7. Kalen Is Too Big

“Maybe you should askwhy Silva before you agree.” Theodore’s voice was harsh, but he didn’t look angry at her.

He didn’t look anything except tense and frustrated.

“Okay. Why did you guys pick Silva?” she relented, not that she really cared. If Theodore could put up with Wallis for so long, then she could put up with the most popular male dancer in her previous lyrical ballet class.

“He sent you a package.” Kilian spoke calmly, but there was a dark undertone to his voice that had her head snapping around to look at him. “He obviously didn’t know that you were arriving late, because he gave it to me when I said you were sleeping and that I’d deliver it to your room.”

“What was the package?” Unease slithered down her spine at the looks on their faces.

“A prayer card, two dolls, and a whole lot of razor blades tucked into the packaging,” Kilian gritted.

“What?” She jumped to her feet, tearing out of Moses’ hold. “Are you okay?”

“I tipped it out onto the table,” Kilian reassured her. “I didn’t stick my hand in there.”

The fight drained out of her body, quickly replaced with confusion. “Wait—a prayer card? Dolls?”

“A silly settlement superstition,” Cian explained. “He had already bled on one of the dolls and the prayer card. Some people back in the settlements believe you can bleed onto voodoo dolls and bury them with a prayer card, and the gods will bond the souls of the dolls together.”

“He was trying to bond me?” she screeched, the blood draining from her face. “And you want him to be my fake boyfriend?”

“We have his life in our hands.” Oscar spoke like his own words were leaving a bad taste in his mouth. “You know how serious the officials are about people messing with bond magic and trying to force bonds. There’s nobody in this academy we can control as completely as him right now. And he’s already been warned about fucking with you. I’ve already told him that if we catch him doing any more voodoo shit, he’s dead.”

“Dead how?” she asked, cutting Oscar a suspicious look.

“Dead like a corpse.” He didn’t even hesitate.

She winced. “Oscar.”

“Isobel.”

She sighed, glancing around the room, hoping for someone to step in. They just stared impassively back at her.

“You can’t go around threatening to kill people,” she hissed.

“Threats are for people who don’t intend to follow through,” he snarled.

Niko’s second stress ball popped, making her jump. He sighed, tossing it to the coffee table. She approached him cautiously, holding out her hand. “I am not a tennis ball,” she warned him, hesitant to put her ligaments into his flexing grip.

He snorted, taking her other hand—the one she hadn’t offered—and spinning her back to the wall beside him so that he could tuck her beneath his arm, their linked hands hanging across her chest.

“To be clear,” Mikel spoke up, “Silva will not be permitted alone time with you unsupervised, and he will not be added as a surrogate. Since your surrogates were established before he came into the picture and you won’t be sleeping with any of them on camera—and especially with you putting on such a platonic display with Bellamy over the summer—we’re confident that people won’t question the morality of you having a boyfriend and maintaining your surrogates on the side. If anyone questions you, you can just say that you’d like to keep the bond separate from your romantic life. This will help to minimise the bond even more.”

“Won’t people get angry that I’m being unfaithful to my mate?” she asked.

“The mate who hasn’t materialised despite you touring the settlements to find them and broadcasting your odd eye colour all over the world?” Gabriel arched a perfect brow at her. “I don’t think so, not anymore.”

She shrugged. “I suppose that’s a fair point.”

He nodded, crossing his ankle over his knee. “You’ve waited long enough. You did your best to find them. It should be acceptable for you to move on with your life now.”

“Next item on the agenda.” Kalen checked his watch. “Is the group itself. With Cooper out of the way, you can sign a contract appointing myself and Mikel as your co-managers. The others have already signed. The term is for ten years, and it grants us the full rights to every song produced by Eleven.”

“We insisted,” Kilian explained before she could even question it. “It makes Kalen and Mikel indispensable. The laws governing Ironside are different to the settlement laws. Anyone here can sign with a manager or a public relations team, for any length of time. The stipulations are that if those people don’t win, the contracts are void. So if we win as a group, our contracts are valid. They apparently didn’t account for the absurd notion of anyone wanting to hire Gifted representation instead of a human team.”

“The Track Team will put up a fight,” Kalen allowed. “They control the Icon track and every Icon past and present, we know that. But if we time our moves right, we can reveal to the public that Eleven is signed to myself and Mikel, and lean on the popularity for some protection.”

“Because if we make it really big, they can’t just disappear us,” Isobel surmised, drifting unconsciously closer to Niko, sipping on his heady whiskey scent as she sought the heat of his solid body.

“Everything we do from this moment on,” Mikel said, “we do for Eleven. Every drop of sweat, every hour in the practice rooms, every class you take, every picture you upload. Gabriel is in full control of social media, so when he tells you to do something, you do it.” Mikel seemed to be lecturing everyone at once, fixing each of them with a slow, careful, calculating look. “When Elijah tells you to switch things up, you don’t ask questions. You switch things the fuck up. When I tell you to train harder, you train hard enough to bleed. When Kalen tells you to take extra lessons, you don’t think for a second that you don’t need them. From tomorrow, this show is ours. We direct it. We take it where we want it to go. And it’s going on the journey of our group forming.”

“There’s a way this is all supposed to play out.” Elijah’s husky voice had them all turning to look at him.

He was hunched over his knees, looking haggard, as though the short nap had only made him sick. She knew the feeling—it was exactly how she had felt in the shower. She almost broke away from Niko to go back to him, but Mikel shook his head, catching something on her face.

He mouthed, “Keep it even,” at her while everyone was still focussed on Elijah.

“We’ve already started pushing the hashtag #eleven across social media, getting everyone interested without explaining what it could possibly mean,” Elijah went on to explain, acting like he hadn’t just slept through half of their discussion. “And we’re going to go live with one of our group sessions every week, where we will start to publicly form the group, getting everyone curious and invested as we choose who is going to be assigned to certain roles in the group and test each other’s skills. Kalen and Mikel will be directing those sessions, so it gets them in front of the camera too. We won’t announce anything, so the officials will just think we’re preparing a group project and will let it play out for the ratings. By the time they figure out we’re intending for this to be permanent, it needs to be too late. We need the fans backing us completely. We need them threatening a riot at the idea of the group being broken up. Let me see the artefact.” That last bit had been tacked on so suddenly, it took Isobel a moment to realise Elijah was talking to her.

He had his hand held out.

She wiggled out of Niko’s hold, dug into the waistband of her shorts and was about to drop it into Elijah’s palm when the colour caught her attention. “It’s changed again,” she said, shocked.

The colour was still rosy, but it had thicker gold tendrils weaving through, making it appear veiny.

“Yes, I know,” Elijah said, plucking it out of her hand before turning his attention to Theodore and suddenly changing the topic again. “When are you going to have sex with Wallis?”

Theodore stared back at him steadily, one dark, winged brow popping up in question.

Isobel’s stomach swooped low, acid rushing to the back of her throat.

Was this part of the plan?

What the fuck?

Elijah hummed in triumph, turning the jewel before his eyes. It was changing again, bleeding more red than gold.

“Well, that confirms that,” he said.

“What?” Isobel snapped, sharper than she intended.

“This monitors the health of the bond,” Elijah explained, still staring at the jewel. “Red is bad. Gold is good.” His eyes lifted from the artefact, quickly categorising her pinched expression before a flash of understanding chased away the distracted look on his face. “Theo isn’t actually going to sleep with Wallis. Sorry for that.”

“Wait,” Theodore groused. “Illy, you believed that?”

“I don’t know!” She tossed up her arms. “I’ve never been half bonded before.”

“Sex is off the table at this point.” Mikel announced it like he was reading out their schedule for the afternoon, his face never so much as flinching. “For all of us.”

“What?” She swallowed, guilt surging up into her chest.

She had almost had sex several times now. She would have, too. In the storage room with Moses. In bed with Theodore. Maybe even in the bathroom that morning with Oscar. She would have without hesitation—but each of the Alphas steered it in a different direction.

“I felt that,” Elijah said, all of the exhaustion wiped from his features. He held his hand over his chest.

“Felt wh?—”

“Guilt,” he answered before she could ask the question.

“I think we all felt it,” Mikel said, dark brows drawing together as he surveyed the room, before settling on Isobel again. “I wasn’t talking about … within the group. I meant sex with people outside the bond is no longer possible.”

“Why?” She swallowed again, praying that them feeling her emotion was just a random once-off, that she might have accidentally pushed it out at them through the bond the way Kalen had taught her. “Was it possible at some point?”

“When we were more or less strangers to each other?” Kalen shrugged. “It could have been accomplished with minimal to no damage to the bond. But now? I don’t think so. With you taking most of the side effects, it’s not something we’re going to risk.”

“Then …” She glanced around the room, realising she was standing in the middle of them all, having not yet moved to the next person. “What … Who …” She gulped, facing off against ten utterly impassive expressions. Bond magic was such a mysterious, taboo topic, steeped in superstition and paranoia. She knew as much as the humans did—from watching Ironside. The only time either of her parents truly spoke about their relationship or the bond was when her father revealed that Caran wasn’t even his mate, but the Tether of his deceased brother.

He made their relationship sound like a cold, emotionless transaction … but it couldn’t have been that emotionless or cold. Not if Isobel existed.

Still, none of that could have prepared her for the realisation that she was now the reason that ten aggressive and energetic Alphas could never have sex again, for as long as she lived.

Unless they had sex with her.

She swallowed again, her breaths coming faster, her chest beginning to rise and fall rapidly.

Would they expect that of her?

Theodore?

Kilian?

Oscar?

Cian … oh god, Cian will never survive.

Elijah? Gabriel? Niko?

Mik—

Oh god.

Kalen was too big.

He would destroy her.

“This may not be the best time …” Kilian hesitated, a wince in his voice. “But we can more than feel what you’re feeling right now.”

“W-what do you m-mean?” She was hunched over, her hands on her knees, about to have a full-blown panic attack.

“We can hear your thoughts, Illy.” Theodore was by her side, a hand on her back, rubbing back and forth in a light skitter of strong fingers.

Fuck.

FUCK.

What had she thought? Something about Kalen’s size, certainly … and now that she was thinking about it, she was thinking about it. Because she had seen it. When she slipped into his head while he had a woman hanging suspended before him.

“Isobel,” Kalen rumbled. “Just calm down. Take a few deep breaths. I?—”

“Oh my god, you can’t be the one to try and calm me down right now,” she wailed, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” he rumbled back, sounding closer than before. His hands were on her arms, drawing her hands away from her face. “Come here,” he muttered, walking backward and drawing her with him.

She obeyed because that was exactly what he had trained her to do. Their hours spent in the climbing gym—rarely interacting outside of it—had conditioned her to listen for the sound of his voice and to obey him as though a forty-foot drop depended on it.

He caught her eyes, holding her captive as he drew her back to his desk with small steps, before he turned, picked her up and sat her on the edge, his hands fleeing her waist as soon as she was settled. He took a step away, still close, but not crowding her.

“Nobody is asking you to have sex with them and nobody is expecting it,” he rumbled.

When she just stared at him, still trying to batter away the panic they all knew she was feeling, a gravelled sound rumbled out of his chest.

“Acknowledge, Sigma.”

“A-acknowledged,” she squeaked.

“Your body is your own, and you choose what to do with it at all times—including when you choose to give that power away to someone else. I know you’ve experimented with a few things to ease the bond, but do not ever forget your safe words. They’re for you now and always.”

“What about the others?” She voiced the first question that popped into her head, still a little too overwhelmed to digest the situation.

“They’ll use the same words you’re familiar with, princess.” Kalen was using that low, soothing timbre that the Alphas used when they were trying to appease the bond.

But it wasn’t going to work, because her thoughts were finally starting to catch up. Surely, they would begin to resent her when they couldn’t have sex with their girlfriends.

How would they maintain relationships?

The harder she spiralled, the more she seemed to lose her grip on the wall she usually kept her emotions locked behind, and they started to spill over her exactly as they had when she woke up in her father’s apartment after the shooting.

There was panic, jealousy, discomfort, and guilt. Her stomach clenched, saliva pooling in her mouth.

She was going to be sick.

“I need to—” Mikel sounded like he was in pain as he pushed off the wall.

“All yours,” Kalen interrupted, voice tight.

He stepped away, and Mikel took his place, tilting her chin up until his mottled blue-black eyes were an inch from hers.

“This is causing me physical pain,” he said, probably hoping to appeal to the Sigma inside her—which was smart, because it worked almost immediately, and she tried to halt her spiral so that he wouldn’t be affected.

She hadn’t had a chance to go to him yet, to settle the bond for him, and now she was pushing a boatload of panic onto him.

“Stop,” he groused, his hands cupping the sides of her face, his forehead falling to hers. “You didn’t do this to us, Isobel. This happened to you. Just breathe, pet.” His rough thumbs stroked along her cheekbones, making her blood hum in fizzling realisation because Mikel Easton was touching her.

He was touching her a lot.

“Yes, I am.” He let out a gruff sound that might have almost been a laugh. “Focus on that and focus on breathing.”

His steadfast, abrasive demeanour was easy for her to latch onto, his roughened voice easily commanding her attention, his mismatched eyes disconcerting and arresting, pulling all of her focus until she was matching his breaths with her own. He pulled air through his firm lips, and she copied, both of their chests expanding, his gaze flickering down to the way she pursed her lips. He held his breath, and she held hers.

His eyes darkened, his breath rushed out, his face inching closer before he suddenly released her head, his hands falling to the desk either side of her thighs. “Good girl.”

The words were a heavy vibration that shivered down her spine and landed low in her belly, unfurling warmth through her body. His eyes flashed with realisation, his pupils expanding to darken his gaze further.

Realisation of …

How he had just made her feel.

“S-sorry,” she stumbled over her apology, already mortified. “It’s the bond?—”

“No,” Mikel interrupted calmly. “It’s not. Don’t apologise. Do you find everyone here attractive, Carter?”

She opened her mouth, but Kalen spoke before she could answer.

“Don’t lie again.” His voice was deep silk, his broad features arranged into severe, harsh lines.

She wanted to curl up into a ball and die, just a little bit. But these Alphas, they were her people, now. They were her people forever. Whatever that meant.

She had to assert herself within the circle of their influence. Had to make her voice heard and not shrivel away beneath their testosterone.

“Yes,” she forced out, attitude leaking into her tone. “W-what of it?”

Kalen and Mikel both smiled like sharks, like her sassiness was adorable.

“It’s not news,” she immediately defended. “Everyone thinks you’re all attractive.”

“Correction,” Oscar drawled, his scratchy voice making her throat tighten up. “They think everyone but myself and Mikel are attractive.”

“That’s bullshit,” she spat, anger coursing through her. “Don’t believe everything you read online. I … like your scars.” She was blushing so hard she could feel the heat emanating from her skin as she flickered her gaze to Mikel for the briefest second to include him in the statement before she was staring hard at her own lap.

She hadn’t ever tried to think about why she found the more savage beauty of Mikel and Oscar appealing, but she also didn’t care to analyse it further. Not with them listening to her thoughts.

“So it could be worse,” Kalen reasoned with her, tugging at her with that smooth, persuasive tone. “You’re stuck with people you find attractive, at least. Moses, Theo, Gabriel, Cian, Kilian, and Oscar have all offered to ease your bond in any way you need—and they were well aware of what that could entail. If you end up having regular sex with all six of them, that’s between you and them, and any of you could back out of that arrangement at any point, for any reason. The existence of the bond doesn’t erase consent.”

“What about the rest of you?” she mumbled, still staring at her lap.

“I won’t touch you,” Kalen announced, forcing her head to jerk up.

She had calmed down enough to slam a wall down on whatever emotion threatened to bubble up at that statement.

“I won’t be assisting you either,” Mikel said.

Kalen could seeit in her face.

The Sigma was insulted. He happened to like that spoiled little rich girl side of her, but only because it made his hand itch to punish it out of her until that little pout had a matching stream of tears.

“We’re in a position of authority over you,” he explained. “Quite an intense one too. We’ll be treating you like one of our Alphas, which means telling you what to eat, when to exercise, how hard to push yourself, and more or less everything else. We can’t complicate that position.”

“But what about your lives,” she insisted, that flush burning brighter in her cheeks. “Your girlfriend.” She said it almost accusingly, her mismatched eyes searching his face. “And um, your sex life,” she tossed at Mikel.

Kalen’s girlfriend really was becoming a problem. Most of the year before, she had been content with her bragging rights, and with the few visits back to the settlement he made. But over the summer, things had begun to fracture. He couldn’t fuck her, and he was stumbling over the practised words of adoration that he had been feeding her for years now.

She was his cover—and that wasn’t something he could let go of easily. Josette was his plant in the settlement. The loyal whisperer who flattened out all the wrinkles he caused, all while he was absent and doing whatever he wanted at Ironside. She didn’t expect monogamy—he had made it clear that wasn’t an option from the beginning—but she did expect her perfect little world to keep running without any incorrect brush strokes in the portrait of them she liked to wave under people’s noses.

She wanted to tell people she was dating the Professor West of Ironside Academy—not fielding questions on where the Professor West was, and whether the Professor West had forgotten all about her.

Why was he never with her, even after he came home for the break?

Why were they still not living together?

Why did she never sleep at his place?

The other professors all brought expensive gifts home for their partners—where were her expensive gifts?

She wasn’t going to stand for the questions much longer. That wasn’t part of their arrangement. She hadn’t done anything about it yet—other than pushing and prodding him for more. But that wouldn’t last.

“My sex life is not your concern,” Mikel said, folding his arms. He had taken too long to answer, but his voice was stern and brooked no argument.

Isobel nodded at him, chewing her lip.

Kalen knew he had to say something, but he was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The Sigma was about to see a very sexual side of him. Their first night in the Stone Dahlia was looming, and there would be no shielding her from what he did inside his room.

He couldn’t touch her.

He couldn’t touch anyone else.

He couldn’t break up with his girlfriend. Not when her ire could turn the tide for him within the settlement.

“There are people relying on me in the Mojave Settlement—and many of the other settlements,” he said, thinking over his words carefully. “Just like all of these guys relied on me or my grandmother at some point.” He tilted his head, nodding briefly to the rest of the room, though he kept her gaze. “My relationship with Josette was never about romance. She offered me the influence I needed in the settlement, and I offered her the status she needed to get in with the officials—because they wouldn’t even blink at her before she became involved with me, but I was able to put her into contact with important people. She’s a fierce loyalist, and without her, some of my actions might start to look … a little less loyal. I need to find a way to keep her on board for a little longer.”

Isobel was chewing her full bottom lip, her fingers twisting together. It was her usual nervous tell. It seemed she wasn’t projecting her thoughts or emotions anymore, and he immediately wanted to dive back into her mind and rummage around until he could lay out the future—all of their futures—into a neat timeline. Because he had no idea how to make this work.

None of them knew how to make this work.

There were fucking ten of them and one of her.

Not to mention Theodore and Moses were the two most likely to fight over her, and they were the two they really could not afford fighting or losing their tempers.

Did he really think he could go the rest of his life without having sex?

He didn’t know how to answer that question.

Or he did, but he didn’t want to admit it to himself, because whenever he tried to think about it, the question changed to whether he really thought he could go without sex with her around.

He didn’t want those thoughts in his head.

“I …” Isobel was trying to vocalise something, but it must have been difficult to say because her brow wrinkled and her teeth dug deeply into her lip as she cut herself off.

He was transfixed for a moment, his instinct screaming at him to order her to bite deeper, and deeper … until she drew blood and offered for him to taste it. But she wasn’t a pretty little toy for him to play with. She was his mate, and they were balancing on a very fragile ledge.

“This summer was too much,” she finally said. “I can’t live like that. And what Eve did to me? If that’s what a bond infraction feels like, I can’t live with that either.” She lifted her stunning eyes, ignoring everyone else to stare at Kalen because he was the one she had identified as most likely to hurt her. “You can’t sleep with her.”

Don’t tell me what to do, little girl. The Dom in him roared to the surface, and he shoved it down with a wince. Don’t make her beg for it. This is her right.

“I won’t be,” he promised.

“Or anyone else.”

“I won’t be, Carter.”

She sucked in an unsteady breath, addressing the room without actually looking at anyone.

“Nobody can defile the bond like that. If anyone plans to do that, I’m out of the group.”

She was rubbing her arms, trying to calm her goosebumps. This was taking a lot for her to make such demands of them, and he felt a swell of pride that he had no right to feel. He didn’t make her this way.

She was incredibly adaptable.

Surprisingly so, for a girl who had everything handed to her—except freedom, of course. She was very unlike an Icon child in that regard.

“We hear you,” Theodore said. “Loud and clear.”

None of the others answered, and Kalen knew why. They had already discussed this issue over the break, and everyone had agreed that anything resulting in a soul infraction was unacceptable, but Isobel wasn’t just addressing a room of men, or a room of Alphas, or even a room of her own friends.

She was addressing her mates.

Cutting them off from all the avenues of sexual gratification they weren’t even slightly interested in, and not addressing the one avenue they were interested in—or at least some of them.

Probably most of them.

Elijah wasn’t about to admit it, but he stared at her like every flutter of her long, dark brown lashes was the most fascinating thing he had ever seen—which was a dangerous thing for her, but she didn’t seem to realise it. Gabriel looked at her like she was one of his precious notebooks and he was barely controlling the urge to stack her onto his desk where she belonged, erecting a ten-foot wall around her so that nobody else could contaminate her.

He hadn’t known Kilian to show interest in anyone other than his ex, but Isobel had him wrapped entirely around her finger. She could tell him to burn down the entire academy and he wouldn’t even hesitate.

Cian was harder to read. He wanted to fuck her, that much was clear. Kalen suspected the younger Alpha had become obsessed with Isobel, but could never find any actual signs of it. Cian was too good at putting on a mask.

A mask Theodore and Oscar didn’t even bother with and hadn’t bothered with since the Sigma waltzed into their lives. Both of them would tear apart anyone who so much as blinked wrong at Isobel, including the members of their own group.

Niko was, thankfully, displaying far more self-control in Isobel’s presence than the others, but it didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t acting the way he would act if he was disinterested in someone. Niko was warm on the surface, but cold underneath to everyone except those closest with him. If he wasn’t interested in Isobel, he wouldn’t even be standing inside the room right now. He certainly wouldn’t be standing there silent at her demand they cut off all sexual activity with anyone outside the group.

He was holding his tongue for the exact same reason everyone else was holding their tongue.

Because the urge to ask her if she was also off limits was too strong.