Bonus Scene

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.