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

by Caroline Peckham

“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.”

“Yes, your majesty,” he said teasingly,

And I had to admit that though it was an act, I didn’t totally hate the idea of dominating him.

tiny, near invisible crack in his resolve to stay away from me and I intended to burrow my way right back inside his heart using it.

My heart stilled as they passed beneath my hiding place and I caught sight of the latest sacrifice Nightshade had selected for King. A shock of white hair and pasty skin caught my eye along with the pinched features of the unfortunate boy I’d chosen to befriend. Eugene Dipper.

No wayyyy! I thought he was the king

Eugene started begging on the porch like even in his fucked up state he knew to be afraid.

The kid was a hundred pounds when wet at most. No way he could handle a dose that size.

This wasn’t a group of whipped little school kid cult members, this must have been the fully fledged. The trained version of the cult. And they were as dead set on killing us as they were on serving their psychotic master. But unluckily for them, no one was as psychotic as me.

I swung left and right, my fists slamming into faces, some real, some not.

but I was a machine built to destroy and they stood no chance against me.

“Wake up you stupid peacock,” I demanded. “If you die here, Elise will have my balls for it.”

I tasted blood and death and it was my favourite flavour in the whole wide world. Second to Elise’s pussy.

desperate to reach the fucker and destroy them for Elise.

“King!” I bellowed, my throat rubbing raw. “Your death is mine!”

“You found me,” Elise breathed, her eyes burning with intensity.

“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.”

“She might be able to feel your pain but that doesn’t change anything. It’s your strength that makes you who you are. 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.”

An agony ripped through my core so sharp and pure that I was sure my soul was tearing in two. It felt like the world was caving in and the sky was falling down on my head. Like a vital part of me had just been snuffed out, burned alive, destroyed and all that remained in its place was pain.

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.

“When my King gets here, he’ll destroy you and the last of the men you’ve cast under your spell,” Nightshade hissed in response. “And I’ll laugh as I watch him devouring your souls!”

I know you love me, Rydikins. Your secret is out.

Which meant I’d just won the Elise’s Harem Boys Bingo.

My little monster and me bound together for all eternity. And nothing in the world, not King, not anything that had happened, or the three guys around us could make a single doubt flit into my mind.

“You’re not just anything, Leo,” I growled, reaching up to cup his jaw in my hand. “You’re the one person who could make me smile even when I thought that I was broken beyond repair. You’re the one who saw exactly who I was and what I needed and never questioned it or judged me for it. You’re the one who was designed to be a selfish creature, but has gone out of his way to care for me and provide for me time and again in ways that I didn’t even know I needed. When you look at me, you don’t see a broken girl just trying to tread water before she drowns. And the way you look at me makes me want to be the girl you see.”

I pushed up on my tiptoes and Leon dragged me against him as his mouth claimed mine, our kiss marking our decision to be together, to accept the bond the stars were offering us and allowing our souls to be joined irrevocably.

“Goodbye Elise,” he replied coldly with a finality that echoed into the depths of my soul. Before I could say anything else to stop him, he shifted into his Basilisk form and slithered away into the trees.