“Met probably isn’t accurate, I never spoke to him before the day he announced I was his. But yeah, according to him and the others, he saw me when I was a freshman and decided I belonged to him.”

“That’s when Clay, Evan and Hunter started watching you for him? This is the bit I don’t understand, why didn’t he just come say hi?”

“GAA, the school we went to, has these weird rules. Every freshman has a year to prove who they are, and that means for the first year they don’t really interact with the older kids and the older kids aren’t allowed to mess with them. It’s supposed to give you a year to find your place or some shit.”

“And Sebastian and the others were like prefects?”

“The Elite, yeah. There’s a tradition that the graduating Elite seniors pick their replacements from the juniors, but the guys were picked as freshmen. It was a whole thing, but basically it meant they were royalty, they were Elites for three years, not just one, and their word was law.”

“So they were the kings and Sebastian wanted to make you his queen, but he didn’t make his move until your sophomore year?”

A bitter laugh falls from my lips. “Yeah, it was the first day of classes and I had a shift at the diner I worked at straight after school. By the time I had my uniform on, they were sitting in a booth in my section. I was so scared, I thought they were there to tell me I was getting kicked out of school, but instead Sebastian told me I was his and that I had to quit my job. Clay went and spoke to my boss and came back with my final paycheck. I’m not entirely sure what they threatened him with, but he told me not to bother coming back.”

“Wow.”

“Oh that’s not even the worst thing they did that day. They forced me to get into their car and then he just started telling me I was his. God, I think he even mentioned us getting engaged. I freaked the fuck out and must have passed out, because when I woke up I was in a bedroom at his house. He had a doctor there for me and he called my mom out and she stayed the night. I still don’t know how he managed to convince everyone that I was there willingly, but no one ever questioned it.”

“Your mom never thought it was weird?”

“No. Mom drank the Kool-Aid from day one, she loves Sebastian, I told her what he was doing and she just brushed it off as teenage drama. When I went to Maine I had a complete fucking meltdown. I told my dad everything and he never questioned it. He hates Sebastian, well all of them really.”

“But apart from that first few days, Sebastian hasn’t been a total psycho, right?”

I exhale slowly. “No, not really. He scared the crap out of me that first day, he said all this shit about cages and clipping my wings and loads of other fucked-up stuff, but then he just changed his mind and set me free.”