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“Don’t touch her,” Niko snarled. “Don’t even look at her. You made her cry.”
“You’ve been here with us every step of the way,” Elijah added. “Supporting us the same way we supported each other.” “That’s what Ironside means to us.” Gabriel’s firm lips gentled into an uncharacteristic half-smile, softening his stern expression and sending the comments flickering by even faster. “It means teamwork. Community. Connection. Support. Family.”
The officials can’t kill us now. It would be far too obvious. They can’t even cut us from the show. Right now, we are Ironside—the viewers don’t even care about the graduating year. We just need to keep it this way.”
“I hate that fucking guy,” Oscar grumbled, turning back to the table to help her prepare the coffees. Nobody else dared to approach the drinks station. “You hate everyone,” Isobel said, too tired to care that Oscar was being a big, snarling bully. “I like you.” The words were a scrape of gravel, utterly without warmth. They still made her stomach burn, her skin tingling with pleasure.
“Okay, we get the point,” he snapped. “That you’re basically the Taylor Swift of Ironside?” Isobel wasn’t deterred. “Got a whole squad and everything.”
Gabriel was hard to ruffle, except for the million tiny things that ruffled him. Hurting his feelings was nearly impossible, but lord help whoever put a fork into the cutlery drawer facing the wrong way.
Elijah arched an elegant brow at her, dropping his water bottle back into his bag and pulling at the neckline of his shirt, trying to get it to stop sticking to his skin. “Do I look like I flirt, Sigma?” “I could see you flirting,” she hedged. “Maybe with a scientific manual of some kind? I could see you stroking its spine by the fireplace, fingering its pages.” He looked amused, so she continued. “I could see you flirting with a documentary on binary code—snuggled in with some wine and fondue.”
“Did you really just say fingering?” Gabriel interrupted. Isobel, whose cheeks began to burn, ignored him, keeping her attention on Elijah. “Not fondue. Souls, maybe.” “Souls,” he repeated dryly. “And tears,” she added. “And dreams. And hopes.” “Tears and dreams and hopes,” he parroted. “Right.”
“My personality,” Gabriel answered, the tilt to his lip evening out, his expression as frighteningly blank as ever. “That’s what kept her around.” “Oh?” Both of Isobel’s brows shot up this time. “Can I see it?” He chuckled, rising suddenly. “Come here, puppy.”
“Oh my god, my eyes,” Theodore wailed, rolling onto his front and banging his head against the floor, punctuating each knock of his forehead with a muffled shout. “WHAT. THE. FUCK!”
“Like pull my hair but pretend it was someone else? Someone nicer?” He laughed: the day had come. “I’m going to need another example.” “Like spank me but only with two fingers.” Gabriel’s laugh grew louder, so she kept going because it was such a rare treat, and she needed to hear it again. “Like spit near my mouth,” she suggested. “Or I’ll call you daddy but only if you complain about having to drive me around and offer to fix my squeaky door.” “Is the squeaky door a metaphor?” “No, a literal squeaky door. The vibe we’re looking for is: choke me, but only if you’re an otolaryngologist … or,
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But when it came to kissing? Please. The human men didn’t stand a chance. Nobody at the academy stood a chance. Santoro was attractive in a boy-next-door way, and the Kozlov twins were attractive in a won’t-stop-posting-videos-of-shirtless-wood-chopping way, but it just didn’t compare to the Alphas. They were attractive in a life-destroying sort of way.
“I’ll shower you myself,” he decided, ducking behind her, his hands on her shoulders, steering her to the door. “Purely platonic, I promise. I can absolutely do this. I’ve been training for this day my entire life—or ever since I found out Kilian was doing it.”
“We can’t do fire again,” Mikel insisted. “Of course, we can,” Kalen insisted. “Fires happen all the time. We just need a solid alibi, and we’re going to have one because we aren’t going to be here when the fire starts.
“How long do we have before that match starts burning again?” “An hour,” Kalen answered. “And we need to be live at that time. All ten of us, with Braun stepping in at some point to wave to the camera.”
“What happened dies right now, in this room,” Kalen said. “Everything you just saw.” “How many fires have you set?” her father returned. “As many as we need to,” Kalen held onto his calm, “to make sure she’s never hurt again.”
