Page 43

Della

“Kylian is truly a go big or go home guy, huh?” I eye the mountain of designer shopping bags on the backseat and on the floor.

So many bags that I have a couple wedged behind my right knee, and Everleigh had to sit in the passenger seat instead of the back. There was no room beside me.

And that’s after Kylian had a store assistant fill up the trunk.

Everleigh massages her forehead. “I knew I should have set a budget. But this isn’t a house. I thought, how bad could things be?”

“This bad, apparently.” I once again eye the shopping bags as Kylian drives us to their mansion. I’d say he easily did about ten to twenty grand worth of damage when he whipped out a black credit card, demanded the manager, and said he needed things. He needed them now .

A blonde woman in a pencil skirt and a silk blouse came running .

Private changing room. A metal rail with clothes pre-selected and wheeled right to me to try on. Champagne and strawberries dipped in chocolate. The manager even sent someone out to get us lunch—lobster and endive salads.

I have never seen anything so insane in my life.

Fortunately, Everleigh was too overwhelmed to enter the dressing room with me. The scars on my back are slowly healing, so I only tried on dresses with high backs. If Everleigh saw them, she’d want to talk, and that’s not what I need right now.

At the Pack Ashe mansion, it takes Kylian, Everleigh, Nancy the housekeeper, and me to bring all the bags into a house filled with yummy smells.

Rune pokes his blond head from the kitchen wearing a white apron splattered with red sauce, proving he’s responsible for my stomach rumbling. “Hey, cher . Della, good to see you. What’s with all the shopping?”

“Della has a date,” Everleigh explains.

Rune eyes the bags we’re all loaded down with. “Just one? Or will there be a series of them for… say a month?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you,” Everleigh grumbles, but she smiles at Kylian. “He is way, way too generous.”

Kylian drops a kiss on the top of her head. “What you need, baby, you get it. And Della is family. She gets the special treatment too.”

A pang hits me low in my belly, and I put my bags down and walk away so no one will see my eyes welling up. I always thought I was too cynical, too realistic, too damn ordinary to have the kind of love Everleigh shares with her pack.

That I didn’t want it.

But I think I always wanted it. Why else would I have been so obsessed with Everleigh having a Cinderella moment in a big, poufy dress where she declares her love for her pack and they swear they’ll love her forever?

I thought I had something special with Pack Madden, and just when I was getting used to feeling loved, it ended.

They didn’t want me. Not as much as I want them.

I’m relaxing on a sun lounger in the backyard by the pool, studying the house at the end of the garden, when the sliding door opens and Kylian joins me.

“What’s with the random house at the bottom of the garden?” I ask him.

I swear it wasn’t there the last time I was here, though I had been making it a mission to avoid my sister, given I was gearing up to sneak into Haven Academy.

“It’s for Olive.”

Olive is Everleigh’s biological mom. Everleigh’s biological father, Sloane Eddiswood, is rotting in jail for abducting and confining Olive in a private hospital for decades. Hopefully, he’s having a thoroughly miserable time pacing in a four-by-four cell.

I’m not sure why Kylian felt they needed to build an entire house for her, but I guess there’s no such thing as small gestures with alphas.

I turn to look at him. “Does Olive still hate alphas?”

If Pack Ashe hadn’t freed her, she would have died in the clinic. It’s an experience that has left her deeply scarred.

“She’s starting to trust us,” Kylian says. “She had dinner at the house a few days ago.”

“That’s great news.” I grin.

He eyes me for several seconds. “Her therapist is helping her a lot, and she has availability.”

Uh, not him too.

I look away. “No, thanks.”

We study the house for the next several seconds.

“There’s no date, is there?” he asks.

I briefly consider lying, but Kylian is smart. He has sharp instincts.

“Nope.”

“I gather this has something to do with what you were doing at Haven.”

I look at him. “They’re living in a prison, even if they don’t know it. In a couple of days, Ms. Arkwright, the head of the school, will find new prison wardens for them. I couldn’t help my sister, but maybe I can help them from winding up with someone like Lawrence Wentworth.”

He slowly nods. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Considering you’re the one who choked me out, I’m kind of surprised you’ve become my favorite.”

He winces. “Not my proudest moment.”

He thought I’d betrayed Everleigh when Lawrence kidnapped her from the house. Now, Everleigh says there are hidden cameras in the hedges and a wired alarm on a garden door to prevent anything like that from happening again.

“You were looking out for my sister. I get why you did it.”

“Are you sure I can’t help with this mission of yours?”

I shake my head. “It has to be me. I’m just there to convince as many omegas as I can not to go through with their matching.”

"Are you in any danger by going back?”

I consider it. “Slightly. But it’s a calculated risk. The worst that can happen is that a teacher will throw me out. The risk is worth it.”

I’m still not sure how I’m going to get inside the school, but I got myself in before. I can figure something out.

He nods. “Fair enough.”

“You won’t try to stop me?” I blink up at him, surprised. “And you won’t tell Everleigh?”

“You sound like you know what you’re doing.” He gets up from the lounger, then stops and looks at me, suddenly a little scary. “And that other thing. The thing that happened to you. If you ever want to do something about that, let me know.”

Lawrence Wentworth’s servants found him with a pillow over his face and a gun in his hand. It looked like a suicide, but it wasn’t. It was Kylian, and I think he just asked me if I want him to kill the alphas who grabbed me.

He waits for a response.

“No, thanks. I’ll get to that on my own.”

That pain is mine. The revenge has to be mine as well.

He nods and walks inside.

I take in the view for a bit longer. When the delicious smells of Rune’s Cajun cooking make my stomach rumble, I go inside to eat with my sister and plan my assault on Haven Academy.

I spend two days at the Pack Ashe mansion.

Kylian knocked on my bedroom door and casually mentioned that their driver would drop me off at the academy and pick me up two hours later, solving how I’d sneak in.

I was going to say that I was River’s sister, Juniper. Then I would take forever hunting for my invitation in my bag and pretend to cry when the search overwhelmed me.

No guy likes it when a girl cries. It makes them uncomfortable. The guard would wave me in to get me to stop, so he didn’t have to deal with my endless tears.

That hadn’t been necessary.

“Just stay in the back seat. The driver will get you in,” Kylian had said.

The drive to Haven Academy was uneventful, though my chest had felt tight as we approached the gates, remembering what had happened to me outside of them. I swallowed my panic, spritzed myself with the cherry and praline perfume I had stocked up on, and settled back into my seat.

The gates swung open after the driver had a brief conversation with the guard outside.

I’m wearing a dark green velvet dress that conceals the belt marks crisscrossing my back. It has a cinched waist, a full skirt that hides my black strappy sandals, and off-the-shoulder sleeves.

My shoulder-length auburn hair is wavy, and I’ve swept half of it into my face, so I have something I can hide behind if I spot Ms. Arkwright or she spots me. No other teacher has eyes as sharp as she does. She would have questions about what I’m doing here that I couldn’t answer.

As I move around the packed ballroom illuminated by crystal chandeliers, an orchestra plays classical music on the half-stage.

For the last fifteen minutes, I’ve drifted around sweet-smelling omegas and deliciously scented alphas, sipping from a glass of champagne that I passed to a server. I haven’t seen River, and it’s time to do what I came here for.

The last time I was in Haven, I made a conscious effort not to hurt anyone. I quietly tried to convince omegas it was in their best interest to leave before they wound up tied to an alpha who treated them like a piece of meat.

Fuck quiet. I’m here to burn this school to the ground.

“Shit,” I mutter a curse when I spot a familiar face and quickly spin around to avoid him.

Xavier.

I bounce off a chest that feels like granite, and powerful arms pull me close and whirl me across the dance floor.

A familiar whiskey and bergamot scent tickles my nose.

“I had this,” I mutter.

“You’re family,” Kylian says. “You don’t let family walk into trouble without being there to back them up.”

I should have known. “Did you come alone?”

I sigh when he doesn’t answer. “All of you?”

He spins me.

Not only is he in a suit and shirt, a stark difference from the ripped blue jeans and T-shirt he was wearing when I left the house, but he’s gotten better at dancing since I saw him dance with Everleigh at their mating ceremony.

“Not Rune. You’d have seen that big blond head of his clear across the room. He’s sitting this one out. He’s at home with Everleigh.”

My muscles tense. “Does Ever know?”

He snorts. “You nearly died the last time you came here. Do you honestly think she’d have waved you off if she knew where you were coming?”

She’d have killed me herself. Nope. She’d have sat on me. “True. Where’s Cian?”

He shrugs. “Around. He’s making sure that any anxious omegas aren’t pressured into anything they don’t want.”

I ask myself why I didn’t go to him for help.

Having a family like this is new. Unexpected. I always had Mom until she betrayed Everleigh and me. And I had Everleigh, but I would never put her in a position where she was in danger. Haven Academy is no place for her.

So, it just left me.

“What’s the mission here?” he asks.

Something about the way he asks it makes me whisper, “Why? Did you bring a gun with you?”

He offers me a lazy smile as he dances us around a woman eyeing him like dessert.

“Can I have it?” I envision forcing all the teachers into the chiller and the omegas outside.

“Do you know how to shoot?” he asks, his lips barely moving.

“It can’t be that hard, can it?”

He gives me a long look, and I groan in frustration because it’s clear this conversation will not end with a gun in my hand.

“I’m looking for my friend River, and to end this ball by any means necessary.” It doesn’t seem wise to tell him that I intend to set this place on fire, starting with the buildings farthest away from the ballroom.

I’m looking to destroy the place, not kill anyone.

Unless they deserve it.

He lifts an eyebrow. “ Any means? That sounds messy.”

“If messy gets the job done, then messy it is.” I spot a gray stare directed at me from over his left shoulder and curse as I yank my head to the right to evade Vincent’s penetrating gaze.

“What?” Kylian frowns.

“I just saw someone. Move to the right.”

“Someone you need me to kill?”

I love that he goes straight to the killing. He’s like the big brother I never had. “Someone who shouldn’t be here. He can’t see me here.” I need to get out of here. But first. “Have you seen a girl with long, curly blonde hair and brown eyes? I’ve been trying to find her.”

It’s why I’m not already on my way to the science building in search of explosive chemicals with the lighter I tucked into my strapless bra.

He shakes his head. “It’s packed in here.” His eyes flick over my shoulder, and he curses. “Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” Alarm races down my spine.

“I think you’ve been made.”

“Who?”

He whispers a quick description.

“Shit. Vincent will pull me out of here, Kylian. He’s a politician. He’ll use big words and confuse me.” I’m being dramatic, and from Kylian’s grin, he knows it. “Can you distract him for a bit? Buy me some time to get to the science building?”

“What are you doing in the science building?”

“I’ll tell you after,” I promise.

If I can avoid blowing myself up in the process.

He gives me a warning look. “Ten minutes, then I’m coming to find you. If this place is the hell you told me it is, you shouldn’t be wandering around on your own.”

We separate, and when I go one way, ducking around a group of chatting omegas, he goes the other.

I’m nearly at the door when a blond alpha steps into my path, cutting off my exit. His smirk is arrogant, and he smells like a cinnamon waffle with a little too much cinnamon.

From the edge of my vision, I spot Cian in one corner, his dark green eyes narrowed on the blond alpha blocking my escape. He’s working his way toward me as I turn to face the blond alpha.

Kylian wasn’t joking when he said he and Cian had my back.

“Hey, gorgeous.” The alpha flashes perfect white teeth at me.

“You’re in my way.” I side-step him.

He mirrors me, continuing to block me. “We’re going to dance.”

“No, thanks.”

“I wasn’t asking.” His expression hardens.

“Sure.” I smile as I step up to him.

He’s reaching for my hand when I drive my knee between his legs. He grunts, face white, cupping himself as he sinks to his knees.

I say into his ear, “Next time a lady says no, listen . It’ll be less painful for you.”

A hot stare penetrates my back so intensely that I automatically turn, seeking my observer.

My gaze clashes with Levi across the room.

It’s wishful thinking to hope that he won’t see me.

His brow furrowed in a frown, he lowers his champagne flute. As he plunges into the crowd on the dance floor, I whip around, grip the skirt of my dress, and bolt from the room.