The break was nice and clean.
Hardly aggressive.
“Sweet dreams, everyone.” Oscar grinned around the room, striding for the door.
The violence eased something inside him, and he couldn’t help but feel a spark of admiration for Theodore, who managed to not make a single sound and was still holding onto an ominous silence.
Hopefully, he was planning revenge.
That could be fun.
3
Chains And Choke-Holds
Isobel didn’t see Kilian for weeks. He seemed to disappear entirely. Even Theodore was distant, spending more and more time training or practising … though he was still at every one of the small group sessions with Easton every morning. The Alphas were very careful to keep her surrounded, while still somehow maintaining their distance. She saw them all daily, and at least one of them had transferred into all of her classes, but they avoided the topic of Kilian, and she was too scared to push for more information.
Reed was as distant as the professors during their piano lessons, and Easton had upped the ferocity of their small group sessions—for everyone except Isobel. The others weren’t even pretending to do vocal training anymore and were simply beating each other up.
Brutally.
They dragged themselves out of each session panting and bruised, completely sapped of energy. She was too intimidated by Easton to ask what was going on, and Theodore artfully evaded the question whenever she dared to bring it up.
Ironically, the only Alpha she felt any normalcy with anymore was Niko. He called her out of her dorm room for training sessions a few times a week—eventually taking the place of her physiotherapy sessions at the medical centre—and she was really starting to enjoy his company. Especially after seeing him let loose on the other Alphas during Easton’s sessions. It was now painfully obvious just how drastically he was holding back on her.
Like now.
“Again,” he said, hauling her up. There wasn’t even a drop of sweat on his brow.
Her shirt was already sticking to her skin. She groaned, planting her hands on her knees. “Just a minute.”
She had gone back to her full academy schedule only a week ago, after several weeks of being banned from dance classes and practises. Her body was struggling with the increased amount of exercise.
“Take a break.” Niko reached over the ropes, grabbing two water bottles, and tossing one to her. He sank to the mat, stretching his legs out and draining half the bottle before recapping it and rolling it away.
She gulped the cool water, collapsing opposite him and trying to rub out the cramp in her calf with her free hand. He rolled his striking eyes at her, gripping her ankle and hauling her closer so that her leg landed over his lap. She almost sloshed water all over herself.
“You aren’t one of my surrogates,” she said. “You don’t need to do that.”
He gave her a flat, bemused look. “No, I’m not. I’m your trainer.”
“I’m too sweaty.” She tried to pull her leg away again, but he held firm, his brows dropping lower.
“Stop it,” he ordered. “Let me check the muscle and then you’re free.”
She wiggled uncomfortably. Niko didn’t touch her unless it was to sweep her onto her ass and pull her up again so that he could knock her straight back down with a bored look on his handsome face. That was the extent of their physical contact.
It wasn’t that he made her uncomfortable, the problem was that his touch felt … good, and she had no right feeling like that. Niko was as detached and cold toward her as the professors, always stringently maintaining boundaries and keeping their relationship black and white.
Still, her body wasn’t getting the message.
Her skin warmed when his fingers dug into her muscles, pulling a strained moan of relief from her throat. His gaze shot straight to hers, but his fingers didn’t still, deftly working the cramp out of the muscle.
“It’s my birthday,” he said conversationally.
“What?” This time she did dribble water over herself. She quickly wiped her chin and set the bottle away.
“Today.” His well-formed brows arced up as if to ask: “Are you going to do anything about it?”
“Ah … happy birthday,” she managed. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“I was debating inviting you to hang out tonight.” His talented fingers brushed the full length of her calf, drawing a shiver out of her body that she tried to hide by shifting on her butt in a pretence of getting more comfortable. “We’re going to do a movie night.”
“We?” she croaked, even though she knew the answer.
Niko gave her an exasperated look and then stood, sweeping her up again. He never let her take long breaks and he didn’t hang around with her after their sessions. She suspected it was because of the cameras. After airing their first few sessions and making as big a deal out of it as possible, the production team seemed to get bored, and they moved on when Niko didn’t give the show anything interesting to air. Either that, or they had decided to stock up on footage for some diabolical future episode, which was always possible.
“I share a birthday with Kilian,” he said as he effortlessly swept her onto her ass again, except this time, the breath was knocked out of her from his words as well as his actions. “He’ll be there.”
“Is he okay?” She bounced back to her feet, dropping into the defensive position Niko had taught her. She gripped the opportunity to talk about Kilian like a lifeline, her blood buzzing frantically. They all refused to talk about him, and she didn’t want to text him in case he needed space from her.
“They removed him from Ironside for a little while,” Niko answered, his tone casual but his eyes guarded. “Just to make sure he didn’t know anything about Aron’s involvement in the Vermont attack.”
The Vermont attack. It was the first time anyone had said those words to her since the night of their disastrous dinner. Even Teak and Charlie were careful to skirt around the topic during their sessions, since Isobel had declared that she didn’t want to talk about it. Hearing it mentioned so casually was like a physical kick to the stomach. The air whooshed out of her, and she winced.
The chain around her wrist warmed, constricting tightly. She jumped a few inches, staring down at it. It had been acting up lately—warming or buzzing when her emotions went haywire—but never anything like this.
It vibrated so hard it looked like it was moving.
No … it was moving.
It uncoiled like it was stiff from holding its shape for so long, stretching out languidly before darting up her arm, the metal warm and smooth against her skin. She shrieked, but Niko quickly snatched her wrist before she could pull it off.
“Don’t ever mess with a soul artefact,” he whispered, his eyes hard as the chain snuck beneath the sleeve of her shirt and crawled across the centre of her chest, dipping into her cleavage. It grew prickly, like the links were sprouting little metallic caterpillar legs, and Niko gripped her other hand when it tried to fly up to her chest. The chain settled along her sternum and then it pinched in, those little metallic legs piercing her skin.
Niko swore, his expression torn as she yelped.
“What the fuck is it doing?” he groused, his usually controlled tone unsteady.