Vicious Fae (Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac, #3)

by Caroline Peckham

He was freedom and sweetness and something entirely exotic embodied.

“Because it feels natural to look after you,” he murmured, leaning close to my ear. “So natural that sometimes I forget you don’t want me to.”

I took hold of her wrist, guiding it over my heart and using her outstretched finger to paint a cross there. She glanced up at me under her lashes, remembering the moment up on the hill overlooking the lake when she’d painted a cross on my heart in a promise that said she wanted the real me. Not just the venomous creature everyone else got. “That’s what I want the tattoo to be,” I said.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “That you make me want to forget the deal,” he replied. “And risk years of bad luck?” I teased. “I’m beginning to think you’d be worth it.”

Gabriel: Did you just send me a kiss?

“Well you make me act out of character,” he replied.

“I feel more for you than I’ve felt for anything in so long that I can’t even remember.”

There was something between the two of us which defied logic and reason. Something which bound us and elevated us beyond the laws which might apply to our behaviour with anyone else. My Ryder wasn’t the same man as the one the rest of the world got. My Ryder was just for me.

“You’re right where we want you…in the middle.”

I was more than happy with the girl right beside me. Mate or otherwise. She was perfect for me whether the stars decided it or not.

A fucking witch sent here to charm me under her spell. And I never wanted to break free of it.

“I’m not prey, I’m the hunter,” I warned. “Wrong. You’re a bird, I’m the cat,” she hissed.

“You’re mine,” I growled as she gazed at me through hooded eyes.

She was my gift from the stars. My one good thing in this world.

“What are you after?” “You,” he replied simply.

“One more second with your mouth on mine and I’d have forgotten about the damn deal and given you all you could want of me and more, bella.” “And be cursed with bad luck for years?” “Maybe you’re worth it.” “I am,” I teased.

Do you want to be my alibi?” “Always.

“That life has been unkind to you. I wish I could change it.”

But when I’m with you, when I’m with any of you, I don’t feel like that…I feel like each of you really sees me. But each in such different ways. And I need all of you. I need the light and the dark and the joy and pain.

“Posso accettarlo. I don’t want to cage you, amore mio. If this is who you are then this is who I want you to be. So long as you’re all in with me then I can be all in with you too, on whatever terms you need.”

“Ti amo, Elise,” Dante said in a low voice, interrupting me. “You can trust me. I’d sooner die than hurt you.”

I didn’t think there was anything in this world which could frighten me. But I’d just discovered my biggest fucking phobia ever. Losing her.

Because little did he know, it was too late for me too.

“You don’t need to look at me like that,” I said. “Like we nearly lost you? That’s because we did,” Dante said in a low voice.

She was the sweetest, darkest thing I’d ever known. And I needed her like the sun needed to shine.

My heart rate rose as she pushed it into my pocket without a word before anyone could see. Because rose quartz meant belonging to someone. It was a promise and a pledge of its own. And though I’d hoped she was mine in some small way, to give me this meant it was true. And that set my veins on fire with electricity.

“I can’t wait until we’re bonded by the stars, Elise. When they bring us together, I just know that everything will be alright somehow.”

“You’re the most tempting thing I’ve ever known.”

“Same way I know everything about you. I’m always paying attention.”

I wanted to be brave enough to tell her how I felt about her, but I wasn’t sure of those feelings. How could someone like me be capable of loving someone after all these years of feeling nothing but pain and lust? How had she begun to heal me with nothing but her presence, her laugh, her smile? She brought out a side to me I’d never seen before, and reawakened a part that I’d only known as a child.

“I’m thinking…that you helped me remember that I can feel more than the words painted on my knuckles.”

He loved me. This beautiful, powerful, dangerous creature loved me. Even though I was broken and grieving and had lied to him, he loved me still and my heart pounded with the aching need for me to say it back to him.

“Good.” I growled. “Because I’m not some soldier in this war. I’m your goddamn commander, your ruler, your fucking queen. So we will stick to the plan the way that I laid it out and you’ll all listen to me when I give you commands, or you might as well fuck off back to your dorms right now. This isn’t a negotiation. We’re here because of my brother. And we’re doing this my way.”

Please stars, let me see her. Let me know where she is. Let me save her.

My heart felt like it was clamped in a spiky vice, bleeding with every pump it gave out. And it wouldn’t feel right again until I had Elise in my arms. My girl. My fucking salvation.

You love the girl, don’t you? I can feel it everywhere in you.”

“I love you!” Elise’s pained cry reached me in the darkness of my mind. “I love you Ryder! You’re mine and I’m yours.”

It’s the way you survived and how you keep surviving that made me take notice of you. That’s the man I see when I look at you, or when I feel the scars which mark your flesh, not a victim, a survivor, a warrior, a fucking King.”

I saw red as I tore my gaze from Gabriel’s broken form. And though my grief for my mate threatened to overwhelm me, one thing remained utterly clear in my mind as the bloodlust rose to take control of my limbs. Nightshade will die.

There couldn’t be a world without my Leo. I refused to believe that the sun would rise again without him to bathe in its rays. There was no good in a world that didn’t hold him, no light, no laughter, no joy at all.

Her death was mine. For Leon. I’d fucking gut her.

I looked up at him and as he returned my gaze I gasped, reaching up to cup his cheek as I looked into his golden eyes which were now rimmed with a line of purest silver. Like starlight given life. The stars had marked him as mine and from the way his gaze was fixed on my eyes, I knew that I’d been branded as his too.

I was destined to be with Leon Night and the rest we would figure out together.