Glisser (Ironside Academy Book 5), page 9
No, she wasn’t that devious.
Not yet, anyway.
“He always wants something,” she said, still in a huff, still annoyed that he had dared to try and talk sense into her. “I’ve never had the upper hand before, but now I do. He has an illegal ability. He was involved in a double homicide back in his home settlement. He took away my mother’s memory of me so that she had nothing left to live for, and she died—” She cut herself off with a choking noise. “I know everything. His Alpha voice doesn’t work on me anymore. I have you guys. The bond made me stronger, made it so that I can resist him now. I have the upper hand,” she insisted.
He loosened a breath, his lungs filling with her scent. It wasn’t any sweeter, but it had lost the damaged edge. She was determined now. She wasn’t going to wallow in helplessness for long. That wasn’t her. Why did her bullheadedness make her so fucking attractive?
“I’m not sure I’d call that the upper hand,” he said, not even realising as his hand slipped through the silky mess of her hair to cradle her skull. “But it definitely changes the dynamic. And I don’t think the bond has made you resistant to his Alpha voice. I think half of your mates could overpower him in Alpha dominance, and since you’re our mate, you can also resist him. You’ll probably be able to resist other Alphas weaker than us, as well. But that’s just my theory. He still hasn’t tried to make contact with you?”
She pulled back, her hands slipping to his chest. “No … I …” Her eyes were unfocussed, her forehead crinkled in confusion. “I …”
Isobel wasn’t in the music room anymore, cuddled into Elijah’s lap, his strong hand cupping her skull.
She was … in a car … and it was hurtling toward the edge of a cliff. There was a screaming boy in the passenger seat and a sobbing woman in the driver’s seat.
“Mom! Please! Please stop!” the boy begged, pulling desperately at the door handle. It somehow snapped off in his hand, and his terror swelled like a physical thing, expanding inside the car until it shivered across the windows and rattled the back of Isobel’s teeth.
“Mom!” he wailed.
She closed her eyes, trying to pull herself from the too-real vision.
It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not—
“What the fuck?” Cian’s voice interrupted her internal chant.
She blinked her eyes open again and found herself standing beside the car as it teetered on the edge of the cliff.
All ten of the Alphas had been pulled into the vision with her—almost like a punishment for her trying to escape.
“What kind of sadistic fucking side effect is this?” Gabriel spluttered, staring at the little boy desperately clawing at the car window. The car was about to go over. Theodore jolted forward, but Cian caught his arm, shaking his head.
“It’s not real,” Elijah said softly.
“It’s my memory.” Cian’s eyes were wide with horror, fixed on the car as the woman finally turned and spoke to the boy, and he wound down the window, climbing out.
“Now you,” he called back through the window, doing a small bounce on his feet that screamed of uncontainable panic. “Mom, hurry! Please!”
She didn’t move. She just stared at him, her hands on the wheel, tears falling fresh, a strange sort of finality descending over her features.
Her mouth opened, and the car creaked, jolting violently forward before tipping over the edge. The boy chased it to the edge, falling onto his knees and screaming down into the valley below.
Cian’s face was ashen, his breathing choppy as the little boy grabbed handfuls of grass and dirt, slamming his fists into the ground and screaming, “No!” over and over and over, until his body was depleted. And then he just sat there, aquamarine eyes full of water, golden skin smudged with dirt.
“I would have forgiven you,” he cried. “It would have been okay, Mom. You didn’t have to. You didn’t have to.”
Isobel didn’t know what to do or say. It was too much, too sudden. They all seemed to be in complete shock. Not even Moses had a sarcastic comment about the sadism of the bond—or the gods, whoever was driving this. She tried to move to Cian’s side—the real Cian—but with her first step, the vision wavered and faded, replaced by Elijah’s cold eyes, now wide with shock and dismay.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about tonight,” he rasped out.
5
Dear Pervert
They lounged around Mikel’s office, silence permeating the room. They were all exhausted, talked out, and still a little shellshocked. Nobody had been expecting to hear that Charlie had died, and they were already on edge after the vision of Cian’s childhood from that afternoon.
There was an immense relief hanging about the room that they finally had a modicum of privacy back and that their safety seemed secure for the time being, but that relief felt dirty—like something they had stolen, or like they had traded the horrible events of the afternoon for it. It was hard to shake the feeling that they were expected to live in the shadow of trauma and hardship and that anything else was wrong or forbidden.
“I really fucking hope the bond doesn’t do me next,” Gabriel muttered from behind the rim of his glass. The statement came out of nowhere.
They were all drinking. It had been that kind of day.
The others didn’t laugh, and Isobel was pretty sure it wasn’t a joke.
She also hoped she wasn’t next.
“We were so careful,” Mikel murmured, apparently still thinking about Charlie as he stared into his glass, swirling the dark-red liquid around. They were drinking wine out of fancy whiskey glasses because that was all he had in his office.
They fell into silence again, and Isobel took a deep swallow of the rich, fragrant wine, trying her best to numb her frayed nerves. She was halfway through her third glass—because to hell with that two-drink clause—when her phone vibrated, and she had to blink a few times to focus on the screen.
Cooper: Your first dance in the Dahlia Room is in two nights. Have you finished the choreography? I need to approve it.
She groaned, her head falling back against the seat of the couch behind her, right between Kilian’s legs. She was stretched out along the floor, Theodore beside her, his arm thrown over his eyes. He could have been asleep for all she knew, but he moved his arm as they all glanced at her.
“I have to show Cooper my choreography,” she whined. “For the performance on Friday.”
“What have you got so far?” Mikel asked, still staring into his glass.
“I’ll show you.” She jumped up and stumbled over to the oak coffee table, stepping onto it and taking another sip of wine.
Moses, who was leaning against the wall beside the door, motioned to her glass. “You wanna put that down first?”
“Um.” She thought about it. “No. So anyway, I’ll start like this. No, like this. No …” She laughed, clicking her fingers. “That’s right. I don’t have a dance yet. I don’t do ‘provocative and entertaining, sensual but tasteful,’” she mocked, imitating Yulia’s accented voice. She flipped an imaginary, sleek ponytail over her shoulder for extra effect. Kalen smirked, and that was everything she needed because he was the one Yulia had been devouring with her thieving eyes.
Moses burst into laughter.
“Thieving eyes?” Theodore taunted from the floor, his teeth flashing in a brief show of humour.
“What?” She glanced around the room. “Did I say that out loud?”
“Didn’t you?” Cian looked confused.
“I don’t think so?” She froze, her hand gripping the whiskey glass even harder.
First Cian’s memory, and now … they were hearing her thoughts again?
“Oh boy,” Oscar groaned. “Please don’t think about Kalen’s dick again.”
“Why would you bring that up right now?” she seethed, spinning rapidly to face the dark-eyed agent of chaos. He was sitting against Mikel’s now-empty liquor cabinet with Niko, who was wincing as he stared at her feet, his entire body tensed like he thought she was about to topple off the table. “Why am I having side effects again?” she demanded. “We completed the bond.”
They were suddenly all very interested in their glasses.
It was Kalen who finally spoke up.
“We think Eve permanently damaged the bond. With Niko separated from us, taking on all the pain and trauma, the bond was almost perfect, like cutting off a dying limb to preserve the body. When he was brought back into the fold, he brought the poison back with him. So to speak.”
“H-how can you tell?” She frowned, glancing between Niko and Kalen.
“We can all feel it,” Kalen told her, approaching the coffee table. He held his hand out.
She guessed she was making them all nervous.
She didn’t take his hand, choosing to frown at him instead. “I can’t feel anything.”
“We didn’t want you to, so we somehow cut you off from it, just like how Niko did when the bond was damaged.”
“That’s not fair.” She folded her arms, glaring at him. Even standing on the coffee table, she still couldn’t look down on him. The low table just made them almost the same height.
“Ten against one says it is.” Moses sounded far too nonchalant.
“Can you all still hear my thoughts?” she asked.
Kalen nodded.
She imagined flicking Moses on the nose. In her imagination, she was standing on a bigger coffee table, so she was taller than him.
It was very emasculating.
Kilian spluttered out a laugh. Kalen’s warm, amber eyes shone in amusement, but he was too mature to laugh. So she imagined flicking him on the nose as well, just to knock him down a peg or two.
He dropped his hand, arching a calm, challenging brow at her, some of his influence briefly brushing up against her like a tiny swell of power that he quickly worked to rein back in. “If you won’t come down, then show us what you have so far. We can help.”
She gave him the finger. “This is what I have so far.”
“You’re pushing it, princess.”
She grinned, taking another swig of wine. It was so much better to be drunk than sad and afraid. They should do this every night. Or at least once a week. Wine party Wednesdays.
“We literally just signed a legal contract promising not to have more than two drinks at a time,” Gabriel drawled, though he was watching her with a tinge of amusement—though a tinge of anything was an absolute outpouring of emotion for him.
“Hey,” he protested. “I’m very expressive.” This was said with a completely blank face.
“How long is this going to last?” She groaned, knocking her fist against her head. “I’ll take requests,” she decided. “We can decide the dance that way.” She spun to face Cian, who was slumped back into the couch beside Kilian, his tattooed arms folded behind his head. “You first. Because trauma.”
“Hey,” Moses protested. “I have trauma.”
She imagined flicking him in the forehead.
“Do it one more time,” he threatened.
“Do what?” She played dumb, still facing Cian, who chuckled.
“Since you’re taking requests,” Cian drawled, his tone low.
Kilian shoved him before he could finish the sentence. “Don’t even.”
Cian hid his smile behind his hand as he rubbed along his mouth. “What, now you can hear my thoughts too?”
“We don’t need powers for that.” Kilian rolled his eyes.
“Fine.” Cian bit his lip, folding his arms behind his head again. “How about I pick the song, will that help?”
“Yeah!” Isobel gave him a thumbs-up, trying to drain the rest of her glass. It was empty. Disappointing.
Kalen cooly snatched it from her hand before returning to lean against the desk beside Mikel.
“Provocative and entertaining,” she muttered to herself as Cian scrolled through his playlist. “Sensual, but tasteful.” Like Kilian.
“Why, thank you.” Kilian smirked at her.
She waved him off, trying to focus. “Okay, I’ve got this.”
Cian started a song. She had no idea what it was, and she decided to try a spin, just to test how drunk she was before she started dancing. She wasn’t sure what went wrong, but she was suddenly tilting sideways, two strong arms catching her and smacking her against a broad, muscled chest hard enough to bruise.
“Umph,” she puffed out, clutching the shirt of the Alpha, who had apparently caught her mid-fall.
Niko.
“Damn, you’re fast,” she said, shocked.
“Damn, you’re drunk.” He set her on her feet, his hands anchored to her hips. His grip flexed before he released her, stumbling back to the cabinet and falling to the ground again.
He looked pretty drunk himself.
“Can confirm,” he drawled, picking up his glass to salute her.
She tried to salute him back, but realised her hand was empty. She tucked her hand behind her back. They probably didn’t see it.
“We saw,” Theodore countered.
She stalked over to him and flicked him in the head. He grabbed her wrist, and she stared at his long fingers wrapping her pale skin.
“Why would I imagine you catching me?” she complained.
“How are you this drunk from three glasses?” He peered into her face, tugging her a step closer.
“This has happened before.” Gabriel sounded like he was wincing, even though she couldn’t see his face since he and Elijah sat on the couches behind her. “Last time we all drank, she seemed to take on our inebriation.”
Theodore’s eyes had trailed from her face, his grip on her wrist slackening, his attention fixing to the hem of her dress, which he probably had a straight view up from his position on the floor.
“Oops, sorry.” She scooted back, smoothing down the material, which was a thick, ribbed cotton, so there was nothing to smooth. It was just a comfortable, lounge-around dress she had pulled on after her shower.
She returned to the coffee table and stepped back up, causing Niko to groan in frustration.
“It was so much easier to swing from some ropes.” She toed the table’s wooden surface with her socked feet, pouting and ignoring Niko. The slippery socks probably weren’t helping their nerves.
“I would argue it was harder,” Kalen murmured.
“Please don’t bring up your dick while we’re still in her head,” Moses griped.
Isobel ignored them because her phone had vibrated again. Cooper had sent her a link to a video.
Cooper: How about something like this?
“Why is that fuck texting you at midnight?” Oscar demanded roughly.
“Because we’re still in a ‘meeting,’” Elijah returned, though he also sounded pissed off. “So he knows she’s still awake.”
The video was a pole dance. There was nothing “sensual but tasteful” about it, though it had the provocative part down. Oscar was making a scary sound in the back of his throat. Isobel ignored them and all their alpha-ness as she studied the video with a frown. Physically, she could do it, but it was a little too restrictive for her tastes. There were only so many moves you could do on a pole.
“Don’t even think about it,” Oscar snapped. “You’re not grinding on a pole for that disgusting pervert.”
“It would be easier to think with wine,” she said, eyeing the bottle on Mikel’s desk. He shifted his position, blocking it from view.
She imagined flicking his cheek.
His hand flexed around his drink, and she quickly looked away. Except now she was staring at Oscar, and he had murder screaming from the depths of his dark eyes.
She swallowed again. “Jeez, okay, I’ll text him and tell him no.”
She tapped out a quick message.
“You sent that to me,” Cian stated dryly. “And you misspelled ‘asshole.’”
“She called Cooper an asshole?” Kilian sat up straighter.
Cian lifted his phone and read the message out loud. “Dear Pervent, the ashholes said I’m not allowed, but even if I was, I’d rather you shove that pole somewhere not sensual or tasteful.”
“Let’s just …” Kilian jumped up and plucked the phone out of her hand. “You can have this back later.” He slipped it into his pocket and returned to the couch.
Isobel folded her arms, scrunching up her face. “Anything else you all want to confiscate?”
“I can think of something,” Theodore rumbled, staring at the hem of her dress again, like he was still thinking about the peek he had gotten before.
She considered giving him another one.
He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, his eyes dripping with heat.
“And you can stop that right the fuck now,” Moses snapped, his eyes darkening with fury, his voice taking on a sharp, unsteady edge.
Whoa.
She held up her hands to him because even in her inebriated state, she knew that look. She hadn’t seen it for a while, though, so it was confusing to have the hints of his ferality suddenly surging to the surface. She had thought he was gaining more control over it.
“I thought so too,” he gravelled out. “But it turns out it was just the settled bond—which is no longer fucking settled.”
“Shit.” She jumped down from the table, shifting from foot to foot, unsure what to do. “Sorry.”
“For what?” He dragged his hands down his face, forcing his chest to move with measured breaths. “You didn’t drag us into your head. We all know you’re fucking Theo. You guys aren’t quiet or discreet.”
“I thought we agreed it was my decision who I was intimate with,” she snapped, feeling the heat of shame briefly brush her cheeks.
“I figured you’d have meek, quiet Sigma sex.” He narrowed his eyes on her, seemingly regaining control of himself.
“Liar.” She glared back at him and then deliberately recalled the time he and Cian had pulled her into a classroom supply closet, where Moses himself had almost fucked her, before driving into the back of her throat to come.
