Page 10 of Soulless Rivalry

“If Mom or Dad knew you were such a whore, they would disown you,” I stated, turning the attention back to my brother and his incomprehensible need to fuck everything with a pulse.

“Keyword: if.”

I snickered at that. “You think they don’t know?”

“How would they?” He took a sip of his drink. “I’ve been pretty discreet about my outings.”

“Yeah, which is why they fired the new pool girl at the beginning of summer.”

Mikhail dared to look surprised. “Wait, what?”

“They saw her blowing your dick in the backyard. Need I remind you there are cameras everywhere at the compound?”

Royal chuckled and smirked at my brother. “Not as sleek as you thought.”

“This is fucking ridiculous.”

Mikhail was embarrassed, which I found quite funny. He was not bashful around us, but when it came to our parents, he tried acting like it. He tried acting like the responsible adult we all knew he was not.

“Don’t worry,brat,” I said, using the Russian word for brother. “I’m sure they’re fooling themselves into thinking it was a one-time thing and you’re still a perfect little virgin waiting forhis soulmate,” I mocked as the guys laughed at how distraught Mikhail looked.

“I’ll never understand your parents’ weird obsession with virginity.”

I looked at Ash and shrugged. “It’s not about virginity. It’s about not sharing yourself with just anyone.”

He snickered, “Damn man, you sound just like them. Are you guys, like, in a cult or something?”

I rolled my eyes and didn’t bother with an answer. Mostly because I didn’t believe Asher to have the mental capabilities to understand what my parents meant by that. I mean, he would already have to accept his bisexuality before trying to make sense of people’s opinions on sex altogether.

Our parents’ story wasn’t ideal. It was dark and fucked up and started when my dad kidnapped my mother to get back at her father. Yet, for some reason, Adna and Aleksandr Korolov had it in their mind that they were soulmates. Born for one another. And they wanted that for their kids, too.

I placated them, not because I believed in something as foolish as soulmates or true romantic love, but because the mere idea of someone intimately touching me made my skin crawl.

“What about you, Kon’?” Royal changed the subject, bringing my attention back to him.

With his black hair, chipped black nail polish and black clothes, he looked like an overgrown emo kid. His shirt stretched around the shoulders, and he wore faded jeans as if his billionaire daddy couldn’t afford to buy him new ones. His skin was covered in tattoos, so much he put Roman to shame, and he had his tongue pierced.

I’d known Royal for years, long before joining the Academy. We hadn’t attended the same school, not with me living in Louisiana and him in California, but our parents were friends.

Well, friends was a big word when it came to my family. Our parents didn’t really have much of those, but they did have allies, contrary to what most people thought. We kept them close and were interested in forming the right alliances, but always made sure to let them come to us first. And, so far, we’d never asked any of them for help.

We just liked being cautious.

“What about me?” I asked, shrugging and getting more comfortable on the rundown couch.

Royal exhaled the smoke of his cigarette into the night before turning his head back to me. “Are you excited about class starting tomorrow?”

Was I excited about seeing all the morons I had been going to school with for the last two years? No. Did I miss the assignments, boring lessons, and professors that awaited us tomorrow? I didn’t.

But, somehow, this first day seemed different from all past ones.

Because I had something I didn’t have during my last two years here.

Leverage.

And I was fucking excited to use it.

With that in mind, a smirk drew itself on my lips. “Yeah. Can’t wait.”

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