Fated Throne (Zodiac Academy, #6)

by Caroline Peckham

Roxy glanced back over her shoulder at me with a small smile that made my gut lurch and I found myself smiling back like some happy little elf at Christmas. If I wasn’t careful that girl was going to make me fucking soft. Problem was, I didn’t have any inclination to stop her.

“Look east to the heart of the rising star when the wind calls to you and find the origins of your legacy,”

“Two phoenixes, born of fire, rising from the ashes of the past. The wheel of fate is turning, and the Dragon is poised to strike. But blood of the deceiver may change the course of destiny. Beware the man with the painted smile who lingers close to your side. Turn the scorned. Free the enslaved. Fear the bonded men. Many will fall for one to ascend. Suffer the curse. The hunter will pay the price. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Keep the broken promise. Mend the rift. All that hides in the shadows is not dark. Blood will out. Seal your fate. Choose your destiny.”

She moved forward and pressed a kiss to Gabriel’s cheek before turning and placing the briefest of ones on my lips. My heart leapt in surprise, and I barely even leaned into it before she’d broken away and was heading towards the hidden door again, leaving my lips tingling and my heart thrashing.

But if the two of you are determined to go up against the will of the heavens over this then I think you should know that you’ll be making plenty of enemies among them along the way.” “She’s more than worth it,” I assured him, and his pissy mask broke into a smile.

“Is it me or is she scary as fuck when she goes all shadow freak?” Seth muttered and I snorted. “A bit,” I agreed. “But she can be scary as fuck without the shadows too.” “I guess she’d need to be to keep Darius in line,” he joked. “Is that so?” Darius’s voice came from behind us, and I turned to look at him with a less than innocent shrug. “You’re high maintenance, dude. You gotta admit it,” I teased. “Yeah, everyone knows brooding bad boys are the hardest work when it comes to boyfriends,” Seth agreed. “But all the angry fucking usually makes it worth it.” “Usually?” Darius asked, looking amused. “Well, I don’t have first-hand experience of your cock to judge by, so I can’t be sure unless you wanna go somewhere more private?”

“If anyone is going to be pinning you beneath them tonight, mutt, it’ll be me,” I warned him, flashing my fangs and watching as Seth’s smile widened. “Wanna bet?” Seth challenged, always so cocky about his ability to fight me off and yet whenever we played this game, my fangs always ended up in his skin.

“Let the hunt begin,” Seth said with a taunting smile that had my fangs tingling and my tongue running over my lips. “This is fast becoming my favourite pastime.” “Are you sure?” I asked, cocking my head at him as he started unbuttoning his grey dress shirt. “It seems like the rules of the game are changing.” “You know me,

“I never played by any rule in the first place. So, if you wanna change the limits you’re putting on yourself then I’m ready.”

“No rules, remember?” Seth taunted. My gaze moved up from the constant thrum of his pulse, sliding over the roughness of his jaw and lingering on his mouth for several long seconds before I lifted my gaze to meet his.

“Or maybe you were right the first time,” he teased, seeming a little uncomfortable at the compliment I was giving him. “Maybe I just like the way it feels when you bite me and I’m really just a selfish motherfucker, using the excuse to get your mouth on my skin.”

“Maybe you don’t need an excuse,” I said carefully. “Maybe if that’s what you want you should just say it.”

Seth swallowed thickly, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine like he was hunting for some answer from me even though I knew full well I didn’t have one. But I liked the way his hands felt on my skin, and I liked the way he tasted. Shit, I just liked every fucking thing about him and maybe I was crazy, but I was starting to wonder if-

I inhaled slowly, not biting down, just running my mouth up the curve of his neck to the corner of his jaw. I loosened my grip on his hair, my fingers pushing into it gently instead of fisting it roughly and a shiver ran through his body as I dragged my fangs back down his throat. “By the stars, Cal, you’re gonna be the fucking death of me if you don’t get to the point soon,”

“And what’s the point?” I questioned, wanting to hear the answer to that way more than I should have.

“Don’t tease me, Caleb,” he murmured. “Not if you don’t really...” “Don’t really what?”

He was still pinning me back against the counter and he ground against me forcefully, the hardness in his pants rubbing against my hip. He tried to move back, but I dropped my hand from his hair and caught his waistband, yanking him close again and holding him there as I felt his hard cock driving against me and found I liked that a whole hell of a lot.

“Yeah. If you’d caught us fucking, Cal would have been pinned beneath me screaming my name in ecstasy,” Seth joked. “Err, I think you’ll find Seth would have been on his knees moaning something that could be my name, but you wouldn’t be sure because his mouth would have been so full of my dick,” I added with a dark grin.

Orion immediately pushed off of the wall opposite me, his eyes full of anxiety. He’d washed and changed, wearing what I guessed were a pair of Gabriel’s navy sweatpants. He didn’t stop coming, dropping to his knees in front of me and pressing his mouth to my bare stomach. I gasped in surprise, fisting my hands in his hair as desire spilled through my flesh. He hugged me against him and looked up at me with his brows drawn low. “I’m sorry,” he rasped, a haunted look in his eyes that made my heart squeeze painfully.

“I thought you were done with me, Blue, I really did. I hoped it too even though that knowledge would have destroyed me. But then I found out you were sleeping with the dog.”

“I almost lost all hope for us, beautiful, even though I wasn’t meant to have any in the first place. But I did, I just hid it really fucking deep, denying it to myself that I still dreamed about a future where you were mine, no matter how impossible that seemed. And after you told me you weren’t his and kissed me back in the tomb, fuck, I’ve not thought of anything else since. Nothing but your mouth on mine and you pulling me closer. But I still kept away. Because I can’t give you anything. Nothing’s changed. I know that in my heart. I know it and I still can’t accept it. Because tonight I found out what it was like to have you dying in my arms and nothing has ever terrified me more. Nothing, Blue.”

For a moment I just looked at the snow, thinking of how Roxy had told me her only Christmas tradition was a snowball fight with Darcy and remembering the way she’d laughed with me when we’d wrestled in the snow exactly a year ago in the grounds of this very place. I should have told her then how much I wanted her. I should have been a true Fae and owned up to all the shit I’d put her through and just told her how much I admired her, hungered for her, needed her. But I’d known I wasn’t good enough for her. Even then I’d known it, so rather than just tell her how I felt I’d hidden it. And look where that had gotten us. I’m so fucking sorry, baby.

He gave Roxy a shove towards me, and I caught her face between my hands, creating a silencing bubble around us as my mind whirled with a desperate desire to find some way out of this. “Tell me what to do, baby,” I breathed, looking into her green eyes, hoping she might have thought of something I hadn’t. She swallowed thickly and shook her head. “There isn’t anything,” she breathed, a tear slipping down her cheek as she looked up at me. “I’m sorry, Darius. I don’t want you to have to do this for me.” “I would do anything for you,” I growled fiercely,

“I’m yours,” she breathed, her mouth touching mine with her words. “Whatever you have to do...even if Mildred really does have your-” “I can’t be with her like that,” I growled. “I can’t be with anyone but you. It would fucking kill me, Roxy.”

“You’re mine where it counts, Darius. And I’m yours. Nothing can change that.” Her lips met mine and I tasted her tears and my grief between us for the sweetest, most painful moment I’d ever known.

as I spoke in unison with Mildred. “I choose to bind myself to you in marriage. Let us both enter this union with clarity and honesty and forever be linked by the stars.” I felt so sick at the finality of those words that I didn’t even feel the clap of magic that must have accompanied them, locking me in marriage to the woman I’d sworn I’d never wed.

“I love you, Blue. I loved you then, I love you now, I’ll love you tomorrow even if I’m no longer on this earth. No time exists where I won’t love you.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes and got to his feet, kicking off the stilettos and crossing the room in his boxers with his tattoos all on display. My gaze caught on a Dragon which curved over his shoulder blade and looked suspiciously like me.

knew the odds of this game were vastly weighed against us. But I would fight until my very last breath to keep my girl safe. Death would have to try and rip her from my arms itself if it wanted her, and even then, I would not let go.

“Acrux,” a voice spoke in my head which was soft and feminine and yet fierce and full of power too. ”Descendent of the oath breaker. Harbinger of doom. The blood in your veins runs thick with lies and betrayal.”

“I see two paths before you, blood of the deceiver. Choose wisely.”

Our footsteps echoed heavily along the wide, stone tunnels and I spied ancient relics and treasures along the way, some so precious that the Dragon in me ached to stop and claim them for my own. But there wasn’t a single treasure on this earth more precious than the girl I loved, and I wasn’t going to be distracted from what I needed to do here.

Orion’s eyes met mine, unblinking, like he didn’t dare see anything but me in his final moments and I didn’t dare to close my eyes either.

Tears slipped down my cheeks, and I barely felt the pain of my injuries at all as I gazed at my mate in front of me. A man I had chosen for myself, regardless of stars and fate and laws. He was mine and I was his. Now and always. In the end, he’d kept his promise to me after all and I’d kept mine. We’d fought for each other until we couldn’t fight any more.

“Don’t let go of me,” I begged against his mouth. He held me tighter as he tried to get up once more, but too many of them were pinning us down. “See you in the stars, Blue,” he swore, his lips brushing mine.

“For my most glorious majesties!” she cried. “Peril calls my name, and my name is Geraldine Gundellifus Gabolia Gundestria Grus! Hear. Me. Roar!”

A blur of motion ran toward me, and my heart lifted as I raised my snout, readying to greet Caleb. But it was Orion who slowed in front of me, dropping down and pressing his hands to the burns covering my body. The pain ebbed away as he worked and I let out a low whine as I wheeled my head around to lick his face, making him grunt in annoyance. Lance Orion came for me. He loves me like a pack mate.

“What would you give for them, Darius Acrux? What would you sacrifice to see them survive?”

“Asshole,” he muttered as he gave in. “I heard you were horny for the horn, but I never knew it was true until now.” I almost yanked my teeth from his neck as I snorted a laugh at that before growling to cover it. I hated that fucking rumour – but in this one instance it might have been funny.

“I saw what you were,” I called. “I know what she did to you.” “Oh, you know, do you? So, you know the Nymphs were persecuted by that evil fire queen?” “She was just trying to end the war,” I growled.

“She ruined my kind, made us into monsters and turned the entire world against us.”

“We’re sisters, see?” she said forlornly. “Sisters are so very precious. But the queen betrayed all of her sisters.” “I don’t understand. You were related to her?” “Not in that way, oh don’t you see, little Vega princess? How very naive you are, and how arrogant too.”

“One year,” the voice breathed. “To love her like you ache to. To be the best of yourself. One year and no more.”

“Blood of the oathbreaker,” the voice came again, rich with even more power now as the energy in the cavern made my entire body tingle. “Descendant of the deceiver. Son of the destroyer. Do you offer your life in payment for the breaking of the bonds?”

There was no me without her. And I’d have given my life for hers even if I had to die right now. I’d make this year count. I’d make up for every awful thing I’d ever done to her, and I’d destroy my father to make certain that she would be safe from his tyranny when I was gone.