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She wasn’t just a girl though. Not to me. She was the one girl I shouldn’t want, the one I couldn’t have, the one I didn’t need. And yet I did. And everything in my life could be damaged so badly by that need that I’d fought it tooth and claw up until this point.
I headed down the trail to the beach with one thing on my mind and the determination to get it if there was even the slightest chance I could. Roxy Vega, I’m gonna make you mine.
We turned away and I took another sip of my beer, smiling up at the bulbous full moon above. The glow of it seemed to find its way under my skin and right into my veins. Any time I looked at it too long, the wild beast that lived inside me flexed her limbs like she was on the hunt. And who she wanted, was unquestionably Orion.
“Actually, you can keep your oily dolphin flippers to yourself, Max Rigel.” She ran into the sea, and he stared after her in shock. “She broke his spell,” I said with a laugh and Tory and I retreated into our group. “She’s so badass.”
Lance: I’d never murder you with an axe. I’d use my teeth.
“You’re in trouble, Miss Vega,” he said into my ear. “You’re out after curfew.” “My teacher told me to,”
“Do you always do what you’re told?” He brushed his fangs down my neck and my whole body shuddered sweetly. “No…are you going to punish me?”
“Do you want to be punished?” Hell yeah I do.
Orion was frantic as he bit me and I knew he was trying to hold himself back, the power of the Eclipse hanging over him, drawing the hunger of his Order form to the forefront of his mind. He needed this just like I needed to…to what? I flexed my neck, frustrated as I rolled my shoulders and ached for some sort of release I didn’t understand.
Then he pulled up my shirt, gently running his thumbs over my shoulder blades, causing a divine shiver to run through me. “Ohhh that feels so good.” He did it again with a laugh and I arched into his hands, desperate for more. “Wings,” he announced. “You’re gonna have wings. Darius reacts the same way when-” He didn’t finish that sentence. “You caress his shoulder blades?” I finished for him, bursting out laughing. He groaned, releasing my shirt. “The bond I have with him makes us do weird shit sometimes, alright?”
His eyes glittered hungrily, and he leaned into my ear with a playful grin. “I’m gonna run my tongue over your shoulder blades till you can’t stand it.”
Geraldine started laughing and the sound was thick and heady with lust. I turned to look up at her, finding Max Rigel’s arms around her waist. My lips parted in surprise, but he didn’t seem to be using his gifts on her, if anything it looked more like he was under her spell.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said slowly.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I do,” he said slowly. “I watch you and hunger for you and ache for you. It torments me like I torment you.”
“Then why do it?” I asked. “Why not just look away?” “I’d find it easier to carve my eyes out than I would to stop them landing on you.”
“So don’t stop,” I breathed, my heart pounding recklessly in my chest. “You don’t want me to?” he questioned, his gaze burning into mine.
“Do you think you could ever forgive me for the things I’ve done to you?” Darius breathed, his fingertips trailing up my side and lighting fire in their wake.
Perhaps I was wrong, but in that moment every piece of me was aching for him, needing him to be all the things I wished he would be.
A deep growl resounded through him as he pinned me in his gaze, the cage of his arms tightening around me like he was afraid I might run. But I was done running from him. There was something between us that couldn’t be denied any longer and it was time we faced it.
“There are countless people who would say I’m not allowed to want you,” Darius breathed. “But you make me want to burn the whole world down so that I can claim you for my own.” “Then we should burn it down,” I agreed.
“We believe we made an error before in translating The Tenebris Scripturas – the dark scriptures. The word pure is interchangeable with many meanings in the tongues of old. One of which…is royal.”
“Stardust made on the night of a Lunar Eclipse takes the traveller to the Shadow Realm. Those of pure blood can survive the transition...so you’re our lucky little vessels.”
“What do you want?” Tory demanded of Stella.
“The Fifth Element,” Stella said with a keen desperation in her eyes. “The Element of shadows.”
“You said you only need one of us,” I breathed shakily, unable to tear my gaze from the pit which awaited us. “So just use me. I’ll do anything you want. Everything. Just don’t make Darcy do it too,” I begged.
I turned to look at him and for a brief second all I wanted was to throw myself into his arms and beg him to take me away from here. But I didn’t find anything in his eyes but a wall of cold, hard acceptance.
Pain spiked through my chest, my lips parted, and I suddenly felt like something had been stolen from me. Like he should have been fighting for me instead of accepting my fate. I didn’t know why I even thought he might but the fact that he wasn’t tore through me like a chasm and a single tear spilled down my cheek.
Orion’s gaze fell on my sister, and it was like something was breaking in him. “Blue...” he breathed, a thousand words seeming to go unsaid as she held his eye, shaking her head at him.
I blinked away the flames and stared at Darcy in complete and utter shock as I took in the fire which engulfed her body. Wings of flaming bronze feathers burst from her back, beating in time with the slow pace of my heart as she held herself aloft. Her hair was a twisting mass of living flames burning in darkest red and orange which whipped around her as she beat her huge wings to stay hovering at my side. Flames licked over her skin, casting her flesh in flame and her eyes in darkness. She looked like an angel fallen to the flames, endlessly beautiful and eternally powerful.
We’d survived. And more than that, our Orders had emerged. And we weren’t Dragons at all. For a moment I was at a loss as to what we were, but the knowledge came to me like it had been there all along. We’d been reborn from the flames, rising from the shadows like... “Phoenixes,” I said, staring at Darcy in complete and utter fascination.
