No man ever will.
I’ll protect her.
I’ll protect her the way I wish someone would have protected me.
Unless I die trying...
Chapter Seven
Synder
Bellatrix Cuore is a dead woman walking.
The sun rose on my hungover face, and I found myself alone on a spinning ride from the most depraved part of hell. But unlike some of my trysts, I remember last night.Vividly.And I’ve spent the last six hours since then digging into a rather mundane past for a woman who likes to suffocate men with her thick thighs and devious lies.
And what did I find out about this mystery girl?
She’s basically a fucking human.
My jaw clenches hard just thinking about what I let her do to me in front of the others. I let my guard down. She distracted me.
And it won’t happen again. Especially after finding that other kingdoms have an interest in her as well.
A human girl. The Fae are suspicious of the human girl. Which makes her monotonous existence very, very interesting.
A heavy, black cloud hangs over the afternoon crowd as I stare a hole through her shiny, black locks and straight through her twisted little mind. Sharp, catlike green eyes look back at me. An amused pissed-off smile tilts her cherry lips, and a line of fucking fire blazes between our gazes.
But she turns away like I’m nothing.
“Ahhhooohhh, your supernatural dick is so hard for Miss Thigh Master, huh, Syn.” Benton’s laughter shakes through him and across every nerve I possess as I think about the irony of that little nickname.
“Not exactly,” I tell my little brother.
“Think she’ll take King Leavon’s bait?”
I consider the speech that I know is about to ring out over this crowd of newcomers. It’s the same one year after year. The King is wise to present it to them while their rational minds can think it over.
But he knows well enough to set the deadline at midnight. When all rationality goes out the hellacious window.
“She’s smarter than that.” I know she is. She might be a bitch, but she’s a clever bitch. She won’t sign her life away to a man like Leavon.
Even if he is just as much of a clever bitch.
“Good afternoon, Newcomers,” Leavon’s smooth, confident voice greets the crowd like a god come to life. Come to save us all.
Or sacrifice us many.
I’ve been a part of the Brotherhood for a few years. Just long enough to hate the man I’m supposed to consider a brother. But I have a brother. The only family that I’ve got, but it’s enough to know family doesn’t use you. And Leavon, he uses everyone.
“I do hope my home of like-minded Carnals have shown you that there is a place for those who do not belong. The others—the Pure, as they’d like to call themselves, they may not understand us, they may cast us out, but we are not animals. We are not the beasts the High Fae like to refer to us as. We’re not the sign of times as the mortals may claim. We’re beings just like them. Our hearts all beat the same. People like to throw stones at those they do not understand.” His tone grows generically gentle, and the crowd of Carnals eat that shit up. The newcomers, the humans especially, nod at his last line of remorse.
No one likes a Monster. And no one likes to feel like a Monster.
And Leavon sells that fact hard.
These people will buy it all up in droves.
Except her.