Lost to the darkness, Fuery wages a daily war against the corruption that lives within him, constantly in danger of slipping into the black abyss and becoming the monster all elves fear. Work as an assassin gives him purpose, but what reason is there to go on when he killed the light of his life—his fated mate?
Shaia has spent forty-two centuries mourning her mate. Tired and worn down, she agrees to wed a male of her family’s choosing, following tradition that has always bound her as a female and hoping she will be able to gain just a little freedom in return. But as she resigns herself to being the mate of a male she could never love, fate places an old friend in her path—one who tells her that her lost love is alive.
Will Shaia find the courage to break with tradition and leave the elf kingdom in search of her mate? And as a ray of light pierces his soul again, can Fuery find the strength to win his battle against the darkness or will it devour him and that light of their forbidden love forever?
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It had been the third time he had seen Prince Vail.
Fuery didn’t remember much about their first meeting. Not how he had found Prince Vail’s location, or his arrival at the small countryside cottage in rural England. He had only fragments of the time he had spent with his prince and commander, scattered pieces that felt more like a dream than memories.
Hartt had assured him the meeting had happened, and Fuery was inclined to believe him since he definitely recalled his friend coming to find him, and taking him back to the guild.
A lingering sense of warmth returned whenever he thought about seeing his prince again for the first time, a sensation that had built inside him during his time at the cottage. He had felt safe.
Home.
He hadn’t experienced such a feeling in a long time, and it disturbed him now, because home was an impossible dream.
He couldn’t turn back time to when he had been another male, one free of the darkness.
Untainted.
Prince Vail believed it possible though, and Hartt held on to that hope like a male possessed, or possibly obsessed, had spoken of it to Fuery more than once since that first meeting, encouraging him at every turn.
Fuery had no such hope, but he also didn’t have the heart to tell his friend he was dreaming, and that reality was a far darker beast, one without mercy and light. There would be no saving himself.
He doubted Hartt would listen even if he did voice his thoughts.
His friend insisted he continued what he had started with Vail, allowing the male to assist him by attempting to bring him back into touch with nature in the hope it would lessen the burden on his soul and clear some of the darkness from it. Vail’s connection to nature was strong. Despite the darkness he still held within his heart, Vail had a stronger connection to it than his brother, Prince Loren, the ruler of the elves.
Fuery’s own connection to nature was so severely diminished by the darkness that it was almost non-existent. He couldn’t remember how it had felt to be connected to it, to feel life flow through his veins and light fill his soul, and to take pleasure and comfort from being surrounded by pure, untainted nature in all her glory.
The garden of Vail’s mate, the fair witch Rosalind, was beautiful, filled with colours that Fuery found dazzling, almost breathtaking, and Vail was convinced that it had helped him fight the darkness and claw his way back towards the light.
But Vail had retained his connection to that nature.
The same nature that had rejected Fuery, left him alone in a dark world without her light to guide him.
Hartt had taken him back to visit Prince Vail twice since that first meeting, convinced that it was doing him good and that it would help him as it had their prince, and eventually nature would begin to welcome him again, would open her arms to him once more.
Fuery wasn’t so sure.
The sensation of home he had experienced during his first visit was fading with each subsequent one, like the light in him. It felt weaker with each trip to the cottage, and the calm and peace he had felt on first spending time with Vail in the garden surrounded by the trees and flowers, and the endless blue sky, was slipping away with it.
There would come a point when he would feel nothing again, when visiting his prince would give him no benefit.
Would Prince Vail and Hartt suffer when that happened? Would it pain them to know that there was nothing they could do for him?
Would they give up on him?
Like he had given up on himself.
Gods, he didn’t want to disappoint them, even when he knew it was inevitable, so he went to see Prince Vail whenever Hartt wanted it, and he would continue to do so until they both realised there was no saving him.
It was no hardship for him.
The cottage was a beautiful place, nature condensed into a small area that made it feel like a bubble, a haven, a place removed from the world. He could see why Vail benefited from it, but he was sure it wasn’t only that stunning pocket of nature that was restoring his prince’s light.
It was the beautiful witch who lived there with him.
His prince’s mate.
Mate.
Darkness stirred in his veins at that word and crawled through his soul at just the thought of her, and it whispered at him to stay away from Prince Vail and that cottage.
Stay away from her.
He didn’t need to be around females who belonged to another, and didn’t need a mate of his own either. He didn’t want a female in his life, despised how other assassins at the guild brought them into his damned home and paraded them in front of him, or how Hartt would sometimes make him speak with female clients. He wanted nothing to do with them. Mates. Females.
He closed his eyes, drew down a shuddering breath and held it as he wrestled with his darker urges as they rushed through him, stirred to a frenzy by the path his thoughts were travelling.
Pain shredded his insides, anguish ripping at his heart. Memories flickered and his veins went as cold as ice. His claws lengthened, razor sharp and itching to tear into flesh, to spill blood and cleave bone as the darkness surged in response, a need to lash out flashing through him. He needed someone to take out this aggression on, to satisfy this terrible dark need to purge the pain from him.
Fair Rosalind danced into the black abyss of his mind and he snapped his eyes open as his breath gushed from him.
Never.
He would never hurt his prince’s mate.
He would never harm a female. Not again.
Rosalind had been kind to him, sweet and caring. She had taken care of him whenever he had visited, knowing when to show herself and speak with him, and when to leave him alone with her mate as he struggled with his black urges, on the verge of losing himself to the darkness.
He had come close to losing his fight against it the last time and had left before Hartt was due to come for him, muttering some sort of excuse, although he didn’t recall the exact words he had used. Scattered ones had filled his mind, a collision of excuses that had fought to be the one to leave his lips. He might have muddled them, because Prince Vail had looked confused in the heartbeat of time between him speaking to the male and somehow teleporting.
That teleport had drained him, left him weak and shaking, the black tendrils of the dark beast that lived inside him snaking over his vulnerable body and seeping into his heart.
It was always dangerous to attempt a teleport. All of his powers were unpredictable, but teleporting was the biggest drain on his strength, because he had to force it to happen. It had been a long time since he had been able to control a teleport too. The only time he managed to teleport, it was because he was desperate for some reason, driven by a base instinct to escape that ruled him.
If his powers failed during a teleport, there was a danger he would end up somewhere that might kill him, or worse, would be lost in the infinite darkness that waited in the space between disappearing and reappearing. That space was cold now, like ice, and stabbed at him with frozen needles that punctured his flesh and dug deep to chill him whenever he passed through it. It was tainted by the darkness inside him.
Darkness that was growing stronger by the day.
Nothing Vail did would change that.
He needed to stay away. Hartt would press him to return, and Prince Vail would be upset if he stopped visiting, because both of them wanted him to get better. Both of them needed to believe they could save him from the darkness before he was lost.
He couldn’t risk it though.
As much as he wanted to be there, as fiercely and desperately as he wanted to believe they could save his black soul, he had to stay away.
He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did something to Rosalind.
It would break him.
Every inch of him tensed and stilled as a sensation went through him, a feeling that something wasn’t right and he needed to leave.
It was a feeling that often struck him now, and one he knew the root cause of even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it.
He looked back in the direction of the guild, aware of where it was, always aware of it, no matter how far he travelled from it.
It was the same sensation he had whenever he was in that building now, one that stirred whenever Aya was staying with her mate, Harbin, in his quarters.
His home was beginning to feel like a prison.
A nightmare.
He shook it off and focused back on his work, scouting the lamp-lit black cobbled streets below him as he crouched on the dark pitched tiled roof of a two-storey inn in a large town near the borders of the free realm. Mountains rose beyond it, forming a steep barrier between the free realm and the land of the dragons. A final outpost for fae, travellers and mercenaries.
The last town.
Beyond the mountains, the valleys were deep and numerous, with only a handful of villages nestled in a few of them, none of which welcomed travellers or those outside the dragon species. Not unless they had gold anyway.
The sky glowed dim amber in that direction, the fires of the Devil’s lands burning hot, and his sensitive ears picked up the distant sounds of the black earth cracking and splitting as the lava broke to the surface, forming new valleys and mountains.
Fuery chuckled low in his throat.
He had half a mind to venture there, to pit himself against the strongest male in Hell.
The chance of him winning was slim, but gods, it would be a glorious way to go. If by some miracle of the gods he won, he would take his place on the black throne and rule the strongest realm in Hell, legions of demons at his command.
A fitting role for a creature like him.
Whatever evil and darkness lived inside the Devil, it beat within him too, a drum that he marched to and embraced. He bent it to his will and wielded it like a weapon.
A blade more devastating than any made of metal.
Voices dragged him back to the town, ripped him from his fantasy of ruling Hell and bloodying claws and fangs on the battlefield as he swept across the lands like a black shadow with an army at his back, subjugating all who didn’t fall to his blade.
He gritted his teeth and screwed his eyes shut, and fought back against the whispers in his mind, the ones that urged him to go through with it. Fight the Devil.
Rule Hell.
No.
He had been a protector once. He had fought to defend his homeland, and its people. He had been good.
He opened his eyes and stared at his hands, at the long black claws his armour formed over his fingers. They flickered between clean with the town people blurry beyond them, and drenched in blood, glistening against a gory backdrop of carnage.
He had been good.
He breathed through it, each inhale and exhale making the timing shift, so his claws were clean for longer, and the sight of them bloodied grew shorter, until it was only brief flickers and then faded completely.
His claws were clean.
But not for long.
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Book 1: Kissed by a Dark Prince (FREE AT SELECTED RETAILERS!)
Book 2: Claimed by a Demon King
Book 3: Tempted by a Rogue Prince
Book 4: Hunted by a Jaguar
Book 5: Craved by an Alpha
Book 6: Bitten by a Hellcat
Book 7: Taken by a Dragon
Book 8: Marked by an Assassin
Book 9: Possessed by a Dark Warrior
Book 10: Awakened by a Demoness
Book 11: Haunted by the King of Death
Book 12: Turned by a Tiger
Book 13: Tamed by a Tiger
Book 14: Treasured by a Tiger
Book 15: Unchained by a Forbidden Love
Book 3: Tempted by a Rogue Prince
Book 4: Hunted by a Jaguar
Book 5: Craved by an Alpha
Book 6: Bitten by a Hellcat
Book 7: Taken by a Dragon
Book 8: Marked by an Assassin
Book 9: Possessed by a Dark Warrior
Book 10: Awakened by a Demoness
Book 11: Haunted by the King of Death
Book 12: Turned by a Tiger
Book 13: Tamed by a Tiger
Book 14: Treasured by a Tiger
Book 15: Unchained by a Forbidden Love
Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.
If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.
If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:
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