky vanilla scent flooding her senses. His thumb reached the edge of her jaw, right beneath her ear, and then he drew away, his hand falling back to his thigh.

She blinked rapidly, jerking to her feet. “Fine.” The word tumbled out of her. “It’s not like I was going to have my first time in a secret society dungeon beneath the lake anyway.” She laughed awkwardly, the sound weak. Kalen and Mikel watched her with tensed bodies and hard eyes. “It just seems like a double standard, that’s all. Gabriel, Elijah, and Oscar are clearly allowed to look at people and touch them and speak to them. Why can’t I?”

“Because if anyone gets close to you, they’re dead,” Mikel said flatly.

It didn’t sound like a threat. Just a simple fact.

“It’s only a matter of time before the other Alphas are recruited into the Stone Dahlia. We can’t have Theodore going feral or Oscar deciding to … assert his dominance in public. The mate-bond is repelled by outsiders touching what it assumes to be theirs.”

“I watch Wallis touch Theodore all the time,” she returned.

“You’re practised at managing your own emotions.” Mikel was shaking his head. “Anyone else in your position would have had a complete mental breakdown at this point, but you’ve barely got a wobble in your step. The others aren’t Sigmas. They don’t have the same ability.”

Sounds like an excuse, she wanted to say.

Years of seeing her father lose control and having her mother blame it on his Alpha instincts was niggling at her, but maybe Mikel had a point. Not about them, but about her.

She frowned, her feet brushing across the rug as she began to pace. “I can control my emotions because I had to.” The words spilled out of her without her permission, tumbling unfiltered and flopping onto the carpet before her agitated footsteps. “There wasn’t any space for me and what I feel. It isn’t because I’m a Sigma; it’s because I was only allowed to be this small.” Her voice had risen, her fingers hovering an inch apart before her face as she whipped to face them. “And if I could make myself matter so little so that everyone else could matter so much, then anyone can, and if anyone can, then maybe all of you can make room for me.”