“First …” She quickly twisted to sit on her knees facing him, gaping at him as she held up a finger. “Why? And second—” She imitated his hand flick at the cameras. “—how do you know they aren’t listening right now?”
He tugged his phone from his pocket and waved it at her. “Elijah and Gabriel have been developing a security app. If they try to turn the cameras on to spy on us during our private sessions, we’ll all get a notification.”
“Can I get that app?” She chewed on her lip, watching as his expression relaxed slightly.
Had he expected their conversation to go differently?
“Yes.” He leaned forward, his forearms planted on his thighs, his hands hanging down between his knees. They seemed to have a fresh slew of healing scars scattered over them. “You did the right thing telling Theo and Kilian, Carter.”
“Um … you can call me Isobel, uh, if you want, Professor.”
“You don’t tell me what to call you. I decide that.” He flinched back, like he was reacting to his own sharp tone, his palms running over his thighs. “Sorry.” He grimaced. “It’s been a night.”
“I heard.”
“About what?”
“About the girlfriend.”
“Hm.” The sound was a rumble in his chest. “I don’t have one of those.”
“Well, you forgot about her pretty quick.”
Easton chuckled. “Don’t be a brat, Isobel. You can tease the other Alphas all you like, but it won’t get you anywhere with me. Nowhere you want to be, anyway.”
She bit her tongue.
“I’ve gone easy on you because you hadn’t been accepted into Dorm A yet, but you’re as good as moved in now, which makes you my responsibility. I’m more than a dorm supervisor or a mentor to these boys. I’m here for everything they need but most of the time, I’m also the one who decides what they need. Are you ready for that?”
“I’m not very good at being told what I need.” She quickly dropped her eyes to her knees, confused about when she had turned to face him so readily, like an eager fan straining to hear his every word. She relaxed her posture, stretching her legs out in front of her to ease the ache in her muscles. It wasn’t from her run, but from the heaviness she had sipped out of each of them, and that hollow sting persisting beneath her skin.
Easton watched her. “I’ve noticed.”
“I already have someone dictating what I need.”
“That’s your first free pass,” he informed her calmly. “Compare me to Braun Carter again and I’ll show you how a real man disciplines.”
She frowned, wriggling her toes. “You’re very threatening for a professor.”
“You’re remarkably unafraid for a girl who was almost murdered a month ago.”
She felt her lips tugging up at the sides. Was she enjoying talking to Easton? It felt like she was. “I’ve had worse.”
“No, you haven’t,” he said softly. “But you’re one of mine, now. Nothing like that will happen to you again.”
A shudder travelled up her spine, making her vision hazy at that word.
Mine.
Her toes stopped wiggling, curling in shock, before she curbed the reaction.
“You … I …” she stumbled. “Thank you, Professor?”
His lips lifted at the corners. “You’re welcome, Isobel.”
She stared at him, struck dumb. “I feel weird,” she blurted. “I feel like you just took away all my problems and made them all sound so simple, but they’re not. Like, why would the Track Team be threatening me into trying to figure out a way to contact them? Why wouldn’t they just talk to me? And if the officials know about your … ability—which they do, if they have the blackmail video—how are you still here?”
“Not all of the officials,” Easton said. “The Track Team is only a percentage of them, and they want to know damaging things about people. It’s how they enslave them. If they can’t find anything damaging on you and they want you on their side, they’ll force you into doing something incriminating, just to make sure you’re properly under their heel before they take you on board.”
“And you want them to recruit me?” she asked, a frown furrowing into her brow.
“They need to know that what they have on you is enough.” His eyes grew dark, his emotion suddenly pressing heavily up against her, roiling and bitter. “If you resist, they’ll try harder. If this is them—and we think it is—then they’re going easy on you, which means they’re desperate for you.”
“For me to … what? What do they do?”
“What don’t they do?” He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “The Stone Dahlia is almost the same size as the academy, tunnelling so far down below us that they could host an entire concert down there and we would never suspect a thing up here.”
“Down … down where?” she spluttered.
“Beneath the main lake. The entrance is through the boathouse—well, the Gifted entrance, anyway. The human entrance is from the other side of the hill leading up to the academy. They hire out rooms. Hire out Gifted. They put us on display. Make us entertain crowds of humans who have paid obscene amounts for an invitation. The Track Team has information on everyone. Not just us, but their human guests, and each other.”
He was giving her so much information—so much insane information—but for some reason, she could only think of one thing in that moment. The back of Gabriel’s door, and the message that had been spelled out with individual sticky notes, arranged so heartrendingly obsessively.
I am not for sale.
She swallowed, tears springing up before she could stop them. Horrified, she looked back down to her lap. “Did my … does my father know about this?”
“Undoubtedly.” Easton’s voice deepened. “It seems like a game of popularity, but it’s the Track Team who actually decides the winner every year. And they continue to control their Icons long after they leave the walls of Ironside.”
She tapped a freckle on her thigh. “I don’t want to get involved with them.”
“You have no reason to trust me, but I’ve protected every one of my Alphas since the day they arrived here, and I’ll protect you too. I’m asking you to trust me. Trust Kalen. Trust Elijah. Trust your friends.” He cleared his throat. “Don’t trust Oscar.”
She picked her head up, surprised. “You, Kalen and … Elijah?”
“There are a lot of contingencies to plan in the situation we find ourselves in.” His grin almost twitched into being again. “Elijah is our planner. If he tells you to do something, you should do it. He usually has a good reason.”
She chewed her lip. “And Oscar?”
“Is damaged.” Easton’s expression closed down. “And reactionary. Attuned to his instinct instead of his conscience. Before he had a mate, he was manageable. But you’ve just added a whole new level of primality to his brain that might make things a little difficult with you living in the dorm. You’ll need to learn to manage him.”