He flashes Ian a slip of paper. “A note from the headmaster. I’ve come to take Miss Rose out of your class for the day.”
Ian stalks over and takes the paper from his hands, reads over it and then meets my eyes across the classroom. He crumples it up and throws it into the wastebasket beside his desk. “Missing class today will be too disruptive to Miss Rose’s understanding of our current material.”
Rad turns to stare me down and does something he’s never done before. He thinks hard, a dare in his eyes, and just like that, my affinity drags his thoughts into my mind.
I see exactly what he wants me to see. I see his leverage. He’s beside a pale-faced, sickly omega in a cell, pressing a button on a tablet. She convulses and thrashes on her small bed, and when she stills, her chest doesn’t rise again.
He’ll kill her if I don’t go with him.
“I’ll make up the work, Professor,” I say, my eyes never leaving Rad, though I don’t meet his. I stare at the very smile that sickens me and bare my neck to him as I pack my bag with stiff movements, every muscle in my body tense. Marcus escorts me to the front of the room, and I notice that Rad isn’t alone.
Blair, the omega I saw blow up a block of concrete, stands just outside the door, a collar glittering with magic around her neck.
“Beloved,” Rad says, a depraved note of joy in his voice. “It’s been too long.”
Saints, an eternity wouldn’t be long enough.
Not after everything he’s done.
Yet here he is, pulling me from class, and the only thing Ian can do about it is growl for Marcus to protect me.
Rad presents me with a dress box the moment I step into the hallway. “For our date today.” He nods to the ladies’ room down the hall, and that same slippery smile spreads across his face. “If you would.”
I take the box from him with shaking hands and disappear into the bathroom. I set it on a sink and lean against another, pressing my hands to my face.
I force myself to breathe, inhaling and exhaling slowly, trying to steady myself.
I tap a quick text out to Ian.
>
And if he gets his way, he never will.
I draw the top of the dress from the box and the first thing I notice is the collar. It’s made of silver metal as wide as two of my fingers, studded with glittering crystals. The rest of the dress slips from the box. It’s a simple sheath dress in pale blue silk and it would be pretty if not for the collar.
I squeeze my eyes shut and let my head drop, my chin resting against my chest.
He wants to shame me. He wants to demonstrate his control over me.
And if I want the omega test subject to live, I have no choice but to comply.
I slip into the dress, latching the collar around my throat, then fold my uniform and tuck it into the dress box. The collar is too small—not tight enough to cut off my airflow, but tight enough that I feel it digging into my throat with every movement. The inside is rough, the sharp edges of the backs of the settings scratching against my skin.
All of it intentional.
He wants this to hurt me.
I slip into the stilettos nestled in tissue paper at the bottom of the box and catch my reflection in the mirror.
I look like the omegas I once resented—the weak, brittle omegas wearing collared dresses. I used to think it was an act of submission. I never thought it was forced.
I know so much better now.
I step out of the ladies’ room and Rad looks me over, his slow perusal of my body making my skin crawl. His eyes don’t light with pleasure until he sees the collar around my neck, until he takes in how it digs into my skin.
“Ravishing,” he tells me, offering his arm.
I duck my head and pass the dress box to Marcus, then slowly slip my hand into the crook of the other alpha’s arm, trying not to retch at how close it brings us, at how potent his anise-and-orange scent is up this close.
