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Niko didn’t even turn his head. He didn’t give a fuck. Oscar could threaten as many humans as he wanted. He could rip their heads clean off their shoulders for all Niko cared.

He couldn’t look away from Isobel.

His mate.

His , nobody else’s.

“Do not react.” The order came from Kalen, heavier than Mikel’s Alpha voice, crippling in the amount of power it pressed into them. “Nobody moves, nobody reacts.”

They were lined up at the window, all ten of them—Elijah, Gabriel, and Mikel all holding back a snarling Oscar—but even he seemed to have his head bent down by the sweltering weight of Kalen’s influence. It had never felt so vast before. Niko was struggling to breathe through it.

There was pain wracking through Kilian’s body, his eyes growing unfocussed from Kalen’s swelling power. The older Alpha had never used so much of his influence before—Kilian hadn’t even known it was possible, but something had changed.

Their group, their hierarchy, had adjusted. He wasn’t sure how he knew, he could just feel it. They were stronger as Alphas than they ever had been before, and it was because of her. Their power was forced to grow, their influence had doubled, tripled, out of necessity.

To keep her safe.

He puffed out a pained breath against the glass, struggling to straighten his mind against Kalen’s words. They battered into him repeatedly as he tried to focus on Isobel.

Do not react .

He couldn’t think straight, but his body and mind could recognise that their leader had done the thinking for them and was protecting them in some way.

He tried to follow the thought to the end, to examine the horror that lay there waiting, at the conclusion of what would happen if they reacted, but he couldn’t reach it.

Kalen’s words intercepted him every time.

Do not react .

Isobel was dancing to music they couldn’t hear, her eyes stuck to the mirror they were standing behind.

Of course, she could feel them .

And they felt …

Do not react .

Once again, the thought was torn away from him. He tried to focus on her eyes, but the glittering tear that spilled over the lower line of her lashes made his head throb with so much pain that for a moment, he thought he would black out.

Isobel was dancing.

He tried to examine the scene before him again, but then he saw the violent tremor in her hands when she gripped the pole, and once again, his thought process was shattered by a bolt of crippling pain.

Do not react .

He groaned, his head falling with a soft thump against the glass.

This feeling inside him … it was going to tear him apart.

Isobel had blocked out her emotions and danced more often than she could even recall.

She had done it with eyes piercing through her skin, with fractured bones, with threats dogging her steps and trauma making her dizzy.

She would have danced even with the world burning down around her training room.

But here and now, this one little dance threatened to break her.

“Do you remember me, pet?” the man rumbled, his dark blue eyes watchful as she slowly circled the pole, slowly tried to force her body to unwind.

Yulia had jabbed her with a needle a second before shoving her through the doorway.

That was what broke her. The unknown of what had been injected into her veins.

The complete and total loss of control. The almost mocking display of just how little power she really had in this game.

And yes, some secret part of her heart despised that they had found a way to turn dance against her in a far more degrading way than all their other manipulations.

“I-Ivan,” she responded shakily.

She hadn’t stuttered in such a long time. The shame of it forced another tear to loosen from the line of her lashes.

The man nodded, watching her carefully, his jaw tight, but his body relaxed. He had visited her in the Icon Cafe. He was a friend of Kalen’s—or … an associate? Their interaction had been tense, but only from Kalen’s side.

“They can’t hear us,” Ivan assured her. “And there are no recording devices in here, but there’s every chance the mirror behind my head is two-way.”

Isobel faltered for just a moment, and Ivan’s attention immediately slipped to where her hands had fumbled against the pole, not missing a beat.

She could feel that her mates were close—very close—and now the final piece to this morbid puzzle was clicking into place.

Yulia was going to make them watch her. It explained why none of them had answered the apology she spoke through their bond.

She had wondered at the inferno of negative reactions she had felt in the minutes before she stepped into the room, thinking perhaps the guards had told them about the deal she had made.

Maybe they had. But those emotions had grown sweltering when she entered the room, and now she knew why.

She could feel them struggling for control, wrestling with malevolence. They also felt hazy and confused?—

“Focus,” Ivan commanded sharply. “I didn’t tell you that so you can make it obvious. Look at me.”

She didn’t want to, but he was right. She had been staring at the mirror for too long.

She allowed her gaze to drop to his and did another slow rotation of the pole.

She was dressed in a black cocktail dress with a slit up to her thigh—elegant and understated, as she liked to dress before changing into whatever costume she had decided on for her performances.

“I paid a lot of money for Novikov to put me on the top of your waitlist,” Ivan said once he was sure her attention wouldn’t waver again. “So that I would be the first person they called once you began to take on private clients.”

He was watching her very intently, but it wasn’t … creepy . He was just very intense. Confusion briefly tripped through her. She couldn’t get a read on what he wanted from her, other than her attention.

“Okay,” she finally said.

“You may address me as Sir.” His tone was firm, brooking no argument.

Yulia had told her that the contract would protect her boundaries but that she wasn’t allowed to deny any requests. She had been very clear about it. Still, Isobel struggled, her throat working, before she finally blurted, with a curled lip, “Okay, Sir .”

He smirked at her. “Are you this sassy with them? Hard to imagine Kalen West with a brat.”

She forced her eyes not to drift to the mirror, some of the fear loosening from her body at the easy way he spoke of Kalen. There was no malice in his eyes, no suspicion, no cruelty. Only curiosity and amusement.

Isobel shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sir.”

“You’re not dancing,” he pointed out. “Are you that desperate to be punished?”

“ You don’t get to punish me,” she whispered, the words falling past her lips like a runaway train, her eyes widening in horror at the implication behind them.

“Oh?” He smirked. “I thought you didn’t know what I was talking about? But anyway”—he waved a big hand in dismissal—“I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about whichever officials are on the other side of that mirror, watching your first private performance and judging you severely lacking.”

She gritted her teeth. He was right. If she didn’t do this properly, Yulia would find a way to punish her.

“ I’m finding it very h-hard to f-focus.

” The return of the nervous stutter that had clogged up her throat for most of her first years at Ironside made her want to cry and scream in equal measure.

“Understandable,” Ivan hummed softly. “But I’m not going to hurt you, pet.”

He was giving her that intense look again, like he was trying to send her a private message.

“Why did you pay to get yourself to the top of my waitlist?” she asked, doing another slow circle of the pole before gripping it tightly in her hands and swinging herself around it once, forcing her body to move in a sinuous, liquid line.

She had explored the basics of pole, as with most other dance forms, but hadn’t pursued it past a very basic understanding and couldn’t think straight to remember any of the moves, so she simply curved and curled her body around it, trying to detach her mind from her movements.

She anchored her skin and muscles to the music and tugged on her brain until it felt like she was floating somewhere in the corner of the room, witnessing instead of partaking.

His steady gaze sparkled with approval, but not at her dance. He gave that only a cursory sweep. It was her question that he seemed to approve of. He wanted her to be curious for some reason.

“I have …” He paused, shifting his hips, his finger stroking across his strong jaw. “So mething,” he finally settled on. “It’s something dangerous, do you understand?”

“Of course I don’t, Sir.” She gave him a slightly incredulous look. “I’m a dancer. At an academy of the arts. Which is also a TV show. I don’t know anything about danger—I’m about as far removed from reality as it gets.”

He scoffed, disapproval now in his eyes as they did another sweep of her body.

“You are reality, Carter.” He sat forward, his forearms resting on his spread knees.

“You’re the dirty little secret behind the clever advertisement.

The filthy club floor once the doors are locked for the night and the lights are switched back on.

You’re a ballerina’s broken feet after the stunning show.

And what’s worse? You aren’t even unique.

Even your bullies are victims, even your jailers are trapped.

That’s how massive this beast is. Ironside swallows them all. ”

If Isobel hadn’t been running on autopilot, she would have tripped and fallen off the little stage. It wasn’t illegal for humans to speak against the government in that way, but for the Gifted, an anti-loyalist speech would be very dangerous.

She chose not to respond.