I checked my phone again for a reply from Rook as I waited in the atrium, but none came, and I scrubbed a hand over my face, feeling the prickle of day-old stubble. I needed a shave, and probably a fucking shower, but after we discovered the security guard, Mick, was missing, I needed to figure out why.
All security footage of Monday morning last week had been scrubbed from the drives. It went black around three in the morning and then flicked back to life around seven, when the first of the students began to wander downstairs to find the pornographic photos.
It drove me to madness thinking there was someone else in the academy, just a couple floors below where Ava Jade slept. She’d been alone. It didn’t matter if it was an Ace or her stalker. In either case, the person had wanted to hurt us, and I couldn’t think of anything that would hurt us more than something happening to that girl.
Groaning, I texted Rook again.
Corvus: Where are you guys? The bell rang five minutes ago.
I punched the elevator button and waited, giving in to the urge to go up there and see for myself, even though I knew damn well what I could be walking into. Imagining their bodies tangled together, flushed and violent, made me almost crack a tooth.
I knew when Grey wandered home several hours after I left the rally field exactly what happened when I left. He had that rocks off glow. The one he rarely got from fucking Brianna, but I knew the face. Nail marks all over his neck and shoulders told me the rest.
I didn’t ask because I knew it would only stoke the internal flames to know whether or not they had her at the same time. Without me.
It had become something of an unwritten rule from the start with Ava Jade; that she wasn’t interested in choosing. That she would take her pleasure from each of us as she wanted, without asking permission. Without guilt.
The guys and I had shared before. A handful of times. But those women never mattered to us. Not like her. And my inner beast roared that she belonged to me even though the still rational part of my brain was almost glad she’d found a home in my brothers’ hearts, too.
It was the only way she could be one of us.
It couldn’t work any other way.
I jerked back as the doors to the elevators opened and Ava Jade and Rook stepped out.
“Hey, Bro,” Rook said nonchalantly, his hair damp from a shower. Ava Jade’s was dry and styled in a high ponytail with little pieces left out to frame her face. Either she blow dried it or they didn’t share a shower.
I stuffed the need to know down deep, burying it.
It didn’t matter.
“Lose your phone?” I found myself growling back at him.
He tapped his pocket. “Nope.”
“I texted you.”
“I saw. We were on our way down. I knew you’d be waiting here.”
“Where’s Grey?” Ava Jade asked, peering around the atrium for any sign of him.
Grey entered through the front door five minutes later than he said he’d be and came over to us, a curious knot in his brows. “Thought you’d be in class, didn’t the bell—?”
“I was waiting for them,” I interrupted him, indicating Rook and Ava Jade. “You get those books handled?”
Grey nodded. “Yeah. All taken care of. I have more news, too.”
“What?” Sparrow asked.
“The alliance with the Kings is official. Dies made the move last night.”
I didn’t miss how Ava Jade’s fists clenched at her sides, at odds with the next words to leave her lips. “That’s good, right?”
Grey’s lips pressed together. There was something more.
“Apparently they weren’t satisfied with an alliance in name only. Victor asked Dies for our crews to meet in good faith.” He paused. “So, Dies has welcomed them to join us for the next fight night.”
“Fuck.”
“It’s not like we didn’t think this might happen.”
“I didn’t know you were fighting again,” Ava Jade said to Rook. “When?”
She didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised or perturbed at the new turn of events.
Rook shrugged at her. “I fight when Dies tells me to.”
“He hasn’t found an opponent for you yet,” Grey explained to Rook. “No one wants to take their shot since how badly you beat Conor Jones last month.”
“Pussies.”
Sparrow laughed at that.
Now was as good a time as any.
I tugged the slim box free of my back pocket and passed it to her.
Her laughter ceased as she took it, taken aback by the brand emblem on the cover.
“What’s this?”
“Your new phone,” I told her. “It was supposed to get here days ago, but it was late.”
When she opened the box to see the slim silver cell inside and said nothing, I continued. “You haven’t bought yourself a new one, and we need to be able to get ahold of you. I, uh, I hope you don’t mind. If you don’t like it, I can order something different.”
Jesus Christ, I sounded pathetic. I could feel my brothers watching me.
“Well?” I gritted out, trying to force a reply from her.
Despite my change in tone, she smiled up at me, shaking her head and the heat that’d been crawling up my neck died out.
“Thanks, Corv,” she said, taking the phone out to hand the box back, powering it on. “Guess this means you’re done being mad at me?”
“Depends. Are you done trying to get us all killed?”
“For now.”
A smile stained my lips to match hers, and I wasn’t sure where to put my hands. What was this girl doing to me?
“Ava Jade Mason,” a woman’s voice shrieked as the door to the main office burst open. Standing there in the doorway with a hat twice the size of Texas wrapped in a dead thing instead of a bow, was Ava Jade’s aunt. The Humphrey widow who lived across town in the big secluded mansion all alone.
Fuck if she wasn’t a terrifying creature. With a botched face lift and droopy lips painted a dark red. A cashmere coat draping all the way to the floor, baggy on her five foot nothing frame.
I could smell the mothballs from here.
“Fuck my life,” Ava Jade breathed, sighing heavily as the woman waddled over to us.
“You guys should scram,” she muttered to us.
“No way in hell I’m missing this,” Rook replied, standing up straighter as though he were a fine upstanding citizen of Thorn Valley and not a fucking shark in human skin.
In the black sweater he wore, with his tatted hands behind his back, he could almost pull it off, too.
Grey and I followed suit.
I inclined my head to the woman as she approached. “Madam Humphrey,” I said graciously, stepping between her and Ava Jade. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Corvus James.”
She balked at my extended hand, taking in my too perfect smile and towering height.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Who?”
“Corvus,” I repeated, taking her frail hand in mine to shake it, hearing Ava Jade grumble something unintelligible at my back. She should’ve been thanking me. Thanking all of us. There were non-violent ways of getting what we wanted, and though they were less fun, we used them often.
Grey cranked up the charm to eleven and took my place in front of the woman. “And I’m Grey Winters. Your niece and I share AP calculus. I was the top of the class before she dethroned me.”
Humphrey blinked rapidly, taking us in like her puny little brain couldn’t compute what was happening. She was trying hard to maintain her frustration, but it was waning fast.
Rook put the last nail in that coffin.
He swept forward, taking her veiny hand up to his lips for a kiss. “Rook,” he said simply. “A pleasure.”
“What are you doing here, Aunt Humphrey?” Ava Jade asked, shoving Rook out of the way with a little more force than she needed to, giving him a pointed look.
“I…well I was…”
Well shit, we broke her.
Her face reddened, and she cleared her throat. “I came to see you.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” Humphrey demanded, coming back to herself. “You’ve been ignoring all my calls. My text messages. I thought you’d left.”
“I lost my phone.”
Humphrey’s gaze alighted on the brand new cell phone in Ava Jade’s hand. “Just like your father, always telling lies.”
Ava Jade trembled with rage at her aunt’s comment, and I winced, anticipating a number of things that could leave her mouth now.
“It’s a new phone,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about Dad like that.”
She waved away Ava Jade’s words like they were coils of a particularly odorous smoke wafting near her face. “Yes, well, it’s true, but never mind that. You never replied about Thanksgiving.”
Ava Jade cocked her head, staring with open incredulity at her aunt. “You’re not serious.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? We’re the only family we have now, dear. I should like for you to join me at the house for dinner.”
It didn’t sound like a request, and I wondered why Ava Jade put up with the old cow. Was it truly just because she paid her tuition here at the academy? Fuck, I’d pay it myself to get the hag off her back.
“I don’t do Thanksgiving,” she replied in a careful monotone. “Haven’t since I was, like, four.”
“That’s just sad, Ava Jade. Your parents should’ve—”
The woman cut herself short, clearly not completely immune to my Sparrow’s murderous stares.
Humphrey turned her attention to me. “Well, just ask your friends. You boys must have Thanksgiving plans? Would you rather sit alone at the school?”
“Actually,” Grey interjected. “We don’t. Our father lost his wife the day before Thanksgiving, so we don’t celebrate it.”
Humphrey’s hand went to her chest, fingers clutching the pearl necklace around her throat. “Oh, how very unfortunate. Should you like to, you’d be welcome to attend Thanksgiving dinner at my home with Ava Jade. Everyone should have somewhere to go for Thanksgiving.”
Ava Jade’s eyes went wide at the offer, her mouth dropping open. “They wouldn’t—”
“We’d love to join you, madame,” Rook said, making me choke. I had to cover the sound with a cough and a smile. “What a gracious offer.”
“It’s settled then. I’ll send you the details, Ava Jade, dear. Mind your phone. I don’t want to have to come all the way across town again.”
Ava Jade seemed temporarily mute, glaring at Rook so vehemently that I was surprised she didn’t reduce him to ash with the look alone.
“It’s a new phone,” I reminded her aunt, making her pause before departing. “But I’ll be sure to have Ava Jade text you so you have the new number.”
Her mouth opened into a tiny ‘o.’ She didn’t like the insinuation that she’d wrongly accused Ava Jade of lying. But she only nodded. “Thank you, dear.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Now get to class, the lot of you. I don’t want my niece getting you into trouble for being late.”
Ava Jade stared after her aunt red-faced, her little fists tight balls at her sides until the front door closed behind the old woman.
“You’re not coming to Thanksgiving.” She seethed at all of us.
Rook put a hand to his chest, a fake look of hurt crossing his face. “But, Ava Jade,” he said in a terrible Madame Humphrey impression. “We were invited.”
“I’m going to murder all of you.”
