Cursed Fates (Zodiac Academy, #5)

by Caroline Peckham

“Seth,” I rasped, then tugged on his hand because what choice did I have? “I need your help,” I growled determinedly.

“You’re at least going to try, aren’t you?” My voice cracked because I didn’t know. Seth had hurt me so deeply, hated me so fiercely. He’d never cared for Orion, but was he really heartless enough not to help? “Aren’t you?!” I snapped, shaking him. “I’ll give him everything I have,” Seth promised as the green healing light spread further from his hands.

“Please,” I begged, turning my head toward the cave roof and imploring the stars to listen. “Don’t take him from me. I’ll give you anything you want. Anything.”

Seth clenched his jaw, magic pouring from him as his brow creased with concentration. “Come on you asshole, wake up and tell me you hate me.”

The green light grew brighter as I gave Seth every scrap of power in my veins. His magic felt lighter than I’d expected, not cold and dark and cruel. It was like a warm embrace, soothing, calming, like the man it belonged to really wanted to get me through this ordeal.

My hope stuttered and panic reached into me, demanding I accept the truth. That he was really gone. That my world was going to be absent of him for the rest of my life. And that thought was enough to tear my heart in two, never to be repaired. We hadn’t had enough time. And he was too young to die here, broken and cold in some cave. Fate was bloodthirsty and callous, taking him like this when all he’d wanted was to save his sister. It broke me in a way I didn’t think I’d ever heal from.

“Fuck,” Darius grunted, slumping forward as he gave everything he had. “Don’t give up,” I pleaded. “Not for the world,” he swore. A groan sounded and my whole chest nearly burst with relief. “He’s alive,” I gasped, the light dimming so I could see him beyond it. “Holy shit, it worked,” Seth rasped and the three of us removed our hands at once.

“Where were you?!” I snarled, shoving him in the chest as he pulled Seth to his feet. “We needed you. He needed you.” “I…” Darius shook his head. “Something happened.” “Not good enough,” I hissed, throwing my palms into his chest again and he made no move to fight me off. “You knew how much this meant to him!”

Seth Capella had saved his life. He’d done all he could, come to my aid when I needed help. And that was confronting in so many ways, I couldn’t handle it right now.

“What the fuck Tory?” I breathed. “You’re Star Crossed. How...who?” “I told you no questions,” she growled, reaching for me again. “I just want to forget about it.”

I stepped closer, my chest aching with the need to do something about this, to change the stars, fix her fate, any number of impossible things that could alleviate some of the pain I could see consuming her.

“Make me forget, Caleb,” Tory breathed, her voice cracking with the plea. I could feel the pain coming from her now, the desperation. She was breaking, broken...someone had done this to her. Someone had chosen to do this to her and I just couldn’t understand it. If the stars had chosen her for me, I’d have grabbed hold of her in a heartbeat and never let go.

“More,” she breathed and I growled again, giving her what she wanted with a sharp thrust of my hips. She moaned each time I drove myself into her and I gripped her ass in my hands, my fingers biting into her flesh as I pounded into her harder and harder. “Fuck,” Tory groaned. “Harder.” I gave her what she wanted, my mouth finding her neck as I kissed her and slammed into her faster, harder, giving her everything, a desperate ache filling me as I tried to hold off a little longer. “Bite me,” she begged and I looked at her in surprise as she tipped her head aside, baring her throat to me. We’d never done that during sex before and as much as my instincts made me crave it, I knew she didn’t really enjoy being bitten so I hadn’t ever asked it of her. “Really?” I asked, because I was half a second away from doing it and I wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted to bite someone more. “Yes,” she gasped as I slammed into her again. “Do it!”

“Tell me who he is,” I growled. “I’ll destroy him for doing this to you.” Tory frowned at me for a moment, reaching up to run her fingers along my jaw. “He wasn’t the one who said no,” she said slowly.

“I shouldn’t have told you to come over,” she said, her breath hitching as she fought against the tears. “It was selfish, stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking, for a moment I forgot that you’re his…I’m sorry.” “Why would you be sorry?” I asked with a frown, trying to push against the shield as Tory scrubbed the tears from her cheeks but more just fell to replace them.

The stars would have been pushing her towards her mate before tonight and there was only one other Fae that I knew who she’d been drawn towards like that. If I hadn’t been so caught up thinking with my dick then I might have connected the dots sooner. Why the fuck hadn’t I connected them sooner? It was so obvious, so fucking obvious. My heart pounded against my ribs hard enough to hurt and there was a faint ringing in my ears as I fought against the desire to voice my fears. Because if I was right then what we’d just done…

“You should go to your friends,” she said, raising her chin in an attempt to hide just how much she was hurting. “I don’t want to just leave you here like this…” “I told you, I shouldn’t have let you come. I was just trying to forget, but it was wrong, especially with you... I really am sorry, but I just want you to go now.”

“I could smell the fucking lust on you from half a mile away,” Max growled. “You’ve been with Tory Vega, haven’t you?” I swallowed a thick lump in my throat because there was only one reason why that would be making him this angry and the thought of it made me sick. “It was Darius?” I asked in a hollow voice, the fight going out of me in a heartbeat. I deserved anything he wanted to throw at me. “Of course it was! Who the fuck else would it have been?” Max bellowed and his anger crashed into me as his emotions danced on the air as his Siren gifts flared.

Max’s heart was breaking for Darius and the chasm of grief opening up in my chest told me plainly enough that mine was too. I thought about the way I’d been drawn towards Tory tonight, how I hadn’t been able to resist the urge to go to her and how devastated she’d seemed when she apologised to me for letting me come over. She’d been pushed at me too. The stars were already playing their games in payment for her choice.

“I just slept with the girl he was destined to love and you’re blaming yourself?” I asked incredulously. “I could feel it, Cal,” Max insisted. “I just didn’t want to. I’m the only one who could have seen this coming. I’m the one who should have realised that the pull he felt towards her was more than just lust and infatuation. If I’d just spent the time listening to him when he tried to talk to me-” “This isn’t on you, Max,” I growled, wrapping my arm around him and pulling him close.

I didn’t let go and eventually he released a long breath. “You smell like her,” he muttered.

bawling my eyes out

“He’s just trying to understand,” I said in a low voice.

“Obviously now I wish I’d dealt with it differently…I just didn’t realise we were running out of time…”

“The stars are going to use anything and anyone they can to keep them apart now. You were just the first of many things they’ll use to drive the wedge between them…” “It’s not right.” “I know. But what can we do?” “Something. Anything. I don’t even know what yet. But I’m going to make up for this,” I swore. “I’m going to find some way to fix it.”

My head throbbed, but my chest hummed contentedly with the fuel of magic and I recalled being awake in that cave, drinking from Darius and- “Fuck!” I bolted upright and everything tilted. Seth.

“I haven’t done anything,” Darius said, avoiding her gaze. “She did it to us.”

And as I got closer, I realised it wasn’t just the look in his eyes. There was a fucking black ring around them. “No,” I gasped, grabbing hold of his shoulders as I moved right up close to be sure, my gaze flicking between each of his irises as I begged the stars that this wasn’t true.

“Tory,” he sighed, the first time I’d ever heard him call her anything other than Roxy. “She fucking said no, Lance.” He fell against me and I wrapped my arms around him, gripping him tightly as the world seemed to fall apart all over again. Last night had changed everything. I’d thought almost dying had been bad, but this…

Thankfully, having him this close started to ease the ache and the bond hummed with need as it drew us closer until my hand was knotted in his hair. It took everything I had not to fucking kiss him, or drag him into the shower and soothe him like I had Darcy. It was totally messed up.

He needed me this close and I’d burn for him if I had to.

“When I saw you in that cave, I thought…” Darius cleared his throat. “I thought I was about to lose you, too.” He took my hand and I automatically linked my fingers with his. “I’d be lost without you. I’m so sorry for everything. For what my father did, for Clara.” I swallowed the jagged lump tearing at my throat, squeezing his hand. “I’m sorry too, Darius.”

“I’m in love with Darcy Vega,” I stated, not looking at him. “And she loves me too.” “I know,” Darius answered in a low voice. “I knew the second I saw her in that cave crying over you, and I knew the moment I saw you walking into this room with her.”

“Don’t ever let go of her, Lance. You fucking fight for her until your last breath, you hear me?” I moved to sit and knocked my forehead against his with a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Darius,” I said seriously, fixing him in my gaze. “I vow on everything I am, if there’s a way to change your fate, I’ll find it.”

Sofia: Happy New Year, Phillip! I hope all of your dreams come true x I hope they do too. Because one of them is meeting you.

Since I’d shifted into my Order form at the Vega palace and played with everyone in the snow, I longed to go beyond the manor grounds. I wanted to run and fly and soar through the clouds. It wasn’t fair.

“Xavier…that’s not all that happened last night,” Darius said thickly and something about his tone made my blood chill. “There’s more?” I asked, dreading what he was going to say. He sighed heavily. “Roxy Vega and I had our Divine Moment.”

“She refused to be my mate,” Darius forced out and my heart shattered into a thousand jagged shards. “We’re Star Crossed.” “No,” I demanded, damn right refused it. This wasn’t right. “Yes,” Darius said quietly and I could practically hear his heart breaking. “There’s got to be some way-” “There’s no way,” he said bluntly. “Darius.” “Xavier…I’m going to come home soon. We can talk then.” “Of course,” I choked out. “I’m so sorry Darius.”

My gaze caught on my bed and I couldn’t help but remember what it had felt like to hold Roxy in my arms all night. How had I been so blind? I’d felt it. I’d felt that pull towards her from the moment I first set my eyes on her when she’d walked into The Orb after her Awakening. It should have clicked together for me right then. She’d been standing beside her twin sister, the two of them like mirror images and yet my entire focus had been on her. I’d hungered for her from that first second, I’d studied her in every quiet moment since. She probably had no idea how many times I’d sat watching her across The Orb or in our Elemental lessons. How every time she walked into a room my skin had prickled and burned with this need to go to her.

I’d heard a rumour once that he sometimes leant her out to his friends to secure political deals, letting them have a night with her in exchange for support to his agenda in the Council. I hadn’t wanted to believe it but there was a cold, cynical part of me which was almost certain it was true.

“Apparently the stars chose him for me,” I said. “And me for him. And they wanted us to choose it too…” “He’s your Elysian Mate?” Darcy whispered. “I always did have terrible taste in men,” I muttered. “The stars obviously pick badly for me too.”

“But Tory you’ve still got forever with him,” Darcy said desperately, her eyes swimming with tears for me. “Instead of forever with him loving you, you’ve got forever pining for him. Don’t you remember what Professor Zenith told us about Elysian Mates? You only get one. And if you don’t choose them, you’ll never love or be loved by any other…” “What difference does that make?” I muttered. “No one’s ever loved me anyway, Darcy.”

I was finding the change to my eyes to be one of the hardest parts in this. Not because of any dumb vanity reasons, but because now Darcy wasn’t my identical twin anymore.

Max’s face pinched as he looked at me and I knew that he was feeling my pain with his gifts. I didn’t even have the energy to try and block him out. Seth whimpered softly, reaching out to brush his fingers down my arm in a comforting gesture and I was so shocked by it that I didn’t even flinch away. An achingly long moment passed between the four of us then Max stepped aside, holding the door wide so that we could head in.

Nova was still talking about the extra security measures, but all of a sudden every drop of oxygen seemed to be sucked from the room as Darius stepped in behind Orion. His gaze moved straight to me and my heart stilled as I took in the dark rings around his deep brown irises which seemed to stand out so clearly despite the expanse of space between us.

“I came to see if you were alright, but you’re obviously not-” I threw myself at him and wrapped my arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly just to make sure he was really standing before me. “I’m so sorry, Lance,” I breathed. “I should have been there to help you last night, you could have died, I could have cost you-”

“I can see why Darcy loves you,” I said eventually and Orion’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Are we the sappy declarations kind of friends now?” he asked in a tone that suggested he found the idea of that about as horrifying as I did. “Well, you’re still an asshole, but you’re a good man too.” Magic spilled from my fingertips where I still held his arm and Orion looked at me in confusion as I conjured tiny brown vines into existence, plaiting and braiding them together until they formed a ring around his wrist. “What’s this?” he asked, raising his hand to inspect it and I had to say I’d done a damn good job too. “I promised you a friendship bracelet,” I teased. “We can get together for a slumber party another time though.” He snorted a laugh at me as he backed up. “I’ll treasure it always. Goodnight, Tory.” “Goodnight.”

He slammed his palm against the wall in frustration. “You ungrateful little-” My rage gave way to that treacherous piece of my heart and I lurched forward in a moment of madness, wrapping my arms around him and hugging him tight. The earthy scent of him ran under my nose and the heat of his hard body reminded me he wasn’t just some coldblooded being. “I am grateful. I am so fucking grateful.” Tears seared my eyes and I wondered if the moon was to blame for me being so emotional or if it was just the fact that my relationship with Seth had become so messy that I didn’t have words for what I felt towards him anymore.

“I still own you!” Seth called after me, his voice ringing around the stairwell. I didn’t answer, despite my chest compressing and my jaw tightening. We’ll see about that when Darius Acrux has a word with you, asshole.

Then he looked up and his gaze slammed into mine. I released a breath that had been trapped in my lungs and a smile hooked up the corner of my mouth. His eyes danced with light for a moment and I swear I could have swum in that light forever. Alive. Safe. Same old Orion.