Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,46

out the photocopied pages of my notebook or the pictures I’d taken.

But the damage had been done.

She’d made the princes the butt of enough cruel jokes that the reputations they’d spent years cultivating at Oak Park were destroyed. They still had friends—or rather, there were still people who wanted something from them—but their standing as unequivocal rulers of campus had been torn down.

Is that what’s bugging Mason? That he lost his place on the throne?

Whatever was bugging him was bugging me, making it hard to breathe when he was around, as if the tension radiating from him devoured all the oxygen in the atmosphere.

And at the end of the sixth week of classes, the pressure building in him finally snapped.

I walked back toward Craydon from the gymnasium with Cole and Elijah, working on keeping my gait steady and even. Finn had gone ahead of us to talk to his seventh period teacher before class, and I’d lost track of Mason sometime during the middle of gym.

As soon as we pushed through the large entry doors into Craydon, I realized why.

He had Preston shoved up against a locker several yards down the hallway, with a small crowd gathered around them. I didn’t see Adena, but Sable was screaming at Mason to stop as he pummeled the other boy with his fist. We’d obviously missed part of the fight, because Preston’s lip was already split open and Mason’s knuckles were bloody.

“Fuck,” Cole muttered under his breath, picking up his pace as we hurried toward the altercation. I knew the only reason he wasn’t running was because he didn’t want to leave me behind.

As soon as we were close, he and Elijah darted forward, grabbing Mason’s arms and pulling him away from the blond-haired boy.

“Dude. Not fucking here,” Cole muttered as I finally reached them.

But Mason didn’t even seem to hear him. He strained against their hold, the veins in his neck popping as he fought to get within striking distance of Preston again.

“Did you do it? Huh? Did you, you motherfucker?” His voice was a ragged shout, and his eyes were full of fury as he lunged toward the bank of lockers where Preston was cowering. “If I find out you tried to hurt her, I will fucking end you, do you understand?”

Cole managed to maneuver himself in front of Mason and used his larger form to shove his friend back as Elijah kept a firm grip on his arm. They wrestled him down the hall and out the door just as two teachers stepped out of their classrooms, with me trailing in their wake.

As soon as we were outside, Cole shoved Mason up against the side of the building, pinning him there and getting in his face. “Mace! Enough. You’re done.”

Mason stared at him, his chest rising and falling fast. There wasn’t a mark on the brown-haired boy. Whatever punches had landed between him and Preston, they all seemed to have gone one way.

“Shit.” Cole shook his head. “We need to get him out of here. He’s gonna lose it in front of a fucking teacher.”

“I’ll take him,” I blurted, stepping forward before the words were even all the way out of my mouth.

The raven-haired boy turned to me with an almost disbelieving gaze, as if I’d just volunteered to step into a cage with a wild bear or try to tame a charging bull.

Mason’s eyes flickered as he turned his head slightly toward me, and Elijah nodded, jerking his chin at Cole. “It should be her. We can go clean up inside, make sure nobody rats him out—if it’s not too late for that.”

Cole’s ice-blue gaze lingered on me for a moment before it fell on Mason again, and finally, he nodded.

“Okay.” He tightened his grip on Mason, pressing him into the wall again. “Be fucking cool.”

Then he released him and stepped back. I grabbed the still-seething boy, dragging him down the stairs before he had a chance to protest or offer up any real resistance—because if he decided to truly resist, I knew there was no way I’d get him to go anywhere.

Elijah and Cole headed back toward the entrance doors, and as soon as they disappeared into Craydon, I pulled Mason along harder.

He didn’t resist coming with me, but his gait was almost as jerky as mine, and his entire body seemed stiff, as if he were a robot fueled by rage.

I wasn’t sure where to take him, but I wanted him somewhere far away from all the