Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
I’ll be sleeping with a dozen dreamcatchers standing guard. No one wants to face Crypt’s wrath in the dream world. I’ve never been through that myself, but I know what happened to Silas’s family, and I don’t want a taste of that.
Wiping his chilled blood off my face, I stare up at the sky. The first stars are starting to come out, and the night is growing colder by the second as the aching loneliness starts to influence my power.
I would never admit to the others how much their hatred has always hurt. Legacies like us are all about power and strength, and showing any kind of weakness is like an animal baring its throat in the wild. Even in our own families, it has always been fight or die. Especially mine. Which is why I have desperately wanted anything that is truly safe in my life.
Like Maven. Being in her quintet, all of us watching each other’s backs and bound together by the mercy of the gods…that would be safe. Then, I could finally open up to someone else and be vulnerable for once. I’m so damn tired of keeping up my cold facade.
I want our quintet more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
But that’s exactly what my curse will ruin.
Although…maybe Silas is right. Maybe I did just permanently ruin any chance at the only thing I’ve ever wanted. And even if it does work out, I’m not sure they’ll ever get over hating me.
The prophecy I got from the gods never specified that.
I mutter a prayer to Pheli, the god of the dark sky above me…who is also the god of hope and change. Maybe he’ll have mercy on me when nothing else seems willing to.
MAVEN
The club pulses with light that hurts my eyes and music so deep it rattles my skull. I slip through the throng of humans grinding on one another, carefully avoiding contact with anyone as I keep my focus trained on the dark VIP doorway.
When I reach the door, a large human bouncer steps in front of me, folding his arms in a futile attempt to appear more menacing. He glances over my baggy clothes and expressionless face and snorts. “No smile? You could at least try flashing me your little tits. If they’re good enough, I’ll think about letting you in. Otherwise, get lost. Only prime meat gets admitted.”
Ew. I’ll never understand misogyny.
Normally, I might offer him another chance, but I’m far from a merciful mood.
I’m pissed off, and he’s in my way.
So when he reaches toward me to manhandle me, I break his hand in four places, punch his throat to collapse his trachea, kick him aside, and leave him crumbled on the ground, fighting for breath while I snatch the security card from his pocket and slip through the VIP door.
It leads to a dark upstairs section that overlooks the rest of this club with one-way glass. The only people occupying this sultrily decorated space are my wolf shifter target, two of his pack betas, and three human women who are having a terrible time.
One of them is clearly trying to hold back tears as a shifter gropes her chest, not letting her off his lap. Another half-naked woman is on the alpha’s lap, staring off into space in a way that tells me she’s mentally checked out to get through tonight, while the third is stripping for the leering male shifters with trembling hands as they wait for the party to get started.
Assholes.
I step out of the darkness, and the shifters glance my way. The fact that they left nothing but a human bouncer down there and don’t even get up when they see me tells me their survival instincts are severely lacking. But then, I suppose that’s the point of me. I’m not supposed to tip off anyone’s danger senses until it’s too late for them.
Lykoudis’s nose wrinkles. He has dark skin, scars all over one half of his face, and a voice dripping with annoyance. “Who let your ugly ass in here?”
I glance at the stripping woman. “Dress yourself and leave. Take your friends.”
She hesitates, visibly trembling as her attention flicks back to the shifters. She knows how dangerous their kind is, and she’s only human. All three girls in this room seem hyper-aware of the power imbalance and the fact that these wolf shifters could snap their necks and get away with it.
Lykoudis scoffs. “Well? Take the rest of it off, slut. And you, bitch? Get the fuck out of?—“
Before the words are out of his mouth, I slip a large silver dagger from my sleeve and send it straight into the forehead of the third pack beta. His neck snaps backward, head hanging at a broken angle as the blood gurgles from his face, his body twitching.
Instantly, a buzz fills my veins, and I take a deep breath.
This is what I needed. Something dark to help me ignore the hurt. Something to remind me what my reality is. Not the daydream I let myself have for a day.
The women scream. It’s not the kind of screaming I enjoy because they’re innocents. But at least it gets them to listen to me as they grab their clothes and scramble from the room. The two shifters snarl and leap to their feet, now assessing me as a real threat instead of a minor annoyance.
“What the hell?” Lykoudis roars. “You’ll fucking pay for that!”
I should make this quick. I could have his heart and be out of here in a couple of minutes, but my anger needs to go somewhere, and right now. It’s been too long since I got to blow off steam by watching someone bleed and cry.
Which is why I don’t kill the other pack beta right away when he launches toward me. He shifts midair and bares his teeth at me, but I slide beneath the leaping wolf and stab another knife into his flank, exactly where his joint is. He howls and drops, unable to heal quickly thanks to the silver.
Lykoudis bares his teeth with a snarl he probably thinks is impressive. “Do you even know who I am? How dare you fucking attack me! I’m going to?—“
“Less talking. I’m getting bored.”
He finally shifts and attacks just as the beta rips the dagger from his flank and comes at me again. Fighting off two oversized wolves from the same pack should be tricky since they should communicate telepathically and work together to take me down. Instead, they fumble, bumping into each other, snarling, and going for my throat at the same time.
I plunge a second silver knife up into the beta’s neck as I roll to the side, and when Lykoudis leaps on top of me, I finally tap into the rush of new static in my veins. Dark tendrils of magic explode from my fingertips just as they make contact with his big furry frame, and a pained yelp knocks from his throat as he crashes against the wall of the darkened room.
The beta is already dead.
Sad. I wanted to see him cry. It might’ve made me feel a bit better.
I rip my second silver knife from his throat and stalk to where Lykoudis is writhing on the floor in agony, thanks to my unique type of magic. Slipping a tiny bottle from another hidden pocket, I uncork the potion and force the entire thing into the alpha wolf’s thrashing snout.
He chokes, and abruptly, the potent wolfsbane concoction forces him to shift back. I can’t help the sick smile that blooms over my face when he spits the bottle back out with wide, fearful eyes, his back against the wall. His nose is bleeding profusely, which is satisfying.
“S—stop! Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you!” he sputters, spittle flying. “Is it the location of my pack? They’re stationed right outside of?—“
“Shut up,” I sigh, jamming the silver knife into his thigh.
When I yank it back out, the spurt of blood goes everywhere, and he yelps again. He tries for a punch, which I easily dodge, and since his hand is already there, I whip out my adamantine dagger and sink it through his forearm. Immediately, he screams as it starts to turn his blood into acid, eating him up from the inside out.
“You’re really a pack alpha? Yikes. I thought this would be a fun fight. But I suppose any alpha who would willingly sell out the weaker in his pack is truly a coward at heart. Speaking of which…”
I trace the silver knife around his torso and down to his crotch, amused by the wet spot that’s soaking through his pants as he starts to twitch.
“I—I have money. Is that what you want?”
“If I wanted money, I would have it already.”
“Then what do you want?” he explodes hysterically.
I study the pathetic shifter, finally letting the pain and loss in my aching chest wash over me. The buzz from my kills was nice but not enough to push down the emotions still slicing through me.
“Dead men tell no tales, which means I can tell you anything, and it will go straight into a grave. So it won’t hurt to answer your question. You want to know what I want?” I lean over and whisper into his ear. “I wanted them. More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, which is a hell of a fucking lot, by the way. But now, I need to forget I ever wanted them. I need to forget I was ever stupid enough to fall for competitive, heartless legacies.”
He whimpers and clutches clumsily at his bleeding arm, which still has my dagger impaled through it. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“The fact that I should be immune to heartbreak, but here I am,” I mutter. Then I shrug. “But back to the matter at hand…I want nothing except what I came here for.”
“Then just take it! Stop terrorizing me and take whatever shit you want!”
“If you insist.”
I peel off my right glove, and darkness flares to life around my hand as I whisper the forbidden words. When my fingertips first breach his chest, the wolf shifter goes perfectly still and looks down, his jaw hanging open. The blood drains from his face as I wrap my hand around his beating heart and pull it straight from his body—slowly, to see the agony last a little longer.
But my spell works, and he’s still alive, choking in horror as I lift his heart with a triumphant grin. It pulses rapidly in my hand, reflecting his ongoing terror.
“I—I’m…still alive?” he whispers, limbs twitching uncontrollably as the adamantine starts to wreak havoc on his system.
“For now. Don’t worry, that only lasts twelve hours. Unless your heart is returned, which it won’t be. In the meantime, enjoy hell on earth.”
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.