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“Harper and Temperance are fuckingsisters!” someone shouted.
I looked over at Harper again, and she started looking around as the heat turned on her suddenly. Asher looked broken, and I had to at least give him credit for that. He looked like he might fall over, too. Had it not been for the arms holding me, I would have collapsed long ago. My body no longer supported my body weight.
“Harper!” I jerked when Damian’s voice—full of absolute hatred and fury I’d never heard from him—rang out over the chattering crowd. “She’s your fuckingsister? YourSISTER?!”
Why the hell is he so pissed over that?I wondered.
Damian’s eyes darted over to me. “Let her go!Now!” He turned back to Harper. “Bring me that bitch. She and I need to have a littlechatabout family.”
His words cut through the fog to a memory that seemed like years ago now but was only a few weeks. When I’d stayed with him and Asher at his house at the beach. He’d told me family was everything. He’d questioned me about my dad and had seemed devastated a light like his had been lost in the world. He’d even seemed concerned with how my father would have seen him.
Was he pissed about what he saw in the video? The literal last moments of my father’s life?
Or was he pissed Harper had lied?
My bet was on the lying, no matter what bullshit he’d fed me that weekend.
She’d fucked up twice over. Once when she’d lied to him about who I was—because he hated being lied to, especially when it was over ajob—and again when she’d betrayed family, most likely. And she’d done thata lot.
Hands fell away from me, and just as I’d thought, I collapsed to my knees as the tears continued to fall against my will. It was like someone had flipped the switch on them, and I couldn’t turn it off. My mind was distracted by the spectacle unfolding around me, and yet I still couldn’t stop.
The crowd turned just as their master decreed, and hands reached for Harper, dragging her to the front to Damian as she fought and kicked just like I had. The second they reached him, he jumped off the table and snatched her by the arm.
He told one of his friends something, and it was like the president gave an order. Several guys fanned out and made their way to every exit.
“Get her out of here,” Damian said, but I didn’t see who he was talking to until Luna and Justin shrugged off the people holding them and ran to my side.
Justin lifted me in his arms like a baby and carried me out of the room. No one stopped us as we passed, but as two other students tried to follow us, several of Damian’s goons at the door trapped them inside.
“What the hell is he doing?” I asked between sniffles.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to kill him.” Justin’s voice sounded eerily calm, cold, and dangerous, devoid of any emotion or even sense of consequence.
“No,” Luna said. “Don’t get your family involved. Sebastian Wolfe is powerful.”
“My family is far more terrifying than anything thewolf cubscan do,” Justin spat.
What the fuck?
“Justin, don’t,” Luna warned. “You have no idea what a war like that would cause. Things are bad enough as it is. We just need to make sure Tempe stays safe.”
“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “Justin, what’s up with your family?”
He sighed. “I have a few secrets of my own. I think it’s time we sat down and had a chat. Especially if we plan to go on that date we discussed.”
I stared up at him as he carried me. His face was completely stoic. It was like he was a totally different version of himself, someone I didn’t know or recognize. It made me think back to some cracks Damian and Asher had made about him being dangerous—something I never would have believed.
Until now.
Justin was the only one of the three who wasn’t complicated. But as we closed in on his dorm building, I couldn’t help but think my life was about to get a hell of a lot more complicated.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
DAMIAN
The crowd in the cafeteria had become frenzied from the information I’d uncovered. There was a palpable buzz in the room, and it scorched me.
What the fuck have I done?