Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
“No. I’m going alone.”
Because there is no wedding, and I have a shifter to kill.
“We’ll just follow after you,” Silas challenges. “I hope your relative doesn’t mind legacies crashing the party.”
Gods, why are they such bossy, annoyingly attractive men?
“Unless you didn’t come for a wedding after all. Perhaps you came to meet with…others.” Silas’s voice has lowered, and he’s studying me like he would dissemble my mind to get an answer.
But I don’t know what answer he’s looking for. What others would I be meeting with? I can’t think of a response to play my cards close to the vest. I’m too damn tired, thanks to that episode.
Crypt must have moved through Limbo because he steps out directly in front of me, studying my face as one corner of his lips drags down slightly.
“Let our girl go to bed. She’s exhausted.”
Dream-walking incubi like him can sense that. Usually, it would bother me that he can tell I’m dead on my feet, but I let it go because it finally gets Silas to soften, too.
“Just keep your promise of one day. Let us have tomorrow with you. No games.”
I frown at him. He thinks I’ve been playing games? Since when? For the last few days, I’ve successfully driven him up a wall. Where did all that annoyance and frustration I’ve worked so hard to cultivate in him go?
“Fine,” I relent, stepping around Crypt. “But if any of you try to bother me while I’m sleeping in, I’m gone.”
Truthfully, I plan on slipping out early in the morning to kill Lykoudis and get his heart. Hopefully, the snowstorm will have calmed by then. Leaving them in the kitchen, I retreat to the guest room I picked and prepare for an early bedtime before dropping onto the luxuriously soft bed with a groan.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I scowl, picking it up to try to figure out how to turn off the vibration. I can never figure out phones.
The notification came from an email from Everbound University about the upcoming Matched Ball that takes place after First Placement. It’s a big formal event that Kenzie has been ecstatic about.
I go to close out of it, but something in the email catches my eye. I quickly skim.
…
our esteemed headmaster, Professor Hearst, has arrived back at Everbound and will deliver an address preceding First Placement to congratulate all legacies who have survived their first semester at Everbound University thus far.
The headmaster has returned.
Finally, some good news.
I just have to get through the next day without getting too attached to these assholes, and then I can get on with my mission. Clearly, getting them to hate me is hitting too many snags.
So maybe after I finish my mission here, I should just run. Never see them again.
No matter how that makes me feel.
CRYPT
“You want to tell us what the fuck is up your ass?” Decimus growls as soon as Maven is out of earshot, turning on Frost, who still sits at the dining room table.
The ice elemental sighs like he’s resigned that his peaceful dinner is over and stands to face the rest of us. “You told me to be here. I’m here. That doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it, and she’s too smart to buy any fake niceties I toss her way anyway.”
Crane snaps at him about something else, and it leads to an argument that gets bigger and louder, but I don’t join their little spat, content to sit back and watch. We all have such different auras, so it’s no wonder we never meshed well as children like Maven was asking about.
Though I admit, I’m curious why Frost’s aura is so soft compared to how icy and arrogant he has always acted. Of the three of them, he was the one I minded the least when we were younger, but he purposefully distanced himself at every chance. I suppose he’s doing the same thing now with Maven.
I’m snapped out of my musings when Frost says something accusatory, and Decimus snaps, “I didn’t fucking pressure her. She wanted to touch me, and it just…escalated.”
Crane straightens, narrowing his eyes. “What do you mean, escalated? Did you fuck her?”
“No. She just…” Decimus rubs a hand over the back of his neck and looks uncharacteristically flustered. “She started teasing me, touching me, and I lost control. Came like a fucking geyser. And then…” He shakes his head again. “It wasn’t sex. It’s not like I won the wager. But I didn’t fucking pressure her like that. I just strong-armed her into spending time with us here?—“
“Hang on,” I interrupt, my jaw tightening. “She stroked you off?”
He scowls. “It was a lot more intimate than you’re making it?—“
“I don’t give a damn. My question is, did you get her off? Or did you take and give nothing in return?”
He grimaces. I can tell I’m not the only one that pisses off when Frost sneers, “And you’re mad at me for not making progress with her? You’re a dick, using her like that.”
Decimus’s temper flares. “I didn’t use her. I wanted her to use me. She had me promise not to touch her—how the hell was I supposed to return the favor? And I was already way too damn close to snapping and fucking her rough and raw. I wasn’t about to let her first time be with me out of control!”
Crane hesitates. “Maven is a virgin?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Decimus grunts, dropping into one of the island stools and rubbing his face. “She wouldn’t tell me. But come on, what are the chances she’s hopped into anyone else’s sheets when she hates skin contact?”
Immediately, my thoughts skip back to Maven’s dark eyes holding mine as she kissed the dragon shifter earlier. The way she was trying to provoke me. My cock hardens as I imagine what it would have been like for her to taunt me more, holding my gaze while her fingers trailed over someone else, driving me mad with need.
She didn’t seem to hate skin contact when she wasn’t solely focused on it.
“I have to wonder if that’s one of her acts, too,” Crane muses.
Frost looks at him sharply. “What are you talking about?”
“Our keeper has been fighting dirty.”
I listen as he quietly reveals what he found in Maven’s notebook. As hypocritical as it was for him to invade her personal space without permission when he took every measure to prevent me from doing the same, I find myself smirking when he’s finished talking.
Decimus folds his arms across his chest, shaking his head. “Damn. She really has been trying to get rid of us, huh?”
“Once again, deliciously unexpected,” I agree.
Frost is quiet, studying the marbling on the island counter. “If she really wants to get rid of us…”
The dragon shifter gives him a scalding glare. “Don’t even fucking tell me you’re fine giving her up. The gods picked her for us—we’re hers, so whatever moody shit you’re trying to justify, just let it go. Anyway, I’m relieved that not all of that was her actually hating me, but I want to know why the hell she’s been fighting our quintet so hard.”
I tip my head. “But that’s obvious. If she’s involved in the anti-legacy movement, being placed in a quintet with legacies like us would be completely antithetical to her beliefs.”
It seems to take them a moment for that to sink in, and then Crane swears. “I hate to ever agree with you, but that might be it after all.”
Decimus considers it and then shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s it.”
“But if it is, I should report her,” Frost mumbles.
“Report her, and I’ll permanently mar your oh-so-precious model face,” I warn.
The other two just glare at him, and he huffs before leaving the kitchen. Maybe he’s going to finally go withdraw his power from wreaking icy havoc outside.
Crane tips his head as he gets lost in thought. “But if Maven is so anti-legacy?—“
A nearby surge of subconscious terror pierces through Limbo and makes it into the mortal plane, making me tense. Sensing such a powerful nightmare would normally have my mouth watering, but my appetite twists when the aura saturating the terror is unmistakably Maven’s.
I’ve been desperate to taste her dreams since the moment I laid eyes on her. No dreamcatcher keeps me from sensing her like this now—an oversight Crane must have made while preparing this place. So, whatever nightmare is playing in her head, I can keep it from hurting her.
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.