Savage Royals: A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance(73)

A few more students were called up, and then Dean Levy leaned down to the microphone and intoned, “Talia Hildebrand.”

Jacqueline sat up straighter, patting my knee before I stood and walked up to the stage.

I climbed the steps up one side as Dean Levy waited for me, and when I reached him, he shook my hand with pomp, leaning in to murmur his congratulations. I accepted the large, framed award and was about to step toward the other side of the stage when a strange noise caught my ears.

Breathing.

It was loud and echoing, blasting through the entire auditorium at high volume.

Panting breaths.

Soft moans.

Rustling noises.

I glanced around in confusion, and my gaze caught immediately on the screen behind the stage, where a new video was playing.

Shock stole my breath as my insides seemed to liquefy.

It was… me.

Dressed in a light t-shirt over a maroon bikini, I was practically humping Cole’s stomach as I kissed him. His hands were on my ass, squeezing and massaging, angling me to give the camera a better view.

What the fuck?

My mind went blank with shock, hardly able to process what I was seeing. What had felt daring and exciting and beautiful at the time looked dirty and cheap in the grainy video playing onscreen.

Adena. Ice filled my veins. She must’ve done this. How? How the fuck—?

Then the image switched.

It was a new shot, from a new angle, revealing me draped over Finn, rubbing against him as I devoured his mouth. In quick succession, it switched again and again, showing me making out with the other two Princes.

“What is this…?” Dean Levy murmured beside me. He stepped away, moving toward the edge of the stage to speak in low, urgent voices with another admin.

But I couldn’t tear my gaze from the screen.

The fourth video finally stopped, and a caption appeared across a black background.

The Hildebrand Legacy: Cheap Trash.

Then a new series of images flashed across the screen.

Me, inhaling smoke from Elijah’s mouth—his face blurred out, mine in perfect detail.

I blinked, my throat closing up in horror. Adena hadn’t been in that room. I was sure of it. And she hadn’t been in the fucking basement at the lake house either. How could it have been her who did this?

It couldn’t.

It wasn’t.

My entire body started to shake as the true realization hit me. I glanced desperately toward the audience, who were all staring with shocked, uncomfortable expressions—but Cole and Elijah were gone. Two empty chairs sat next to their parents, and two pieces of my heart seemed to die.

I turned my gaze back to the screen, clamping my hands over my stomach like I could somehow protect myself from all of this, like I could keep myself from flying to pieces.

There were more images. So many more.

I saw myself passed out in that same study room in Clarendon Hall, my tube top riding up as I sprawled across the couch like a broken doll. Boys I didn’t know were gathered around me, posing with me in obscene positions and laughing.

Every illicit or embarrassing thing I’d done all semester flowed across the screen, intermingled with images I knew weren’t of me—girls who’d been photoshopped to look like me, all caught in some filthy, disgusting act.

Dean Levy was off the stage now, and I heard raised, angry voices coming from somewhere near the back of the gymnasium as another video began to play.

The whoosh of waves came through the speakers, and I knew, even before I saw the dark, grainy footage, what was coming.

Laughter sounded in the video, close to where the camera was being held, as my moonlit form stood in the ocean’s shallows and screamed into the night.

“You hear that, Jacqueline? Fuck youuuuu! Fuck the Hildebrands! Fuck all your—”

The screen went dark suddenly, like the power had been cut.

Silence filled the large room, and the weight of it was so much I thought I might collapse under the pressure.

What…?

Why?

Spurred by desperation, I spun around, searching the crowd for the any of the Princes. But none of them were there. Elijah’s and Cole’s parents gazed at me with open disdain, and when I caught sight of Jacqueline, of the raw fury on her face, my heart stopped.

No. No no no.

The framed certificate the dean had handed me slipped from my numb fingers, and then I was moving, stumbling down the steps, racing for the door at the back of the room. I shoved it open, careening down the hall toward the building’s exit, my breath coming in short gasps.

I burst out into the quiet night and walked quickly down the pathway toward the quad, my legs feeling like they might buckle at any moment as my stomach churned with nausea. I kept hearing the sounds from the video, which had played so loud it was like they’d pierced my brain.

The heavy breathing. The low moans and whimpers.

Those had been ours.

They’d been something precious and beautiful, something secret and fragile.

And now they were trash.

Before I’d even made it twenty yards, movement in front of me caught my eye, and I stopped.

On the pathway leading to the gymnasium stood all four of the Princes, shoulder to shoulder, locked into their perfect formation.

Bile rose up my throat as the awful suspicion in my mind turned into undeniable truth.

They had done this.