Cursed Fates (Zodiac Academy, #5)

by Caroline Peckham

This isn’t it. I won’t let him go. I’ll follow him beyond The Veil. I’ll climb into the stars and drag his soul back out of them if I have to. This. Is. Not. It.

“He’s not fucking dead until I say he is!”

“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.”

“Don’t give up,” I pleaded. “Not for the world,” he swore.

“Are you insane?” I demanded, shaking my head as I tried to process this, to understand it on any level. Who the hell would say no to their destiny like that? Who would be insane enough to turn their back on their one true love. “What have you done? Who did this to you? I-”

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

Darius looked at me for a long moment, his jaw grinding and I waited for him to unleash his rage on me. Which was really the least I deserved. “She chose not to be mine so it’s not like I get any say in what she does now, is it?” he said eventually, dropping back into his chair and looking away from me towards the fire once more.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, princess, but it wasn’t some declaration of love. It was the two of us giving in to the heat that burns between us when it flared too hot to resist. But she made it clear enough that that was all it was to her.”

“After everything I’d done to her it didn’t really seem like my place to expect any more than she was willing to offer, so I didn’t push it.” Darius leaned back in his chair and rested his head against it. “Obviously now I wish I’d dealt with it differently…I just didn’t realise we were running out of time…”

A warm body pressed me down and I reached for her, knowing her by scent alone.

Darius might have hurt her, but didn’t she understand the weight of this kind of Star Bond? It would overcome anything, everything. Darius would have spent the rest of his life making up for all he’d done to her, he would have watched over her more fiercely than the moon did the Earth. He’d have given her the world.

Had she even realised the immensity of what she’d given up? Had she really been so stubborn that she would choose a life without love in it? Doomed to pine for Darius for the rest of her days and never have him. The stars would make it their mission to keep them apart now. Nothing would go their way even if she regretted the decision. It was impossible. It was downright cruel. To herself. To him.

Darius pushed me back onto the bed and fell down beside me, winding his arms tighter around my waist. Our bond flared like it never had before, because there was nothing I could do to help him. This was beyond my control. But I was still forced to act, to do something to make this right even though there was nothing I could offer. 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 ...

His flesh was scalding hot against mine, but I didn’t let him go even when smoke coiled out of his mouth. He needed me this close, and I’d burn for him if I had to.

“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?”

“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.”

“I’m the princess,” she announced, lowering her head to press her ear to my chest. “And you’re the king’s son,” she breathed. “There’s so much power in you, can you feel them?”

Running away from my problems had never helped me much before, but I didn’t need to deal with that bullshit. What had happened between me and Roxy, that was…ours. It didn’t matter that it was fucked up and raw and bleeding, it was still ours. We’d been marked by it inside and out and no matter how much I might have wished it had gone differently, that didn’t change it.

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.

That’s what he’d done to his Storm Dragon pet when he wouldn’t fuck my Aunt Juniper to get her pregnant. And now she had three boys running around her ankles, waiting to see if they’d turn into Storm Dragons too when their Orders Emerged. Because that was what my father did. He got his way. In everything. No matter what it cost other people. He didn’t care that he made Dante Oscura father children he’d never see with a woman who wasn’t his wife, he just wanted Storm Dragons with the Acrux name attached.

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. My grip on Darcy’s hand tightened as my ears began to ring and a well of pain opened up inside me. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and absolutely couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sight of him standing there looking so broken.

This was my choice. Mine. It shouldn’t have hurt this much to follow my heart. And that was what I’d thought I was doing. But if that was the case then why did it feel like I was being torn to bits from the inside out?

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-”

Who’d have thought my Cardinal Magic Professor would be giving me piggyback rides around campus when I first started out at this school?

“You know, I owe you an apology too,”

“When you first came here, I assumed the two of you would be weak girls, incapable of rising up to claim the position you’d been born for. I thought you’d be all sorts of things and no matter which of them were true, I didn’t once consider the idea that you might actually be capable of claiming your birth right. Or that you might deserve it. And I was wrong about that.”

“And for what it’s worth…Darius is starting to see that too. He might not be ready to admit it, but he can see your potential. And I know it’s destroying him to think of all the things he did to you in an attempt to keep you beneath his heel. Even if he believed he was justified in doing it at the time.”

“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.

“But you’re a Libra!” Tyler said in exasperation. “You’re all about fairness.” “Wrong. Ten points from Terra. Libras are about justice. And I decide what that means to me. And if I say that Tory Vega can have a bake sale and employ her sister as a cupcake stand, then I will be the first in line for the grand opening. But you, Corbin. Do not have that right. So clean up your mess and see me in detention on Thursday.”

“My favourite students are the ones who don’t piss me the fuck off,” Orion snapped. “And the ones who suck his cock best,” Kylie whispered from behind me with a giggle and a gust of air rushed over me as Orion shot up to her desk.

“If you ever insinuate anything like that in my classroom again, you won’t just be in detention for the rest of the month – which you are by the way – you will be packing your fucking bags.”

“The honest truth is that I’ve never known a home before I came to Zodiac Academy. I’ve been a disappointment to everyone in my life. My family think I’m useless. And I thought that too for a while…but I can help with this. I can be useful. But not to them, to my friends.”

people who have accepted me as I am, who never asked me to be anything but me.”

“If you try to fuck me over, kid, I’ll break every bone in your body. And if you try to fuck over the Vegas, I’ll rip out said broken bones one by one, put them in a blender and feed them to you through a straw. I know some nasty fucking spells that will make sure you stay alive through the entire thing. Mark. My. Words.” My lips popped open and hell, I was shamefully turned on by him in that moment.

and Caleb…fucking Caleb with his fucking face and his fucking blonde hair and his fucking fangs which he got way too close to my girl way too often, not to mention what he did with the rest of his fucking body and- Not my girl. Never my girl.

“Lance is off limits,” I snarled. “Which means the girl he loves is off limits too.”

“He had a life before this. He had things he wanted, things he’d earned. He should be living his fucking dreams out playing in the Solarian Pitball League right now. Not stuck here teaching. His mother is a fucking psychopath, his sister disappeared years ago, and he hasn’t been able to make a single decision for his own happiness since the moment my father linked him to me. But somehow, in among all of that shit, he found a girl to love. But you, selfish motherfucker that you are, want to rip that away from him too?”

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It was one of those phrases people tossed around but didn’t give much thought to. But there was real truth in that. Power was the root of all my problems. Every fucking one of them. And I wasn’t going to watch the people around me abusing theirs anymore.

“Fine. Maybe I do care. Maybe I don’t like seeing her with him, laughing and smiling and batting her eyelashes at him like he’s the best fucking person she’s ever met, and his cock is so fucking big that she just can’t get enough of it. And-” “You sound jealous,” I growled, as I glared at him. “Is that what this is? Have you fallen for her or something?”

“It’s just…you know what it’s like for Werewolves and our mates. The Alpha in me demands I meet an equal. Someone who can match my power and unless I can find that, I’m never gonna be able to find that true bond with anyone. And I’ve met a lot of fucking Wolf girls and guys, even Alphas in their own rights, but none of them are strong enough to contend with me. And sometimes…I just get sick of all the pack orgies and want someone who I can simply call mine.”

“Yeah, I get that. I’ve had one or two thoughts like that myself,” I snarled bitterly. “About the Vega who really was destined to be mine. Until she stepped beneath the stars with me and told me she’d rather suffer alone and in misery for the rest of her life than be bound to me in any way.”

She was clearly avoiding me, and I hadn’t made any attempt to get close to her either despite the fact that I lay awake at night wishing I could. The closest I came was heading down to stand outside her door when everyone else was sleeping and checking that she wasn’t falling into the temptation of the shadows.

she clearly had been using them and I’d already had to press my magic out towards her more than once to pull her back. But she never seemed to realise it was me. Never thought to check beyond her door for whatever she’d latched onto to pull herself out of the shadows. And I was glad. Because if she figured out it was me, she might demand I stop doing it. And there was no way I could just abandon her to the lure of the shadows alone.

“Practicing,” she said icily, pushing to her feet and glaring at me just like she had before the first time I’d kissed her. That memory cut me open and left me bleeding, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Probably both.

“I can watch my own back,” she replied, her eyes guarded as she watched me press my hand against her shield. I didn’t try to break it. I just laid my palm against it, feeling the gentle caress of her magic against my skin and trying not to take offence to the fact that she thought she needed to protect herself from me with it. “I’ll have to get used to that now anyway.”

“I’m always going to be alone now, aren’t I? Forever.” Her green eyes circled in black flashed and for the briefest moment I saw the pain that word cost her as it passed her lips before she locked it back down again. “I’m sorry,” I breathed, my gaze falling from hers as the guilt over what I’d cost us pressed down on me.

“Darius…” Roxy said, her tone suddenly softer and I dropped my gaze back to her instantly, forgetting the clouds and anything else in favour of hearing her speak. “I need to know if you meant it. What you said to me when the stars called us together. If you really did regret the things-”

I looked down at Roxy again and my heart twisted as a horrible thought occurred to me. I released my grip on her hand and backed up a few steps. The tremors instantly lessened, the thunder losing volume too.

“Well, at least you don’t have to worry about me hurting you again,” I said bitterly as the reality of that crashed over me. I couldn’t even be near her without the stars punishing us and the thought of having to keep my distance from her forevermore only poured salt onto the wounds of knowing I could never have her. I strode towards the cave exit. “Because I can’t get within ten feet.”