Savage Royals: A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance(66)

Blood.

“Talia?”

The voice was so heartbreakingly familiar it made me want to cry. I didn’t want any of the Princes to see me like this, but at the same time, relief flooded me as Elijah knelt by my side.

“Oh fuck. Talia. Are you okay?”

I nodded dazedly as his hands moved over me, wincing when they brushed across my cheekbones. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Adena.”

“What? Are you fucking serious?”

His voice took on a harder edge than I’d ever heard from him. His tone was usually smooth and lyrical, which, having heard him sing, didn’t surprise me. The darkness in his voice now was the kind I usually heard from Mason or Cole, the kind that would send sane people running for the hills.

Then he shoved a hand through his hair, refocusing on me.

“Shit. Here.”

He helped me up before gathering my backpack and slinging it over his own shoulder. I leaned on him, and he let me walk slowly as we moved toward the Wastelands. When we got there, he dug into my bag for my key card and unlocked the door.

Inside my room, he deposited me on the couch and then disappeared into the bathroom for a second, returning with the first aid kit I’d used on Cole after the fight. He used several tissues to blot the blood coming from my nose, biting his lip in concentration as he worked.

I watched him, my mind still blank with shock.

I’d been pushed and shoved last semester and had a paintball rigged to shoot out of my locker, but I’d never been jumped like that. My heart was still beating sluggishly and unevenly, a sick feeling twisting in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t just the physical pain. It was the memories it’d unleashed, like poison seeping through my bloodstream.

When Elijah dabbed at the bruise on the side of my face, I hissed a pained breath, and he winced.

“Shit. I’m sorry, Tal. I really didn’t think Adena would take it this far. I don’t think any of us did. She’s probably fucking pissed because Mason told her at the party that they were over, over. That he never wants to get back together with her. She’s been gunning for him since the first fucking day she got here.”

My heart stuttered at his words, something warm and dangerous worming its way through my chest. He’d told her it was over.

That shouldn’t mean anything to me, but it did.

“God, that bitch.” Elijah shook his head, looking angrier than I’d ever seen him. “She attacked you to hurt Mason.”

“Why would—” I winced again as he touched my other cheek. “Why would attacking me hurt Mason? Does she think he’ll get blamed for it? He won’t. I’ll tell Dean Levy it wasn’t him—I was there, I saw her. Her, Sable, Veronica, and a few others.”

He set down the tissues he’d been using to clean my face, shaking his head with a grimace. “No, Legs. That’s not what I meant. She thought it would hurt Mason because…”

His voice died out, and he swallowed hard.

I blinked at him, trying to decipher the look on his face. He looked almost… sad.

“What?” I whispered. “Elijah, what?”

He sat back, scrubbing his hands over his face roughly. Something was agitating him, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. My brain felt like it was on a half-second delay, the pain in my temples pounding in time to my heartbeat.

Elijah had always been a little bit of an enigma to me. He was perfectly put together and looked like he belonged in a suit and tie, but had a messy dorm room covered in rock band paraphernalia. He could sing and play guitar like a god, but apparently he hardly ever did it anymore. He was quiet and almost withdrawn sometimes, but the ink on his back practically screamed with raw emotion. It was almost like he was two people trapped inside one body, and I had a feeling that the still waters of his calm, classic features ran very deep.

He’d been an asshole to me in the fall, just like the rest of the Princes, but there’d always been a little less bite to his taunts, a little less brutality to his treatment of me. Maybe that was why I felt the most comfortable with him out of all the four boys—the safest. When they’d dropped the bullying and inducted me into their “Royals club” at the beginning of the year, Elijah hadn’t had to do such a sharp one-eighty as some of the others had.

Cupping the side of my face gingerly, careful to avoid the bruise blossoming on my cheek, he let out a long breath.

“I’m sorry, Talia. I never meant for this to happen. It’s fucked up.”

My gaze was locked on his, drawn in by the tenderness and regret in his hazel irises. The boy in front of me was so far removed from the one who used to taunt me and stare me down as I walked by.

The boy in front of me cared.

“It’s okay, Elijah,” I whispered. “It’s not your fault.”

He didn’t seem to want to hear that though. He just shook his head, his thumb rubbing softly against my skin, as if he were trying to reassure himself that I was real. That I was still here, whole and intact.

A dozen emotions danced across his face, tightening his features. Something was churning under the still waters of his soul, and I could feel it bubbling up inside him.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before, Tal,” he murmured. “You shouldn’t be this good. After everything we did, you should hate us all.”