She felt her lips tugging up at the sides. Was she enjoying talking to Easton? It felt like she was. “I’ve had worse.”
“No, you haven’t,” he said softly. “But you’re one of mine, now. Nothing like that will happen to you again.”
A shudder travelled up her spine, making her vision hazy at that word.
Mine.
Her toes stopped wiggling, curling in shock, before she curbed the reaction.
“You … I …” she stumbled. “Thank you, Professor?”
His lips lifted at the corners. “You’re welcome, Isobel.”
She stared at him, struck dumb. “I feel weird,” she blurted. “I feel like you just took away all my problems and made them all sound so simple, but they’re not. Like, why would the Track Team be threatening me into trying to figure out a way to contact them? Why wouldn’t they just talk to me? And if the officials know about your … ability—which they do, if they have the blackmail video—how are you still here?”
“Not all of the officials,” Easton said. “The Track Team is only a percentage of them, and they want to know damaging things about people. It’s how they enslave them. If they can’t find anything damaging on you and they want you on their side, they’ll force you into doing something incriminating, just to make sure you’re properly under their heel before they take you on board.”
“And you want them to recruit me?” she asked, a frown furrowing into her brow.
“They need to know that what they have on you is enough.” His eyes grew dark, his emotion suddenly pressing heavily up against her, roiling and bitter. “If you resist, they’ll try harder. If this is them—and we think it is—then they’re going easy on you, which means they’re desperate for you.”
“For me to … what? What do they do?”
“What don’t they do?” He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “The Stone Dahlia is almost the same size as the academy, tunnelling so far down below us that they could host an entire concert down there and we would never suspect a thing up here.”
“Down … down where?” she spluttered.
“Beneath the main lake. The entrance is through the boathouse—well, the Gifted entrance, anyway. The human entrance is from the other side of the hill leading up to the academy. They hire out rooms. Hire out Gifted. They put us on display. Make us entertain crowds of humans who have paid obscene amounts for an invitation. The Track Team has information on everyone. Not just us, but their human guests, and each other.”
He was giving her so much information—so much insane information—but for some reason, she could only think of one thing in that moment. The back of Gabriel’s door, and the message that had been spelled out with individual sticky notes, arranged so heartrendingly obsessively.
I am not for sale.
She swallowed, tears springing up before she could stop them. Horrified, she looked back down to her lap. “Did my … does my father know about this?”
“Undoubtedly.” Easton’s voice deepened. “It seems like a game of popularity, but it’s the Track Team who actually decides the winner every year. And they continue to control their Icons long after they leave the walls of Ironside.”
She tapped a freckle on her thigh. “I don’t want to get involved with them.”
“You have no reason to trust me, but I’ve protected every one of my Alphas since the day they arrived here, and I’ll protect you too. I’m asking you to trust me. Trust Kalen. Trust Elijah. Trust your friends.” He cleared his throat. “Don’t trust Oscar.”
She picked her head up, surprised. “You, Kalen and … Elijah?”
“There are a lot of contingencies to plan in the situation we find ourselves in.” His grin almost twitched into being again. “Elijah is our planner. If he tells you to do something, you should do it. He usually has a good reason.”
She chewed her lip. “And Oscar?”
“Is damaged.” Easton’s expression closed down. “And reactionary. Attuned to his instinct instead of his conscience. Before he had a mate, he was manageable. But you’ve just added a whole new level of primality to his brain that might make things a little difficult with you living in the dorm. You’ll need to learn to manage him.”
“Why can’t he learn to manage me, instead?” she grumbled.
Easton smiled—his first full, real smile since they had begun talking, and even though it twisted all his scars and made the shadows beneath his eyes even darker, she felt something in her chest flip, the hollow ache inside her turning just that little bit more painful.
“I’m afraid Oscar has a habit of breaking his toys,” Easton warned.
Isobel groaned. This again. “I’m not a toy.”
Easton’s smile dropped away, and he leaned forward again. “You’re a born and bred puppet, Carter. I’m not saying that to be cruel. I’m saying it because it’s the truth. You’re a toy to anyone who wants to play with you. Whether you let them or not—well, that’s the part that’s up to you. I’ll protect you from the other Gifted, from the psychotic bitch who hurt you, from your asshole of a father, and from the officials at Ironside … but you’re going to need to protect yourself against the other Alphas. Decide your boundaries. Make them clear. Learn how to manage the volatile personalities and find your space with the peaceful ones. Nobody else is going to do that for you. We have too much respect for each other to dictate how you interact with each of us. Those are our boundaries. Am I clear?”
“Crystal.” She chewed her lip, and his eyes flashed with amusement, as though he knew she had more to say. Eventually, she just blurted, “Everyone calls you Mikki.”
“You’ll have to earn that,” he said, standing, his eyes passing over her. “Floor exercises only for the rest of the session. I don’t want to see you back on that treadmill and if I catch you siphoning off anyone’s shitty mood, you’re in trouble. I think you’ve taken enough for today.”
She swallowed, waiting for him to walk away, but he didn’t. He waited. She ducked her chin, and he knelt before her.
“Nod if you’re going to obey,” he said gently, sensing that she was completely overwhelmed.
She nodded, her gaze still stuck to her legs.
“Good girl,” he said, low and soft, the words a caress that fluttered through her on a gentle breeze, lifting her chin as he stood and walked away so that she could watch him.
She had no idea what kind of man Easton—ah, fuck it. His name was Mikel. She had no idea what kind of man he was, but her chest ached with the need to trust him, to see what might happen if she became one of “his Alphas.” Though she would never be one of them, she still wondered what it would be like to be one of his.
Her entire life, people had claimed that they were protecting her. Doing things for her own good. But none of them ever looked like Mikel when they claimed it.
None of them ever made her feel like it was true.
9
Adorable Sex On A Stick