Page 97 of Knox Academy Omnibus
Kalen
I watch her as she leaves withhim. I think my heart breaks just a little at the knife she just shoved into it. Why him? I know we all fucked up, but she didn’t give me a chance to explain. Or apologise.
“Boys, my office...now,” Dad demands. I’m surprised he kept his cool all through dinner. It would have been for Laura’s benefit since she declared she invited him. Dad was probably hoping that Baxter would show her what he is really like. And although he clearly did that, she chose to ignore all of the evidence right in front of her face. And she fancied him. Gag.
All four of us follow behind him. Sawyer looks about ready to barf and the twins seem to not care. I call bullshit on that though.
I shut the door behind us, Dad already at his desk. He looks about ready to murder us. I’ve never seen him this mad...ever and between us we’ve done some really stupid shit to wind him up.
“What were you thinking?” he booms, his voice laced with anger. “Sawyer? Care to share why you fucked a student, and my stepdaughter?”
“It was before I knew she was a student.”
Dad nods. He already knew. It’s evident in his eyes and Onyx calls him out.
“You already knew. So why the third degree, old man?”
“Because my future wife will cause problems for us if I don’t. We need Amelie and you all just fucked it up. Baxter hasn’t complied willingly, and now Amelie won’t either, because you idiots couldn’t keep your dicks in your pants. You had to play your stupid games with her.”
“I love her,” I blurt out and they all stare at me. “She isn’t a game to me.”
“Then you need to fix this,” dad snaps and I shake my head.
“The twins fucked that up for me, Sawyer will have to. He is the only one she doesn’t actually one hundred percent hate right now.”
“You better work it out, we have until the new year and she has to initiate. I was hoping a family bond would be her deciding factor.”
“We all bonded with her, in a way,” I smile. I use humour in tense situations. It usually goes one of two ways; diffuses the situation or fucks things up further. I rarely care about the outcome.
“Kalen, don’t,” Dad snaps, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Are you all punishing me? That has to be it. I’m sorry, but me and your mother are over.”
“If you think Slate or I are going to play nice, you’re mistaken. That bitch got mum reprimanded.”
We all look at Onyx. What is he talking about?
“Actually, your mother is the one who unfairly graded a student’s paper because of her hatred for me and Laura. Ameliewas wronged and went to another teacher to re-grade her paper, which she was entitled to do. The new teacher re-graded the paper for her - fairly I might add - and as the two grades were so far apart, I had to send her paper to outside council.
As such, your mother was already on very thin ice as a teacher for mocking Amelie in front of an entire class, for showing favouritism towards you over her when it came to sanctions, and for threatening her to stay away from you all when Amelie simply went to her for advice. Now this...deliberately fiddling grades is not something I will tolerate in my academy.”
I want to laugh at that. Falsifying records to keep a student from graduating if dad can’t afford to lose him is fine, but not fake grades? Or maybe he’s the only one allowed to be corrupt at Knox; he just hates that his ways are rubbing off on mum.
“Shit!” Slate says, running his hands through his hair.
“Mum lied to us,” Onyx adds, his face falling.
“Boys, I’m sure you all know The Order means a lot to me, to continue the legacy. I screwed up my generation. I was young and foolish. I fell in love with a girl who wasn’t part of the bloodlines laid out for us. I thought it could work. It didn’t. It couldn’t. I need you all to sit, so I can tell you about your parents.”
We all take a seat, throwing confused glances at one another.
“So I haven’t been honest with you about you boys and your parents. Kalen excluded, of course. We have very few pure bloodlines left. That all ended after my grandfather.
“Let’s go back to when I was in high school. It was my senior year and your grandfather was part of something. I wanted in. He said we were too young and should wait until we were out of school. In the end, my persistence won out.
“There was me and four other guys. Sawyer, your father, Slate and Onyx your father, a relative of Baxter’s, and another.It was like fate had us all together to be part of something big. The connections we could have had. All we needed to do was find girls within the blood line. Or even if just one of us did... The idea was to create a child of double blood. Whoever did that would have a child to rule the empire our families had created.
“Sounds easy enough, until we all fell in love with the same girl within the bloodline. Everything came crashing down. We all fell out. The Order of The Snaidhm was destroyed...until I found Amelie.”
“How is that possible?” Slate asks. “Her family is Australian.”
