Page 84 of Wicked Chains
Helena doesn’t even look at him. “If she won’t kneel, then she will be made an example.”
A second presence slides up beside me. Soren, wearing that shit-eating grin, but his eyes are flat and black, dangerous. “I think that’s enough, Headmistress. You’re becoming quite boring, actually.”
For a moment, I think maybe I’m safe.
Helena tilts her head, assessing the two of them, and then she smiles. “You boys want to protect her? How sweet.”
She snaps her fingers.
An invisible force slams into Lucien and Soren, sending them skidding backward ten feet. Lucien lands on his feet, barely, but Soren actually goes down on his ass, which would be funny if I wasn’t about to die.
Helena steps closer, her voice pure ice. “Last chance. Kneel.”
I look her right in the eye. “Fuck off.”
She raises her hand. I brace for the impact, the crack of bone or the snap of my own free will. But instead, something else happens.
A door slams open at the back of the hall, hard enough to shake the chandeliers.
Ash storms in.
He’s not even pretending to be civil tonight. His green eyes burn, and there’s a set to his shoulders that makes half the room instinctively recoil. Every student he passes shrinks away, all their shitty smugness gone in an instant.
When he gets to us, he doesn’t waste time.
He puts himself directly between me and Helena, his back to me, facing her down with all six feet five inches of pure rage.
“She belongs to me,” Ash says, voice so loud the silverware rattles. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Helena doesn’t blink. “You forget your place.”
“My place,” Ash says, “is at the head of the Blood Moon Coven. You answer to us.”
The whole room is frozen. No one, not even the other faculty, is brave enough to move.
Helena sneers nastily. “You think you’re in charge?”
Ash leans forward, eyes locked on hers. “Try me.”
Lucien and Soren are both back on their feet now, but they keep their distance, watching like they know this is a battle above their pay grade, and they’d only make it worse by interfering.
Helena finally speaks. “She is disruptive. She refuses to submit to authority.”
“She submits to me,” Ash says, and I can feel the truth of it, the way the contract binds us. “And if you have a problem with that, you can take it up with the coven.”
Helena laughs. “The coven is mine.” The two Blood Moon members are still beside Helena, but they look less certain now.
They stare each other down for a long moment.
He turns back to Helena. “If you ever touch her again, I’ll feed you to your own familiar.”
Now is not really the time to be thinking about anything but saving my own ass, but it occurs to me that I did not know Helena had a familiar. It makes sense, she’s a witch, but I’ve never seen it. I briefly wonder what it is—maybe a dung beetle or, even more fitting, an anglerfish?
“Your inappropriate attachment to this girl is unbecoming as leader of the coven, Ash. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
The two Blood Coven members are now stepping backwards, inching toward the exit.
He ignores her, taking my hand. “Come with me,” he says. I don’t argue.
