“That’s exactly why I think it’s him,” Sophia emphasised. “Because there’s no plausible reason. If this has anything to do with Stygian, then all you can do is wait for him to reveal its purpose.”
“He’s scary,” Luis said to the table. His excitement over guessing the right answer dying off. “He fixes good luck.”
Isobel quickly took a few hasty gulps of the tea before taking the mug to the sink. “Maybe he’ll be nice to me.” She forced out a faint laugh. “I’ve had pretty shitty luck.”
“Maybe not,” Sophia said carefully, standing to walk Isobel back to the gate, her arm winding around the narrow shoulders of her brother. “Your mate is exceedingly strong. Stygian might think you’ve been given too much.”
Ten mates was definitely too much.
Damn.
Isobel’s hands shook when she opened the gate and stepped through, but she paused to look back at the siblings. “Thanks,” she said softly. “It’s nice to talk to people who aren’t … you know.”
“Fighting to the death for a spot of fame?” Sophia chuckled, an accent that Isobel hadn’t taken much note of the first time she had met the girl becoming more obvious the more at ease she became. There was the slightest lilt to her words, the s sound softer and the consonants crisper. They might have been from Mexico or another Spanish-speaking country.
“Yeah, I knew I was right about you,” Sophia seemed to decide out loud. “You’re exactly how you appear on screen. You should work on that. Be more like Kane. Be a better actor. Be a predator.”
Sophia saw it too.
The real Theodore.
For some reason, that made Isobel like her just a little bit more. Most people didn’t see through Theodore’s golden boy mask. She kept her mouth shut instead of commenting on Theodore, but her lips curled into a smile.
“You can come back,” Luis offered, answering her smile with a toothy grin. “You can finish your tea next time.”
“Maybe I will.” Isobel waved at them and then started off toward Dorm A.
4
The Cold Emoji
Isobel walked halfway to Dorm A before her nerves got the better of her and she redirected herself to Dorm O. She couldn’t turn up in sweaty exercise clothes spotted with blood and without birthday gifts. Niko never invited her to anything, and she hadn’t seen Kilian in weeks.
She agonised over what to wear, her stomach flip-flopping sickeningly. Her fingers itched to snatch one of Kilian’s shirts from the shelf, but they didn’t smell like him anymore. She considered wearing the dress he had bought her, but it reminded her of Eve … and the fact that nobody had attacked her since Eve was expelled.
The news about Aron had broken to the public the same night she told the guys, but none of the officials had reached out to her to hear what she had to say. Not even her father had asked her what had happened in Vermont. He had given her an exhaustive lecture about wasting her time on Omegas and then ignored her for two weeks for ruining his settlement tour, abandoning his apartment in the family centre until she was well enough to start playing the game again.
She had no idea what had happened to Eve.
Nobody would tell her, and the news was only focussing on Aron, keeping the details just vague enough that it almost seemed like they were blaming him for the attack … and him alone. None of it made sense, but that was Ironside. The officials didn’t have to explain themselves. They decided what narrative to play, and the rest of the world never questioned what they saw. The only thing that remained to be determined was why, exactly, they had chosen this narrative.
Isobel settled on a pale slip dress—one of the pieces her father had brought to their last dinner. He had one of his assistants analysing the latest fashion trends and purchasing designer pieces for Isobel to wear. A post had gone viral of Isobel recycling the same five oversized T-shirts, always tucked into black tights or shorts, and some of the comments had linked her apparently limited wardrobe to the less-than-stellar box office numbers for her father’s latest movie.
One of his team had decided to bring the comments to his attention, and now Isobel had more clothes than she knew what to do with.
He didn’t care that the T-shirts were Kilian’s, or that she spent most of her day exercising. He had told her to get changed between every single class so that she was never anything less than absolutely presentable.
The slip dress skimmed her body gracefully, the fabric silky smooth, gliding against her thighs as she slipped her feet into sandals. The neckline was subtle, the spaghetti straps accentuating her pale collarbones. She quickly moisturised and brushed her hair, twisting it into a ponytail when it flared out, a little too wild after all her activity for the day.
She picked two ribbons carefully off one of the more extravagant dresses she would likely never wear and hurried outside, almost running straight into a harassed-looking Theodore.
“Good. You’re here,” he said. “Already checked everywhere else.” He cast a quick, uncomfortable look at the door. “Can we please leave, like now? I’ve been accidentally groped twice.”
It had been weeks, and it was still hard to look at Theodore without thinking about his hand pushing into her panties. Most nights when she flopped onto her makeshift bed, that intense look in his eyes as he eased her toward orgasm was the first thing she saw. The way his arm had shuddered with restraint as she came on his fingers. The way he had bitten his lip so hard it had drawn all of her focus. The way his eyes had burned hotter than they ever had before was seared onto the backs of her eyelids.
“Ah.” She cleared her throat. “Hello.”
“Hello back at you, cutie.” He grabbed her hand and began dragging her away from the dorm. He clearly wasn’t as affected as her. “What are the ribbons for?”
“I’m going to pick some flowers for Niko and Kilian.”
“What for?”
“For their birthday.”
“I don’t get it.”
She was jogging to keep up with his long strides, but she didn’t care at all because the warmth from his hand was tunnelling through her body, easing away her exhaustion and calming the feeling of her stomach turning over and over like a carnival ride—the same uncomfortable feeling she had been dealing with for weeks.
“To give them as presents?” she tried again.
“Oh.” He cast her a tight smile. “Of course. How … you.”
“I can’t tell if you’re insulting me or not,” she grumbled.
“I would never insult you …”
She dug her heels in, forcing him to slow down before she continued walking, analysing him with her eyes narrowed. “Why did that sound like there was a but?”
“Well … I don’t have the highest opinion of your innermost survival mechanisms,” he admitted gently. She flinched, thinking he was talking about Eve, but he quickly added, “Because of Oscar.”
“Sato?” She frowned up at him, but he avoided her eyes, both of them silent as they walked around the lake.
She broke away from him when they got to Jasmine Field, and quickly gathered up two floppy bouquets of flowers before they approached Alpha Hill. It wasn’t until she was halfway up the steps that it finally hit her.