New York Times Bestseller, Pepper Winters, delivers a brand new High Fantasy Romance.
“It’s taking everything I have not to touch you. Not because I want to make you mine but because every part of me screams that you already are.”
A pack of wolves hunt a girl who takes her last breath by a river’s edge.
She is found and nursed back to health by the kind-hearted Nhil people.
She has no memory.
No past.
And is given a choice that could change her forgotten life forever.
A pack of wolves adopt a man who begs for death in the grasslands.
Blood revives him. Flesh strengthens him. All while the alpha watches him as if he knows who he is.
He has no memory.
No past.
And yet…he’s drawn toward the smoke of a faraway clan.
And in that smoke, he finds a girl with the same mark on her thigh, the same empty mind, and the same forgotten language on her lips.
He’s convinced they know each other.
She’s certain they are strangers.
But the more time they spend together, the more tangled the truth becomes.
Their forgetfulness was deliberate.
To keep them apart.
To keep them lost.
To keep them from claiming their true power.
Because in that power exists a terrible choice.
A choice that could destroy the world…
…or each other.
When a Moth Loved a Bee is the first volume in the Epic Fantasy Romance Destini Chronicles.
A heavily romantic, spice-filled fantasy set in a world where life and death, shadows and stars watch over two forbidden lovers whose powers are best left forgotten.
Recommended for readers over R18 due to explicit scenes, content, and darker elements.
Author Note:
This Fantasy is 100% romance. It isn't a quest where they spend most of the book apart. If you want a rich world, magic, intrigue, oodles and oodles of page time with the two characters together, all brimming with longing, forbiddenness, and butterfly-winging moments, then this is the book for you.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
. The Stranger .
THE HEART.
A simple organ. A vital instrument in keeping mortal flesh alive.
To pump blood.
To give life.
To keep bone and breath from returning to ash and memory.
But that is not it’s true purpose.
I wished I’d remembered that when I found her.
I wished I’d remembered that the pounding in my chest wasn’t from a simple organ, striving to keep my fragile, feeble form alive, but the quintessential pathway back home.
Back to who I was, what I was.
Back to every memory of her.
If only I had remembered that.
Perhaps then, we could have avoided all the pain.
Chapter One
. Girl .
“ARE YOU...ALIVE?”
Something firm but kind rocked my shoulder, causing scratchy eyes to open and dry mouth to swallow. Someone rolled me onto my back, forcing me to stare up at the blinding, boiling sun.
I winced and tried to curl away.
A tapping on my cheek. “Wake up. Come on. Say you’re alive.”
“She’s dead, Niya. Leave her to the vultures.”
“She’s not dead, Kivva.” The tapping grew in earnest, making my head crunch against the stones beneath my skull. The pain dragged me from the thick, foggy place. It tethered me, shedding the empty floating feeling, tying me firmly to a form that’d forsaken me.
I gasped as my heart beat stronger. My lungs breathed deeper.
“That’s it.” The tapping on my cheek stopped, sifting sweetly through my hair instead. “You’re okay. You’re not alone anymore.”
Alone.
That word stabbed a lightning bolt through my chest. It made tears I couldn’t afford to shed roll down sunburned cheeks. It filled me with such bone-snapping pain I couldn’t catch another breath.
I choked.
I coughed and—
“She’s struggling to breathe, Niya. It’s the sickness. Get away from her.”
“It’s not the sickness, Kivva. She’s just coming back from the land of death, that’s all.”
Death.
Another word that tugged on my heart, digging claws and teeth, ripping my spirit apart.
Whoever touched me kept running their fingers through my hair, giving me an anchor in this world while I tried to decide if I wanted to return to it.
“Come on. Open your eyes. I know you’re not dead,” the female voice soothed. “At least...not anymore.”
Could I come back from the dead?
Was that where I’d been, ever since I’d collapsed on this river’s shore?
Her touch went to my eyes, pressing down on my cheek while another pulled up my eyebrow. My eyelashes cracked open under her control, sending a blinding ray of light to pierce my vision.
I moaned and summoned all my strength to swat her touch away.
She let me go.
Darkness descended again.
But there had been something.
Something different.
This world that seemed to hate me had delivered something I’d never seen before.
People.
Like me.
Gritting my teeth, I opened my eyes of my own accord.
“See?” The girl beside me grinned over her shoulder toward the others. “I told you she was alive.”
“Yes, but is she sick?” One of the taller figures shifted closer. “Where is her clan? No one survives out here alone. Did they banish her?” He raised a long stick with strips of vines and leaves fluttering from the top. Brandishing it at me as if it would ward off my evil, he added, “We should leave, Niya. We don’t have time to hunt and carry her too.”
The girl kneeling beside me bared her perfect teeth. “Are you so heartless to leave a mortal to die? A mortal like us?”
“If she deserves it.” The man nodded, his nostrils flaring. “Look at her. She has no clothes, no possessions. Not even a waterskin. Mark my words, she was stripped of rank and banished from her clan. She wears the mark of the sullied.”
I flinched as he jabbed his long stick against my upper thigh. “Right there. She is branded by death itself.”
Again, my heart hitched on the word, tugging with something, only to fade with another beat.
Niya bent over me, her gentle touch swiping at the mud and dirt clinging to my leg. Spitting on her dark hand, she smeared saliva over the filthy splodge the other man had stabbed. With her forehead furrowed, she studied my thigh far too closely.
Skin prickles cloaked me as I tried to shift away.
But I couldn’t.
My body had no strength. No energy left to fight. All I had were a few remaining heartbeats to fade into the whispering fog and forget about this place.
“It’s not the mark of the sullied,” Niya murmured, glancing at me with black eyes framed with blacker lashes. “It’s a birthmark.”
“A taint from the source itself!” The man rattled his stick, sending its vines and leaves swinging. The other men behind him bowed their heads and pressed fingertips to their eyes as if to shield themselves from my monstrousness.
“It is not.” Niya snorted. “You’re not our Spirit Master, Kivva. Don’t pretend you know what you’re talking about.”
“Then take her to Solin and have him tell you. But then you’ll be responsible for sickness sweeping through our clan for daring to bring that into our home.”