16. I Really Hate You

Isobel steppedout of the shower, wrapping herself in a towel and sinking into a chair in her dressing room, gnawing on her lower lip as she considered her predicament.

Her skin felt overheated and overstimulated. Even the brush of her towel against her thighs was too much, and the Ben Wa balls inside her were beginning to feel truly uncomfortable.

She had fallen asleep on the couch in Kalen’s dressing room, and when she had woken up, she had been too embarrassed to say anything to him, let alone ask him for his assistance with the Ben Wa balls. She had fled his presence the second they returned to the dorm.

She fiddled with her phone before sighing and bringing up the group chat, since the dorm had seemed empty before she jumped into the shower and she didn’t know where anyone was.

Isobel: I need help.

The thumbs-up icon popped up below her message and she clicked on it to reveal the name.

Mikel Easton.

She wrinkled her nose, shaking her head. “You’re the literal devil,” she said to her phone.

Kilian: Everything okay?

Isobel: There’s something inside me that needs to be removed and I’m not allowed to remove it myself.

Niko: What the fuck, Carter?

Cian: Simmer down, Niko. She obviously wasn’t asking you.

Theodore: This feels like a trap.

The little thumbs-up icon appeared below Theodore’s message, and she clicked on it to reveal Mikel’s name again.

Isobel: I need someone to remove it platonically.

Theodore: There it is.

Moses: I haven’t laughed so hard in weeks. Thanks, Carter.

Cian: Is the platonic part negotiable?

Isobel: No. I don’t feel like being spanked tonight.

Another thumbs-up.

Mikel Easton was the devil.

Elijah: Okay, for once, I’m at a loss. What the actual fuck is happening?

Gabriel: There’s absolutely no way Kalen put something inside you during the performance.

Kalen (admin): Mikel punished her for disobeying the rules of the hunt.

Moses: Remind me never to disobey Mikki.

Cian: Pretty sure he would just beat you up, Moses.

Moses: I’m not willing to take the chance.

Mikel (admin): Shut up, Moses.

Moses: Don’t come after my orifices!

Mikel gave Moses’s message a thumbs-up, and Isobel snorted, shaking her head.

Kilian: Can you be a little more specific about what the object is and where it is?

Niko: Could you not?

Oscar: Don’t pretend you don’t want to know.

Niko: You’re all insane.

Oscar: We’ll be back soon, Carter. I can help you then.

Isobel sat up straighter, her fingers flying across the screen.

Isobel: Where are you all?

Theodore: Necklace hunting.

Kilian: Niko pretended to move his shit into the human accommodations for his week of sleepovers. They don’t have cameras in there, so he searched their rooms. He found five of them—one in each of their rooms.

Moses: We’re still looking for the rest.

Isobel frowned at her screen, before clicking on Niko’s name to open a private message.

Isobel: I thought you didn’t believe me?

His response was instant.

Niko: Open up.

Her head snapped up at the faint sound of a knock in the next room. She tossed her phone aside and hurried into the bedroom. Niko was standing on the other side of her bedroom door, his hands shoved into the pockets of a sports jacket, his hazel eyes guarded, his hair—bleached into a pale silver through the mid-lengths and ends, but still an inky black at the roots—framed his handsome face in a fretful, two-toned mess. He had a sports bag slung over his arm, but he wasn’t in exercise clothes. He was in a pair of slim-fit jeans, artfully distressed and faded in all the right places, though she assumed it was from wear rather than a deliberate design. He wore a faded tee with Ironside Academy scrawled across the front, the material soft enough to hint at the sculpted torso beneath.

His attention slipped from her face, dropping to her towel, and she quickly stood aside.

“I was just getting dressed,” she snipped, ignoring the blush creeping over her cheeks as she spun on her heel and stalked back to the bathroom. “Can you make it quick?”

He followed her silently, closing the bathroom door behind him. She collapsed back into her chair in the dressing room, and he dragged a footstool over to face her, sitting and crossing his ankle over his knee, his sneaker jiggling in agitation. He let his bag slip off his shoulder, falling to the ground. He had left it unzipped to fit his tennis racquet, and she peered into it now, spotting a change of clothes.

“Was it really an act?” she asked, nodding to his bag. “Were you just pretending you were going to stay with her?”

He glanced at his bag, fidgety and distracted. “I always carry around a change of gym clothes.” He dug into the pockets of his jacket, producing several lengths of thin, braided rope, which he dipped forward to drop into her lap, before leaning back again, gripping the edge of the stool behind him.

“There.” His voice was harsh. “Your little soul pieces.”

Niko wantedto pick up his bag and flee the room. He wanted it with every fibre of his being because even sitting this close to her was making him feel insane.

He couldn’t think straight when he could see her, or even when the others talked about her. He struggled to remember what it was like before he was pulled from the river. There was nothing but deep, endless darkness inside him, twisting with ugly, grotesque shadows, the unsteady floor beneath him doused in gasoline and set on fire so that he was always screaming in his mind, crying out from the agony.

There wasn’t any room for logic, or memory.

There was only pain, and deformity.

Except … sometimes, if he tried hard enough or looked hard enough, he felt other things. It was easier to look at her now because it was easier to be around the necklaces. They calmed the screams and blanketed the fire—not entirely, but enough for him to breathe again. That was why he had stepped forward for Mei.

Isobel had said that the necklaces were their bond. Hers and his. And he remembered bonding with her, for the most part.

He could watch it like a movie, but all he felt was pain and anger and something ugly and poisonous. It was like his mind was broken.

He remembered the bond shattering more than anything else. He had tried to take it all, to keep it away from her, but he had damaged himself in the process.

Severely.

He knew it more surely than he knew anything. It may have been the only thing he knew with any degree of certainty.

Isobel stared down at the necklaces, fear and hope warring across her features. It was strange, to be able to look at her. To know, objectively, that he had found her beautiful. To see that beauty clear as day … and to wish nothing more than to hurt it.

He felt that he would infect her if he stayed with her for too long. He would make her ugly. He would spread his deformity to her, somehow. But he couldn’t drag himself away.

She’s lying to you.

She wants to trick you.

The poison in his mind refused to listen to logic, to his best friends, to her. So he stayed to see what she would do with the necklaces. To force her to prove what she was claiming.

Without even looking at him, she placed one of the necklaces along her forearm, plucking at the string securing the ends until they began to unravel. She held her breath, her chest rising and falling above the towel, drawing his unwilling focus to where the end of the covering was tucked in.

He wondered what it felt like before, his lust for her. Had it felt as violent? As furious? As disgusting? As possessive?

The strands of hair began to glow, to burn, to hiss and steam as they melted through her flesh. He leaned forward, frowning as she clenched her jaw and bore the pain without a word.

This means nothing.

“Thought it would be prettier,” he said, the rotten malevolence inside him refusing to stay quiet for long. “This is hardly a glorious reuniting of the soul.”

“Bond magic demands blood at the best of times,” she gritted.

He hated everything about her except the way she braced herself against the pain, laying a second necklace over her other forearm. Her eyes burned as her skin burned, her jaw set, her muscles tight, every inch of her stubborn. Every sound that she swallowed made his cock lengthen … until she sagged back against the chair, the final necklace singed back into her skin, and he found himself all the way hard.

Which he hated, of course.

She was so painfully inconvenient.

She regarded him with that fire still in her eyes as she panted. “You look pissed,” she noted, suddenly ducking forward and dragging his gym bag toward herself. She dug around for a tennis ball, which she threw at him. “Here. Squeeze this.”

His grip flexed around the ball on instinct before he scoffed and tossed it aside. It wasn’t what he wanted to be squeezing. He much preferred the idea of wrapping his hands around her infuriatingly pretty little neck. So he stood to leave, because as pissed as he was, he knew that the others would kill him if he touched her, if he spread his ugly into her, if he made her catch his disease.

She jumped up before he could escape, closing the door and tossing her arms out to guard it.

“Just wait—” she rasped.

“Get the fuck out of my way, Carter.” That felt wrong. He had always called her Isobel. Even her last name tasted like ash.

“Just wait,” she repeated, more insistently this time. “I just … I need to know why you’re so angry at me. Is it true, what Elijah said? You took all the mental damage of the soul infraction?”

He flinched, rage boiling hot and fierce, clouding his vision.

How dare she.

He didn’t know what, exactly, she had done wrong. He could barely remember what she had said, or why he was there.

The necklaces—that’s right.

He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, repeating the facts Gabriel had taught him.

We are a group.

We keep the bond a secret.

The group is safe.

Red means stop.

He opened his eyes again, his rage curdling when he heard the faint knock in the other room. He had locked the door behind him, but he wasn’t sure why. He had locked it, hadn’t he?

“Tell the others to back off and leave us alone,” he grated out.

“Okay.” She flipped her hands up this time, placating him, her tone soft and soothing.

He wondered what it would sound like if he squeezed enough to damage her vocal cords.

No.

That was against the rules.

We are a group.

We keep the bond a secret.

The group is safe.

Red means stop.

Isobel was part of the group, which meant she was safe.

She leaned over to grab her phone off the chair, sending a message and turning the screen to show him.

Isobel: Niko is with me. My body accepted the light without a problem. We need a minute.

He grabbed her phone and tossed it behind him. “That was stupid.”

She sighed like she was sick of his attitude.

Well … fuck her?

“You’re the one who wanted me to stay,” he reminded her, taking a step closer.

She backed up. Maybe she wasn’t so stupid after all. He advanced another step, and her shoulders bumped the door. She groaned, a hand slipping over her towel-covered stomach.

“Fucking hell I hope that man gets the karma he deserves,” she grumbled.

“What?” Niko recalled something about Mikel in the group chat, but he couldn’t think clearly even with the most simple of tasks, so he had given up trying to unravel that particular mystery almost as soon as they began talking about it.

“Mikel put some metal balls inside me and told me I’m not allowed to remove them on my own. That’s what I was texting the group for. He obviously meant one of you guys, unless everyone is fine with me texting Silva to come over and put his creepy fingers in me.”

What the actual fuck?

He surged forward in a dizzying rush of possession and fury, gripping her shoulders as he pinned her to the door.

“Just because I don’t want you doesn’t mean you get to throw yourself at fucking Silva,” he snarled.

She shoved against his chest. “It was a joke, asshole!”

Mine.

He ripped her towel away and grabbed her chin, forcing her face to the side, glaring at the line of tiny black hearts stepping down her neck. The explosion inside him didn’t cool until he had her bare and exposed, revealing their bonded mark.

Mine.

Now there was a chorus rioting alongside the furious chaos inside him, chanting that infernal word over and over and over.

“Yellow,” she whispered.

He didn’t lift his hands from her, but he stilled, and so did she.

Red means stop.

But yellow didn’t mean red.

She waited, pulling in one breath after another, her skin growing hot beneath his grip.

Isobel releasedthe brief spark of fear that had flared to life inside her. Niko was still immobile, still waiting. Fighting something inside his mind. She wasn’t sure that he would stop, but now that she knew, she couldn’t help the well of hope that rose inside her chest. She had tested him, and he had stopped.

She dragged his hand down from her neck until it was pressing over her frantically beating heart. “Nothing has changed for me,” she told him.

He stared at the back of his hand … and then seemed to realise she was naked. His eyes trailed down over her breasts, her stomach, her legs. His brow furrowed, and his lips twisted into a scowl.

“Yellow isn’t red,” he said, dragging his hand lower, over her breast, her stomach, following the path his eyes had taken.

He slipped it between her legs, finding her wet. His eyes darkened, a low, rumbling growl vibrating through his torso.

“Stop trying to fucking fix me,” he demanded, shoving his fingers inside her without warning.

She yelped, soaking him further, because as much as he had tried to take all of the fucked-up darkness of their damaged bond, some of it remained in her. And it was viciously pleased that he was staking a claim, even though he was doing it with a look in his eye that bordered on disgust.

He seemed to have found the nylon loop because she felt the pull of the balls being slowly dragged downward.

Her breath turned ragged, her hands grabbing fistfuls of his jacket. She feared he would pull the thread out with a brutal yank, but his frown was one of extreme concentration.

Group is safe, he mouthed the words, staring at her neck.

She hiccupped on a sob, seeing the broken chaos in his eyes, and he seemed to shake off his trance, his hand freezing.

“Does it hurt?” he demanded.

He thought she was crying from Mikel’s toy.

She shook her head, and his frown burrowed deeper. He pulled the thread free, releasing one ball, and then the second, from the fatigued clutches of her body.

He dropped the toy without even glancing at it, two fingers immediately tunnelling back into her.

“You’re so swollen,” he said, voice like gravel, searching her neck, temper flashing back into his eyes.

“I c-can’t,” she gasped, clutching his wrist.

“Can’t isn’t red.” He dragged his fingers out before pressing them in again, his thumb brushing over her clit.

She shuddered, a jolt of pleasure making her almost dizzy with relief.

“No, I mean … I … really can’t,” she begged, gripping his wrist. “Mikel said I’m not allowed to come until tomorrow.”

“Do I look like I give a fuck what you or Mikel want?” Niko snarled, pulling his fingers out and dropping to his knees, his tongue laving at her heated flesh.

He groaned, the sound animalistic, his hands gripping her thighs, and the second he looked up at her, hazel eyes burning, she knew she was lost. The tension of Gabriel, and then Mikel, and then Kalen teasing her all night crashed through her body, and trying to stop it was like trying to hold back a sudden release of water. It poured through her hands and washed all over her body, a broken sound torn out of her mouth. The orgasm lasted too long, Niko tasting every moment of it.

He bit her stomach, her rib, the side of her breast, sucking the flesh into his mouth until it throbbed and ached. And then he took her mouth. He kissed her like she was anchoring him to sanity, before dropping to her breasts again. He bit and licked and sucked until her chest was littered with his marks, drawn like a magnet back to her mouth, his kiss rough as he shoved off his jacket. He eased away from her far enough to rip his shirt over his head, and then he was coming back down on her with the full force of his strength, lifting her against the door and pinning her there with his chest and hips as he pulled her legs around his waist and tugged down his zipper.

It didn’t even occur to her to stop him, to say the word that would end what was happening, or even the word that would make him pause. She was well aware that she was about to have her first time against the door in her closet with an Alpha who glared at her with disdain … and she had never been more desperate for anything in her life.

She needed him.

She felt like she would die if he dropped her and left her unclaimed. Something slow and hesitant was trying to build between them, subtle and soft beneath the rough, feral battle between their bodies, something she wasn’t even sure he noticed.

This thing between them was awful and messy and right.

“Fuck, I hate you,” he groaned, notching the head of his cock into her entrance.

She licked her lips, her eyes glazing over as he surveyed her face. It was only a moment before he captured her lips again, his hands tightening on her thighs as he eased deeper into her. He rocked there for a moment, that tiny little thread of softness between them flickering in the dark of her consciousness.

His hands flexed on her skin, and she knew she would have bruises there to match the ones on her chest.

“Tell me how you feel, mate.” It was a rough demand, full of mistrust and confusion. He didn’t seem to realise he had called her mate.

“I care about you,” she whispered, her breath catching on a whimper as he seated himself fully inside her.

She was already sore, already swollen, but it was a strange relief to be filled again, to be filled until she was truly full. His breaths were choppy, his eyes unfocused. He ducked to taste her lips, the kiss exploratory. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered back.

He pulled back and shoved into her in a single, brutal stab, vaulting her toward a ledge she wasn’t sure she wanted to jump off. There were tears in her eyes, and he pulled out halfway, rocking again, only a few inches back and forth until her tears slipped free and a whine was pulled from her body.

“Tell me the truth,” he growled, thrusting deep, fucking her into the door in long, unrelenting strokes until she was clinging to his shoulders, hiding her head in his neck, her throat raw from the sobs she fought to swallow down.

It was too much emotion.

Too much pleasure and fear.

She was staring at it right in the monstrous eyes, acknowledging that she might have lost the Niko she had known and that she …

“I …” she whispered, the words failing her.

He released one of her legs, gripping her hair and pulling her back from his neck. He wanted to see her. He knew the words on her tongue, and he wanted to taste them.

She could feel his want.

Inside her head.

She could feel him.

He was connected to her again.

His lips hovered over hers, waiting. “Tell me the truth,” he ordered, so quiet, his thrusts becoming slow and languorous.

His mind was chaos. Scattered thoughts, sensations, memories. Everything swirling around in an ugly vortex he struggled to stand upright inside of. But he was managing to ignore all of it, his focus on cherries. On softness. On the brush of her hair tickling his fingers where he gripped her thigh. On the rippling, squeezing muscles around his dick. On the words he wanted to hear.

Tell me.

This time, he spoke inside her head.

Her reply was easier, this way.

I was falling for y?—

His lips crashed down on hers, cutting her off, and his groan was gravel. He lifted her, turning away from the door and ripping several articles of clothing from the nearest rack, tossing them to the ground before he deposited her on top of them. He was inside her again faster than she could reach for him, his fingers teasing her clit as his mouth latched onto her breast. It meant he could only circle the head of his dick inside her, because of their height difference, but he let out a rough, bestial sound against her nipple when she tried to tug him back up her body.

He wrung another orgasm out of her, and when she tried to wiggle away, her flesh overly sensitised, he ducked down to bite her thigh. He sucked her skin roughly, marking her over and over on each of her thighs until she was dripping and desperate for him again, and then he laved her with his tongue until she was on the edge of another release.

He rose, shoving into her, his body shaking.

“Won’t last, mate.”

Mine.

He repeated the word as he buried himself inside her and growled into her neck, licking over the little heart he had tattooed into her skin as he pulsed and throbbed, releasing into her.

He licked her neck again before rolling to the side so that he wouldn’t crush her, his grip tight on her thigh as he hooked it over his hip, refusing to let her pull away.

They were both breathing in soft rasps, sweat misting their skin, his cock still hard and persistent inside her as the aftershocks of her orgasm continued to shiver through her body.

“Something changed.” His voice was guttural and strained, misting the skin of her neck. He had turned her so that his mark was still accessible. “I can almost think straight … like it’s there but … just out of reach.”

It was worse before?

Her chest squeezed painfully.

“And I can hear you.” He pulsed inside her. “I can feel you in my head, separate to all the chaos. Will you stay?”

“I’ll stay,” she promised quietly, hugging herself tightly against him. “I’m sorry, Niko.”

He nuzzled his mark. “I’m sorry, mate.”

Her heart melted, but her despair only swelled, because she could feel his darkness closing in again, whipping about his mind now that he wasn’t so focussed on fucking her. He gently pulled out of her and rolled up to a sitting position before bundling her into his arms and carrying her to the shower.

She winced as the maelstrom inside his head swirled faster and faster.

“Out,” he demanded, seeing her face as he set her onto the bench in the shower. “Don’t stay. Get out.” He shoved at her presence in his mind, constructing a clumsy wall to ward her off, and she was glad that he had cut her off in that moment, so that he couldn’t feel how much she hurt for him.

“Part of the group,” he said, some of the focus leaking from his eyes. “Red is stop.”

He kicked off his jeans and turned on the shower, growing silent as he washed her with so much care and meticulous attention she could have been made of glass. She didn’t dare push his hands away or offer to do it herself, but she monitored him, searching his eyes for any sign of the hatred he had possessed earlier.

It was gone, but somehow … this was worse.

Without the fire, it was so clear that Niko was broken.

He dried himself and tugged his pants back on before he towel-dried her just as softly and carefully as he had washed her. He wrapped her into a fresh towel, carried her back to the dressing room, and sat her in the same chair as earlier, backing away with his hands raised like he was putting everything back exactly the way he had found it.

Pretending it never happened.

His distraction and confusion increased as he gathered his things, putting on his shirt, his jacket, and his shoes. He looped his gym bag over his shoulder and shifted from foot to foot as he stared at her.

“It didn’t fix me,” he said, staring at her forearms before his eyes crawled back up to hers. “As much as I would love to, I can’t be fucking you every hour of the fucking day. I need …”

“We’ll fix it,” she promised. “I promise, Niko.”

He sucked in a heavy breath, licking his lips. “We’ll see,” he allowed, like he didn’t believe her.

He opened the door, the distance between them already growing, but there was light between them again. A connection that lived. His wall slipped, just for a moment, his urge to stay with her warring with the persistent thought that he didn’t deserve it.

She opened her mouth to ask him to stay, but he spoke before she could.

“You’re safe?”

“Yes—”

“You’re hurt?”

“No, Niko?—”

He nodded and disappeared in a blink, slamming the door behind him.