Chapter 8
The Lincoln pack were coming back, and I had to be stronger than this.
I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, at my eyes that were swollen from tears, my hair that had returned to its usual thick mane after a brief reprieve at the ball. Roxy had tried to insist on coming, but I’d begged her not to.
I needed to be alone in a stall and cry a bit. She had already seen me cry over this.
How many more times before I became a burden?
I had to sort myself out.
My heart ached for the way I was feeling.
I tried to hold my head high and walk back to the classroom but I had to take a break along the way, stopping and pressing a palm against cool brick walls.
“Roxy’s going to have thrown away all the pictures. So, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to see them ever again.”
Oh.
Oh no.
I stopped, then turned around, fists balled at the roots of my hair, hoping the pain would help me fight the tears.
Wrong train of thought. Now all I was doing was thinking about the pictures?—
“No. No, no, no. You’ll be fine. You can do this. You can face them all.” I took a shaky breath, trying to fight the quiver of my lips and the burning tears. “You can’t be gold pack, and have a dark bond, and go back in there crying. It’s too much. It’s stupid.”
With one final, painful squeeze of my hair, I dropped my hands. When I spun on my heel, ready to try, I crashed straight into what felt like a solid wall.
I staggered back with a squeak, catching myself on the worn stone wall so I didn’t land on my backside.
I blinked up, registering a form-fitting suit as I tried to get my bearings. “Sorry, I didn’t?—”
“Shatter Kingsman?” The voice was low and rough, and when I looked up at him, I did a double take. I hadn’t seen him before—and I definitely would have remembered if I had.
He was an intimidatingly tall alpha, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties. Despite being dressed in a suit like faculty members often were, his black hair was shaggy, tumbling into dark hooded eyes. His skin was pale, and his face was lean with high, sharp cheekbones. There was a deep scar cascading down the left half of his face, cutting into his brow and reaching almost to his chin.
“You’re…?” I asked, unsure. I looked down to see a folder in his hand.
“Mr. Sato, new assistant to the Dean. I was coming to fetch you from class. I have a few questions about your admission papers.”
“Admission papers?” I asked, my mouth going dry. “They’re uh… sorted.”
Dusk had sworn they were.
“If you don’t mind, we can discuss this in my office.”
I frowned, eyes darting down the hallway to where my Omega Studies class waited. “I’m really not supposed to…”
“What?” he asked, having half turned from me, but he glanced back, one scarred eyebrow cocked.
I noticed his subtle scent, clearly muted with dampeners. I caught the edges of… I cocked my head, unsure what was in the air. A dark wood… ebony? Maybe, but there was something else with it—something burned or charred that I couldn’t identify.
That was strange. I could usually identify scents. Most omegas and alphas could, even without being told. It was like… instinct or something. But I already knew my instincts were very odd.
“My pack doesn’t like me going anywhere alone,” I told him.
“Not to meet with faculty?”
“I’ve never seen you before,” I said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out an ID that read ‘Mord Sato. Assistant to the Dean.’ It did look like the ones I’d seen from the teachers.
“There’s an empty classroom here.” He nodded to a nearby door. “If that makes you more comfortable.”
I glanced between him and the door. Something unsettled in my stomach. “I think I should make an appointment. Then my pack can?—”
“This isn’t about their admission,” he said coolly.
“They helped me with it.” I cupped the back of my neck, glancing again at my Omega Studies class. What was it, maybe… twenty steps away?
That mattered, all of a sudden, even if I couldn’t place why.
“I’m not good with the online—” I cut off. I’d taken half a step back in the middle of my words, and the alpha tensed. For just the briefest second, his aura flared in the air.
It was overpowering and frightening, an invisible energy that smothered me.
As strong as Umbra’s.
A threat.
My heart jumped to my throat, and goosebumps rose on my skin, but then the aura was gone as quickly as it had come.
I stared up at him, knowing I must be pale.
No faculty would let their auras out around a student like that. He hadn’t moved, not even a flinch, and he hadn’t said anything either.
He didn’t have to.
With the smallest movement, he nodded his head toward the room he’d pointed out. His eyes were lightless and unblinking as they fixed on me.
I weighed my options carefully.
This had to have something to do with the Lincoln pack.
But if he really wanted to talk in a classroom, how bad could it be?
And did I really have a choice?
There was no way I could get two steps without him catching me. Even without his aura, he was made of solid muscle beneath the suit.
I clasped my fingers, stepping past him into the empty room, trying to keep my cool. My scent was muted like his was, but it wasn’t gone, and he’d sense if I was scared. But that ship might have sailed. I’d left the bathroom on edge. If this was to do with the Lincoln pack, I shouldn’t give anything away. The less I gave away, the more cards I had to play later.
The door latched shut behind me, and I balled my fists in my skirt. Just answer whatever questions he had, and then I could go straight to Dusk. But I heard the lock click and I spun instantly, gaze darting from the door then back to him. His expression was frighteningly impassive, yet his eyes were drinking in every single one of my movements.
Again, I tried to stifle my fear. He knew how scared I was. From my expression to my scent. But last time I’d heard a lock click like that, I’d been in Eric’s room.
Nothing like that was going to happen.
Besides, if I was gone too long, Roxy would think something was up… Right? Would she come looking for me? Or get Dusk.
I was only a few classrooms down…
“Sit,” he said.
“I’m okay like this,” I said, forcing my voice steady.
His hand closed on my shoulder, and I glanced about shakily, caving and sitting down.
I needed my pack.
What was going on? And what was in that folder? Was it to do with what was in the safe?
“What do you want?” I asked.
He opened the folder as he sat on the desk before me, now far too close for comfort. Despite the natural burned wood edge to his scent, it was like a blanket of calm.
That, however, only set me on edge more. He wasn’t worried about having me in here—not even a little, but I was sure he knew I had a pack.
He shifted slightly, his blazer moving with him, and I saw the flash of silver at his belt.
A gun?
Why did he have a gun?
What if Dusk, Umbra, or Ransom came in here? Might they get hurt?
“I’m new around campus, a prospective member of the Lincoln pack,” he was saying. My eyes snapped to him, blood going cold as I fought to keep my expression straight as he watched me for a reaction.
“You’re… joining them?” I asked, voice dry.
“There’s a lot of politics to catch up on, and I always think it’s easier to get it from the source.” A strange smile flashed on his lips.
“Me?”
“They’re rather set on turning that bond from black to… something more pleasant,” he went on. “I’d be biting in after—no need to risk the scent match. But I’d say it’s very much in my interest to get clarity about the full picture.”
“I want to go back to class. Just tell me what you want so I can go.”
He didn’t answer for a long time, peering down at the papers he held. “Your scent is very curious,” he said, eyes far too scrutinising as they lifted to me.
I didn’t answer.
“Poison,” he went on. “But not the natural kind. I thought they were lying.” He set the sheet down. “But it’s rather fitting considering the bind you have your mates in.”
I glanced down at the piece of paper he’d added to the stack. “Uh…” I reached out, tilting the top piece just a bit toward me as I read it.
Shit.
It was all the details of my enrolment at Rookwood Academy. With a flood of relief, I realised it wasn’t the same one. I’d memorised every page back to front. There was one like it in Dusk’s, but it had outdated information—before he’d given me the Kingsman name. Not like this one. “What do you mean?” I asked, looking up at him, finally able to breathe now that I knew this paper wasn’t a threat.
“I never truly expected an omega’s scent to match a weapon of war.” He reached down and straightened the paper on the stack.
I chewed on my lip, still so tense with nerves. “You, uh… know what it is?” I asked, tearing my eyes back to him and trying to ignore that stack.
That top piece, though. It was my proof they hadn’t got into the vault.
It was really important.
“The Atropa abomination?” he asked. I tried to focus on him, but it was hard. “I’ve seen it tear packs apart. One alpha—that’s all it takes. One pack mate falls and there are no survivors. Not even the last one standing—the one who wins?” He snorted, then lifted his hand and mimed shooting himself in the head. “Is that you, Omega?”
“What?” I asked, blinking up at him. I was still trying to keep my nerves in check. What had he said? I was inching my fingers toward the stack as I ran back over his words.
Kill entire packs?
Right.
I knew that about the poison. I mean, kind of. Vandle had been alive, and he’d been the one to kill his pack mates—but then, Umbra had said something about him being forced not to kill himself… I think.
Finally, my fingers brushed the paper, and I nudged it out of place from the others, nerves cooling.
Right.
Everything was right, again.
Except… Mord had replied, I realised, though his eyes had slid from me to the page I’d just adjusted. His lips drew into a line.
What had he just said about me?
“Devastation?” I asked him. Me? “No, I’m just?—”
“Dark bonded?”
I frowned, swallowing at the weight he put into those words, as if they meant something different to him.
“What’s your scent?” I asked, hoping to throw him off whatever trail he thought he was on. “I can’t… I can’t pin it down.” It was true.
I saw a stiff curve to the edge of his lips. “What do you think it is?”
“Ebony wood. But I don’t um… know what the other part is.”
Just… hold it together. It was just a test. Like an exam. I had to stay calm. I reached out for the stack again, but he got there first, placing another piece of paper onto it, keeping it perfectly straight.
My admissions page was hidden. Stuck in the stack… It was proof they hadn’t opened the safe…
What if I’d imagined it?
“Why did they dark bond you?” he asked.
I stared at him, unsure of how to answer.
Why did he want to know that?
I didn’t know what the Lincoln pack was doing or what their play was. Any answer I gave might destroy a position I needed to claim later.
Did I play the victim…? Or that I was on it all the time…? Was I in love with Dusk, Umbra, and Ransom—or did I hate them?
“I’m…” My voice was weak. “I can’t talk about the…” I shut my eyes. “The bond.”
“They’ve commanded you not to speak about it?”
I nodded desperately, even if it was a lie.
“Do you want their bond?” he asked. I grit my teeth, eyes falling on the stack of paper. I reached for it again, but this time Mord caught me by the wrist. “Do you want that bond?”
“They uh…” My voice shook. Feigning this fear wasn’t hard at all. “The Lincoln pack rejected me, and no alpha was ever going to want me after that. But they… they did.”
Was that enough to walk the line? To let him conclude what he wanted? I shut my eyes, tugging my wrist from his grip.
“It doesn’t matter now—” I began, but he cut me off.
“It matters a great deal if your mates want to bargain for a princess bond.”
My eyes snapped up to him.
“What is interesting to me,” he added. “Is that the Lincoln pack swore the feud evolved over time, yet it seems your pack had you marked for a dark bond from the moment they met you.”
I frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“You were an honorary member from the beginning of term, Shatter Kingsman.” He lingered on my last name with far too much meaning.
“Dusk added Ransom’s last name because I didn’t have one and the Dean was suspicious.”
Mord finally reacted with something more than indifference. One scarred eyebrow shot up, and the faintest grin slid onto his face. “You don’t know?”
Uh.
This wasn’t the way I’d anticipated the questioning going.
“I don’t know what?”
I tried to grab at the paper he had in his hand but jumped violently at the sound of my name being called from the hallway outside. “Shatter?”
That was Ransom, and he sounded urgent.
My eyes darted to Mord’s hip where his gun was, and then up to him. He didn’t look phased in the slightest as he glanced at the door. He got to his feet, returning the stack of papers to the folder, and straightening his suit.
“That,” he said. “Is even more curious.” He was looking me up and down.
“What is?”
“Does a dark bond give an alpha the ability to geo-track their bonded omega?” he asked. My lips parted in shock for a second before there was a loud banging on the door.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Kingsman,” he said quietly, then crossed toward the door that led out to the gardens. I was on my feet as he reached it, backing toward the door I could hear Ransom behind.
I felt an aura flare and then the door crashed open in an instant, but Mord was already gone.