Page 24

“It’s okay, princess.” He had her gathered in a blink, holding her as her arms wound around his neck, her fingers skating along the broad length of his shoulders, driven wild as she tried to figure out where else he had been touched.

“Shh, it’s fine.” He captured her wrists again, holding them against his chest. “As nice as this feels, I’m not exactly in control right now. ”

Him admitting that in front of all the other Alphas caused her just enough pause to realise she was crying and shaking and acting like an insane person.

“S-Sorry,” she hiccupped.

That fucking stutter .

He dropped onto her bed beside Kilian, the others gathering around, some of their fury now contained, their expressions pinched in pain as they soaked in the agony that throbbed through her chest.

Oscar whirled, his arm flashing up, but Moses seemed to grip his forearm just as fast, halting the other Alpha as his fist hovered by the wall beside Isobel’s bed. Oscar stretched out his fingers, a growl slipping from his throat, and Moses dropped his arm.

“Ivan was there for a reason,” Kilian spoke quickly, like he needed to divert their attention from Isobel.

“He knew they were going to force Isobel into taking on private clients and he … bribed them?” He cut his eyes to Isobel, who nodded, before he continued.

“He wanted to be her first.” His jaw flexed as a wave of aggravated sound vibrated around the room.

“He wanted to deliver her this. He said it’s for Kalen. ”

He held up the little silver USB.

Kalen’s grip, still restricting Isobel, quickly loosened, and he plucked the USB out of Kilian’s grip with a frown before tossing it to Elijah, who turned on his heel and strode from the room without a word.

“If he was just there to pass on a message,” Moses snarled, advancing on the bed, “why the fuck?—”

“We knew people were watching through the mirror,” she quickly interrupted.

“—did he have his hands on your fucking tits?” he finished anyway, the storm in his eyes a swirling, dark grey mass.

Is that what happened? She could remember Ivan’s words just fine but was fuzzy on the other details. Perhaps because he had made such a big deal of how important his words were.

“It was part of the deal,” she said. “To go topless.” She swallowed, quickly glancing between them, her eyes hesitantly tripping from one glaring face to the next.

She knew that they weren’t angry at her, but their fury was still a sight to behold, and it wasn’t helping the awful pain still gripping her body.

She sought out Kilian again, climbing back into his lap.

Kalen sighed, dragging his big hand down over his face, his arms twitching like he was fighting the need to force her back to him.

Her body melted as soon as Kilian picked her up and turned her to face him, settling her against him, tugging her thighs either side of his hips.

The slight strain of accommodating his size immediately soothed the ragged edges of her pain, and she quickly hid her face in his neck, forcing out the rest of the story with his strong fingers stroking lightly up and down her sides, dragging from her hips to just below her arms and back down again.

She squirmed slightly whenever he reached the highest point, the sensation almost ticklish along the sides of her breasts, but he seemed to enjoy her slight wiggling if the deeper pitch of his breathing was anything to go by .

“Yulia offered me a deal to spare one of you a private date by accepting one of my own. I tried to negotiate for all of you, but she drew the line at Kalen and Mikel. She said I had to dance and at least go topless. She said guests had to sign a protective contract before they came into the room but …”

“But Ivan was touching you,” Theodore said, his tone uncharacteristically sharp. “I don’t care what’s on that USB. He’s a dead man.”

Isobel shook her head, her chin brushing along Kilian’s collarbone.

He had discarded his formal jacket and only wore the designer button-down her father had bought him.

They all looked mouth-wateringly good when they dressed up, like suited and slick fantasies come to life, striding in a towering wall of knee-weakening Alpha testosterone.

If the officials learned how to control them the way they had obviously figured out how to control Isobel, she could only imagine all the ways their magnetism would be exploited inside the Stone Dahlia.

“It wasn’t like that. Ivan wasn’t there for that,” she whispered, trying to cuddle closer to Kilian as her thoughts ran rampant. It was a miracle that he was even managing to make his scent so warm and comforting. “He?—”

“He’s trying to blow up the Stone Dahlia,” Elijah announced, striding back into the room with his laptop.

“There’s enough evidence on this thing to bring it all crashing down.

You have no idea.” He sat on the edge of the bed, levelling them all with an expression that she might have described as blank if it hadn’t been for the shine of surprise in his icy eyes.

“This thing—” He tapped the USB connected to his laptop.

“—is their collateral database. They have collateral on everyone, and I mean everyone . Their entire board of directors. Every single student that’s been brought into the Stone Dahlia.

Even the human staff. It’s all here, neatly alphabetised.

Except for one file he tried to delete—a female student who was supposed to graduate this year.

Her collateral events were particularly nasty.

The final note on her file is that they were deeming her used-up and sending her back to the Mojave settlement. ”

“How does any of that bring down the Stone Dahlia?” Cian asked as Isobel twisted on Kilian’s lap to face them all fully.

Cian had relaxed enough to lean against the post at the bottom of her bed, but she was sure it was more due to the shock of what Elijah had declared.

He gathered his golden-blond hair into a knot at the top of his head, the muscles in his forearms flexing in agitation, painting a dichotomy of fury and shock in his body.

Luckily, the shock seemed to be stepping to the forefront.

“It implicates the Dahlia because …” Elijah clicked around on his screen for a moment. A second later, Yulia Novikov’s accented voice clipped into the room.

“Jack Ransom Tier One Collateral Event: a male escort was hired to seduce his wife. Jack was drugged and taken to a SD hotel room?—”

Elijah hit Pause. “I assume that means Stone Dahlia,” he said as they all stared in complete shock at the laptop. He tapped at a key to resume the voice recording.

“The male escort was killed, and the body was planted in the hotel room. The murder weapon was placed into Jack’s hands, and other DNA evidence was arranged accordingly. Jack Ransom did it in the bedroom with a trophy … caught by the cleaning crew.”

Isobel sucked in a horrified breath. “She’s joking about it.”

“That’s tier one,” Elijah said. “I only listened to a couple of them, but they always seem to start with some sort of event to get people under their control, and then they slowly escalate.” He clicked around and then tapped another key. It was Yulia’s voice again.

“Jack Ransom Tier Four Collateral Event: Jack was given a choice. He could arrange collateral on and recruit a first-year slut into the SD, or he could take on his own first slave. He chose to act as a recruiter. We sent her straight to the red rooms. We can now add sex trafficking of a minor to his list of offences.”

“Holy fuck.” The words exploded out of Niko, whose hazel eyes quickly grew cloudy and then flashed in rage. “Red rooms,” he said. “They’re intended for sex.”

Isobel’s blood ran cold.

Yulia had tricked her .

Elijah typed something into his laptop, his elegant brows pinching together in disgust. “There are too many mentions of the red rooms to count. You said Ivan had to sign a contract?” He glanced up at Isobel.

“My guess is that she wants people to break those contracts. That’s why the two-way mirrors are there.

In case they check for recording devices, they’ll think they’re safe to misbehave.

Yulia catches them breaching an agreement, and she uses that to blackmail them. ”

“She injected me with something,” Isobel breathed out. “It must be to compromise the students she sends in there to make them even easier to take advantage of. If the student passes out, whoever paid to be there might think they’ll get away with taking liberties.”

“Ten Alphas are more valuable to Yulia than one Sigma,” Gabriel said, his eyes wide and unfocussed on the bed covers.

“I thought maybe she did this because she knew she would never be able to control all of us properly, we wouldn’t perform the way she wants—we’ve proved that in the Icon Cafe.

But she claimed that power in a single night.

She made us watch her put Isobel in that situation.

She knows we’ll do anything she asks to stop that from happening again, even if what she asks is for us to take her place in a red room. ”

“Don’t even say it,” Isobel hissed, her chest spasming with a severe jolt of pain.

He stared back at her, wincing as he felt what she felt.

Cian growled, rubbing at his chest. Theodore stalked around the bed and jerked his chin at Kilian, who shifted to the right, closer to Kalen.

Theodore wedged himself onto the edge of the bed, his heavy hand falling onto Isobel’s thigh, squeezing reassuringly, though he didn’t actually say that they wouldn’t try to trade places with her.

After a moment, his hand twitched, his nostrils flaring. He was staring at the silk of her dress like he wanted to burn it.

“I’m going to shower.” Her voice was strained. “I need to wash off … the night.”