“One more thing.” He stepped up to her, ignoring her question. “If it’s about Alphas and it isn’t common knowledge, best you don’t repeat it. The whole base instincts thing in Alpha formations? The officials don’t need to know. I really can’t emphasise that enough.”
She nodded, watching as he walked out before wetting a paper towel and cleaning the remaining smudges of blood from her chest. The chain now looked completely innocent, the glow dying away.
Niko escaped the gym and walked all the way back to the dorm without a flicker of emotion for the cameras, but as soon as he was enclosed safely inside his own room, he quickly sank to the floor, his eyes staring blankly through the window, a tremor taking up residence in his hands.
He could still taste her blood on the back of his tongue and there was a burning, overwhelming urge exploding somewhere in the back of his brain, trying to convince him to run back there and lick up her quivering torso again and again until the metallic taste of her blood mixed with the thick, sweet scent that had tried to creep out of her when his head was buried in her shirt and he was trying to wrestle himself under control.
This should have been easier.
He liked the girl, but he wasn’t desperately in love with her or desperate for a mate. He just liked her, as a person. It should have been easy to brush off this incident, to hunt down Elijah and record it the way they were supposed to be doing. But selfishly, he wanted to keep this to himself. Elijah didn’t have fucking boundaries. He might ask if Niko got turned on. He was worse than the goddamned officials.
Niko groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face. It was getting harder not to touch her … and worse than that, he knew it wasn’t the bond. She was small and sweet and vulnerable and also none of those things at all, and he was struggling to keep his thoughts under control when his hands were always on her and her scent, heavy with sweat, was always clinging to his clothes.
And now her blood was in his mouth.
She was invading him … and he didn’t like it.
Isobel had an hour. She should probably run back to her room and get changed, but instead, she found herself walking toward the chapel, her fingers running over the chain now fused to her skin. It wasn’t even sore anymore, and it hummed happily beneath her touch, sitting almost flush with her skin, like a tattoo made of metal.
She checked the chapel first, but when she only found a first year huddled before a candle, she skipped around to the back, where there was a small residence surrounded by an enclosed courtyard. She pressed the button on the outside of the gate and rocked back on her heels, waiting.
It was Sophia who came out, Luis’ head appearing in the opening of the door his sister had left hanging open. He peered at Isobel with big eyes, his spectacles hanging off his nose again. Sophia tucked her black hair behind her ear, flashing a wrist stacked with shining, beaded bracelets.
“Was expecting you sooner, to be honest.” Sophia unlatched the gate, standing to the side and waving Isobel in.
“I don’t have long,” Isobel said, her eyes darting around what appeared to be a haphazard herb garden overgrown with weeds as Sophia flicked the gate shut and led the way back to the house.
Luis skittered away, hiding in the next room, his owlish eyes blinking out from another shadowy doorway as Sophia led her into a pokey kitchen. “Tea?”
“Ah, sure.” Isobel glanced around. “Where’s the Guardian?”
“Mom is sleeping. She gets these awful migraines that knock her right out. But let’s be honest, you came here to talk to me.”
“I did?” Isobel furrowed her brow at the other girl.
Sophia’s lips twitched. “You want information. But do you want it from the obviously super cool and super pretty Soul Keeper with the world’s most adorable little helper, or from the Guardian who cut your soul artefact off and bargained to keep it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Her light mahogany gaze caught on the top of the chain peeking out from Isobel’s now-stretched neckline and she dropped the kettle she had picked up, the sound of it clattering back to the stovetop, making Luis flick back into the shadows.
“Is that …” Sophia drifted forward, eyes wide in wonder.
“It just happened.” Isobel covered it with her hand, feeling oddly protective. “It’s … kind of embedded into my skin.”
Sophia whistled, taking in Isobel’s body language before backing off and spinning to the kettle. She pulled down three mugs and dropped teabags into each of them, glancing furtively to the doorway her brother was hiding in. “You have any idea what it means?” she asked.
“I don’t know what anything means anymore,” Isobel said. “And I … don’t trust anyone.”
“Understandable.” Sophia leaned against the counter, folding her arms. “After what that bitch did to you. We heard the officials talking about it in the hospital. They didn’t bother much with your friendship on the show, but the officials said you guys were close and that she was always the first person there to comfort you after she orchestrated an attack against you.”
“Well …” Isobel scoffed. She could have done without the knowledge that the officials were gossiping about the attacks they allowed to happen. “Yeah. It was pretty messed up. I really thought she was on my side.”
“Maybe she was?” Sophia shrugged. “For a little while, anyway. I mean, it makes sense to pretend to be your friend while they haze you, in a sadistic sort of way. But when you gained some popularity on the show, maybe she tried to switch things up to get some screen time with you. Until she thought you were bonded to her crush, that is. Then I supposed she had to weigh up whether the screen time was worth it.”
“You know the game pretty well for someone who isn’t even playing it.”
“Girl.” She laughed. “Everyone knows how this game works. At Ironside, you’re predator or you’re prey. There’s no in between. And the prey? Well … they never make it very far, do they? I’m surprised you’re still kicking.”
“I’m not prey.”
Sophia poured hot water into the mugs, setting one on the far edge of the counter before carrying the others to the small, circular dining table. Luis ducked out from the hallway, grabbing the third mug and hovering by the counter indecisively.
“Those Alphas are definitely trying to push you into the predator category, especially with all that ‘initiation’ crap Sato started a little while ago,” Sophia allowed, pulling out a chair and plopping into it, folding her legs as she blew on her tea. “It’s pretty obvious what he was trying to do. But you aren’t there yet. Maybe the Vermont attack was just the push you needed.”
Isobel sat, pulling her mug closer, fiddling with the tag from the teabag as Luis approached his sister’s side, eyes fixed on Isobel as he nervously fiddled with his overlong sleeves.
“Anyway”—Sophia waved a hand as though to disperse the topic—“you said you didn’t have long. What is it you wanted to ask?”
“These soul artefacts.” Isobel touched the links through her shirt. “What do they do?”