Cursed Fates (Zodiac Academy, #5)

by Caroline Peckham

“I’d take death over life without you,” he breathed, his voice rough and broken by fear.

I reached up to lay my palm on his jaw too, my other hand landing on his arm. “Darius,” I murmured, unsure what I was even going to say just as thunder crashed in the sky above. “I miss you too,” he...

“Then you’ll feel a hell of a lot better. You know you can’t function when you’re hangry.” He smirked at me and a hollow laugh fell from my lips. “This isn’t like craving a sandwich.” “It had better fucking not be,” he said. “I’m no sandwich. I’m like a goddamn triple chocolate sundae with sprinkles and syrup and the juiciest damn cherry on top. Don’t compare me to a basic lunch, Cal, you’ll hurt my damn feelings.”

“Look how fucking civilised this is,” he teased, moving around me to leap onto my bed. He landed on his back and bounced amongst the cushions as he grinned up at me. “You can have me any way you want me. Usually you’ve gotta fight tooth and claw to get a taste of this and I’m offering myself up on a silver platter here.” “Seth…” I began, but I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say. My fangs were aching and that emptiness in my chest where my magic should reside wasn’t going to feel any better until I filled it up.

“Come on, man. You can pin me down or bend me over or whatever the fuck you want. I’ll be your sub for the night. You can even tie me upside down and drain my blood into a wine glass if you like?” I cringed at that idea and he snorted a laugh.

Seth inhaled deeply as he bared his throat to me and for a moment I was struck with the realisation of just how much he must have trusted me to show such vulnerability to me like that. Especially for a Wolf. They only ever bared their throat as a sign of submission and though I knew he wasn’t submitting to me in any way other than this, the knowledge that I had such a powerful Alpha at my mercy willingly made my heart race.

I touched my lips to his neck, my fangs brushing against his skin and a shiver danced through his flesh as I prepared to take what I needed from him.

The last of my self control snapped at his command and I lunged at him, my teeth sinking into the flesh right above his hipbone as he grunted in surprise. His blood washed over my tongue and I groaned in pure, undeniable pleasure as the taste of it swept me up and pulled me out of my own pain. My hands grabbed his hips as I held him in place but I didn’t need to, he wasn’t making any effort to escape me. Seth’s grip on my hair tightened as he pulled me closer, his other hand grasping the back of my neck as his fingers slid across my skin and raised goosebumps on my flesh. I growled desperately and a groan of pleasure escaped him too as I drank and drank, flooding my body with his power and finally finding myself in the dark.

“I’m such a fuck up,” I said with a heavy sigh. “You’re not a fuck up,” Seth growled. “You’re the most thoughtful, generous, amazing fucker I know.” I snorted dismissively. “Maybe you look at me through rose tinted glasses.” “I don’t,” he snapped. “When I look at you, I promise you I see it all. The good and the bad, the light and the dark. And you’re still the best person I know.”

My heart twisted at his words and I reached out to pull him into a hug. “You’re the best person I know, too,” I murmured. Seth fell still, his hands still on my chest as an achingly long moment passed between us. He turned his head against my neck. His lips brushed my skin and I froze. My heart pounded as he moved his mouth up my neck slowly, his hands gentle against my chest as my skin tingled where he touched me. His lips brushed against the soft skin beneath my ear and I swallowed thickly as he pressed the lightest kiss against the corner of my jaw. My free hand moved to clasp his waist as my fingertips brushed against his skin and he groaned beneath his breath as his mouth moved along my jaw, scratching at my stubble in a way that made my flesh prickle. My heart was hammering wildly and the breath I inhaled caught in my throat as his mouth brushed the corner of mine and a shiver danced through every inch of my body.

He moved again and I found myself looking into his eyes, less than nothing between our lips as he hesitated. “Seth…” I breathed, not really knowing...

I watched him go with my heart in my throat and moved to close the door behind him. My skin still tingled where he’d touched me and I was struck with the desire to call him back. But I didn’t. A frown tugged at my brow and my mind turned over and over as I tried to make sense of the way my heart was pounding out of rhythm. I fell back onto my bed with a shaky breath and let my eyes fall closed. What the hell just happened? A Wolf howled mournfully beyond my window outside and a tingle ran down my spine which had nothing to do with what I’d done today and everything to do with my best friend’s visit.

lovestruck idiot so I had to think outside the box. And deep down, I think that a girl who the stars chose to be your perfect match must really want a badass kind of gesture over chocolate hearts and flowers. So I say we go kick the little gangster’s ass for what he did to her and you can cut off his balls and put them in a box for her…or just take a photo, whatever you think she’d like best.”

Self sacrificing fuckwit.

“You cost me the love of my life,” I said in a calm but dangerous voice. “He’s in prison because you couldn’t wait to destroy me the second you got the chance. And all over a Wolf I never laid a hand on. Do you understand what that makes you to me?” “Your enemy?” she asked bitterly, looking to Seth again like she was expecting him to vouch for her. “No, it makes you nothing,” I growled. “Just a worthless, waste of oxygen who I now no longer acknowledge as existing.”

“Kylie Major is no longer visible to anyone who supports me and my sister!” I called to the room and Seth flipped his fingers so my voice was amplified ten times over. I caught Darius’s eye and he nodded with a dark glint in his gaze before I continued. “You will not see her, hear her, or even smell the sickly sweet perfume she wears to hide the scent of evil on her,” I spoke clearly, my voice ringing around The Orb and Tory let out a little laugh of triumph. “That goes for anyone who supports the Heirs too,” Seth suddenly boomed and I looked to him with a smile twisting up the corner of my lips. It was dark and savage and tasted new on my mouth. But it felt good to wield our power at long last over someone who deserved it. I thought of all the times she’d cursed me, laughed at me, of the time she’d spat on me. She thought I was beneath her, but she was going to get a rude awakening when she found herself at the bottom of the food chain in the next five seconds. “If anyone is seen with her, they’ll get the same treatment. She is officially nothing,” Darius took over, a hungry glimmer of vengeance in his eyes.

The Heirs turned their backs on her and we followed suit. “Wait!” she cried with desperation in her tone, but I couldn’t hear her. No one could. She was going to suffer alone and pay for what she’d done. Invisible, ignored, nothing.

I now knew a hell of a lot about what it was like to grow up in a house with a tyrant, and he’d even opened up about some of the darkest shit that Lionel had put him through. I knew more details about his favourite Pitball team than I’d ever cared to know, countless funny stories about things him and the other Heirs had gotten up to over the years and much more besides. I’d traded him tales of shitty foster families, bike heists, the love I shared with my sister and a refusal to tell him how many ex boyfriends I actually had. Because there was no need for him to go hunting down all of them. For example, my fifth grade boyfriend Johnny Briggs really couldn’t be blamed for dumping me – I had flashed my panties at his best friend behind the slide after all. No way he deserved to have a Dragon visit him while he slept.

“Our son will change the world, he’ll be the greatest Seer of his generation,” Marcel breathed as he leaned down to kiss our mother and the conviction of his words let me know that he had no doubt of that whatsoever. He’d seen it. “His life will be hard,” our mother breathed against his lips as she pulled him down on top of her and a tear slid along her cheek. “For a time,” he agreed. “But he will know all the best kinds of love in the end. Even if he never knows ours.”

“You’re our brother,” Darcy gasped as she turned to Gabriel. I twisted towards him too and he looked between us, his face painted with so much emotion that it was hard to take. “I was alone in the world for so long that I gave up on ever uncovering the mysteries of my past,” he breathed. “I found happiness in creating my own family…but now… I remember. The visions broke the block on my memories and I remember my mother, your father… I remember holding the two of you on the day you were born and promising to love and protect you until the day I died.”

Crazy damn Werewolf.

“I’m furious with him truth be told,” he muttered. “And this bond between us is making me pine for him like a fucking wolf cub for its mother.”

“He may even get me a new one to replace him, though I’d still pine for Lance for the rest of fucking time. And I’d rather cut off a hand than be bonded to some other asshole.”

The stars had turned against us so thoroughly, I wondered if they’d ever been rooting for us.

In the words of Geraldine: fuck me sideways with a Dragon dildo. I don’t need anymore chaos in my life.

“And there was me thinking it had something to do with you not wanting anything from a jumped up lizard asshole who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow and is only good for hate sex?”

Darius was smirking at me in that way that used to get my blood boiling with rage but now, to my utter devastation, was making a motherfucking blush crawl over my cheeks.

“Nobody fucks with my girl and gets away with it,” he growled, his lips brushing my ear for a moment and making me shiver.

“I like it,” he said, his smile growing as he looked me over. “You look all sleepy and innocent. I could almost imagine you just woke up in my bed.” I was definitely goddamn blushing now and thanks to my lack of bronzer he was clearly well aware of it. The sky was darkening overhead already as we lingered, but I fought the stars for just another moment. “If I’d spent the night in your bed, there wouldn’t have been anything innocent about it,” I taunted to get him back onto safer, less mortifying topics of conversation. Like sex. “As much as I ache for the feeling of your body against mine – and I really fucking do – I think if I was allowed a single cheat against this curse that keeps us apart, I’d just want to be able to hold you in my arms,” he replied. “Just to wake up with you there, knowing you were safe.”

“Fuck fate,” I snarled because it was time I owned what was going on between us. “No one gets to pick my future for me. I choose what I want and I want you.”

Tears sprung from my eyes and I turned away from the sky and the stars and all the fucking secrets they held as I raced back down to the ground. They may have forced us apart, but my lips still tingled with the memory of Darius’s mouth on mine. And if we’d managed to steal that much then I was going to figure out how to claim a whole lot more. I’d been a thief for a long time and if I had to take my destiny from the clutches of the stars while they slept, then I’d figure out a way to do it. I’d never set my mind on something and failed before. And this wouldn’t be the first time.

Insane didn’t even cut it. I had dreams about Darius almost as often as I did about Blue. And they weren’t all PG fucking thirteen either. It didn’t help that Darius punched himself in the face every time he remembered to be pissed at me. It felt like his actual fist ramming into my cheek. I’d been mid-way through my breakfast the last time and had fallen off my fucking chair. Sin Wilder had

“I don’t believe in fate,” I hissed. “Or destiny, or gods, deities, demons or even fucking lizard assholes choosing my life for me. So you can bind me to you or curse me or capture me but I will never be yours or anyone else’s unless I choose it.”

“I vow on the stars that we’ll find the Imperial Star before Lionel does,” I breathed. “No matter what it takes.” They all spoke in unison, a clap of magic binding all five of us together in a star-bound promise that echoed through the universe. “No matter what it takes.”