22. Dorm A Daddies

Isobel hurriedthrough a shower and tossed on a loose, cropped shirt with a dark green camouflage pattern—in keeping with the theme of their performance—to pair with her high-waisted, stretchy exercise shorts. She downed a bottle of water, her body still trying to produce sweat even after a cold shower, and met everyone else in the lounge.

Kalen and Mikel had dragged a dining table to sit behind the couch opposite the TV, and it was filled to overflowing with junk food.

“Just this once,” Mikel lectured the Alphas descending on the table, though Isobel knew he didn’t police their eating too badly.

He sent them meal plans—and her, too, since the start of the term—and checked in once a week to see if they needed adjusting. But he wasn’t overbearing about it.

Isobel picked up a container of fries drowning in melted cheese and salty seasoning, tucked a can of Coke under her arm, and settled on the floor. The Alphas always gave her a spot on the couch; it was beginning to feel unfair. Theodore, Moses, and Oscar sat behind her, and she leaned back against Moses and Theodore’s legs as Kilian fell to one side of her and Gabriel dropped to the other.

Gabriel had found the only salad on the table, it seemed, but he had paired it with a bottle of sparkling water so maybe he was celebrating after all.

Mikel had managed to transfer the footage he had captured over to the TV screen already, and he began to play it without preamble, handing the remote to Elijah.

Isobel tried to analyse the dancing. She really did. But she kept getting distracted by the sheer athletic magnetism of the Alphas on the stage. The way they jumped, kicked, even the way they grinned at the cameras. Their muscles twitched and bulged, their breaths coming harder and harder, sweat dusting their skin, their eyes intense.

She started fanning herself, her body growing hot.

Theodore squeezed her shoulder in sympathy, the talented, irresistible, condescending asshole.

“Oscar and Moses need to be tighter,” Elijah said, pausing the footage. “Their movements aren’t as sharp.”

“Dude, we wrote the song,” Moses complained. “What else do you want?” He didn’t seem to be genuinely complaining, more like backtalking for the sake of it.

Elijah apparently agreed, because he played the video again without responding.

“Here.” He paused once more, on a shot where Isobel and Theodore had moved to the front of the formation again, breaking from the dance to sing the high note of the song together. “Almost fucking perfect,” Elijah praised. “But Theo is overpowering Isobel. You need to work on your projection.” He flicked her a look, and she nodded quickly.

“I was too scared to give the note full power because sometimes I wobble.”

“We’ll keep working on it,” he promised her, playing the recording again.

He paused as Moses pushed to the front, his tone taking on the growly edge that was so unique to him.

“Vocal transition was good,” Elijah said, but he paused for a moment longer, considering something. “I have a suspicion quite a few people are about to turn that into a clip.”

Isobel pulled out her phone as they reached their fifth play-through of the recording, deciding they had picked it apart enough for one night. She navigated to one of her social media apps, where pictures of the performance began to flood her screen. There were no videos yet, per the Ironside policy, but the pictures were enough to tell a story. She clicked into a thread that seemed to have almost eighty pictures in it and scrolled through the comments.

@DormADaddies: Did Elijah Reed just dance, or did he just fuck me through my TV screen?

@who_is_lily98: Before I saw Oscar Sato dance, I thought he might break my legs. Now I think he might break my back. PLEASE brEAK MY BACK.

@jessleeXYZ: Carter is mother.

@filmfrenzy: I’m having daddy issues, because I don’t know who’s daddy anymore. Is it Theodore or is it Moses?

@lonely-hart: I don’t even have a uterus and I think Gabriel Spade just impregnated me.

@sjohno21: Isobel Carter can bite off my head and eat me like a praying mantis.

@TheRealLily: Theodore is KING.

@KaneClub32: That entire performance made me question my sexuality.

@IronsideIsAlpha: RE: @KaneClub32: That entire performance just became my sexuality.

@HartHQ: Niko really just said ‘ha, tricked you’ and pulled out a whole-ass persona out of his tennis bag.

@The_Reel_Ironside: How have they been hiding this much talent all this time???

@hollywoodhighlights: Carter’s mate should just stay hidden. He has no chance.

As she was reading the comments, a group message flashed across the top of her phone.

Kalen: 30 minutes until we’re due at the Dahlia.

She immediately got up to change, but Kalen shook his head, touching her arm and bending to mutter low by her ear. “Keep the top. I want that and matching panties.”

Her stomach flipped, but he was walking away from her before she could respond. It was the first time he had ever interfered in her costume choices, and she had to wonder why.

Was it because their patrons would have seen the photos by the time he led her onto that platform, or was it possible …

She shook her head, colour flooding her face.

No, that wasn’t right.

Kalen wouldn’t have gotten excited watching her the same way she had gotten excited watching the other Alphas. Kalen didn’t get excited.

Still … the thought plagued her as they walked to the boathouse, and remained even as Kalen began to twist the ropes around her limbs, but he didn’t touch her more than usual. He didn’t grab her harder, and his eyes didn’t burn any hotter. If anything, he seemed to have grown more in control of himself with every passing week, while she was the one always unravelling, wishing he would touch her more, desperate for him to ease the ache building between her legs as he carried her into his dressing room after the performance.

It was her favourite part, being cuddled into his lap, his fingers soothing through her hair and massaging her legs.

But it was torture.

Since the night with Mikel, he hadn’t stepped over that boundary again, content to slowly but surely drive her insane.

“Can we go and watch one of the fights?” she asked, as she quickly pulled off the camouflage top—now wrinkled and wet with tears, because sometimes she cried, either from the release after being let down from the ropes, or with desperation for Kalen to touch her. She couldn’t quite remember which it had been tonight. It was a bit of a blur. She shrugged a silk dress over her head and stepped into the silver heels she had worn on the way in.

“I suppose I can’t keep saying no.” Kalen seemed uneasy as he gathered his things. “My sponsorship of you is about to end. If anyone wants to request a private meeting with you, I’d prefer they do it while I can still insist on being in the room.” He checked his phone. “Oscar’s fight is just about to start. We might make it.”

He led her out of the room, but they had barely even passed into the next hall before three suited men stepped into their path. They wore headsets and had human eyes.

“A guest has requested to meet Isobel Carter,” one of them said.

Well … that was quick.

Kalen sighed, rubbing his jaw. “Fine. Lead the way.”

They followed the three men through the hall and down a passageway—the same passageway Eve had been led down a few weeks ago. They paused before a door, one of them stepping closer to her and Kalen.

“She will go in without you,” the man said, holding out a hand to press against Kalen’s chest, even though Kalen towered over him and looked like he could scoop him up into a bear hug and crush his bones.

But Kalen wasn’t human.

He was powerless.

Pissed, but powerless.

“I’m her sponsor,” Kalen began to growl, but the human cut him off.

“These two officials have been chosen to chaperone her in place of her sponsor.” He nodded at the men standing behind him. “Do we have a problem here, West?”

Kalen barged into her mind, knocking down her wall like it was made of LEGO and seating himself with a furious huff right in the centre of her mind, his words a snarl that swirled around her head.

You stay connected to me.

Okay, she returned.

“No problem at all.” Kalen held up his hands, stepping back. “I’ll wait right here.”

They opened the door and ushered her inside, the two men immediately leaving through a door opposite the one they had come through, leaving Isobel alone …

With her father.

“You could have just called another twelve times,” she drawled, fighting down panic.

It’s my father, she said to Kalen.

Call out if you need my help, he demanded.

“Very fucking funny,” Braun Carter snapped. He was furious, clutching the back of a fabric armchair like he might be able to tear into the velvety material and play with its innards in lieu of whatever violent urge he was feeling towards her.

“I guess you heard about the show?” she asked, examining her fingernails. “I told you I had it under control.”

“Stupid girl!” He picked up the chair and slammed it back down on the ground again.

Kalen’s insistent presence inside her mind grew alarmed, and she sent him a distracted plea to let her deal with Braun.

“You don’t challenge the officials,” her father snarled. “You don’t declare war against the entire fucking network. This isn’t just a stupid little reality show you fucking idiot. This is Ironside. This is capitalism. This is the economy of the world’s superpower, and you are an asset. If you prove to be a sunk cost, they will sell you off before you can do them any damage.”

“But I’m not a sunk cost, am I?” she asked calmly, examining the red flush of rage creeping over him, and the poisonous swell of his emotion crashing up against her chest like a storm battering the walls of a lighthouse with incessant, heavy waves.

How did he live like that?

Her father was no longer the standard against which she judged all Alphas. He was now the outsider, and for the first time in her life, she truly wondered what was wrong with him.

He continued to breathe heavily, clutching the chair like he might toss it against the wall next, waiting for her to explain herself.

“I’m pretty sure I just made Ironside history.” She shrugged. “Or at least I will by the time they air that episode—which they will have to air because we’ve filmed it. If they don’t air it, we will.”

Braun shook his head, some of the rage easing out of his complexion. Maybe it was hearing her talk as though she were truly invested in winning, for once.

“You don’t understand, Isobel. They’ll break you down one way or another. You need to play their game their way, or they will end you.”

“I really don’t,” she said, wondering if they had tried to break him. Was that why he was so certain? “Why do you care?” she added. “Why not just see me as a sunk cost and sell me off? Why do you keep interfering?”

“Is that what you want?” He released the chair, a strange, eerie sort of calm taking hold of his face and body. “You want to forget where you came from? Forget everything I’ve done for you? Everything I’ve sacrificed?”

He approached her, and she promised herself she would stand firm, but she still flinched when he raised his hand to rest on the top of her head.

“You’re my daughter,” he said. “That’s why I care.”

And then she felt it.

She felt him push into her mind.

It wasn’t the same as when Bellamy tried to speak inside her head, or when Kalen barged into her consciousness, or when one of the guys pulled everyone into her mind to address the whole group, like it was a big echoey room with lots of doors.

When her father entered, it was with a ghostly hand that plucked and picked and sorted through the images inside her memory. He gathered up a little moment where Kilian had held her hand, and Braun’s ghostly grip closed around the image, squeezing until it was ash, filtered through his shadowed fingers, and she couldn’t quite remember what the moment was.

He plucked another, and she was simply too stunned to react, her body frozen with confusion and shock as a memory of Theodore’s stunning smile nestled into Braun’s ghostly palm and once again, was crushed. She watched the ashes float away and wondered why she had felt sadness a moment ago.

She couldn’t remember.

And then she realised what he was doing, her body kicking into motion, her hands darting up to tear his grip from her head.

“Don’t move,” he growled in Alpha voice. “If you won’t do the sensible thing, then I’ll make you forget them, just like I made your mother forget you.”

Just like I made your mother forget you.

Thatwas why her mother hadn’t come to visit.

Because her father had an Alpha ability after all, and it wasn’t ferality.

The overwhelming fury inside her exploded outward, burning hot in her blood and making her hands twitch, her grip on his wrist tighten.

“Don’t move,” he snapped again, his Alpha voice compounding the need to obey inside her.

But he didn’t feel so strong as he once did.

And she was too angry to obey.

She dug her nails into his skin, tunnelling them deep and scouring his arm as he jerked his hand away with a feral hiss.

“I said don’t?—”

“I don’t give a fuck what you said,” she yelled at him. “Touch me again and it’ll be the last time you see me.”

He seemed too shocked to speak, the anger still vibrating through his body.

“Are you even my real father?” she demanded. “Or was my mother’s true mate my father? I don’t see how I could possibly come from you. There’s something putrid inside you, just rotting you away. I don’t understand how that can give birth to life.”

He fell back a step, shock arresting his features. “It can’t,” he said. “But you were … before.” He swallowed. “You happened before I got sick.”

Suddenly, all of his anger was gone, and it was like he was seeing a ghost. Blood dripped down his arm, and he didn’t even seem to notice. He stared straight through her.

“You don’t know what it feels like.” He moved back a few steps like he needed to get away from her. “I lost her.”

“You killed her,” Isobel countered, her tone uncertain. She wasn’t familiar with this empty, broken man.

It was like she had unlocked a part of him that he never visited, a part he was just as unfamiliar with as she was.

“Not your mother.” He waved her off. “My mate.”

Isobel swallowed tightly. “What?”

He sighed, and she could see him leaning into his anger again. He was about to dive back into the fury and violence to escape their conversation and whatever he was feeling, so she tacked on quickly, “Tell me about her.”

He slumped into the same chair he had almost torn apart a few minutes ago, wiping a hand down his face.

“You think I’m bad?” He laughed hollowly. “My father used to put out his cigarette butts on my legs. He used to mix cough syrups, mouthwash, cleaning products—anything he could get his hands on—into his coffee just to chase a high. He taught us this rage I feel, me and my brother. He beat it into us. But …”

“But your brother was worse,” Isobel realised out loud.

He had a demon.

“Caran was in love with me.” Braun’s voice was rough and uneven. “She waited for me while I was at Ironside, but she got sick before I graduated and guess who was by her fucking side?”

Isobel didn’t know what to say. Quietly, she fell into the seat opposite him, staring at the stranger who had become her father. He stumbled over his words like he had never said them out loud before.

“My brother was her mate,” he said. “But she still loved me. When she got pregnant … well … she was too scared to tell him the truth. He would … he had a fucking demon inside him. It would make his eyes black, make him attack anyone near him. He almost killed me a few times, almost killed her once. She had to keep him calm all the time. Then one night—you were only a few years old—he found out. He commanded her to tell him, and she did. She told him you were mine, and he lost control.”

His eyes clouded over, becoming unfocussed, his face creasing in pain. “I’ve tried to remove the memories, but I can’t. It won’t work on my own head.” He stared down at his hands. “I was supposed to be meeting them in the house I was building for them with my Ironside stipend. I had just graduated three days before, and I wanted to make sure you and her were taken care of while I was gone. I was going to cut ties. With her, you, him, my father.

“I couldn’t take the pain anymore. But that night, when I walked through the door, he was raging, ripping the whole place apart, threatening to kill everyone, and I could see his eyes were turning black. I pulled you and Caran into a room and locked the door, and the neighbour …” His breath shuddered. “She … came to investigate all the noise.”

His hands curled into fists in his lap, the slow, poisonous rage beginning to filter back into his body like smoke, curling up against her chest with a familiar, haunting pressure. “He killed her,” Braun stated plainly. “He ripped her to pieces and then tried to toss her body through the floor in the back room that was still under construction, but he tripped and hit his head. Caran locked you in my car and dragged me out of the house. There was something desperate inside me that demanded I go back into the house … I didn’t understand it. Caran was screaming at me, you were crying and trying to get out of the car … I just … I ignored my instincts. We found the officials and woke up the family who ran the settlement clinic. And then we hid you and Caran in the back of my car, and I drove you both out of the settlement.”

He cracked his knuckles, agony etched into his face. “When I got to my hotel, I saw it. My eye had changed.” He looked up at her, with two eyes very much the same honey-gold shade. “I watched in the mirror as the dark brown faded back to this, and the darkness has been with me ever since.” He touched his chest. “She was my mate. She was right there. I didn’t even get to see her before he tore her apart. She needed me and Caran pulled me away. All because you are my daughter.” His eyes narrowed, examining the look of horror on her face. “You don’t have the darkness, do you, Isobel? You don’t know this poison, which means your mate isn’t fucking missing at all. You know exactly who they are.”

“I don’t,” she croaked.

She could never forget the sensation of the ground opening up beneath her like a set of wide, sharp maws, sucking her into a chasm of pain and sorrow for her to fall through, and fall through, without even the kindness of death waiting below.

Her father had been falling for a long time.

“Is it one of the Alphas?” he asked her, and she thought this might be the calmest, most adult conversation she had ever had with him.

“No,” she lied. “I don’t know who it is.”

“I won’t try to tear you away from them.” He gritted his teeth, that echo of pain racing across his eyes again. “Not if one of them is your mate, but I need to know why you’re hiding it.”

“You lost the right to know anything about me.” She stood to leave but found herself filled with grief and regret as she looked back at him, realising that this tortured, warped man … could have been Niko.

And maybe still could be.

“I’m sorry you have to live with that darkness inside you,” she said, “but you don’t get to use it as an excuse anymore, not to yourself or anyone else. I meant what I said earlier. If you lay your hands on me or my mind again, I’ll make sure you die bitter and alone, tumbling down that dark, dark hole with nobody at your side and not even the barest flicker of light to ease the endless torment inside you.”

“And if I don’t?” he asked stiffly, as though the words were an admission of guilt and it pained him to utter them. “If I don’t ever lay a hand on you again?”

“Then you might finally realise you have a daughter,” she said. “And you’ve had her all along. Someone who wasn’t paid to be by your side. Someone who didn’t need to stay with you to survive. Someone who would have loved you purely and unselfishly if you hadn’t hurt her and scared her and bullied her. You might find that you were never truly alone in the darkness.”

He didn’t answer her, his jaw tight, his agony and anger swirling into a spiral that threatened to sweep her up … except … he pulled it back. He struggled, unsure how to control himself, wincing as his torment sank back into his skin, likely sitting with the same sickening heaviness with which it always sat inside her.

He stared at her for a long time, before finally looking down at the floor. “Who are you?” he asked, unable to meet her eyes. “Three years ago, I dropped off a scared little girl, but I don’t see her anymore. I don’t know who you are.”

“I’m a little bit of you,” she admitted, drawing his familiar eyes back up. There were tears in them that stubbornly refused to fall. “And a little bit of her. But mostly, I’m still just that scared little girl.”

“I think you could win this game, Isobel.” It wasn’t a forceful statement. It was an almost curious observation. “With or without my help.”

“I will win this game,” she told him. “With or without your help.”

To be continued …

Bonus Scene

THE WHISTLEBLOWER

Annalise Teak steppedinto the conference room, clicking the door softly closed behind her. Everyone else had already gathered, and when Callum saw her enter, he motioned for everyone to be quiet. She hurried to an empty chair, nodding quietly at Tilda, the creative director.

Callum cleared his throat and pressed a button, bringing up an image on the projector screen. It was a paused frame of a surveillance video. A room somewhere in the Stone Dahlia, if the rough stone wall was anything to go by, though the strange threaded necklaces nailed to the stone didn’t really suit the decor of the Dahlia.

This was bad.

If she had been called, then it was about Carter … and if Callum Rowe was there, heading the table no less, then … perhaps Carter’s mate had finally been found.

Found by the officials. Carter obviously already knew who it was.

Olivia Frisk—Callum’s executive assistant—was also there, as well as Ed Jones, Jack Ransom, and several other officials.

“As you all know,” Callum began, his small eyes crawling across the table as a meaty hand fell onto the shoulder of the official beside him, “Yulia has been sponsoring several students into the Stone Dahlia under the new permanent program. She suspected that one of them might have information on Isobel Carter’s mate, and … well, you can see for yourselves.”

He started the video, stepping back so they could all see the screen clearly, and Annalise watched as a girl was led into the room by a gold chain attached to a thick metal collar. Bile spilled across her tongue, but she kept her expression unbothered. Unlike Ed and Jack, who both visibly winced.

The presenters of the Ironside Show partook thoroughly of the benefits the Dahlia had to offer, but they didn’t have a taste for the darker side of the club.

The girl was directed into a seat, and it took a few moments of frowning at the patches over her eyes for Annalise to realise who she was looking at.

Eve Indie.

“What happened to her eyes?” Jack asked, frowning at the projection.

“That’s the reason she was brought in,” Yulia responded, as several masked men entered the room on the screen, carrying large, heavy bags with them. “When I found her in the hospital, she was high on painkillers and laughing about how mad she had made them. I had a feeling she was talking about Carter’s mate, among other people, so I had her followed. But … nobody approached her, so last night, I decided to bring her in for questioning.”

“We’re going to try this the easy way,” a female voice crooned over the video. Yulia. She stepped into the frame, also wearing a mask. “Tell me who Isobel Carter’s mate is.”

The masked officials pulled Eve’s arms behind her back, tying them together, and then they tied her ankles to the legs of the chair.

“I don’t know,” Eve said, her tone flat, like she was bored of answering the same question.

One of the officials grabbed her ponytail and yanked her head back, another one pinching her jaw into a tight and unyielding grip. A third pulled a sloshing bucket out of one of the bags they had dragged into the room, and Yulia bent over it, prying off the lid. She leaned in and extracted a heavy, sodden cloth, which she folded and laid over Eve’s face.

Immediately, Eve’s body jerked, the cloth concaving as her mouth opened and she tried to pull in a panicked breath. Yulia reached into another bag, uncapping a large bottle of water. She poured it over Eve’s face, soaking the cloth further as the girl tried to desperately jerk and wiggle free. When the bottle was empty, Yulia peeled off the cloth, and Eve coughed and spluttered in broken, raspy sounds.

“Please,” she begged. “I don’t know. I don’t?—”

Yulia slapped the cloth back over her face, and the wet sounds of Eve frantically trying to suck in air through the cloth had Annalise’s stomach souring, turning over and over.

She was going to be sick.

Yulia emptied another bottle of water, and this time, when she removed the cloth, Eve vomited all over herself. “All of them,” she sobbed. “Carter … bonded … all of them.”

“All of who?” Yulia asked, stepping closer.

“The Alphas,” Eve coughed. “She has ten mates. All the … all the Alphas in Dorm A.”

Yulia surveyed the girl. “You’re not very good at keeping secrets, are you, Miss Indie?”

“Please.” Eve sobbed harder, water dribbling from her mouth. “P-please, I won’t tell them you know. I won’t warn them or anything?—”

Yulia had put the cloth back over her face. “No,” she said, picking up another bottle. “You won’t.”

Annalise let her eyes fall to a spot just below the projection screen, wishing she could also cover her ears as the sloshing, kicking, and grunting continued. She could still hear the rasped, water-logged sound of the cloth pulling into Indie’s mouth.

Even when the video ended, she could still hear it.

She looked up, seeing the paused image of the girl’s lifeless, slumped body, and her vision turned blurry. She hid her trembling hands beneath the table, looking up with unseeing eyes as Callum said her name.

“Is it possible?” he was asking.

Don’t lie. They’re testing you.

“Anything is possible when it comes to the mate bonds,” she replied, the slightest tremor in her voice. “I’ve never seen or heard about a Tether latching on to so many Anchors, but no … it’s not impossible.”

“As we suspected.” Callum nodded. “We need to put a stop to this. If any one of them wins the Ironside Show, we’re contractually obliged to give freedom to their mates. We would have to award eleven winners. It has to be stopped.”

“They’re proving too difficult to control,” Tilda said with a frown. “They have enough support that if we don’t give them screen time, they’ll start posting their own videos and people will turn to them instead of the Ironside Show.”

“That is precisely why we aren’t going to attempt to control them,” Callum responded. “No, that won’t work. We’re going to eliminate Dorm A and everyone inside it. A gas explosion—can it be done?” he asked Yulia.

“I’ll need a month to make sure it’s a clean job,” she responded.

“A month it is.” Callum nodded. “Make sure Theodore Kane isn’t in the building when it happens. He brings in the most viewers, and it’ll boost our audience scores if they get to watch him mourn his Ironside family. We won’t let him win, of course. But let’s keep him around for the numbers.”

“Understood,” Yulia said, pulling out her phone as she stood. “I’ll get right to work.”

“I’ll need your expertise to keep Kane alive without his mate,” Callum said to Annalise as the rest of the people around the table rose from their seats, shuffling toward the door. “Just until he graduates.”

Annalise nodded. Keep it together, just a few minutes more. “Consider it done,” she said.

“Good stuff.” He clapped her on the back. A little too low on her spine for comfort. “Give my love to that mate of yours, hm? I hope you’re both comfortable in the accommodations we provided?”

It sounded like a threat.

“Very comfortable, thank you.”

“Excellent, excellent.” His hand slid a little lower, brushing against her ass as she hurried to the doorway.

She avoided the other officials talking quietly just outside the conference room—just another day in the office, for them, discussing the people in their show like they weren’t even living, breathing cognizant beings, but puppets in a play.

A very expensive play.

She walked quickly past Ed and Jack, who were ashen-faced and a little wobbly on their feet. They spent more time with the Gifted than any of the other officials. She hurried to her office, her breaths swelling fast and hard inside her chest.

She closed her door and sat down at her desk, her fingers trembling as she pulled out her phone. She wasn’t supposed to have Carter’s number. As far as the officials knew, she saw and spoke to Carter when she was ordered to, and she reported back on every word Carter said.

They didn’t know Annalise had been lying to them.

They couldn’t ever know.

She tapped on Isobel’s number, and, heart-racing, typed a message.

Eve Indie is dead. She told the officials who your mates are. You need to announce your bond to the world before they kill you all. Announce the bond to the world, and it will be too suspicious if an accident takes you all out. Do it now. Delete this message. Do not respond.

She deleted the message as soon as she sent it, and dropped her phone to her desk, running shaky fingers through her hair.

All cards were on the table, now.

The Ironside Show was about to go up in flames, and she had lit the match, knowing full well that she might burn down with the rest of them.