Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
“She’s about as Mayhem as she is clueless.” It’s the boy this time.
Isabella laughs, hitting one last button before whatever is holding the screens lifts up to the beehive above, exposing the view. Behind a wall of glass is an endless bed of water.
I take a step forward.
“Well, I like her….” A small voice pops in from behind. “And I shouldn’t…”
Dragging my eyes off the view, deciding we must be built right against the end of a cliff face, I turn to see the new girl. She doesn’t look familiar, and as much as I want to know who she is, I know I can’t.
She steps closer, the sway of her white dress gliding around her legs. The closer she gets, the clearer I see. Her deep-toned skin and green eyes are a contrast to her molten-colored hair. Her plump lips, high cheeks remind me of someone out of a magazine. She is breathtakingly beautiful, in a way that not only would she steal the show in any room she steps foot in, but that she’d literally take your breath away.
Her hand rests against her chest bone and her thumb swipes over a crucifix at the nape. “I like that I’m not the new girl anymore.”
“You never were…” the boy joins.
Her emerald eyes settle on me. “Hi.” The girl comes closer, her head tilting to the side. “We’re supposed to be sworn enemies, you and I…”
“We are?”
She nods her head, lowering down onto a chair. “I guess in a sense we may always be.”
“Okay!” Nate claps his hands. “Show time.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
luna
Abloody hand is around my throat before the room tilts. My back hits the ground, sending shock waves through my body and knocking the air out of my lungs.
“It’s me! Hey!” With both hands on his face, I try to keep his focus on me. Sweat drips onto my cheek, his breathing an animalistic rhythm drawn from the very core of his body.
A snarl escapes the back of his throat, as if someone had tried to mark his territory.
“Priest!”
The weight of his pain is suffocating, but I’d carry it forever if it meant he didn’t have to. All of it. The pain, the resentment, the burden, the loss.
“It’s me. Hey! Hey!”
He’s never looked more beautiful than he does now. The unfiltered instinct of the beast that resides within the man, ready to use his final breath to raze the world to pieces like a predator. Every muscle taut, holding himself back. His chest slick with sweat. Blood spreads through my dress the same way that familiar cold fire does my veins.
His fingers flex around my throat, lowering until the tip of his nose touches mine. He’s untamable, his pupils swallowing the green in his eyes. It’s too much.
He’s too much.
I kiss him once, searching his eyes. “It’s me.” Skimming my nose over his, I kiss him again. “It—”
He forces me back to the ground with his forehead, the growl rattling from his chest a primal warning. His lips sail over mine gently, a contrast to the beast weighing me down. “Stop talking.”
Releasing his grip around my throat, his eyes close and the tension in his shoulders weakens.
“I’m s—” They open back on me, the moss green in his eyes finally expanding.
“Stop talking, Madness.”
“O—okay.” I nod, desperate for him to come back. For him, I’d do it all. For him, I’d do anything. Because I know for me, he lost everything.
His hand rests against the one I have on his cheek, sliding it down to the corner of his mouth and pressing a gentle kiss against my palm before pushing up to his feet and lifting me right up with him. If his intention was not to be obvious, he failed, pushing me behind his wall of muscle, blocking me from seeing anyone else in the room.
When Vaden had unlocked the door not ten minutes earlier, I knew it was bad. To expose me this early only meant one thing.
“We’re losing him.”
My world stopped. I didn’t see anyone but him. No one. Not the danger, threats. My life meant nothing if he wasn’t in it. I left Vaden behind, following the screams and cries from the people who loved him. Everything moved in a blur through the tears in my eyes, passing the collection of framed art. I’d spent years fighting my feelings for him, and he’d spent all his years drawing his.
Silence.
Nothing but silence hovers around us and in a room full of Kings after finding out that someone had been taken from them, and not just anyone, Madison, this is the calm before a storm.
“Priest, I need you to lie down so we can fish this bullet out of you. If it hasn’t already moved,” Evie grumbles. “Even on death’s doorstep, you’re stubborn and pissing me off.”
He listens—hallelujah—keeping one hand on me while lowering us both onto the sofa. Swiping a stray bottle of whiskey on his way, he pours it over the wound with his free hand.