Page 1 of A Story of Mates and Temptation

Chapter One

Page One.

The deities are three. The sun, the moon and the twilight between.

There’s a taste in my mouth I can’t quite get rid of. It’s bitter, disgusting, and no matter how much I roll my tongue around, it stays. Vampyre. It reminds me of Emyr, of what it was like for him to kiss me when I was dying inside and mentally wishing I was anywhere else. It reminds me of all the years I felt dead and cold—alone. I open my eyes, the lids dry and crusted, and my hand immediately goes to my throat, remembering the dagger—Ziven’s dagger—that I slid straight into it. Death isn’t warm; in fact, it’s humid and strange here. I feel silk sheets around my body, and a tight fabric wrapped around me.

Am I a vampyre now?

It’s the only way I could have survived and still be alive. I can hear my heart beating in my chest, or at least, I think I can. Maybe I’ve lost my mind. I was stupid to think I could kill myselfin front of Emyr, the vampyre prince obsessed with me, and he wouldn’t try to save me. He wanted me to be a vampyre, after all. He wanted me, and nothing was going to stop him. I made the right choice not to fight him in the forest, knowing it would have cost Hettie her life. That sweet girl was worth whatever is coming for me now. The deities have decided not to be kind to me and let me die, but at least I’m not a vampyre. I don’t think.

I lift my hand into the light, seeing my skin is pink and not drained of colour at all. There’s no paleness to it—nothing more than usual. I don’t feel hungry, beyond the usual hunger for food, and if I were a vampyre, surely, I would want blood and death? I saw what it did to Kyrell and how it made him insane for blood, how it was all he would think about.

Kyrell is gone. The fact he isn’t here anymore doesn’t seem real; it seems foreign and lost, and I’m not sure how to ever process that he has left this world for good. He was in pain; I knew that, but I hoped I’d be able to find a way to heal him with the books or just some way. He was my best friend, my person in this world I could trust to make me smile when everything was failing. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to not see Ziven ending his life in front of me.

My hand lifts to my teeth. No sharp canines. Nothing different at all.

“I’m not a vampyre.” My voice is broken and cracked, like I screamed for too long. It’s happened enough times I recognise the sound, but this time, it’s from the scar on my neck, the line I can feel has healed, but it will leave a permanent mark of how I tried to end my life before he could get me again.

“Much to my disgust, it’s not something to be delighted about, Story Dehana.” I turn my head to the side and see Emyr sittingat the edge of the bed on my left. The bitter monster prince I escaped is casually resting at the end of the bed, dressed in a dark, blood-red shirt and black trousers. His crown, a red jewelled spiked crown, is sitting in his pale silver hair. His eyes aren’t on me, and I’m thankful I don’t have to look at the light blue irises of my nightmares.

Instead of on Emyr, or the doom I feel spreading around my chest at the sight of him, I focus elsewhere. The room isn’t somewhere I’ve been before and that’s not good. I don’t have a chance to escape somewhere new. The silk sheets are unfamiliar, red, like the short, tight nightdress I’m wearing. The castle walls are yellow brick, glimmering like stars in the bright light shining in from outside. It’s bright out there, and it hurts to look for more than a second.

I can smell my blood in the air, thick and heavy, and little else over it except for the stink of the Silkvir. The rotting smell hangs on Emyr. There’s a big balcony door overlooking what I assume is sand outside. A gentle, warm breeze blows in through the willowy curtains. When Emyr looks at me, my heart pounds in pure fear, and the smile on his face tells me he is happy about that reaction. He likes it when I’m scared out of my mind. For a moment, I feel like the same blood slave who was trapped under him for years. Those endless years of misery and not a moment of hope. “It’s all going to be fine, my Story. My father’s on his way to meet you, and we’ll figure out what went wrong in your moment of madness. I forgive you for trying to leave this world after all of the misery of being trapped in that mansion.”

“Do you think it was madness?” I ask with a laugh on the tip of my tongue. I don’t see him as this terrifying vampyre anymore. I see him for exactly what he is—nothing. I’m not scared of him anymore. My heart slows as I realise that the past is not nowand I’m not some weak, untrained girl anymore. I was taught to fight. I won a dragon. He can’t make me weak again. “I wanted to die and get away from you. It wasn’t madness.”

He’s on me in a flash, his body pressing into mine, and he is strong. Too strong for me to fight him off, but I scream and fight, anyway. Disgust rolls through me as his hand wraps around my throat and his lips slam down on me as I struggle underneath him, trying to get away, but he kisses me deeper, pushing his tongue into my mouth. I want to be sick.

All I can taste is him—and that bitter, horrible taste. They are the same thing and I hate it. I hate every moment of it.

“As much as I want you,” he growls, pushing himself against my thigh, “when we are married, I will have all of you. I want my wife.” He tightens his grip on my throat. “I know you don’t love me like I love you, but you’re so young, Story. In time, you will find loving me is the best way for us. I love you.”

“You don’t know what the word means!” I spit out the words between heated breaths. “I don’t fear you, and I will not bend to you anymore. I will spend every day of my life here fighting you, endlessly, until you see that I will never love you. Never. The Story you broke and tried to destroy is gone. Good fucking riddance. Who I am now, she is exceptional, and I fought for her.”

His eyes flash with anger and rage, but I don’t stop. “The Story who you beat, raped and destroyed ever since you met her is gone,” I continue, staring up at him. “I’m a dragon rider now. I am fae. I will never be a vampyre, and you’ll never own me. You can do what you want with my body. You’ve already done it before, and it changed nothing. I forgot about you the second I met my mate and was with him. He taught me what love is andwhat sex is really like. You are nothing. I will never love you. I will never want you. You are nothing to me.”

His hand strikes me hard across the face, and his other hand tightens on my neck. I know I’m playing with fire, but I’ve lost so much now, I can’t find it in myself to care. I’ve snapped. My neck jerks with the force of the hit, but I just laugh as my cheek stings and I struggle to breathe. “Being a fucking bitch is going to do nothing but piss me off, Story!” He grabs me out of the bed and throws me against the wall by my hair, yanking out strands of it as I scream. Pain radiates down my shoulder as I hit the stone, and I feel a rib snap. He climbs off the bed, stomping toward me.

“That it?”

“I only enjoy breaking you,” he snarls like an animal, his voice low and dangerous. “You know I enjoy that. Stop fucking laughing at me!”

I glare at him and grin. “Do it. I don’t care.”

He shakes his head. “I should have kept that little girl to tame you, but don’t worry, when I find her with the rest of them, I’ll make sure she is here to make you behave. Your soft heart is stronger than your new resolve to die.” My laugh stops. “Whoever decided to fuck you, whoever you smell like—well, I’ll tell you this—he is dead. I will find him and end him in front of you. Only I get to have you, Story. Only me.”

“You’ll never break me again and you’ll never own me.” Even I don’t believe it now. Not when he knows I have a weakness—Hettie. I sent her running into the forest, but for all I know, he could find her anyway. Some random fae might have taken her in, a helpless child, but if Emyr puts out word that he is looking for a child with her description and reward, they will give her up.

His eyes narrow. “I’m going to fuck that spirit right out of you,” he spits. “I’ll teach you exactly how and why you belong to me.”

A voice interrupts. “Son.”

My eyes widen as the king enters the room, and immediately the room feels wrong. I remember him—remember him killing my friend like it’s happening right in front of me all over again and I can’t stop it. Like it’s real and cold, and he is just stopping Kyrell from being free. I remember him ripping his heart out of his chest in the most brutal way, the spray of his blood, the joy in his dead eyes at the sight of death.

Nothing’s really changed about the immortal king, with a crown nestled on his head. Except now he has creatures flying in the sky, and he found the mansion with the dragon-riding fae. I hope he doesn’t have the books. Catherine and Avaluna might have successfully gotten away with them in the madness of the attack. We lost so much, but we had to keep the books safe. I just read the last page, the one where it told me the books were actually deities and alive, bound to the pages. I read how to free them too. I’m not sure freeing the deities would be good for the world, not when they have likely gone insane from being bound to the books for so long.

“It’s been very long since I saw the prince—now king—of the Moon Dynasty. I smell him on you.” The king pauses and cocks his head to the side. Ziven. “I enjoyed ripping his dragon apart and watching him fall from the sky. I doubt he survived the fall and the death of his dragon.” No. No. No. His dragon is dead? Ziven…no, he is alive. I can feel our connection in my chest, still alive and burning, like the first moment I met Ziven. I can feel him out there because he is my destined mate, and he is not dead. I’d know. But Brythan? His dragon… Deities above.

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