Chapter seventeen
Laurel
Life settles into a routine.
Carrson and I spar every morning. At first, I grumble about it, pointing out how Samantha no longer seems to be out for my blood, so what’s the point? He only looks at me, calm and serious. “You don’t understand. This place is far more dangerous than it seems.” He lifts an arm and points toward the door like a dragon or a monster waits just outside. “Terrible things are out there, little mouse. Awful things. People a million times worse thanSam would love to get their hands on you.”
Something in the way he says it makes my skin crawl. Like he isn’t talking aboutifa threat will come, butwhen.Like it’s already circling.
He says it’s part of being his Bonded. That it makes me a target. He tells me about the Jackals, the rival gang Thomson mentioned, how they’ll hurt me if they get the chance. He also mentions their leader, Silas Creed, who Carrson describes as clever and ruthless. The way his voice tightens around the name unsettles me. Like he hates Silas but also can’t help admiring him. Like even Carrson, the one everyone else fears, keeps Silas in the corner of his mind.
He says there are other risks, too. That sometimes danger comes from theinside. At first, I assume he means Jackson, but the longer I sit with it, the more I suspect he’s talking about The Order, even if he won’t say it directly.
At the end of it all, Carrson doesn’t apologize for pulling me into this world. Not exactly. But for one fleeting moment, he looks like he wishes he could.
In the afternoons, I go to classes, usually with Stevenson as my shadow. He doesn’t talk much, just watches me with that calm, unreadable gaze. At first, it irritates me, his constant presence, but over time it becomes something else. Not quite friendship. More like comfort. The quiet reassurance that I’m not alone. That someone has my back, even if they’re under orders to do it.
After that, it’s off to Rosewood Hall, where all the sisters spend mandatory study hours in the large library. It’s beautiful there. Tall arched windows let in shafts of honey-colored light that spill across gleaming wood floors. The ceilings are vaulted and ornate, with gilded moldings and multitiered chandeliers that look like they belong in an antebellum ballroom. Rows of long oak tables run the length of the room, flanked by velvet chairs and tall bookshelves filled with delicate vases, curated artwork, and the occasional book. The scent of old paper, polished wood, and jasmine-scented perfume lingers in the air.
At first, I sit alone, exiled to the far end of a table. The other sisters whisper across their homework, casting sidelong glances at me with scowls and looks of disdain. Slowly, that changes. One day, Cicley takes the chair across from me. A few days later, a redhead named Abbie drops into the seat beside mine. She’s in calculus with me and has questions about the lecture notes. After I answer her, I expect her to get up and move away, but she doesn’t. She just stays there, reading quietly, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
Maybe she says something to the others. Or maybe it’s just a natural progression. Either way, their shunning softens into tolerance, which morphs into curiosity, and eventually settles into something that almost resembles quiet approval, or at least indifference. It’s so subtle I almost miss it, until one day I realize I know the names of nearly every woman in the room and that they’ve all spoken to me, even if it was just a brief hello.
The final, most shocking, development comes the day Samantha slams a stack of books down beside me so hard I jump. She levels me with a look of practiced boredom. “Abbie says you’re smart. I’m taking organic chemistry with you.” Her cheeks flush the faintest shade of pink. “Mother will kill me if I get a B. Do you know about D and L enantiomers?”
I blink at her, stunned she’s even speaking to me, let alone asking for help. Slowly, I nod.
“Well?” she snaps. “Don’t just sit there like a bump on a log. Explain it to me.”
With a dramatic sigh, she flops into a chair beside me with her arms crossed, like this is the worst kind of punishment. I spend the next hour walking her through chirality, stereocenters, and optical rotation. She doesn’t thank me when we’re done, but a few days later she shows me the A she got on the exam.
In the evenings, I’m back in Carrson’s room. Most nights Stevenson brings me dinner, and I eat alone at the small table next to the window. It looks out onto the backyard with the empty swimming pool and the large green lawn. Beyond that is a cornfield I couldn’t see the day I delivered the pizza, but from the second floor where I sit the corn stalks glint silver in the moonlight, their tasseled heads bobbing, swaying in the breeze. They bend toward each other like they’re telling secrets I’m not meant to hear.
Some nights, when he’s not wrapped up in whatever mysterious Order-related tasks he’s juggling, Carrson eats with me. I’d never admit it, but those are the nights I like best.
Morning Carrson is all sharp commands and hard eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you, if your feet are wrong, you’re useless. Shoulder-width apart. Lead foot pointed forward. Don’t lock your knees.”
Dinnertime Carrson is a different person. It’s like the day wears down his armor. The scowl softens, the drill sergeant fades, and something warmer, morehuman and playful, takes his place. He’s still smug, still cocky. Funny when he wants to be. Flirty without trying. He argues with me, teases me, makes me laugh. He tells stories that I know are carefully censored, with the more violent parts stripped away, but through them I start to piece together fragments of the world he lives in. The other brothers. Their less-scandalous escapades.
There’s the night he walks in with a black eye and a limp, like it’s nothing. Like he tripped on the stairs instead of beating the hell out of a brother who challenged him for leadership. I gasp, hands flying to my mouth. He catches it. Smirks. “If you think I look bad,” he says, slow and smug, “you should see Benson.” Then, with a lazy shrug and a glint of sharp, white teeth, he adds, “Oh, that’s right…you can’t. He’s in the hospital.”
Or the night he brings me a glass of home-brewed root beer. It’s the best I’ve ever tasted, cold and fizzy, with a hint of vanilla and spice. “Johnson makes it in the basement,” Carrson says, watching me try it, then smiling when I nod with approval. “His great-grandfather perfected the recipe during Prohibition. There’s a more alcoholic version too.” His eyes spark with something mischievous. “Hang on, don’t take another sip.” He vanishes, then bursts back into the room a minute later. From behind his back, he pulls out a bowl of vanilla ice cream like it’s a magic trick.
“Let’s make root beer floats,” he says, grinning as he sits down across from me. We both reach for the bowl, our spoons clinking. Our knees brush under the table, and when neither of us pulls away, I pretend not to notice. I tell myself it’s an accident. It doesn’t mean anything. That’s the story I tell myself, and I let myself believe it. Because the alternative? That I might want him, and he might want me back? I have no idea what to do with that, something so dangerous, so tempting. Forbidden. I shove the thought aside. Let it melt away like ice cream into my root beer.
That’s how it happens. How, over weeks and months, as summer school changes into regular classes, as the leaves on the trees turn from green to gold, I fall into the rhythm of a life I’m now part of, whether I like it or not.
Chapter eighteen
Laurel
I’m in the library of Rosewood Hall, packing up my bag since it’s almost five o’clock, when one of the sisters across the room yells out, “Hey! Look, Carrson’s going to battle.”
As one, the sisters surge toward the tall second-story windows overlooking the backyard. Pages flutter. A chair tips over. I trail behind them, not running, but not exactly walking either. My curiosity is stirred despite myself. Carrson’s come to bed bloody several times now, from defending his position as leader of thebrothers, but I’ve never seen him in action.
I wedge myself into a spot next to the others and peer down at the scene below us. On the wide lawn behind Ashford House, the one where I once saw a dead man, the brothers are once again in a circle with Carrson in the center.
Carrson faces off against another brother, this one much bigger. Sampson, I think is his name. He’s massive, with muscles bunched under his shirt. Tall and broad, while Carrson is smaller and more lithe.
