Broken Fae

by Caroline Peckham

"Don't go," she growled. "We need to talk."

  I shook my head, already knowing this had been a mistake. That I was more attached to her than ever before. That her smell would linger with me and I'd crave her day after day with more passion than ever because I'd given in to temptation. If she and Leon were happy with this, that was between them. But I needed to work out if this was something I could live with. Because I got the feeling that my addiction to Elise had just grown tenfold. And I had no idea how to get her out of my blood.

  I lay on my back on the mezzanine level of the boathouse with my legs dangling over the edge and swinging back and forth while I leafed through Gareth’s journal, looking for meaning in more of the sketches he’d drawn.

  It was Sunday and Leon was at a Solarian Pitball League Game in Olafia city with Roary, watching his favourite team play. He’d asked me to join them, but I wanted them to have some brother time without me, so I’d refused.

  The cherry gum in my mouth had lost its flavour and I was only chewing it from habit at this point, trying to distract myself from the tingle in my fangs where my power was running low. I’d spent the morning practicing with my air magic, lifting myself up towards the sky then catching myself again before I could go splat on the ground. It had been fun, but I was close to tapped out now and I was more than a little tempted to go hunting for someone tasty. Of course, there were only a few Fae who I really desired a drink from, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to track any of them down easily as they still seemed to be avoiding me a lot.

  I frowned at a sketch of a Pegasus caught in quicksand, his rear half sinking out of sight while he threw his head back in a panicked whinny. I’d thought the sketch was a representation of how trapped Gareth had been feeling but as I looked into the beast’s eyes, I felt like the emotion I was seeing there was hope. The Pegasus had one front leg out of the muck, his hoof extended towards the bank and the longer I looked at it, the more it felt like I was seeing a creature destined to break free. He wasn’t drowning, he was about to save himself despite the odds.

  “But how...” I murmured, my finger skimming down the nose of the Pegasus I knew so well. Gareth’s talent meant he’d captured his own image in his Order form perfectly. The creature almost burst from the page and its will to live struck a chord deep in my heart. “Were you trying to escape Gare Bear?”

  The wooden boards beneath my back shifted and I flinched as I looked up to find Dante climbing the ladder to reach me. He wasn’t making a sound and I realised he was keeping himself silent in a silencing bubble as he approached.

  I smirked to myself as I closed the sketchbook and dropped it down beside me, wrapping the stale piece of gum in an old wrapper and discarding that too before closing my eyes and waiting.

  I could feel his footsteps vibrating through the boards beneath me as he drew nearer and I had to bite down on the inside of my cheek to hold back a smirk. Did he really think a big ass Dragon could sneak up on a Vampire?

  He moved to stand over me and I swear I could feel his shadow, heat rising in my flesh at every place it touched me.

  He dropped down to sit beside me and I tensed, expecting a prank, a playful attack, anything other than the gentle brush of his fingers through my hair.

  Dante dropped his silencing bubble and murmured. “Vorrei poterti tenere.”

  He moved to lay beside me and I turned my head towards him, opening my eyes slowly so that I could see the storm whirling within his.

  “I missed you, Dante,” I breathed and a smile touched his lips as he lay there on his back, his head turned my way so that we mirrored each other.

  “Non me ne sono mai andato.”

  I bit my lip as the sound of him speaking his language in that deep, dark tone of his got me all kinds of turned on.

  “You do that on purpose,” I accused and he arched an eyebrow at me.

  “Do what?”

  “Make me all hot by saying things I can’t understand. I’m always at least half certain they’re dirty,” I teased.

  Dante gave me a heated look but then turned away to look up at the wooden roof overhead instead.

  “Are your family all okay?” I asked after a few moments when he didn’t seem to have anything to say in response to my words.

  “My great uncle Enrico’s house was attacked last night. Luckily the old bastard has a touch of The Sight and saw Felix coming before he got there. His whole family ran - thirty two of them lived on that estate - luckily he got them all to my house before Felix arrived. It isn’t in an Oscura to run, but he saw what was going to happen if they tried to fight. Felix would have massacred them all. There are six bambini living with him and they would have been taken...” Dante sighed, running a palm down his face and looking like the weight of the world was resting on his shoulders.

  “Why would he take the children?” I asked as he continued to stare at the roof.

  “That’s his latest tactic. He’s been kidnapping our children to force members of my pack to turn against me. He holds their babies hostage to force them to join his side in this fight. And I can’t even blame them for doing as he says. In fact, I’ve made it clear to every member of my pack that if he does it to them, I won’t hold them responsible for turning against me when I come to claim his head. How can I? Faremmo qualsiasi cosa per le persone che amiamo.”

  I reached out and took his hand, squeezing his big fingers in mine and smiling as he held me tight.

  “You’ll get him, Dante. And you’ll show the whole world what happens to a man who crosses you, who hurts your blood and threatens the people you love. He’ll die screaming and no one will mourn him for a second. And when you send him to death he won’t be coming back because there’s nothing Oscura about him. A morte e ritorno. To death and back.”

  Dante turned to look at me and a shiver raced along my skin as electricity crackled in the air.

  His gaze dropped to my lips and I answered that longing look in his eyes by leaning up until my mouth met his.

  He returned my kiss, but the movement of his mouth against mine was slow, measured, like he was holding back on me and I wasn’t sure why. Leon told me he’d spoken to him about this, though I hadn’t had the chance to talk to him myself. But the look in his eyes had said he wanted me clearly enough, so I didn’t understand why he was restraining himself.

  I shifted to straddle him and he sat up as his arms wound behind my back, our kiss deepening as I seemed to break through some of his restraint, but as my hands slid down his chest, he caught my wrists in his grasp and pulled back.

  “I don’t think I can do this, bella,” he murmured, looking into my eyes with regret.

  “What?” I breathed, my heart racing as confusion filled me and the sting of his rejection made me ache.

  “Not when we’re alone like this,” he said slowly, releasing my hands so that he could cup my face between his palms. “I know what Leon said about it, but...”

  “But?” I prompted, forcing myself to hold his gaze even as I fought the urge to race away from him and this knotted feeling in my gut.

  Dante sighed, his fingers painting the lines of my face like he was trying to memorise them, like he thought he might need to do that for some reason. “But, being here with you feels like I’m betraying him. When it’s all of us together and I can see how much he wants it that way it’s one thing. But having you out here by myself, looking at the silver in your eyes that marks you as his and knowing that I’m taking you anyway, it just feels...wrong. Like I’m taking his girl.”

  “I am his girl,” I breathed. “But I’m your girl, too.”

  The look in Dante’s eyes said he wanted to believe that more than anything, but he just couldn’t.

  “My mamma and papa were Elysian Mates,” he murmured, his hands slipping from my face until his arms were wrapped around my waist again, hands clasped behind my back. “Their love burned for everyone to see with the heat and power of the sun. They never would have even considered wanting someone else. And I c
an’t help thinking that you won’t either in time. Maybe right now you’re still adjusting to it and the feelings you had for me before it happened still linger. But in time, I think you’ll realise that you love Leon most. That he’s the only one you need. And every moment I spend alone in your arms is only going to make me want to hold on tighter. I’m afraid that it will destroy me in the end.”

  “It’s not a competition, Dante. My feelings for you are just as strong as-”

  “I want to believe that, bella,” he breathed. “And maybe I just need time to accept it. But right now, anything we did alone together would be tainted by the taste of betrayal on my tongue. Leon is my family even if blood doesn’t connect us.”

  “Okay,” I agreed even though it made my heart ache. “We don’t have to do anything without him here.”

  Dante gave me a regretful smile and I shifted back, moving off of my knees and wrapping my legs around his waist before dropping onto my ass between his thighs. Neither of us made any move to untangle ourselves further. My gaze skimmed over his impossibly handsome face with his broad features, strong jaw, deep brown eyes and his black hair all messed up instead of swept back in the way it usually was.

  “Stop looking at me like you want to eat me, bella, that just makes it harder to resist you,” he teased.

  I licked my lips, smiling as my gaze slid to his throat. Eating him up didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world, but with my skin flushed and aching for him, I was pretty sure my hands would roam if I bit him now and I’d just promised not to do that.

  “What were you reading?” Dante asked, hunting for a distraction and picking up Gareth’s journal casually.

  I tensed, every muscle in my body locking as I looked at it in his grasp and he noticed instantly, his gaze moving from the book in his hand to me as he offered it up.

  “I didn’t mean to pry, amore mio,” Dante said softly, holding it out for me and I sighed.

  “It’s alright,” I said, shaking my head and indicating for him to open it. “It’s just, that’s Gareth’s. I found it hidden in his old room and there have been a few clues in there to help me figure out this Black Card stuff. But I feel like I’ve come to a dead end with it. I keep staring and staring at all of the sketches in there, but they never seem to make any more sense to me. Maybe you’ll spot something I didn’t.”

  “Elise...” Dante looked at the journal for a long moment before releasing a sigh. “There are some things that you need to know about my friendship with your brother. I had him helping me with Lorenzo, working for me to try and get him off of the Killblaze. I had him acting as Lorenzo’s dealer to try and wean him off that shit and I was the one who told him to join that cult.”

  My lips opened and closed like a fish out of water and the pain in Dante’s eyes was the only thing stopping me from running the fuck away from him or screaming or maybe beating his damn face in, or-

  “I just thought they were a bunch of weirdos,” he explained. “And I was trying to save my family members from the pain of having Lorenzo gone. I realise now that he was already lost to us. But I’m afraid I might be responsible in some way for what happened to Gareth too. I asked him more than once if he was okay in that cult, but he only ever smiled and nodded. Maybe I should have looked closer or cared more, but I have a lot of people to look out for and I guess I just didn’t want to go looking for any more issues than I was already dealing with.”

  I released a long sigh, forcing myself not to get angry at him for his part in this. He hadn’t known me then, couldn’t have understood even half of what we now knew about the Black Card. And he’d forgiven me for my part in Lorenzo’s death. No matter what route his actions might have sent Gareth down, I knew he hadn’t intended him any harm.

  I reached out to cup his cheek in my hand and shook my head. “Gareth was into all kinds of trouble that I knew nothing about. I might as well blame myself for not realising he was in trouble as blame you for giving him work when he needed it. He wanted to earn that money to pay off the debt hanging over me. By paying him, you were saving me from a life I’d always feared falling into even when you didn’t know I existed. None of us understood the bigger picture, probably not even him.”

  Dante’s hand fell over mine and he closed his eyes. “Mi dispiace amore mio.”

  “I’m sorry too.”

  “I wish I’d met you sooner. I could have cleared that debt easily if I’d just known-” he began but I shook my head, pulling my hand from his face.

  “The debt was just the final straw,” I replied. “But we’d always been planning on running from this place, from Old Sal, Alestria, The Sparkling Ura-”

  I sucked in a breath as I grabbed the journal and flipped through the pages until I reached one towards the back. It was an image of a Pegasus and a little angel flying through the sky, racing away from a planet which I suddenly recognised. Uranus. And at the foot of the page were words I’d read again and again, but they hadn’t made any sense to me until that moment.

  Where we used to watch the sky, you’ll find the wings you need to fly...

  “We need to go,” I said, leaping upright and grabbing Dante’s hand as I yanked him to his feet too. “I think Gareth might have left me something else at the place my mom used to work.”

  “The strip club where the owner was trying to blackmail you into working too?” he growled, a crease forming between his brows.

  “Erm, yeah.” I reached up to smooth his frown away. “Look, I know it’s fucked up, but Old Sal is like the only person even close to family I’ve got left. At least while my mom is still...the way she is in that place. I know she’s got flaws and I know it’s kinda pathetic for me to even care about her but...there aren’t that many people left in my life who really knew Gareth like she did. We grew up in that place, we ate dinner there most nights, helped out with cleaning and shit like that for pocket money.”

  "She's your family?" Dante asked and I hesitated a moment before shrugging.

  "She's close enough," I conceded because I wasn't sure I could say I felt love for Old Sal exactly, but she had been a constant in my life when I hadn't had many of those. Of course, she'd also been the reason Gareth had taken on that debt, though I definitely placed most of the blame for that failure in my mother's hands.

  "Okay. Then for your sake, I'll give her a chance to prove she’s worthy of you."

  "Worthy?" I snorted a laugh at him and shook my head. "Your opinion of me is way beyond the rest of the world's."

  "No, bella. You're a queen among men and the sooner you realise that the better. Haven't you noticed how easily you make men worship you? There's magic in you more powerful than the stars themselves."

  My lips curved into a smile and I grinned as an idea occurred to me. "Let's go then, and I know how to make the journey more fun."

  "Why don't we just fly, bella?" Dante asked, rolling his shoulders back like the shift was pressing beneath his skin and his inner Dragon was already getting ideas about coming out to play.

  "Because The Sparkling Uranus is in downtown Alestria, where the buildings are packed way too close together for a Storm Dragon to land. And even if they weren't, do you seriously think that the King of the Oscura Clan will go unnoticed there if you show up in your Order form?"

  "Why am I trying to go unnoticed?" he asked with a smirk. "I'm not the kind to fade into the background, Elise."

  "No, but we don't exactly need to place a flashing sign above your head either. It's a flying visit, I just wanna see if my gut is right about this, not encourage a gang war at my mom's old workplace. I think it’s better if you go incognito."

  He rolled his eyes but relented and I grinned as he caved to my will. "Come on then, bella, tell me what's this plan you've got for getting us there then?"

  "Simple," I said with a smirk. "I'm mated to a Night now and my new pride are known for thieving. Leon recently acquired a shiny new Faerarri. I say I steal the keys and we take it for a ride."

  Dante l
aughed loudly and nodded his head in agreement, and I shot away from him to carry out my dastardly plan, leaving him to meet me in the parking lot.

  ***

  By the time we made it to The Sparkling Uranus, I could almost convince myself that everything between me and Dante was back to normal. Aside from the fact that I was getting through gum like a Killblaze addict with unlimited access to the tubes and an endless capacity to consume them.

  I should have bitten someone else when I ran to steal the keys to the luxurious car we were driving but I hadn't. I just couldn't summon the desire to taste anyone but my Storm Dragon now that the predator in me had set her sights on him. But I couldn't bite him yet, not until I got myself under control and calmed my flaming libido down enough to do it without grinding on him like a stripper on a pole.

  I realised that I'd been staring at the thick artery in his strong neck when he was forced to repeat himself and I blinked to try and combat the desire to pounce right here and now. Biting him while he was driving was probably a bad idea.

  I quickly gave him the directions he'd asked for and he groaned low in the back of his throat like he'd realised I’d been staring and was having just as much trouble holding himself back as I was.

  When we reached the strip club which weirdly felt like home to me, Dante pulled the car up in front of the sign that read 'no parking' right outside the front doors on the street, ignoring the signs for the carpark around back.

  He cut me a look that said he was less than impressed with what I’d asked him to do before running a hand down his face and covering his features with a concealment spell. Within a few moments, my easily recognisable gangster became just a normal guy who no one would know. I mean, he was still huge and hot as fuck, but he wasn’t an infamous gang leader so he was marginally less noticeable.

  “It’s easier this way,” I reminded him. “The people here would freak if they knew Dante Oscura was walking amongst them and then we’d never get to check out what Gareth left me.”