Savage Royals (Boys of Oak Park Prep #1) - Callie Rose Page 0,55

it was shitty of us to treat you like you were any different. You’re a Royal, and we need to accept that.”

“Wow. Don’t sound so fucking excited about it.” I crossed my arms over my chest, still glaring warily at him.

“Well, if you’re expecting a damn parade, you’re shit out of luck,” he drawled. “But what I am offering is a ceasefire. A reset. We’ll start over, and this time we’ll treat you like a Royal should be treated. No bullshit.”

I still didn’t speak. My lips were pressed so tightly together my cheeks ached, and I searched the depths of his eyes for some hint of his true intentions. His irises were such a pure, distilled color of green that it was hard to believe they were real sometimes, and all I saw in them was a sort of amused annoyance.

After a long moment of silence, Mason cocked his head. “I don’t understand. I thought this was what you wanted, Talia. To be one of us. I’m offering you a fucking olive branch here, which”—he shook his head, laughing under his breath again—“I don’t do often. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want, but it won’t change the fact that you are a Hildebrand. You’re meant to be one of us.”

“I don’t believe you.” My voice was scratchy.

A Cheshire smile lit his face, and he stepped away from me, reaching for the door handle. “You don’t have to, Hildebrand. The truth is written in your damn DNA.”

Chapter 17

Mason hadn’t been kidding.

He hadn’t been lying.

Somehow, in the two weeks since the end of fall semester, the Princes had decided I was one of them. I was a Hildebrand, granddaughter of two of Roseland’s wealthiest citizens. A Royal.

…and just like that, the bullying stopped.

Not just from them, but from everyone at Oak Park. Adena and her little posse still seemed to hate me, but even they didn’t actively taunt me or push me around anymore.

If I’d ever had any doubt of the Princes’ sway and power over the school, it died the first day of spring semester.

As quickly and thoroughly as they’d turned the entire student population against me, they undid it. Kids talked to me in the halls, people in my classes offered to study with me, I got invited to parties and social events.

The whole thing was such an abrupt turnaround I felt like I had whiplash as I went through the first week of classes—as if I’d literally stepped into someone else’s shoes, some other girl who was popular and well liked.

But that wasn’t the only change.

The weirdest, strangest, most unnerving part of the whole thing was that the Princes didn’t just leave me alone.

They enfolded me, as if their little unit had always been five rather than four.

Over the next few weeks, they insisted I eat lunch with them every day. In the classes I shared with them, they held a seat for me right next to theirs. They walked me across campus, and Finn started hanging out in the ballet studio with me again during sixth period gym. He seemed happy to be there, and I wondered if he’d missed this little haven hidden away on the second floor of the gymnasium.

It was sort of nice to have him back, actually. I still hated all four of the Princes, and I refused to let them just brush the entirety of the previous semester under the rug like it’d never happened. But even when things had been at their shittiest, the ballet studio had always been a weird neutral territory, a place where we’d both let our guards down.

Sometimes we chatted about random stuff, and sometimes we didn’t talk at all. But I found I could concentrate better when he was around, although I had no idea why. Something about the sight of him leaning against the wall opposite the barre and mirrors put me at ease.

As far as the rest of it?

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

It was nice not to be singled out and tormented by my classmates anymore, and the Princes weren’t really even dicks to me when I hung out with them—no more than they were to each other, anyway. They gave each other shit and joked about old, embarrassing stories, and they included me in those conversations almost as if I’d been there.

As if I’d been here this whole time.

They’d been friends since they were toddlers—something I’d guessed after my talk with Philip over the break—so they knew