Vicious Fae (Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac Book 3)

My gaze fell to Gabriel last and my heart pounded at the look of utter despair in his eyes. He’d seen this for the two of us. Or so he’d thought. He’d claimed me like the stars had already offered me up when in fact they’d just been playing a cruel prank on him. He’d been alone for so long, he deserved so much more than to have the one thing he’d pinned his hopes on snatched away from him like this.

Sarei stato tuo in un'altra vita, amore mio,”

“Where are we going?” Leon asked. “We need to talk about-”

“There’s nothing else to say,” Dante replied firmly, a wall in place behind his eyes as his jaw locked tightly. “The stars have spoken. Take her home. She’s meant for you, not me, not any of us

Something cracked in his eyes, a fundamental piece of him seeming to crumble to dust.

“Wait,” I said, stepping towards him as he started unbuckling his pants.

“You’d better run if you don’t want your name linked to Nightshade’s disappearance.” He dropped his clothes to the ground and used his Earth magic to bury them deep beneath the soil where they couldn’t be found to be used as evidence.

“Ryder-”

“Goodbye Elise,” he replied coldly with a finality that echoed into the depths of my soul. Before I could say anything else to stop him, he shifted into his Basilisk form and slithered away into the trees.

Gabriel was staring at me like I’d just dug his heart out of his chest with my fingernails and tossed it at his feet. I looked between him and Dante, not knowing what to say,

Dante and Gabriel stood staring at us like they couldn’t quite believe what they’d just witnessed.

“No,” Gabriel gasped, his gaze locking with mine as he shook his head in horror. “It can’t be…I couldn’t have made a mistake like that…”

Leon’s hand stayed locked around mine, not possessively, more defensively, like he wanted to place himself between me and the others to protect me from them.

I looked up at him and as he returned my gaze I gasped, reaching up to cup his cheek as I looked into his golden eyes which were now rimmed with a line of purest silver. Like starlight given life. The stars had marked him as mine and from the way his gaze was fixed on my eyes, I knew that I’d been branded as his too

You’re more than enough for me,” I growled fiercely. “You’re my Lion. And there isn’t a universe in which I’d ever say no to you.”

I pushed up on my tiptoes and Leon dragged me against him as his mouth claimed mine, our kiss marking our decision to be together, to accept the bond the stars were offering us and allowing our souls to be joined irrevocably.

“You’re not just anything, Leo,” I growled, reaching up to cup his jaw in my hand. “You’re the one person who could make me smile even when I thought that I was broken beyond repair. You’re the one who saw exactly who I was and what I needed and never questioned it or judged me for it. You’re the one who was designed to be a selfish creature, but has gone out of his way to care for me and provide for me time and again in ways that I didn’t even know I needed. When you look at me, you don’t see a broken girl just trying to tread water before she drowns. And the way you look at me makes me want to be the girl you see.”

Three hazy figures stood outside this moment but my mind couldn’t stay focused on them long enough to worry about them. This wasn’t about them. It was about me and Leon

And if that was true, then I’d have to be a better man to fulfil everything she needed. I’d have to be more. And by the stars, if she chose me, I’d spend the rest of my days trying to be enough