Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,32

the pain that seemed to live inside him, barely contained by his skin, flashed across his features.

But he wasn’t the one who snapped.

I was.

My body was moving before my brain consciously gave the command, the crutches falling away from me with a loud clatter as I limped forward in two long strides. Pain flared in my ankle, but I hardly registered it as I swung my fist toward Adena’s face.

It was a wide hook, sloppy and wild, but it had all the force of my momentum and rage behind it. I caught her on the cheek, and her head whipped to the side, her entire body following. The large crowd gathered in the hallway gasped, and Preston caught her before she went down to the floor, grabbing her shoulders to steady her as his shocked gaze flew to me.

I shook my fist out, trying to banish the stinging ache that had reverberated up my forearm.

“You…” Adena choked on a breath as she blinked at me, one hand pressed to the side of her face. “You… bitch!”

“Wow. Original.” I felt my mouth moving, but my voice seemed to come from far away. So much anger and adrenaline was coursing through my body that I was beginning to shake. “Tattle on me if you want. Then maybe I’ll tell everyone you fucked with my car. Tell them what your idea of a fucking prank is.”

She jerked back as if I’d hit her again. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. Her nostrils flared as she glanced around the hall, taking in the large crowd that’d gathered around us, watching our entire exchange. She made an angry, almost animalistic noise in her throat before turning on her heel and stalking off down the corridor.

As she moved away, my good leg wobbled, and I suddenly realized I no longer had my crutches. I knew I shouldn’t have put weight on my broken ankle when I stepped forward, and I tried to keep all my weight off it as I put my arms out to regain my balance.

Hands closed around mine as Cole and Finn each stepped up to my sides, steadying me as Elijah retrieved my crutches. A murmur of voices filled the hall again as people went back to what they’d been doing before the altercation, whispering about it in hushed voices, and Mason stepped up to face me, breathing sharply through his nose.

The pain I’d seen on his face was gone, but the emotions that were left were no less intense. His body invaded the bubble of space around me, his energy pressing against me.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Princess. What the hell were you thinking? You could’ve hurt yourself. Your leg—”

“It’s fine.” I shook my head. “I get my cast off soon anyway. It’s been getting stronger.”

“Does it hurt?”

Yes. It throbbed dully, not a sharp pain but a pulsing ache, a reminder that it hadn’t born my weight in weeks. I didn’t answer, but he read the expression on my face and cursed.

“You need to let yourself heal up,” he rasped, his voice strained. “And you don’t need to give Adena any more reasons to go after you.”

“She can’t talk shit like that about your mom,” I insisted stubbornly. My hand hurt almost as much as my ankle, but I didn’t tell him that. “It’s not fucking right.”

Mason blinked. For a moment, the tense, angry energy radiating from him softened. Then he reached down and swooped me into his arms, gathering me up in a fireman’s carry. I let out a little yelp of surprise as he shot a glance at Elijah, who still held my crutches.

“Bring those.” He glanced back down at me. “You’re staying off your feet for the rest of the day.”

As if that settled the matter, he moved toward the door with long, steady strides, as if my clunky cast and I weighed nothing. None of the other Princes objected, falling into step beside us and pushing the door open when we reached it.

Mason carried me all the way across campus to the Wastelands, up the stairs, and into my dorm before depositing me on my couch. Elijah rested my crutches against the wall near the couch as Finn grabbed a bunch of pillows to stack up under my leg.

“You’ve got a pretty good right hook there, Legs,” he murmured, shooting me a lopsided grin as he straightened.

Cole rifled through my freezer and came back with a plastic bag full of ice cubes. He handed it to Mason, and