Page 11 of Breaking Ophelia
The fantasy isn’t about sex, not really. It’s about ownership. About knowing that the Board will give me a green light to do whatever I want, as long as I keep the blood off the Persian rugs. The Hunt is a game, but I don’t want the game. I want the aftermath.
She fights. I let her. The harder she pulls away, the tighter my grip. I press her down until her nails scrape lines into the stone, until her body shudders and the fight drains out. Then I let her breathe. Then I let her remember who holds the leash.
It’s almost beautiful, the geometry of it: one body bent to the will of another, violence shaped into something you can pass down like a family ring.
I blink and I’m back on the balcony, hands clamped to the railing, sweat cold between my fingers.
Colton speaks without looking at me. “The Board won’t like this.”
“Don’t care.”
He huffs a laugh, all breath. “She’s meant to solidify the future, nothing more, certainly not an obsession. You’re meant to claim her at the Hunt, not before. Don’t go fucking this up for the rest of us.”
My lips thin into a line because he’s reading my thoughts. Invading my fantasy. “It’s handled.”
He sits up, cracking his spine, eyes slitted. “You keep saying that, but I see you lose your shit every time she’s in the room.”
I don’t answer. The urge to knock his teeth down his throat is almost overwhelming. But I need Colton. He’s the only one in this school who understands that the line between predator and prey is thinner than a fucking razor blade.
He stands and stretches, rolling his head until the vertebrae click. “Whatever you say, boss.” He lingers a second, then stepsinto the stairwell, vanishing the way he always does—leaving a void in his wake.
I stay until my legs are numb. Until the world outside is nothing but black and the library is just a shell. I run my hand along the balcony, slow, feeling the iron bite into my palm. I leave a line of sweat behind, a small marker that I was here, watching.
I step into the corridor, heel-toe, just like a soldier. I know every security camera blind spot; I helped design the system when my father bought the first surveillance upgrade. I cut through the hall, passing empty classrooms, the smell of bleach and failure ghosting in the air.
On the way out, I catch her reflection in a side window, standing at the edge of the quad, clutching her books to her chest, eyes scanning the darkness. She looks up, straight at the glass, and I swear she sees me. She doesn’t flinch.
For a breathless second, it’s just the two of us, separated by thirty meters and six inches of bulletproof glass. She raises her chin. I smirk, raising my fingers in a small wave.
She turns, hair flying, and is gone.
I drag my thumb across my teeth, taste salt. My pulse is steady, finally.
Next time, I won’t just watch.
I’ll make her run.
Chapter 3: Ophelia
Iswearthelightin this place is designed to make you feel like a fucking vampire. The iron mounts throw up angry shadows along the walls, so every jaw seems sharper, every pair of eyes sunken and creepy. The main hall’s ceiling vaults overhead, all ribbed black beams and stone arches, like a mouth poised to snap shut and grind the room to powder. I walk into the cold echo of a bell and immediately regret the boots I chose. Every step is loud as fuck and just draws the stares of everyone sitting around long tables in groups of 12.
No one speaks to me, but the energy shifts the instant I cross the threshold. Heads tilt; some faces twist with open disgust, others with the bland interest of someone watching a wasp crawl over their food, not worth the effort to swat just yet. I glance pastthe faces, never lingering long enough to get stuck in any one person’s orbit.
Honestly, if I hadn’t starved myself all day just to avoid this, I wouldn’t even have come down for dinner, but I was hungry. Unfortunately, this fucked up place holds group dinners like a big, happy family. Everyone sitting in their spots, waiting to be served.
I half wonder if they’d serve me too or have me eat out of a bowl off the ground.
The Feral Boys, as I’ve heard them referred to as around campus, sit on a raised dais, an oak slab of a table reserved for them and their pack. Five thrones—there’s no other word for them—with wood carvings crawling up the legs. Caius Montgomery sits at the center, long black hair hanging along his jaw, eyes tracking me as I cross the space. He does not slouch. He doesn’t need to. He is the axis that spins the whole fucking room.
To his right, Colton—silent, unblinking, with the kind of stillness that looks accidental until you realize it’s anything but. Rhett to the left, blonde and louche, the kind of beautiful that’s always bored because nothing surprises him. Bam, at the far end, is already half out of his chair, one tattooed arm braced against the table like he might hurl it across the room just for the sound it would make. Next to him, Julian looks like he’s waiting to be painted, bored and self-amused, lips always on the edge of a sneer.
Yes, I did make it a point to study each of them today at the library, taking notes on who is who.
Considering they were all at the meeting, I figured they’d be important to my survival here in one way or another.
The five ‘sons’. The chosen ones.
No one invites me to their table, but then again, I wouldn’t fit in even if they had. My place is at the margins, a perimeter seat near the window, where the drafts are constant and the view is just fog and the vague suggestion of forest beyond the windows. I sit, making sure not to shrink or hunch. Posture is one of the only weapons I have.
