Chapter 5 Talon
FIVE
TALON
“Oh, honey, I’m home!” I bellow through the entryway of the OCK house, letting the heavy front door slam shut behind me. I drop my backpack and head straight for the kitchen on the right.
Jasper sits at the black dining table. He may not be as tall as Dredyn, but he’s almost as big—hunkering down over a bowl of ramen.
“Where’s mine?” I ask, swinging open the fridge. I grab a cold beer, pop the cap against the counter edge and take a few gulps.
“At the restaurant,” Jasper signs.
“Fucking rude, dude,” I shoot back, grinning as I lean on the fridge door.
Jasper responds by casually flipping me off without even looking up from his laptop. With one hand, he continues typing something on the keyboard, and with the other he scoops up another mouthful of broth.
Jasper doesn’t talk—at least, not most of the time.
He can talk, physically, but chooses not to.
If you ask any normie around campus why the big silent guy never says a word, they’ll give you some insane story.
Maybe they’ll claim his vocal cords were slashed in a gang fight, which would be a much more exciting way to explain the gash on his neck because the real story is anticlimactic.
Others insist he has a weird accent or a speech impediment.
One time, we heard a freshman whisper that Jasper never learned to talk at all.
The truth is much simpler: my best friend is a man of very few words, and he prefers it that way.
For the last seven years, this has been our norm, so by now it’s just part of who he is, which is fine by me.
Jasper and I have been friends for as long as I can remember.
We grew up as next-door neighbors and our parents were close, so we were practically brothers from day one.
Communicating with Jasper has always been easy, with or without signing. When he first made the decision to go nonverbal back in high school, I was the one who taught him American Sign Language.
I let the fridge door swing shut and survey the kitchen, trying to decide if I’m actually hungry enough to eat the chicken I meal prepped for myself four days ago. Jasper is still focused on his laptop, the screen’s light reflecting on his dark eyes that flick up to me briefly as I wander over.
“Your dad put you to work again?” I ask, nodding toward his computer.
He pauses, fingers hovering over the keys, and shrugs one shoulder. “Just homework. Some of us care about passing O-Chem.”
I groan in sympathy. Organic chemistry—O-Chem—is Jasper’s academic nemesis this semester. I don’t know why he bothers to take some ridiculous classes. We all know that he will go to work for his dad when he graduates.
Who works for the Syndicate.
The law and order of our elite world.
That’s the thing about legacy kids like him and I—our futures have been written in the stars, maybe even before then. There’s no room for free thinking. And in a few years, we will have wives who bear children who will join us in building the underworld of the Syndicate.
“Don’t remind me,” I say, sliding into a chair across from him. “I swear Professor Nguyen is on a mission to single-handedly obliterate the average GPA of this entire university. I’ve never seen so many brain cells spontaneously combust during his lectures.”
Jasper huffs a silent laugh, which translates to a brief grin and a shake of his head as he turns his attention back to the screen.
I notice he’s got a problem set open—chemical structures scattered across the document.
But before I can comment further, heavy footsteps thump on the staircase down the hall.
A moment later, Dredyn emerges from the doorway of the kitchen, tall and broad-shouldered, like a disgruntled bear rousted from hibernation.
He’s shirtless, wearing only a pair of gray sweatpants slung low on his hips, and his dark hair is an unruly mess, sticking up on one side, as if he’d just rolled out of bed.
“What the hell are you two yelling about?” he grumbles.
I exchange a look with Jasper, then smirk up at Dredyn. “Have a nice beauty rest, princess?”
Dredyn narrows his icy blue eyes at me. “Bite me, Talon.”
He reaches past me to grab the beer from my hand and steals a swig.
“Rude! First Jasper won’t share his dinner, now you’re stealing my drink? The betrayal in this house, I swear.”
Dredyn smirks and hands the bottle back after draining a good third of it in one go. “Consider it a tax for waking me up this morning.” He shuffles over to the fridge and pulls it open, peering inside. I watch as he grimaces at the meager contents much like I did.
“Didn’t we assign Beck to grocery duty two days ago?” Dredyn mutters, pushing aside the same sad carton of expired milk I noted earlier.
“Yup,” I say. “And in true Beck fashion, he forgot.”
Dredyn lets out a short, irritated grunt. “I’ll kick his ass later. I’m starving.” He closes the fridge, holding up the forlorn pizza box. “Is this the last slice from Friday?”
Jasper nods slowly. Dredyn sighs and tosses the box back into the fridge
Dredyn scratches at the faint stubble on his jaw, looking between us. “Fine. Let’s just order in. Chinese sound good?” he grumbles, already pulling out his phone.
“Perfect,” I agree as my stomach gives an audible growl.
I glance back at Jasper’s screen and notice a paragraph of explanation written in neat purple ink on the document—definitely not Jasper’s handwriting. It looks like someone walked him through one of the problems step by step.
“Who’s the brainiac writing the answers for you?” I ask, genuinely curious.
Jasper’s fingers hesitate over the keyboard for a second. I can practically see the gears in his head turning as he formulates a response. But before he can answer, Dredyn, who had been leaning against the counter, chimes in.
“Apparently Jasper has roped someone into tutoring him. I’m trying to figure out who the poor soul is,” Dredyn says.
Jasper shoots me a withering glare, clearly blaming me for opening my big mouth.
“Drop it,” he signs curtly.
I arch my hands in surrender, grinning. “All right, all right. Just making conversation.”
But Dredyn, of course, doesn’t let it go. He leans forward, elbow on the table, expression somewhere between curious and calculating. “We could probably all use it. Is it one of the grad students?” He quirks a brow. “Is she hot?”
Jasper’s gaze drops straight to his laptop. He types something, backspaces, then starts again, avoiding us.
Before I can push the subject, Jasper glances up, eyes flicking to Dredyn with warning. “Are you going to tell him about the goat?”
“A goat?”
“Mad and Rook stole a goat and painted ‘OCK RULES’ on it, then let it loose in the main hall.”
Jasper chuckles silently into his cup. Even he thinks it was genius.
Dredyn exhales through his nose. “PTO reported it to the Greek Council—I got the email earlier. Those smug fucks want a formal apology and reimbursement for ‘emotional distress.’”
I bark out a laugh. “Emotional distress? Over a goat? Where the hell did Mad and Rook even get a goat?”
Dredyn doesn’t miss a beat. “I bought it.”
That makes me choke on my beer. “You bought it? Of course you fucking did. Tell me it wasn’t Craigslist.”
“No,” he says flatly, eyes gleaming. “It’s an Alpine—prize breed. Cost me a shit ton. I want it back.”
Across the table, Jasper lowers his cup and signs with one hand, “Why the fuck would you want a goat?”
Dredyn just grins. “Why not?”
I shake my head, laughing so hard my ribs hurt. “You’re telling me, the heir to Omega Chi Kappa—the muscle of the Syndicate—spent thousands of dollars on a goat, just so our brothers could paint it and traumatize PTO?”
“Exactly,” Dredyn says, unapologetic. “And I still want my goat back.”
“Future leaders of the Syndicate, and they cry over livestock. Fucking pathetic.”
Right on cue, the doorbell rings.
Dredyn stands, muttering, “Food’s here,” like he didn’t just confess to running a goat-based psy-op for fun.