Chapter 6 Rhett
She’s not in class.
My brain tries to downshift into the lecture, but all I see is the empty chair. The professor’s words fade to a thin background hum, overrun by the sharp, statistical calculation of absence.
She’s never absent. Not for class, not for conflict.
She’s methodical, punctual and precise. This little deviation is driving me fucking nuts until it’s the only thing I can think about.
I wait for her to slither in late, holding a cup of tea with that little notch at her lip from where she bites the rim.
I wait, and the waiting becomes its own form of violence.
Halfway through the hour, I snap my pen in two. The jagged edge draws blood from my thumb, and I stare at the drop of red until it beads and falls onto my notebook. I smear it across the page with my forefinger.
I don’t hear a word of the lesson.
After class, I walk the halls, scan the quad, check all the usual spots she would be at this time. Nothing. Isolde Greenwood has evaporated. The phrase runs on repeat, hissing under my breath: not here, not here, not here.
Maybe she’s plotting. Maybe she’s run. Maybe she’s in her room, licking her wounds.
I choose option three.
Archer House is empty. The other two girls have classes and lucky me… one of them left the front door unlocked. I move silent, ghosting heading up the stairs to her room.
Her door is locked, but locks are a suggestion, not a rule.
I turn the master key, slow and precise, and listen to the satisfying click of tumblers yielding. The handle is cold. The smell hits first: lavender, faint but persistent, overlaying a darker undercurrent of ink and dried sweat and the chemical tang of rage.
Inside, the room is chaos, but not in the way of a normal girl’s lair.
There are no clothes on the floor, no swirl of makeup or shelves of cream and candles.
Every surface is covered in paper, files, clippings, sticky notes in block capitals.
The blinds are half drawn, slashing the space with rectangles of white light and gray shadow.
The hall is short and her bedroom door is open.
Her bed is on the right. She’s curled on her side, knees drawn up, hair tangling over her cheek and pillow.
Her chest rises and falls in a rhythm so slow it looks deliberate.
She wears cotton pajamas, white with thin purple stripes and pearl buttons running to the hollow of her throat.
I freeze at the sight of her. Not for fear, but because the wall above her desk is a fucking masterpiece.
Red string crisscrosses from thumbtack to thumbtack, the kind of conspiracy cliché I thought only existed in bad TV.
But this is different. She’s annotated every connection, mapped every face, every alias, every Board member.
My own yearbook photo is dead center, linked to Casey’s in a savage double underline, then spun outward to names and events I recognize, and more that I don’t.
There are photos. Not gory, but clinical—copies of campus security logs, press releases, death certificates. Next to Casey’s name is the phrase: “Failed acquisition. Witness: Grey, Rhett.” Underlined in blue ink. She’s highlighted it three times, as if the repetition could summon the truth.
My pulse drums out a count. I pace the wall, absorbing each detail, cataloguing her methodology. It’s beautiful. It’s dangerous. It’s exactly what I would have done, if I were her.
On the desk: a list of names, scrawled in her blocky hand. At the top, “Greenwood, Casey.” Underneath: “Current Prey: Greenwood, Isolde.”
I look back at the bed. She hasn’t moved.
The room is cold; the vent by the ceiling hums on high, making the air dry and sharp. Her hand twitches once, then curls back under her chin. Her lips are parted, a thin line of drool collecting at the corner. She looks younger like this. Innocent. Almost.
I cross to the bed and kneel, careful not to jostle the mattress. I watch her breathe for a full minute, memorize the way her lashes tremble when she’s on the edge of a dream.
She stirs. I see the moment she senses me; her breathing stutters, then holds. Her eyes slit open, then snap wide when she sees my face hovering above hers.
“Naughty, naughty little girl,” I chuckle, loud enough for the echo to bounce off the cinderblock wall. Her scent floods my nose, clean and floral and thick with heat.
She jerks upright, shoving herself back against the headboard. Her knees slam into my chest but I barely feel it.
“Get the fuck out of my room,” she hisses, hair a snarl around her shoulders. Her hands go for the nearest weapon, which turns out to be a capped pen from the bedside table.
I laugh, not because it’s funny but because I need her to know she’s already lost. But also because it is funny.
“Too late for that,” I say, and plant my hands on either side of her head, bracketing her between my arms. The mattress sags with my weight. Her knees press to my chest again, but there’s nowhere to run.
“Do you want to explain this?” I jerk my chin at the evidence wall. “Or should I call the Board right now? They won’t like this little thing you’ve got going on.”
She glares, defiant. “Go ahead. I’ll call the cops and tell them about the Hunt. About you. About how my sister died.”
Her breath comes fast, floating in the air between us.
I lean in, my face a hand’s width from hers. “Your sister died because she didn’t know how to run.”
“You murdered her.” She spits the word, a fleck of saliva catching my lip. “And you’re going to do it again, aren’t you?”
I lick the spit from my lip. “No. I very much want you alive.”
She shoves at me, but I don’t budge. The pen in her hand presses to my neck. She thinks she can kill me with it.
“I know everything,” she says. “I know what the Board is, what they do, who they protect. I know you’re just a tool for them, a fucking rabid dog.”
I smile. “Everyone needs a dog. Maybe I could be yours.”
She bares her teeth. “Get. Out.”
I press closer, so our faces are nearly touching. “I want you to show me what you’ve learned. All of it. Right now.”
“Fuck off.”
“No,” I say, and snap the pen from her grip with one twist. I toss it across the room, where it bounces against the wall and shatters.
Her hands curl into fists. She’s going to try to hit me.
I want her to.
I want to see if she has any real fight in her, or if she’s just prey in better camouflage.
I drag my gaze over her body—thin cotton, no bra, the outline of her nipples hard in the cold. Her legs are tense, the muscles bunched, but she isn’t scared. She’s furious.
I lean in until my mouth is at her ear. I breathe in every layer of emotion she’s feeling and it makes me dizzy with want.
“You think you’re the hunter,” I whisper, “but you’re already mine.”
She swings for my jaw, a hook straight out of a self-defense video. I catch her fist and twist it behind her back, forcing her to arch up into me. The move yanks her shirt open at the neck; a button goes flying and her skin flashes, pale and unmarked.
She hisses in pain but doesn’t scream.
I trap her arm behind her, then bring my other hand up to her throat, not squeezing, just holding. I can feel the pulse hammering under my thumb.
“You’re not your sister,” I say, and her eyes widen, just a little.
“I never wanted to be.”
“You’re better,” I tell her, and mean it. “You’re the only one who’s ever gotten this close to the truth.”
Her lips tremble, but she doesn’t look away. Not even when I lean in and kiss her. Not brutal, not savage, just a claiming—a press of mouth to mouth, my hand still tight on her throat.
She tries to bite me. I expect it, and turn my head so her teeth graze my cheek instead.
She twists, tries to knee me, but I’m heavier, stronger, and I pin her in place with my body. Her breath comes ragged, desperate, but her eyes are full of hate, not fear.
I break the kiss, my mouth at her ear again. “Next time you want to investigate a crime in the middle of the crime scene, don’t leave the evidence out in the open.”
She grunts, twists and before I can clock it, her fist has swung into my temple.
My head snaps sideways, vision going bright white at the edge. Blood fills my mouth, copper and salt, and I can feel where I bit my tongue. I laugh, shaking the sting off, and slam my weight down over her.
Her back hits the mattress with a bounce. She scrambles again, but I catch both her wrists and pin them above her head, splaying her helpless. Her hair fans out under her, the color bright in the cold light. Her chest heaves.
“Get the fuck out of my room,” she spits, raw-voiced, every muscle flexing against my hold.
I lean in, lowering my face so close she can’t miss the blood I drag over my teeth with my tongue. “Not happening.”
She jerks, twisting hard, and nearly rolls us both off the bed, but I recover and crush her back down.
My knees straddle her hips, locking her in place.
There’s no question of my advantage—her wrists are delicate, the bones sharp under my grip, and she’s pinned with nothing but her own fury for leverage.
She tries to claw me, but with her arms above her head, all she manages is to rake the back of her hand down my forearm.
“You’re already mine, it doesn’t matter that the Board wants me to wait for you… you’re mine, sweet little one.” I whisper against her ear. I let the words crawl in, sick and sweet. “You can hate me, you can fight me, but you know the rules. Once it’s written in the book, the only escape is death.”
“Then kill me, you fucking freak. I’ll never be yours.”
I grin before licking a line up her cheek, causing her to shiver.
“Oh Isolde. You can hate me, you can fight me, hell, try kill me, but at the end of the day, you feel exactly what I do, don’t you?
That sick fascination. That tie. The pure want when we touch.
No matter what’s in your pretty little head, you want me, you want me to destroy you, to fear you, to love you and to worship you. ”