Viciously Yours (Fae Kings of Eden Book 1)

The pain lancing Rennick’s chest stole his breath. His heart hurt and throbbed with the aching desire to throw itself from the tallest tower.

He clutched at the shirt covering his chest as Ora leaned over him, rubbing soothing circles over his back. “Ren, talk to me.”

Heart attacks were rare, but they did happen, though it was usually in the elderly. As he homed in on the feeling, he realized it wasn’t physical pain; it wasn’t his pain at all.

Amelia.

Ora called after him as he ran from the room and skidded to a halt in the hall. A maid gathered linens from the floor with concern etched in her features as she glanced behind her.

When her eyes snagged on Rennick, she gathered the sheets faster.

“Should I call the healer?” Ora asked, surveying where he’d fisted his shirt.

“I need to find Amelia.”

“She was here, Your Majesty,” the maid said. “She just left.” With the sheets piled haphazardly in her arms, she turned on her heel to leave.

“Stop,” Rennick commanded. The maid froze. “Which way did she go?”

The woman motioned down the hall leading away from Rennick’s study, where her gaze had previously wandered with worry. “That way, Your Majesty.”

He swerved around her as he ran, throwing a “thank you” over his shoulder and praying his mate was okay.

A stray arrow on the ground snagged Rennick’s attention. One of Amelia’s, he surmised, recognizing the craftmanship from all those years ago.

“Ren!” Ora’s footsteps moved closer as she jogged after him. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Bending down, he swiped the arrow off the ground and rolled it between his fingers. What was she doing and why does my chest feel like someone ripped it wide open?

“Ren,” Ora snapped.

He turned to face her. “What?” he snapped back with a glare.

She reared back, her blue eyes going wide before they slid behind him. Moving toward him, she touched his arm and leaned in, lowering her voice. “What has gotten into you?”

Anguish exploded within him, followed by a sob behind him. Spinning around, he saw Amelia at the opposite end of the hall.

He ran to her side, vowing to kill whoever had upset her. “What’s wrong, love?” He reached for her, but she backed away.

“I can’t find Eddy.” Well, I can’t kill him.

Even though the reason for her ire made sense, it didn’t feel right. In the past, she barely blinked when the fox disappeared for a day. “We’ll find him.”

Ora approached, and Amelia backed farther away, her red-rimmed eyes hardening.

“I don’t want to interrupt,” his mate snipped and did an about face to leave, but Rennick reached out to stop her.

“I’m coming with you.”

“I’ll wait for you in your study,” Ora murmured.

Amelia snatched her arm from his grasp and left without looking back.

Frustration made his skin itch, and he turned to Ora. He’d planned to show Amelia her library and needed Ora to explain a few things to him since she’d helped design it, but the woman was insane if she thought he would continue their conversation while his mate was hurting.

“Find Finn and tell him to find Eddy.” Ora’s mouth turned down. “Now,” he added forcefully. She wisely kept her mouth shut and stormed off in the opposite direction.

Cursing, he followed after Amelia, who kept glancing down different hallways, muttering to herself, before taking the closest stairway to the next floor. If he didn’t get to the bottom of her pain, it would drive him mad. “What’s wrong, love?” Silence stretched between them. “Don’t shut me out.”

She scoffed and practically ran up the next set of stairs toward the royal quarters. “You left me alone all afternoon and night in an unfamiliar place, so don’t talk to me about shutting someone out.” The venom in her voice took him aback.

“I needed time to think.”

At the top of the stairs, she looked both ways several times.

“This way.” He guided her toward their room.

“You don’t run when I upset you,” she seethed, opening their door. He wanted to point out that she literally ran from him just now, but decided against it. “Leaving me alone was bad, but running to Ora was unforgivable. I’m leaving.”

She stomped toward the dressing room with him on her heels, and when he stepped through the door and saw her trunks open, he saw red.

Did she already pack her things?

A quick survey of the room showed her clothing hung neatly across from his, squashing his fears. He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her against him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

He never saw the elbow coming until it jabbed him in the gut. If she hadn’t threatened to leave him, her feistiness would have turned him on.

“Let me go right now,” she shouted, trying to wiggle out of his hold. “You said if I decided to leave, I could leave.”

He fought to differentiate his emotions from hers as everything spiraled out of control. “We will leave. If you leave, I leave, so if you’re trying to leave me, that won’t work.”

With a huff, she stopped struggling. “Let me go, please.” Defeat colored her words, and it hit harder than her elbow.

After releasing her, he spun her around and held her in place by the shoulders. “Please, tell me what’s wrong. If me leaving yesterday upset you this much, I will never leave your side again.”

“Stop that.” She swatted at his hands. “Yes, I’m angry you left, but you left because I upset you.” A tear ran down her cheek. “I can’t control how you react, but I also can’t fix anything if you’re not here. I was careless with my words, and I’m sorry.” She blew out a long breath. “I’m asking for a little grace. I thought you were someone else for years.”

If this was her idea of fixing things, she was terrible at it, because all he wanted to do was break Finn’s neck.

“But it was you I wanted,” she whispered through her tears. “Your letters; he was only a face. I don’t care about him. I care about the man who wrote to me for years, whose loyalty never wavered, the man who I considered sneaking through the barrier to search every kingdom for, consequences be damned.”

He could feel her honesty laced with sadness, but her words made his protectiveness flare up. Had she tried to sneak into the fae kingdoms, she could have died by a number of things.

“Imagine my surprise when I came to tell you those things and found you with another woman.” Daggers would cut less than her eyes. “I can handle your silence, but not you running to someone else.”

Quick as lightning, she yanked dresses from their hangers and dropped them into an open trunk with him staring in stunned silence.

He removed the dresses from the trunk and dumped them on the floor. “You’re accusing me of running to another woman?”

She freed another dress from its hanger, but he slammed the trunk shut before she could throw it in.

“I went in search of you to apologize and invite you hunting because I know you love it.” Tears lined her eyes again, and her cute chin wobbled. “I heard you laughing with Ora in your study. While I fretted over where you were, what you were thinking, and if you were okay all night, you were having a great time with your best friend.”

He frowned. “Finn is my best friend.”

Her eyes flashed as she took a step toward him. “She touched your arm like a lover, a familiarity we can’t have in public, and you let her.”

He digested her words and stabbed a hand through his hair, deciding which part to tackle first, but her eyes were wild.

“I left my home and my kingdom for you! You asshole!”

“Stop accusing me of bedding other women,” he said in a low voice, trying not to yell. “I have never touched another woman, nor will I ever. I asked you if Ora bothered you, and you said no.”

“I shouldn’t have to ask you not to let other women touch you when you murdered an innocent man for fucking me before we even met!” She waved her hands wildly. “Should I have lied and said I was fine? No. That was childish of me, and I know I was wrong, but you can’t hold me to a standard you don’t practice yourself.”

She was right. If a man touched her arm in such a manner, he would no longer have a hand. Rennick removed his shirt, tossing it to the ground. “Where did she touch me?”

Amelia faltered, a bit of her anger giving way to confusion. “What?”

“Where did she touch me?” he repeated, punctuating every word as he held out his arms. “I was distracted. Show me exactly where.”

Her eyes turned to slits. “This isn’t a fucking joke, Rennick.”

“I’m not laughing, love.”

Annoyance pulled at her mouth. “Your right arm.”

“Where on my right arm?”

She stared for a moment and touched his upper arm lightly. “Here.”

Leaning down, he removed a dagger from his boot, held it against his skin, and sliced downward, flicking his wrist outward to remove a thin layer of skin.

Amelia screamed, and ran forward, babbling incoherently as she grabbed a dress from the floor to press against his arm. “Are you insane!” Her face paled when she looked from his bloody arm to the bloody spot on the floor.

Green replaced the pale pallor of her skin, and she dry heaved.

His arm burned, but not enough to regret his actions. Taking the dress from her hands, he ripped it into strips, wrapped his arm tightly to stop the bleeding, and assisted Amelia to the sitting room while she continued to heave and mumble about his mental state.

After depositing her into a chair, he walked to the door and pulled on the bell cord to summon someone while worrying over the sweat gathering on his mate’s brow.

He grabbed a wet cloth from the bathroom and held it against Amelia’s forehead, but she pushed his hand away and stood on shaky legs. “You mutilated yourself!”

The blood-soaked cloth tied around his arm made the wound look worse than it was. “It was only the skin.”

She bent over and put her hands on her knees, gagging again.

When she’d finally regained control of herself, she straightened. “Why in the seven rings of hell would you do that?”

Rennick stepped into her space and wrapped his hand around her nape. “There is no longer any part of my body she has touched.” He kissed her forehead and felt her fury and jealousy dissolve.

“You were wearing long sleeves,” she croaked. “She didn’t touch your skin.”

He shrugged. “I’ll burn the shirt, too.”

“Why is that attractive?” she muttered quietly, eliciting a wide smile from him.

“I will kill her and serve you her head on a silver platter.”

She blanched. “You cannot threaten to kill everyone who upsets one of us!”

“I was being facetious.” Not really. “Ora will no longer be allowed in our palace.” He needed to rid their relationship of the other woman. “Tomorrow, we’ll tell her together. I wish you’d told me sooner.”

Her eyes lit up. “I get to be there?”

He laughed, loving his mate’s possessive streak. “You can be the one to tell her.” Caressing her jaw, he forced her eyes to his, relishing in the happiness radiating from her. “If you’d like to stake your claim, I’ll bend you over my desk and fuck you while you tell her.”

His cock hardened at the pretty blush blooming across her skin as she pulled from his grasp and flitted from trunk to trunk.

The contents of the last trunk rattled as she dug around. “Ah ha!” Straightening, she held out a stack of papers to him. “I wanted to stake my claim on whomever wrote those letters long ago, and if I’d been able to deliver these to you, you’d never question that.”

Rennick loathed to leave, but Amelia, with a still green face, insisted he visit the infirmary without her. A maid showed up to answer his earlier summons, and he sent for the warriors-in-training to clean the area of the dressing room floor covered in blood.

Seeing his mate almost pass out reminded him that not everyone was comfortable around blood, and he didn’t want any of the in-house staff to faint. The trainees were accustomed to blood and wounds alike, so removing a bloody rug wouldn’t faze them in the least.

Amelia wanted to see her friend Fawn while he tended to his arm, and once the girl showed up, he kissed his mate goodbye and left.

An hour and a fresh bandage later, Rennick headed to his study, removing the folded stack of papers from his back pocket.

He crossed his study to the corner near the dark floor-to-ceiling bookcases, lit the table lamp, dropped into a plush overstuffed chair, placed the stack of papers on the side table, and picked up the first page.

Scanning the paper, he barked out a laugh.

Dear Nick,

Screw you.

Not Sincerely,

Amelia

P.S. I’m sorry about your mom.

He grinned at young Amelia’s loopy handwriting, punctuated with a snark he’d not known she possessed until meeting her in person.

Time ceased to exist as he traveled back in time through the letters Amelia had written him throughout the years. He chuckled at her wit and honesty, loving her humor and soaking in every detail she gave about her life.

A black envelope he recognized well hid amongst the stack.

How does she still have this?

The paper inside had worn creases from years of being opened and re-folded, and when he opened the letter, he sat forward.

Hello, Love,

My imagination did not do you justice.

You are beautiful.

Always Yours,

Nick

P.S. Are the other girls at the orphanage taking your food? I’ve included a basket of things for you to keep in your room, just in case.

The words took him back in time to when he’d first laid eyes on Amelia. It was an experience unlike any other to finally put a face to the girl he’d dreamed about. Love at first sight was thought to be a fairytale written in books, but Rennick knew it to be true.

It was strange—the feeling he had that day that had nothing to do with their bond and everything to do with her. Over the years, Finn and Ora called it infatuation that later turned to obsession, and they were right, but there was love, too.

He didn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought. He knew what he felt.

Folding the paper, he slid it carefully into the envelope and dropped it on the stack of already read letters to continue with the others. Each letter left him hungry for more of her thoughts, and he couldn’t devour them fast enough.

One letter from a few years ago made him stop, his hands squeezing into fists and crinkling the paper. A glutton for punishment, he read it again.

Dear Nick,

I saw you last night. It’s not the first time, but I was afraid to tell you because I didn’t want you to stop coming (not that you read these anyway).

I’m only telling you now to let you know that I liked your hair brown, but I love it blond. What made you want to color it?

How did you color it? Do fae have magic to do it, or do you have hair shops like humans? (I’ve always loved blond hair on men)

I sound pathetic, but I’m lonely here without you.

Wish you were here.

Pathetically Yours,

Amelia

P.S. You once asked if I wonder about you, and I do. Every day.

Fucking Finn, that handsome bastard. Rennick wanted to find the hair shop Finn used to dye his hair blond and torch it to the ground. A loud knock sounded from the other side of the door. “Come in.”

Ora peeked her head in, her long black hair swinging like a silk curtain. “Is it okay if I come in?”

“No,” he replied, placing Amelia’s letter on the stack.

She laughed lightly and strutted in anyway. “You’ve been testy since yesterday. Is your friend not performing well?”

He didn’t respond right away, because if he did, it would be with violence. More than anything, he wanted to tell her to leave his palace and never return, but he’d promised Amelia the pleasure of doing so, and he’d not take that from her. “Her name is Amelia, and I told you to leave.”

Ora’s blue eyes rounded. He abandoned Amelia’s letters and clasped his hands over his stomach. “Why are you still here?”

She pressed her hand against her chest. “Why are you treating me this way? Is she turning you against me when I was nothing but nice to her?”

He recalled Ora’s behavior, how she’d looked over Rennick’s shoulder and stepped closer to grab his arm. Staking a claim that was not hers.

“You forget your place,” he replied dangerously. “You touched me earlier when you had no right. That right belongs to my mate and no one else.”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet, and he watched with fascination as something in her snapped. “This is ridiculous. I am your mate, and you know that as well as I do. Drop this silly pretense and admit it.”

She could have showed him a dog tail growing out of her neck and it would have surprised him less than her declaration. Ora’s words struck him speechless.

Did she really believe that?

“Think about it,” she went on, “We have the same birthday, our personalities are perfect together, and you think you heard Orissa? Really, Ren? It never occurred to you that it was Ora you heard?”

Her expression held a delusional sincerity, and he knew not telling her Amelia’s true identity was the right call.

“If we were mates, we would feel each other’s emotions,” he replied carefully, trying to rationalize with her. Standing to his full six-foot-five height, he tapped his chest. “I can feel my mate here, and you are not her.”

Ora’s hands balled into tight fists. “Why are you denying our bond? I feel everything you feel. Have I not been able to anticipate everything you needed our entire lives?”

“No,” he deadpanned. “If you had been able to read my emotions, you would’ve known that when I looked at you, I felt nothing but platonic friendship. No part of me has ever desired you in a romantic or sexual way. Release whatever fantasy you’re holding on to.”

Big drops slithered down her cheeks, her mouth open as she stared at him. “You don’t mean that.”

He lifted a brow and crossed his arms. “I assure you, I do. Leave and be back tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock after my council meeting.”

The devastation on her face morphed into happiness, and he cringed at the delusional hope in her eyes. “We can figure this out,” she said, beaming at him. “I know we can.”

“Leave,” he replied and sat back down.

“I’ll see you at four.” She left with a bounce in her step that had him gaping after her.

Has she always been this deranged?

No sooner had she shut the door did it opened again, and Finn walked through. “Ora looked delighted.”

Rennick eyed Finn’s blond hair and scowled. He opened the side table drawer and grabbed a blank piece of paper, ink pot, and quill. Placing the blank paper on top of Amelia’s letters, he unscrewed the ink well lid, dipped his quill, and began to write as he said, “I told her to remember her place and keep her hands to herself.”

Finn took a seat in the other reading chair. “She’s convinced you two are mates.”

Rennick’s hand jerked, almost spilling the ink. “You knew?”

“Everyone knows but you. Personally, I don’t see the appeal,” Finn joked, crossing his leg. “You’ve been so blinded by Amelia and the rebel attacks that you missed out on her longing looks and attempts to sway you.”

Rennick pursed his lips. “If what you say is true, keep her away from me or I will separate her head from her body.”

Finn snorted, then blanched when Rennick lifted his head and leveled him with a look. “You’re serious.”

Rennick put down his quill and read over the document. “Have this decree announced throughout the kingdom.” He stood and held out the paper. “Send warriors to ensure it’s followed. Anyone who refuses to comply of their own will be forced.”

Finn took the paper, read it, and scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

Rennick walked to the door and looked over his shoulder. “I want it done as soon as possible.”