Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
I start to walk away, ignoring her curse-filled shrieks behind me. Turning my back on her turns out to be a small mistake, since she finally manages to lurch up to a semi-sitting position. Just as I glance over my shoulder, she flops one of her arms towards me, crying out from the pain of the broken arm as she finally shows what House she’s in.
Elemental. Fire.
Shit.
The blazing inferno that encompasses me is powerful enough that even though I dive away in record time, it still catches on my pants. I scramble to pat them out, but elemental fire isn’t like normal flames. It’s similar to Greek fire, quickly spreading.
Along with the flare of panic flooding me is exasperation. This bitch just had to wait until the last moment to surprise me with this. Why couldn’t she have whipped this attack out sooner? I never would have engaged with her if I’d known this was her element.
Taking off in a dead run, I don’t give myself time to hesitate before plunging into the nearby raging river.
Immediately, the fire singing my skin is snuffed out—but the subzero temperature of the water shocks my body into near paralysis. The rapids are far stronger than I’d anticipated, and I feel myself getting swept downstream and sucked further down, the cold and pressure making it nearly impossible to hold my breath.
Dying right now would be so inconvenient.
Just as water finally fills my mouth and nose, the swirling river calms enough that I can kick hard, breaking the icy surface with a raw, painful gasp. I’m so distracted with treading water that I barely register the shouts ringing out—until someone dives into the water beside me.
Strong arms encase me, and within seconds, I’m pulled onto the rocky shore. Someone is trying to cradle me, but that is absolutely not fucking happening, so I scramble away, blinking up in surprise…
At three legacies who look utterly pissed to find me in a river.
Silas is the one who pulled me out, and he looks ridiculously good sopping wet, with water droplets clinging to his dark curls and his red eyes a beautiful contrast against our wintry backdrop. He reaches for me again, brows pulled down in a severe frown, but I wave him off as I cough up the rest of the water.
Baelfire is agitated. “Fuck. Just breathe, Maven. There you go. Just?—“
He cuts off in a choking sound when I finally get to my feet, and when I hear Silas swear on a harsh exhale, I realize all of their stares have gone from furious to ravenous because…
I’m pretty much naked.
My dripping clothes are in tatters, my pants practically gone, and the little left of my baggy sweatshirt barely holding together. The massive burn holes in it expose most of my body, even though my black sports bra and panties are intact. Although I know the sports bra is covering the center of my chest where it is, I still instinctively lift my arms to cover that area.
The one part of me that hints at what I truly am.
“Fuck me,” Bael groans, voice hoarse. He reaches down to grip his erection in his pants, looking pained.
I’ve worn anything and everything to disguise my figure since the day I got to Everbound. I made sure everyone thought of me as a frumpy, forgettable wallflower. And now this. The gods really do have a wicked sense of humor.
The one upside is that I didn’t carry any special weapons into training today, so I didn’t lose any of them in the river. Unfortunately, anything else hidden in my pockets is now gone.
When I meet Crypt’s blue and purple gaze in a silent glare, he swallows harshly and shoves Baelfire toward me. “Stroke off later. She’s freezing.”
Bael doesn’t miss a beat, stripping out of his shirt to offer it to me.
Holy shit.
He’s even more jacked than I expected. A glorious expanse of muscle upon muscle, all under smooth golden-tan skin. The ridges of his abs and the sharp V cut of his pelvis momentarily distracts me from the fact that I’m in a similar state of undress.
What would it feel like to touch all of that? That body pressed against mine…
I kick myself internally. I already know it will be revolting.
Now is not the time to start second-guessing that aspect of my life.
Before they can notice where my attention has lingered, I grab his shirt, careful to avoid touching him, and tug it over my head quickly. It’s so big on me that the hem brushes my mid-thigh. It smells like him, that same singed cedar scent I caught earlier.
“Shit, I’m so sorry. I was just…you’re just so fucking pretty that I?—“
He’s interrupted when Silas swears, gently but firmly grabbing my bare wrist and lifting it to show the faint burns along my arm. Immediately, I wrench my arm away, jaw clenching.
“Hold still,” he grits, pulling out his bleeding crystal.
He’s going to try to heal me. Everyone knows Silas Crane is among the most powerful blood fae alive, so a healing spell would be nothing to him, merely a prick of the finger and a drop of his potent blood. But the last thing I need is someone trying to heal me with blood magic.
“No,” I warn.
Silas’s glare is heated. “I will not tolerate you being hurt. Ever. Now, don’t move.”
He tries to step closer, and I let my poker face fall away so he can see how pissed I’ll be if he tries to use magic on me right now. “Fuck off.”
When he moves toward me again, obviously more focused on my scant injuries than the threat of my wrath, Crypt grips his shoulder and warns coldly, “She said no, Crane.”
Silas whirls with a snarl, breaking the incubus’s hold on him, and for a moment, I wonder if they’ll go for each other’s throats. Then Crypt turns his back on the fae, a clear insult, and looks down at my bare hands.
“Your gloves are gone.”
No shit. “They burned off.”
He hums nonchalantly, but I notice that all of the pale markings in his skin glow faintly purple before fading. Something in his violet irises reminds me that this is my most unpredictable match. The one they call a psychopath.
“Out of pure curiosity, and not at all because I’m about to feed them their own spleen…who did this to you, darling?”
That captures Silas and Bael’s attention, too, and now three high-profile legacies are hanging on my next words, like hunting hounds salivating before a chase.
“Just forget this happened,” I tell them before trudging away from the river.
It really is cold out here, sopping wet like this. I wrap Bael’s shirt tighter around myself, whipping almost frozen hair out of my face.
They don’t let me go that easy. Baelfire is suddenly on my right, instinctively reaching for me and then pulling his hand back with a harsh swear. “Damn it, Boo, your feet are going to freeze into solid blocks of ice. At least let me carry you.”
I’m prepared to ignore him completely, but suddenly, I can’t think about anything except what Sierra said. Baelfire and her in bed. The hickeys. Him fucking her, watching her face.
Maybe she was lying, but just picturing all of it sends an entirely foreign emotion roaring to the surface, scalding my skin worse than fire ever could, and I do possibly the stupidest thing I have ever done.
I plant my back foot, turn, and punch a dragon shifter in the face.
Hard.
Baelfire reels back from the force, gripping his jaw as he freezes with shock. Silas blinks between us at an equal level of surprise. Meanwhile, a vicious smile curls one side of Crypt’s mouth up.
I shake out my hand, pretending like it doesn’t throb. It will definitely bruise, but if I draw any attention to it, they’ll just be even more impossible to shake right now.
And I have to get away from them quickly. Because I just slipped up. I lost my cool, and I can’t let it happen again. My emotions are dangerously close to the surface when I shouldn’t be letting myself feel anything at all.
I am nothing but deadly calm. I can’t want them.
“For the last time, you all need to fuck off.”
My voice isn’t as steady as I’d like, but at least my glare keeps them from coming any closer. And as if the universe has finally decided to give me a break, the echo of a shrill whistle sounds far in the distance, signaling the end of combat training.
I march away.
BAELFIRE
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.