Fractured Fates (The Arrow Hart Academy #1)

by Hannah Haze

can see his face now, his eyes dark like the cloak he wears, long jet hair falling around his shoulders, his heavy brow drawn low, his square jaw locked with tension.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he says. I want to close my eyes and believe him. It would be nice to be safe. It would be nice if someone kept me safe. This past year has been so hard. I’m tired. Tired of running and hiding. Tired of fighting and scrapping. Tired of trying to stay alive. Tired of being alone.

He’s another frigging giant and, although I’d guess he’s about an inch shorter than the man in black, he’s just as broad, a black t-shirt straining across his muscular chest and tattoos tracing down his strong arms. His hair is cut above his ears and a thick beard hides his square chin. Both are the color of willow bark, in contrast to his pale blue eyes.

“It’s the way things have been done for the last fifty years, and it’s brought stability and peace to our country. Before this system, the world was chaotic.” My aunt taught me to never buy bullshit like that. If something sounds too good to be true, she said, it usually is.

I’m my aunt’s niece. That’s all I need to remember.

“Kiss me back,” he murmurs again, this time with more of a growl, half way between a plea and a command.

“Will I see you again?” I ask him. “No,” he says, eyes trained straight in front of him. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea.” And as I watch him sail away, I wonder how it is possible for my heart to feel so elated one moment and so fractured the next.

For a long moment, I think it’s her. The color of the eyes, the angle of the jaw. But then slowly I understand that it isn’t. The nose is wrong, the hair too light, the forehead too broad, the lips too thin. It’s not Rhianna. But those are her eyes.

“Only deeply scarlet magic can do that to someone so much bigger than you.”

What is deeply scarlet magic? Strong?

It’s like she’s torn back my skin to reveal the darkness lurking within.

What darkness are you hiding??

He sweeps his thumb along the line of my jaw and peers deep into my eyes. His are a mixture of colors, one eye more green, the other more brown. I stare up into his and I feel like I’m falling. That hook in my stomach is the only thing tethering me to the ground.

“Mate?” I croak out, her words making no sense. “Yes, it’s okay, I’ll go fetch your fated mate right back here. We should never have separated you.”

“It means the fated mate bond between us is sealed.” She’s still too weak to feel it, the thread connecting us, vibrant and alive, binding us together. “And now it’s unbreakable.”