Aaron can’t seem to resist reaching down to squeeze Hael Harbin’s sweaty little hand. They both like new kids because new kids mean new opportunities. Hael is a bit nervous today because his father is acting weird, even weirder than usual, and last week, when he hit his mom—which wasn’t anything new at all—blood spurted everywhere and then she laid on the ground and cried while his father grunted on top of her. Hael doesn’t like that. The sight of all that pain and grunting makes him physically ill and he throws up a lot.

Still, when the ashy-haired girl comes down the steps and pauses in the courtyard, her eyes desperately flicking to the front gate as if she thinks she might take off down the sidewalk and escape this run-down nightmare forever, Hael can’t help himself. He feels hope. He wants to make a new friend. Eventually, he’ll fall so deeply in love with this girl that he’ll take anyone he can to bed, just so he can close his eyes and for a few brief moments actually fantasize that she remembers his name.

Victor Channing is the strangest one of them all, and the one who—in this very moment—is the one with the most pain. His mother hits him across the mouth if he spills a drip of soda on his shirt or gets crumbs on his pants. She yanks him around the way this new girl’s mother does, leaving them both with bloody crescents. Sometimes, his mom even takes him to fancy parties and parades him around like either a trophy or a cheap thrill for sale, he isn’t sure. What he does know is that when she hands him off to his ‘uncles’, bad things happen, things that make him crouch in his closet in the dark with his hands pressed over his ears and his sobs drowning out the darkness of his thoughts.

Victor—or as the other boys call him, Vic, because Victor is just too much work to say—finally catches the eye of the ashy-haired girl and something passes between them, something that can’t be described or explained but which is sought after by every poet and every artist and every musician who has ever composed since the beginning of time.

They are the first to realize that soul mates exist, and that they embody that ideal. That Bernadette Savannah Blackbird is connected to each and every one of them, but that they’re also connected to each other. Hael is connected to Aaron who’s connected to Victor who’s connected to Oscar who’s connected to Callum, and Bernadette is connected to them all, the center of the circle, the beating heart where all the blood flows.

Bernadette stares back at Victor and tries to pretend like she doesn’t see him staring at her like an endgame boss, the final line in a poem, or the epic last words of your favorite movie. She tosses her hair the way the snooty girls at her old school did, but while she can hair flip with the best of them, she isn’t snooty. Actually, she’s really sad, even with that other girl by her side, the one that none of the other boys noticed until just now. Because that other girl, she’s practically a ghost, quiet and stone-faced because she’s just met her stepfather and he, along with her mother, will orchestrate a sharp and violent end to her story.

Penelope Blackbird gazes over at her sister and then flicks her attention to the group of boys. Somehow, she knows as soon as she sees them that she won’t be around forever and that her sister will need someone on her side if Pen can’t be there to do it. She doesn’t know why she thinks any of those things, but she releases her sister’s hand and backs away, turning to a group of girls near the only nice tree in the front courtyard of the school which is all cement but which is also the only place for them to play.

Pen won’t make it to find her happily ever after, not in this life, but she’s the true protagonist of the story. Even with her voice silenced, she found someone to tell it. And, in her next incarnation, she is going to thrive. The universe demands it.

Bernie frowns at the boys as the wind picks up pieces of her pretty hair and tosses it around her face. She sweeps some of it back, still staring at Victor, and feeling her entire life funnel down into one single chokepoint, one that she only need cross before she can have her happily ever after here, now, today.

Bernadette blinks once, twice, three times.

And then wakes up.

The morning of my high school graduation, I wake up early, stretching out on the gigantic bed that I share with five deliciously awful boys and feeling like the whole world is about to crack open and spill beautiful things into my life.

Today is the day of the VGTF’s raid.

I should be nervous as I crawl out of the gray satin sheets that Oscar is so obsessed with that he bought extra sets, just so we could outfit both beds with them. Instead, as I stand in the kitchen barefoot, watching the coffee maker drip-drip-drip and breathing in the earthy caffeinated scent of cheap Prescott beans, I feel rejuvenated.

Excited.

One last chance, one more fight.

“Good morning,” Oscar purrs, padding into the kitchen in his bare inked feet and removing a half-dozen coffee mugs from the cabinet. I’m actually surprised at what a good caretaker he can be, when he chooses to use his powers for good instead of evil.

“Morning,” I say, my breath catching sharply as he steps up behind me, sliding his hands around me until his long fingers find my cunt through the soft cotton of my pajama pants. He teases me with a single finger, playing with the hard nub of my clit and running his tongue up the side of my neck. Touching me. Worshipping me. “Are you excited for today?”

Oscar makes a sound of what’s either complete approval or complete disapproval, nothing in-between, but also impossible to discern. He’s just like that, this tech-obsessed asshole with his iPad for a lover and his kinks and his mastery of knots.

Speaking of kinks, he very calmly and carefully curls his fingers around the front of my throat, continuing to stroke my cunt while he licks up the side of my neck and makes me shiver.

“Am I excited for today?” he repeats, and I can’t tell if his words are simply disdainful or if they’re also cracking with a failure to restrain himself. After a moment, he gives in and shoves my pants down to my knees. “I’m quite happy to be finished at this pompous school.”

That’s what Oscar says right before he drives into me, burying himself deep as I groan, bent over the counter next to the coffee maker. Our fucking is just that—fucking—and it’s short and hot and perfect, and so damn good at calming my nerves that I end up sitting in the living room, drinking my coffee, and smiling like the whole world is waiting with open arms.

One last chance, one more fight.

I keep repeating that to myself, because even if it feels like we’re close to ending this thing, we have to get through the day unscathed. Anything could go wrong here. Even with the VGTF and a supposedly peaceful raid, there are risks. There are always risks. There’s the risk of death—I could lose one or more of my boys. And there’s also the risk of Maxwell and Ophelia escaping to fight another day.

So, as confident as I am in letting Sara Young handle this thing, as sure of it as I am, I also have to maintain my skepticism and play like we might lose.

“Good morning,” Aaron says, appearing with his hair all bed-mussed and adorable. He leans over me and gives me a lasting kiss on the mouth that has my heart pumping and my already sated pussy throbbing in response. Goddamn it, but I already admitted that I was a thirsty bitch, right?

“Morning,” I say as he sits down beside me and across from Oscar, watching as his friend lifts his coffee to his razor-sharp lips. “We should probably get the girls up if I’m going to do their hair.”

Ah, the girls. Since it was our last day of school yesterday, we let the girls stay the night. We were careful, as careful as we always are, but we’ll be even more careful still when we leave the apartment. Like I said, there are risks. There are always risks, and even Oscar can’t calculate every single one of them.

Aaron nods belatedly, yawning briefly before stretching his arms over his head.

“I’ll help you with that,” he offers, standing up and padding down the hallway in bare feet. I watch him go, hiding a smile of my own behind my coffee mug. The fact that the only person in my life that I have to invite to today’s ceremony is the Vice Principal of my old school should have me feeling bereft in some way. Like, I have no parents, no siblings but for Heather who will be participating in today’s festivities with her own class.

The thing is, it’s impossible to feel bereft when you have the Havoc Boys.

“Alright, ladies, it’s time to get up,” Aaron tells the girls, nestled together on an air mattress in what’s essentially Oscar’s office. And by office, I mean he has the desk, the chair, and the bookcase that came with the apartment and nothing else in there. None of us thought to decorate for such a short stay.

And after this …

Well, the plan for tonight is to stay here one last time. Tomorrow, we’ll move our things back to Aaron’s place to stay with Marie who still refuses to get on a plane to Louisiana. Whether that’s because she loves her son too much to be parted from him or something else, I’m not sure. All I know is that Hael has spent every single day on the phone with her since we moved her out of their house in Four Corners.

She even came up to the school once, last week, for a parents’ luncheon thing. Callum allowed his grandmother to come, and it was the first time I’d ever seen the woman with my own eyes. Unfortunately, Ophelia also showed up and so Victor was left at a table with her and Trinity and Samuel Jade while the rest of us orphans crowded at our own table.

Anyway, Victor’s grandmother’s house is now ours officially—although I’m pretty sure it was ours from the moment we had a bloodletting orgy inside of it—but the construction on that is going to take a while. Also, it can’t start until we have the inheritance money.

Just five more months to go, I remind myself, but it still feels like a hell of a long time when everything about Ophelia and Maxwell and the GMP is so uncertain.

The raid today has to go off as planned or I don’t know what the fuck else we’re going to do.

“I’m tired,” Heather whines as she storms past me with nine-year-old attitude that puts my seventeen-year-old one to shame. The bathroom door opens and slams shut, and then I hear the shower running.