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Isobel laughed. “Do you need help?”

“Too late,” Bellamy said flatly. “Sophia bribed me to participate by promising I’d get to name the animals.”

Sophia turned the camera again to reveal a chalkboard sign outside the pen that read:

MEET THE GIFTED GOATS!

Bureaucracy

Admin

Dean Sloan

Middle Management

“I stand by all of them,” Bellamy said.

Isobel bit down on her lip. “Does Dean Sloan know about this?”

Bellamy wriggled his brows, panning the camera to show Susan Sloan crouched near the smaller goat, adjusting its flower crown. At thirty-six, with her black curls perfectly styled and her pencil skirt harshly lined, she was as intimidating as ever—though she was currently cooing quietly at a goat.

“Have you eaten?” Isobel asked, after taking a screenshot of the dean making baby faces. That would come in handy at some point.

Bellamy made a face. “Croissant and half a juice box. Sophia made me share it with a six-year-old.”

“I’ll bring you lunch in a bit.”

“Not unless it comes with new shoes. One of the goats chewed through my laces.”

“I’ll bring you lunch and laces.”

“Bless you,” he said gravely.

“Love you,” Sophia signed.

“Love you both,” Isobel answered, before ending the call and turning to Kalen, who had just finished entering the lunch order for his “patients.”

“You’re going into the village?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell Bureaucracy I said hi.” At her blink, he explained, “They sent me the announcement earlier to put up on the notice board.”

“Ah.” Isobel moved to kiss her two divas goodbye, the firmness of their lips and the quick reactions of their bodies proving they were far from being burned out.

Kilian had half dragged her over his reclined body before Kalen extracted her, stealing his own kiss and slapping her butt in a very un-tranquil way before seeing her out.

She headed back out through the clinic’s quiet pathways, enjoying the way the sunlight filtered through the trees as she made her way through the campus toward the outdoor amphitheatre where Mikel sometimes took his vocal students to warm up in the sun.

She wanted to finish checking on each of her mates before heading out to the village.

She barely made it halfway before her phone buzzed again.

Gabriel: Moses said you were looking for me.

Isobel: Everything okay? I hear your divas are acting up again.

Gabriel: I’m alive. Need to scream at a wall or someone willing to pretend to be a Sony exec for three minutes.

Isobel: Coming to you. Get your lungs ready.

A few minutes later, she reached one of the buildings tucked beside the library, where Gabriel sometimes took meetings when he didn’t want to deal with the main offices.

It looked quiet from the outside, but the moment she stepped in, she was hit by the muted sound of Gabriel’s voice—measured, crisp, and deeply annoyed.

“No, Cheryl, that wasn’t a threat, that was a promise.

” He paused, catching sight of Isobel through the glass wall and motioning her in.

“Of course I can scare people into getting what I want, have you been paying any attention, you daft woman? I’ll touch base later, when you’ve caught up on how this works. ”

He ended the call and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. “Why can’t humans have a fast-forward button?”

Isobel snorted, stepping into the room. “That sounded fun. ”

He dropped his hand, fixing her with a tired but warm look. “Living the dream.”

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?”

“And miss watching people unravel in real time because they didn’t read the fine print of Theodore Kane’s rider clause? Never.” He stood and crossed to her, pulling her into a firm hug that was all muscles and warmth and familiar tension. “You smell like Kalen’s office,” he grumbled into her hair.

“Is that jealousy?”

“Deep, staggering jealousy.”

She grinned, stepping back. “Have you had lunch?”

“I’ll get some now. I need the air, and I can’t go back to the main office, yet. The interns burst into simultaneous tears the second I step into the room. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so wet and loud.”

She wisely decided not to respond to that, and together, they headed back out, the old gravel crunching beneath their shoes. Isobel bumped him gently with her elbow. “I can walk with you until the fountain.”

Gabriel made a face. “You’re leaving me for the goats, aren’t you?”

“How did everyone find out about the goats before me?”

“They asked me to push through an announcement about it on the Ironside website, since they’re raising money for the scholarship fund.”

They reached the main lake, where the fountain bubbled lazily, and slowed to a stop beside a bench shaded by one of the towering pines that lined the lake’s edge.

She could feel his spike of frustration and urgency through the bond.

He wanted to grab her and kiss her, to melt away his frustrations by filling his head with her scent and taste, but he couldn’t do it out in the open, in the middle of the campus.

He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “See you tonight.”

She bit her lip and nodded, leaving him behind with his hard sigh pushing against her back.

“Cian was looking for you!” he called out, remembering just before she was out of earshot.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out where Cian was hiding.

He was a creature of habit, and the day after returning from a shoot, he always ended up in the same place.

Isobel headed north-west, past the budding orchard, to the edge of the river, where a narrow trail twisted around a thicket of silver birch.

There, in a small hollow padded with fallen gold leaves, was Cian.

He lay sprawled on the crisp grass with his arm bent over his face, sunglasses perched on his nose, and a very expensive jacket wadded under his head.

She crouched beside him, grinning at the way he feigned sleep behind his sunglasses. The bond told a different story, sending her jolts of lust and love and relief at his first sight of her in three days.

“Do I smell like jet lag?” he croaked .

“No,” she whispered. “You smell like home.”

Cian’s lips twitched. “Don’t you dare say things like that. I’m already jet-lagged and horny and have a hundred emails waiting.”

She brushed a blade of grass from his cheek. “Then stop saying yes to things you hate.”

He pushed his sunglasses up, fixing his aquamarine eyes on her. “It’s not so bad.”

“No,” she agreed, her fingers sliding through his hair just long enough to make him exhale sharply, “must be hard to be adored and worshipped for your perfection wherever you go.”

His hand found her wrist, fingers shackling her tightly. “I hate every second I’m away from you.”

Isobel leaned in just far enough to kiss him. He groaned immediately, but she was already standing.

“You need sleep,” she said.

“You need to stop kissing me like that if you expect me to sleep.”

She turned to go with a grin.

“Hey,” he called after her. She glanced back. His sunglasses had slipped to the tip of his nose. “You smell like home too.”

She just smiled and walked on.

“Hey!” he called again, and she heard his footsteps behind her before his strong arm dropped over her shoulders, swooping her into his side as they walked. “Fine, twist my leg, I’ll go wherever you’re going. ”

“I’m going to find Mikel, and then I’m taking lunch to Sophia and Bellamy in the village.”

“Perfect. I told my parents I’d visit them when I got back.”

Cian’s parents had moved to the village years ago. Logan stayed with them instead of in the dorms, and he claimed that was why he was always late, sprinting to class, limbs too long for his balance, often with one shoe in his hand instead of on his foot.

Niko’s family had also moved to the village.

Yume, the younger of Niko’s two sisters, had a little boy and girl studying all day long to get into Ironside.

His other sister, Sora, and her husband, Shinji, finished their medical degrees and now ran a clinic in the village.

Theodore and Moses’ dad also lived in the village, running the souvenir shop and cafe attached to his house.

Kilian’s mother was the only family member—except for Isobel’s father—who didn’t live in the village, but that was because she had been given a professorship at Ironside, where she taught a highly exclusive painting class.

She lived with her husband on campus. Isobel’s father came to visit often, but he chose to stay in the off-campus residence that Isobel and the Alphas had built, where they could live their home lives comfortably away from Ironside.

Their “house” was more of a collection of buildings in the countryside, twenty minutes away.

They were all connected by pathways leading to a large central building that served as their shared kitchen, lounge, and living areas.

They had all designed it, fighting over the details for months until it felt like exactly what they wanted.

Something private but connected; vast, light-filled rooms with high ceilings and big windows; stone and timber and soft, open spaces.

They each had their own cabin with a bedroom and a bathroom, and a few other shared spaces, like the laundry and the gym.

When her father and Teak came to visit, they always took her cabin, and she stayed with one of the Alphas.

Other people might find her father and Teak’s platonic relationship strange, but Isobel definitely wasn’t in a position to judge.

She and Cian walked in companionable silence, passing the rose garden, where buds were just starting to bloom. A trio of music students passed them with harried expressions and stacks of sheet music, and one of them called, “We love you, Mr Ashford!” without slowing.

Cian waved at them. He was adored at Ironside, though he didn’t teach or consult in any way. Like Kilian and Theodore, Cian was an Ironside decoration: Simply there to be admired.

They reached the sunny amphitheatre as Mikel was finishing up with his vocal group.

Students were scattered across the stone steps, some lying down, others sitting cross-legged, all of them humming through breath exercises.

Mikel stood at the edge of the group with a cup of tea balanced on the stone ledge behind him.

He looked up as they approached.

“This is a routine inspection,” Cian announced, making the students giggle. “We received complaints that you were being too nice, Professor Easton.”

The giggles turned into laughs.

“I’m very fucking nice,” Mikel growled. “Ask anyone.”

From the grass, one of the students whispered, “He made me hold a B4 for so long I actually fainted.”

“It builds stamina,” Mikel said, unmoved. Then he looked at Isobel again. “You off somewhere?”

“The village,” she said. “There’s a whole thing with goats.”

Mikel’s mouth twitched. “Okay. Good luck.” His eyes swept slowly over her. “See you at home.”

The students didn’t so much as bat an eye.

It was a well-established public story by now that Isobel had lost her mate during her second year at Ironside and had bonded with the Alphas of Dorm A, resulting in them forming a sort of family, with several of them acting as her surrogates.

There were still rumours floating around, especially concerning the professors, but they had steadfastly ignored all questions pertaining to their private lives until people eventually just gave up and stopped asking or wondering.

Their group simply … existed. It was just how they were. People had come to accept it .

“See you later. Bye, kids!” She waved at the group.

“Bye, Professor Carter!” they chanted back, smiling brightly.

Those smiles immediately died when Mikel turned back to them.

The sun was high now, casting soft shadows through the old trees that lined the walkway leading back to the front of the academy.

A few students passed them in golf carts, waving casually, the air full of fresh-cut grass and distant music.

She couldn’t stop her mind from drifting as she walked, her eyes scanning for hidden cameras, her lips pinching at the memory of her own perfect, broken smiles.

The looming rules and rankings, and the pressure to always be two steps ahead, to never let down her guard.

She remembered what it had meant to survive Ironside.

They finally reached the main gate, the academy spreading out behind them in sweeping grids of manicured gardens and stone buildings.

And then, there were the gates. They stood open, wide and welcoming. The black wrought iron twisted into delicate patterns of leaves and long vines that climbed toward words, forged in bold letters overhead.

We are not for sale.

Isobel stopped, Cian pausing beside her. They both looked up, and Isobel’s throat tightened. For so long, those words had meant everything to her. They were a protest, a plea, a prayer, and a secret, all wrapped into one little statement.

Now it was just … the truth. Plain and simple. Stamped in iron for all the world to see.

They had iron surrounding them on all sides.

But inside, they were finally free.

The end.