I am not for sale.
The message on the back of Gabriel’s door had haunted her ever since she had seen it, and now its true meaning finally landed like a heavy iron in the pit of her stomach, making her queasy.
“Elijah could protect himself with his ability most of the time,” Niko said, cold fury written all over his expression. “But Gabriel could only hear the thoughts of everyone he was rented out to. The night Elijah killed that official, Gabriel was hurt so badly, he was brought into the clinic my dad ran. Elijah came with him, and my dad got the full story out of them both. I was listening at the door, so I knew exactly where to find the piece of shit Elijah killed. I burned down the house and the body inside it. My dad had heard about Silla Carpenter, so he contacted her, asking for her help with all three of us, since we were all involved at that point. She organised to have Elijah and Gabriel transferred to a different settlement.”
“And then the plan changed,” Kalen announced. “We decided to push the limits of Ironside a little further and create a group that could win the game. We told Juliette Kane to move settlements and pretend the boys were the same age—”
“What do you mean?” Isobel interrupted, blinking in confusion.
“I’m a year older,” Theodore admitted, sounding a little guilty, “than you and Moses.”
“Oh.” She turned in his lap to look up at him.
“Sorry,” he cringed. “Pretending to all be the same age was a crucial part of the plan.”
She turned slowly, looking at the others.
“We gave Elijah and Gabriel new ages, and we started actively recruiting Alphas,” Kalen said. “Elijah and Gabriel are two years older than you, and Niko is three years older.”
“Right.” She swallowed, wondering what else they had been hiding. “And then?”
“We decided that I wouldn’t apply for Ironside because the plan would be more effective if we deprived the show of Alphas for a while and then hit them with a group of them at once. This way, I could enter when they did, as a professor. I could keep an eye on them and continue training them. We waited to see how much pressure the officials would apply since Alphas are so rare. They weren’t happy, but we managed to strike a deal that made everyone happy. I would work in the Stone Dahlia, which would give us enough money to bribe the officials when we needed to transfer people from one settlement to another, and it would give the officials another Alpha to control and put on display.”
“I struck the same deal,” Mikel added. “Silla hunted me down, and I thought it was more important to help in the settlements than try my hand at being an Icon, so I was happy to work in the club. We figured with four Alphas we had a chance of stirring things up but with more Alphas, we could really shock the world into seriously paying attention. So we convinced Niko to join as well—”
“More like I didn’t give you a choice,” Niko grumbled.
A small smile stretched over Gabriel’s lips. “He said he needed to protect us.”
Kalen also looked over at Niko with a thin smile. “After Niko joined, we found Oscar. He had lost both of his parents and needed medicine for his sister badly. He joined us in an instant, even though he despised the idea of training to be an Icon and learning how to sing and dance like the others.”
“How old are you?” Isobel asked, frowning at Oscar.
“Twenty-two,” he answered.
He was four years older than her.
She chewed on her tongue, considering him for a moment, before breathing out a sigh. “I get why nobody has told me anything before now, but it’s still annoying. It makes me feel like an idiot.”
“If you’re an idiot, then so is every other person out there,” Elijah answered immediately. “Everyone has bought our story and it’s because decades have gone into crafting, refining, and gatekeeping how to push an Icon—or two, or five, or eight—along the track to victory. I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you before now.”
“I get it.” She ran her hands through her hair, hoping to detangle the sleep-tousled mess while she gathered her thoughts. “So, who was next?”
“Me.” Cian smiled at her, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I was already training to be an Icon. My mother always used to take pictures of me when I was a kid and tell me that I should be a model or an actor, then she died, and I found out she had been selling those pictures. Honestly, I think that’s why she killed herself. Alphas and Sigmas are rare commodities in the settlements, and child exploitation is a significant problem. My dad took over my training after that and reached out to Silla because he was worried about how many times I had been approached by people in the settlements asking if I was interested in doing some modelling for the officials. Silla confirmed his fears that those people were running child prostitution operations and then Kalen and Mikel applied for a visit. They convinced me on the spot to join their group, and I switched to vocal and dance training. I’m twenty-one, by the way.”
She just stared at him, working her throat nervously.
Cian would have been a beautiful baby with those aquamarine eyes and tousled golden locks. The idea of anyone trying to harm him made her physically sick, and she curled her hands around her stomach, hoping the story didn’t get any worse.
“I was the final addition,” Kilian said, his pale eyes watching her carefully. “I’m also twenty-one. My adoptive parents knew Silla. They heard she was open to training up possible Icons, and they sent her my picture.”
“Kilian didn’t need protecting from anybody,” Mikel explained. “But like Elijah, he had a staggering amount of natural talent. We decided he was going to be our secret weapon.”
“So you’re all going to try and win the game? As a group?” she summarised. “What kind of group? Like a band or something?”
“More than that.” Kalen looked amused. “A performance group. A mix of genres and styles, but they can all sing and dance at an elite level, and by the time they graduate, they’ll be the most popular group in the world. Everything we’ve done up until now has just been to create mystery and stir up interest. As of next year, every single performance piece is going to be as a group or for the group, and everyone is going to be expected to pull their weight cultivating the group’s fan base. It’s going to be tireless and constant, far beyond what people normally do to win this game. Their careers are starting inside Ironside, not after Ironside.”
She could imagine Theodore and Kilian singing as they performed complicated choreography, because Theodore was good at everything and Kilian was graceful, with a beautiful voice. She could easily see Elijah and Gabriel pulling it off, as well. Even Cian, if she was honest. But Oscar? Singing and dancing? And Moses? And Niko?
“We want you in the group, Isobel.” It was Elijah who spoke, his arms still loosely folded, his cold eyes expectant. “You’re a fantastic dancer and you have a killer voice. With a bit of Mikel’s fine-tuning, you could be a complete ace, like Theodore.”
“Why are you an ace?” she asked, tipping her head back to the smirking Alpha.
“He’s just a natural at everything,” Kilian answered, rolling his eyes. “Picks up choreography like that”—he snapped his fingers—“and he has a stable voice with a natural range that barely needs any work, unlike the rest of us. We had to train for years to match what he was born with. You’re a lot like him.”