Released (Highgate Preparatory Academy, #3)

by Rosa Lee

“I swear to you on my blackened heart and all that is left of my soul that we will come for you, and fucking dance in the blood of those that have harmed you, my love,” Jax vows, and his declaration is full of love and vengeance in equal measure, making my heart thrill. “I love you with all that I am, Jax. All that I will ever be,” I say in return.

What I can’t seem to work out is why he would go to such lengths to keep me placid, unaware, and compliant. It’s not as if I can escape from here anyway, being in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and with my shit sense of direction I’d get lost or picked up even if I did try to run.

Unlike Jacky, she’s never locked it. The freedom the unlocked door offered was an illusion and one that I just couldn’t force myself to fall for.

“Shit!” Loki exclaims next to me, dropping his arm from around me and fumbling in his pocket. My heart hammers in panic, my head whipping round to face him, Kai’s grip dropping from me as well. “What?” I ask, voice breathy and high, my pulse pounding. He brandishes his phone triumphantly. “Almost forgot the playlist! That really would have been a disaster,” he responds, the sound of another fist hitting flesh loud in the room. It’s so utterly ridiculous that a giggle escapes my lips, my hand flying to cover them as the tension feels like it drains from the room. “That’s the spirit, Pretty Girl!”

I’m drowning, Ash, and I don’t know how to swim to the surface.” “Shit, Lilly,” he rasps, his own eyes filling as he stares into mine. He pulls me to him, enveloping me in his strength, in his familiar, ginger scent that helps to calm my racing heart. “I’ll bring you to the surface, my love. Or drown with you. But you are not alone. You don’t need to fight this by yourself.”

“Harold!” my grandmother chastises, whacking him in the chest. “Don’t threaten Lilly’s beaus with MI6!” Oh shit. My grandfather has connections with the British Secret Intelligence Service. Good to know, and possibly, dare I say it, may come in handy too?

I see Jax raise a palm, and Loki slaps it like a fucking wanker, but I’m too fucked out—yep that’s a legit state of being—to call them out on their bullshit.

“I want to pour my release down that beautiful throat of yours,” Kai tells me, his hand wrapped over mine, our grip punishing. “May I, my Queen?” My thighs clench at that name again, wetness seeping down them. “Yes, please,”

“Loki, you are more than enough, my love. You brought me back to life,”

Shitballs. I’m royally fucked, and not in the good, four peens at once kind of way.

I watch with a single raised brow as she faces the front, holding my stern gaze and giving me a wink and a fucking devastating, secret smile. Great. I’m now going to walk into that boardroom with a raging hard-on.

“How the fuck,” I say, my voice fifty shades of husky, “am I meant to sit in a car for god knows how many hours it takes to get to Utah after that?” Masculine guffaws and chuckles fill the room. Fuckers. But, they are my fuckers, quite literally,

“You are my fucking light, Baby Girl. My soul.” He places my hand over his thumping heart. “My heart. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you, both of you, safe.''

“There’s always a new day, Little One,”

I ride up front, Jax in the driver’s seat of his minivan. I like to call it the sunshine bus, and much to Jax’s annoyance but to my delight, Loki paid some kid—Jude Taylor I think his name was—to cover the outside with suns, rainbows, and unicorns one night. Jax was so pissed when he saw it in the morning I thought he was going to strangle Loki until I begged him not to as I loved it. I also may have burst into tears at the idea of it being painted over, so here we are, driving in the sunshine bus, complete with motherfucking unicorns.

“You showed me that there was something to hope for, that I could be loved. You are my soul, my heart, and my light.”

“I knew that you would change my life, our lives, from the first moment that you stepped out of that shower,” he tells me, his emerald eyes glowing in the sun. “I just never knew how much you would become a part of me. You are buried so deep inside, Pretty Girl, that if they were to cut me in half you would be there too, in every part of me.”

“You are mine, Baby Girl, and I am yours until we draw our last breaths on this cursed earth. And even then I’ll fucking hold your soul to ransom and I dare anyone to take it away from me.”

“You are the best part of me, Princess. You taught me how to love again, how to live again, how to breathe again. You arrived like a shooting star, burning all the bad that came your way and leaving only good. We were destined, it was written in the stars that we would be together, and I will never stop worshipping you, never stop thanking whatever god decided that I was worthy of you.”

“You all gave me love at a time when I’d lost everything. You gave me hope when I felt hopeless. You gave me back the parts of myself that I never knew were missing. You captured my heart, we are all bound together for eternity, and I never want to be released from your love.”