Cruel Dominion (Kings & Consorts #3)
Prologue
PROLOGUE
CARTER
Six Years Ago
W orthless.
A waste of skin.
Just like your pathetic ma.
The words of the man whose seed infected my mother eighteen years ago played on a vicious loop in my head. I inhaled the salt air sharply, grunting when the movement sent a shuddering column of pain down my ribcage. Nothing was broken, but it’d come close this time.
Better me than her, I reminded myself, spitting blood onto the sand, tempted to wash my mouth out with ocean water to rid myself of the bitter, metallic taste.
The moon hung low over the dark sea, tipping the black waves in silver as they lapped toward the shore and crashed, spreading white foam over my bare feet. The chill of it brought me back to the present. Propelling me away from the shithole I called home and the drunk asshole probably passed out on the couch by now.
I squinted to see down the dark strip of sand, far into the distance, catching the faint sound of something on the wind.
The last thing I needed was to be picked up by the cops right now. The ones from the rough side of town where I came from wouldn’t blink at the bruise on my jaw or the hunched way I was no doubt walking, but I was nearing the nicer side, where the rich and powerful liked to look down over the water from their glass faced mansions.
The cops over here would probably lock me up for marring the perfect fucking view, even in the middle of the night.
With a snort, I kicked the sand.
“What did that sand ever do to you?”
I jerked my gaze back to the moonlit beach, and the girl walking toward me from its other end. My lips parted, reopening the small cut that’d already crusted over at the corner of my lips. Fuck, the salt air stung, and I wiped the back of my palm over the dribble of blood, trying to erase it before she could see.
The girl stopped, her throat bobbing uneasily as she got a better look at me.
“You look like you’ve had a rough night,” she said, her gaze flitting over the beach behind me and away, like she was gauging whether she could outrun me. Her shoulders sagged a moment later though, as if she couldn’t be bothered to care if she’d just walked right into the path of a serial killer.
I wanted to know why. The question bartered for exit from my mouth, but I held my lips shut.
Girls who looked like her didn’t wander on beaches in the middle of the night. With her soft brown hair bouncing in the breeze coming off the water. In clothes that I couldn’t have afforded with an entire month’s pay at the two jobs I worked to keep a roof over my and Ma’s heads.
Being out here alone looking like that was asking for trouble.
“And you look like someone who shouldn’t be out here this late,” I told her instead of asking all the questions I wanted to, my voice coming out rougher than I intended. “You should go home.”
She sniffed, turning her head to the horizon line and the moon pinned to the black canvas sky. Her emerald eyes, fringed in thick lashes, glimmered with the reflection of the sea. She looked like a ghost. So pale. So fragile. With her arms tucked around her slender body.
She swallowed hard and I saw what she was trying to hide. The red tint to the skin around her eyes. The way her chin quivered.
This girl didn’t want to go home any more than I did.
“I can’t,” she said, her words almost completely swallowed up by the wind.
“Can’t or won’t?” I pressed, trying to imagine what sort of inane troubles she could have that were worth the risk of being out here, toeing the invisible line that separated luxury from fucking squalor.
She didn’t answer, sitting down in the sand to pull her knees into her chest.
I looked back the way I’d come, but couldn’t seem to force myself to take a single step back to the hell waiting for me at home. Besides, I couldn’t just leave her here. She could get mugged. Or worse.
I was no angel, but there were worse devils out there in the dark. The kind who would want more than quiet company. And this girl didn’t look more than a couple years younger than me.
Sighing, I sat down in the sand a few feet away from her, wincing at the ache in my side as I adjusted my position to put the least amount of strain on it.
“What are you doing?” she asked quietly.
“I can’t go home, either. Might as well be miserable together.”
Her jaw clenched, holding back what I thought might be the smallest of grins.
It should’ve felt awkward. Sitting alone with a sad stranger on the beach in the middle of the night. But somehow, it didn’t. The darkness provided a sort of anonymity that sunlight couldn’t. Non-judgmental.
“Tell me something,” she said after a few beats of silence, her watching the sea, me watching her. Considering whether she was real or if the shot to the face I’d taken from my pops earlier had dislodged something in my brain.
“What?”
She shrugged, propping her chin onto her crossed forearms. “Just tell me something,” she repeated. “Something real. Why are you on the beach at two in the morning?”
“Why are you?” I countered.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me. A secret for a secret.”
I worked my jaw, thinking.
“Whatever you tell me, it won’t leave this beach. And you’ll never have to see me again.”
It dawned on me that she had something she wanted to tell someone. Something she needed to say aloud that could also never leave this beach.
“What’s your name?” I asked on a whim.
She pursed her lips.
“Tell me and I’ll play your game. Whatever you say will never leave this beach, either.”
“Anna,” she said decisively after a minute, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth in a way that made my cock thicken in my jeans. “Anna Vaughn.”
“I’m Carter,” I told her, inhaling deeply before I continued. “And my dad beats the shit out of me when he’s drunk. That’s why I’m out here. If I stayed to let him hit me one more time I might’ve…”
A shaky breath passed my lips.
I couldn’t finish the sentence, but Anna didn’t push me. Her gaze dropped and she said nothing. No words of pity. No apology. Just a small nod to show that she heard me and a slight tightening around her jaw.
“Your turn.”
“My father has been siphoning money from the charity he built. I found out and confronted him about it…it didn’t go well.”
“ Dads… ” I said, snorting.
Her lips tightened, face puckering in a failed attempt to hold in a laugh. It burst from her, the sound mingling with the wind and the waves to make the perfect song.
“ Dads ,” she echoed, still laughing, wiping a tear from her cheek with her knuckle.
“Fuck ’em,” I said with a shrug, a wide grin on my own face now, too.
She had an amazing laugh.
“Yeah,” she agreed, psyching herself up before she repeated my crude words, her cheeks pink. “ Fuck ’em .”
I knew right then. If Anna Vaughn was nothing more than a figment of my imagination, I’d gleefully accept my insanity and commit myself to the institution of her for the rest of my miserable fucking life.