“Okay, let’s think…” Creed stops me before I can continue my venture.
My eyes flick between my two brothers. “This a fucking intervention?”
“Nah,” Creed says, shifting to his other foot. “It’s a party invite.”
“The Dungeon blew up.”
“Then it was fixed.” Creed waves his hands in front of him. He knows that’s not what I mean. He knows that I mean someone blew the fucking thing up and we still don’t know who.
All of our phones ding in our pockets and we take them out. I open the latest message and my stomach falls to the fucking ground. Fuck. I miss the days where we would never hear from any of our parents. Coming to this school was clearly a fucking mistake.
Mother: There’s been a breach.
“What is she fucking talking about?” Legend asks, bouncing a basketball with one hand and holding his phone with his other. The trail of girls behind him all stay their distance. “Maybe she’s lying.”
“Sure. About what?” I glare at him. “What could she possibly lie about just to get us on edge?”
Another message comes in.
Mother: We need all of you home. Something is happening and we need you safe.
Safe? Is she fucking insane? I hit call and bring my phone to my ear. “Mother?”
“Knight, please. You all must come back to Rathe immediately.” I look to Legend and then to Creed.
Mother doesn’t use the word please often, if ever.
“You saw something again?”
She pauses. “Yes. I did.”
Fuck.
When my brothers and I were a lot younger, a few hundred years ago, our mother once told us that she would never use her gift as a way to manipulate us. We believed her.
Until we were old enough to realize that Mother will always put Father first.
“I’ve gotta go.” I end the call and shove my phone back into my pocket.
“What’d she say?” Legend asks, watching me carefully while going back to bouncing the ball between his legs.
“She wants us home now.”
“The season’s in full fucking swing.” Creed frowns. “We can’t leave, Coach will lose his mind if he’s out one Lord, let alone all four. Why’s she freaking out?”
“Like always, she gave an order and nothing else. She’s hiding something. I can feel it.”
“Since when could you feel anything through a phone?” Sinner spits, still angry with me. “You a High Empath all of a sudden?”
I blink past Sin’s words. What the fuck is he talking about?
“We could fuck a Pixie? Take what we want and let her drown us in Fae dust?”
Legend nods in agreement, looking to me.
“Yeah.” My voice scratches and I swallow. “Let’s do that.”
I feel Creed poking at the block in my mind, but it’s lighter than normal, almost like the wind rolling over your cheeks in the city of Frost, featherlight and seemingly unthreatening even though you know there’s power in the air. I’ve been able to keep Creed out as long as I can remember. I’m sure he was stronger to penetrate my mind when I was little, but not now. Magic doesn’t wither with age; it grows like an unrelenting vine until eventually, it strangles you to death. I glance his way to find him scowling at me, but he faces forward when our eyes meet.
So my older brother realizes it too, how much harder he has to work to even attempt to slip through. I can’t let him in there now, not when I started the mating process without fucking realizing it.
As we reach the entrance to the catacombs, the blood suckers are already in party mode, Healers on standby while they prep their meals with persuasion and Mage-kissed elixirs.
The Pixie appears then, having wasted no time running to a royal’s call.
She stands maybe fifteen feet ahead, at the edge of the blue flames barricading in the feeding party, and without so much as moving a finger, the tie to her robe begins to unravel, the deep green silk falling to her feet the moment my feet plant themselves before her.
She’s completely naked with Sin circling her back. He whispers something in her ear and her head falls to the side.
My eyes slice to the creamy caramel slope of her neck, my tongue rolling across my lower lip as I trace her pulse, the thump, thump, thumping growing harsh the longer she waits for me to make a move. Or maybe it’s the way Legend’s hands have snuck their way between her thighs.
I’m fucking starved, aching for a fucking meal that will satisfy, knowing in the back of my mind nothing will.
Never again will I be satisfied by the taste of another, now that I’ve tasted what’s meant to be mine.
A low growl stirs in my chest.
No.
I fight back. She can’t be mine.
She’s not Gifted.
She will grow old.
She will die.
The Pixie jumps and I look down to find long, sharp claws have torn through my fingertips, shredding the skin there. Blood drips from the tips as the skin slowly heals itself around them, sealing them off into perfectly wrapped points.
I feel my brothers’ gaze on me because yeah, this is fucking new.
“Deveraux,” she breathes.
Deveraux. Not Knight or Sinner because she has no fucking clue whose chest her bare body is touching, no clue who she’s offering herself to. She doesn’t know and she doesn’t fucking care.
Creed steps up then, wrapping his fist in the Pixie’s short hair and giving it a little tug.
She moans and the sound has my lip curling.
Creed’s eyes find mine as he lowers his mouth to the left side of her neck, silently telling me to do the same. To get lost in the free pass before me and out of my fucking head.
I jerk closer until the girl’s naked body is flush against mine, dropping my lips to her neck. My teeth ache, so I press them into her artery and hot liquid erupts over my tongue.
My chest rumbles wildly and I fight a fucking scream when a sharp sting stabs into my fucking mind, like talons of a griffin digging into my skull, attempting to tear it from my body. I rip myself away with a gasp, stumbling from the group, from my brothers and the Pixie who tastes like rotten flesh. I trip over my own fucking feet, falling to my knees, and growl angrily as bile works its way up my throat.
I heave and spit and throw myself to my feet.
I hear my brothers coming, but I quickly snap my fingers and jump through the marbly haze, closing the portal before my brothers can jump through.
This is all her fucking fault.
I hate her.
I hate how fucking bad I need to see her.
Touch her.
Fucking taste her.
I’m not convinced the gods got it right, that they would gift me, a fucking Deveraux royal, with a weak little woman who will die some mundane death as humans do, but for now, that’s where I am.
At the mercy of a partial bond and everyone knows partial bonds make you fucking mad with need. Every kind of it, but the worst of it all is this unspeakable determination to protect and un-fucking-natural desire to love and earn love right back.
I don’t want to protect anyone but my blood.
I don’t have to earn anyone, and I don’t want to love.
I don’t even know how to love.
I love my brothers, yes, but this is not the same.
Nothing will ever be the same again, my mind screams, and I tell that bitch to shut the fuck up.