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.”
Kalen pulled in a deep breath, his scent like burnt sugar as it filled her lungs, curling around the room like smoke, an acrid bite to it that tasted like sulphur, which she attributed to Mikel.
“The boys are killing themselves every day to work out as much Alpha aggression as they can,” Kalen said calmly. He didn’t sound angry at her, but his anger was there all the same, pounding into her skin with enough force to make her stumble. “And you’re one of us now. That means nobody touches you, nobody hurts you, nobody makes you feel small … and that includes Braun fucking Carter.”
“You’re never going to be alone with your father again,” Mikel added, a rough promise that raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
She ducked her head down, shame dribbling through her. “What happens if they don’t train so hard?”
“They surge.” There was a note of warning in the way Mikel spoke. “There’s a part of the Alpha brain that just seems to … flick off. Like a humanity switch. Suddenly, we’re nothing but animals with entirely animal instincts.”
“For most Alphas, it isn’t a problem,” Kalen explained calmly, shaking out his cuffs. It was hard to imagine him losing control in any way. “But when large groups of us cohabitate for too long, it seems to make it happen more often. It was comfortably manageable thanks to Elijah’s plan and Mikel’s guidance, but adding a shared mate into the mix has basically electrocuted all those instincts we were trying to keep dormant. Nobody will hurt you, but they might hurt other people if they see someone as a threat to you, or if the bond is being defiled in any way. They won’t be able to help themselves. And that includes women touching them, not just men touching you. Our instincts go both ways. Both scenarios are dangerous, you just haven't witnessed the discussions we’ve had with them that resemble the discussion we’re having with you right now.”
She frowned, gripping the back of her neck as her pacing slowed to a stop. “If the bond can’t stand being defiled by other people, then how can I handle Theo, Gabriel, and Elijah with their fake girlfriends? And why are they still carrying on with their fake girlfriends if it causes them so much distress?”
Kalen stood up, straightening out his shirt, his thumbs smoothing over the material to tuck any loose fabric back beneath his belt, drawing her attention to the large stature of his body and the muscles that were briefly defined when the material pulled tight, even though it was a typical business shirt, an ironed fabric with enough structure that it definitely shouldn’t have just given her an outline of abdominal muscles.
He cleared his throat. “It’s clear that you’ve been mistreated, Isobel. That’s not what we were referring to earlier. Your Sigma ability is still an ability, even if you’ve had to use it for unfortunate purposes. Sigmas are incredibly strong-willed. Their mental fortitude is unparalleled. I’m not saying that you should be mistreated because you can handle it. I’m saying you’ve handled it better than an Alpha would have, because they don’t have the same mental fortitude. And it’s essential that we show the world just how well you can handle seeing the boys with their fake girlfriends, because we’re playing a very delicate game here, trying to cover up the fact that you’re actually half-bonded to every Alpha here.”
“Any one of our boys would have snapped and snapped someone’s jaw if they had to endure even a small fraction of what you have,” Mikel added. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t all training every day to maintain control over our impulses. None of us are using it as an excuse not to manage our aggression.”
“You told me today that I have to learn how to manage Oscar,” she accused quietly.
“And I’ve told him the same thing.” Mikel’s mouth hardened, tension lining his face. “You’ll each need to figure out how to do that in your own ways. Assuming neither of you are about to change?”
He stared at her expectantly, waiting for a confirmation that she could be just as stubborn as Oscar, but she … stubbornly didn’t want to admit it.
“I’ll be your sponsor,” Kalen announced, stepping around her and heading to the door. “But I’m also giving you a day to change your mind if you need to. Make sure you think this through. This isn’t an option I would be giving any of the others, so take advantage of it.” Before he opened the door, he glanced back at her, waiting to see if she had any other questions.
She nodded, saying a quiet goodnight before heading toward Kilian’s room. The lounge was empty, looking like a cleaning crew had slipped through while she had been in Kalen’s office.
One probably had. Or Gabriel had beaten them to it.
She raised her fist to knock on Kilian’s door, but then figured he was probably already asleep since there was no light spilling out from beneath the door. She cracked it open, trying to keep quiet, and breathed a short sigh of relief when there was enough moonlight spilling through the wide bay windows to illuminate her steps as she crept toward his bed. It was neatly made, her hot water bottle on top of the covers waiting for her. Kilian’s form was stretched out on a brand-new couch, a blanket tugged up over his hips, his chest bare, his pale skin flawless in the soft shadows, every muscle sharp with definition, his hand resting on his stomach.