Chapter Two
Legend
She senses me before she sees me.
Her back goes stiff and those rough little hands freeze along her blade. Slowly, her head turns, eyes the color of the demented forest slamming into mine from fifty fucking feet away.
Her brows dip with confusion.
“Legend.” My name leaves her lips like a wicked little prayer that claws at my insides, making my teeth ache to bite. Slowly, she turns until her body faces mine.
“How did you get here?”
I say nothing, creeping closer to the girl who thought she could run from this.
From me.
When I don’t answer her ridiculous question, she asks another bullshit one. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t have been able to get through the barrier.”
“So that’s how you want to play this?”
Haide glares, arms crossing over her chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A dark chuckle escapes me, and I cock my head to the side, feeling that heavy, constant fucking thrum that now beats beneath my chest. It grows louder with her nearness, driving me mad with the need to get closer. Need that’s beyond my control.
“Now that’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Is that any way to talk to your king?”
“Sorry, please, King Deveraux, if you would kindly…go fuck yourself.”
A split second after the last word leaves her mouth, she turns on her heels and runs.
“Bitch.”
She’s fast.
Faster than any chick I’ve seen, so I put some actual effort into my strides.
Sorry, baby girl, but no one is faster than me. I will catch you.
And when I do…
She bolts like a shot of lightning across the cliffs.
I swear the earth answers her call, driving her farther from me, tearing through the blackened rock beneath her boots and throwing it back at me, like it knows I’ll raze this place to the ground to get to her.
Like it’s trying to protect her from the sharpness of my claws.
It can’t.
Nothing can.
What the little warrior princess doesn’t know is I happen to like a good chase. I dart down the edge of the massive rocky cliff, thunder cracking from above, and a fire ignites in my veins. One that burns hotter than anything before it.
The girl I tore through realms for, the one whose blood sings to mine like we were carved from the same brutal stone, she thinks she has a chance. Bless her black heart.
She’s doing nothing but waking the beast and leading him right to her.
Literally.
I can feel him, my Ethos, a gift from the gods given only to those with royal blood in their veins. He lives deep beneath my bones, buried in my chest—a prisoner locked away behind my ribs, only to be set free once a fated mating bond is completed.
He stirs, waking, clawing at my insides in a way I have never felt before. The pain so sharp my temples start to ache as my chest vibrates with a roar that isn’t mine. But is.
This must be what my brother felt after he met his mate, London, the girl who led my little Haide to me, as fate so clearly arranged.
Haide’s scent steamrolls behind her, whirling like a vortex, right into my nostrils—leather and lilac.
Wild and wicked.
Mine.
I growl, the sharp points of my teeth breaking free and puncturing my lower lip.
I don’t chase her because I’m angry, though I am.
I chase her because she’s mine. Because every breath she takes away from me tastes like a fucking betrayal, and everything in me says I have to.
Find her, take her, claim her.
That shit is on repeat in my head and I’m not sure if it’s me or my Ethos who screams it. It’s annoying.
She is fucking annoying. A bratty little outsider who has a lot to learn.
How dare she leave my kingdom, leave Rathe, the realm where magic was born, after only just storming her way into it like a demon out of hell.
Huffing, I shake my head.
Enough is enough.
My feet slam against rock, the cliffside brittle beneath years of lava rot and sea wind, but I don’t slow. She’s fast in a way that tells me she’s made for this, for the edge of the world and the edge of a blade.
But I’m getting bored.
Her silhouette flashes between jagged rock and storm-thick mist, all wild black hair and lean muscle, untamed and unpredictable as the worthless gifted trapped on this island with her.
The stories about those who roam these grounds are true: they are completely and totally ruthless. Liars. Killers.
And not the good kind we Stygian, those born of dark magic, take part in.
But the kind that led them to the fate they dealt themselves: in Exile Island.
It’s no wonder my Haide is such a fucking terror. She was born here.
Chaos is all she knows.
I watched her the day I met her.
The day my brothers and I, along with London, took the throne that was rightfully ours. She slit a man’s throat with his own teeth, then tilted her head back and smiled.
The beast in me wanted her and he wanted her bad. He had never been so loud. So close to the surface.
Until now.
And now she runs from me like she doesn’t already belong.
The bond between us is very much alive, but it’s thin, this small thread that has yet to grow into the chains that will bind us. That won’t happen until we complete all the steps in the mating ritual. When I’m inside her and she screams my name like a war cry instead of a threat.
I felt it the second I heard her voice.
The moment she saved my brother’s mate when she didn’t have to.
The moment she dared to look me in the eye like I was the lesser danger.
Wrong, little pet.
Unlike my brother, who fought his bond until it damn near killed them both, I want my chains.
And I want them now.
I surge forward as the cliffs narrow, forcing her to vault over a jagged break in the rock. She lands low and rolls, dirt and ash staining her palms. Her shoulders tense like she feels me getting closer.
She’s not running for safety. She’s running for the thrill.
She thinks this is fun.
Haide doesn’t understand the kind of game she just walked into or that the rules changed the moment the gods cursed her name into my veins.
She doesn’t know I dream about her. That I smell her when there’s nothing but smoke and bone around me. That her voice lives inside my skull like a brand I can’t burn out.
Her head whips over her shoulder just long enough for me to catch the flicker of something feral in her grin.
“You’re smiling?” I growl, gaining ground now. “Oh, so you wanna play?”
She laughs—a sharp, sharp sound that cuts through the wind like she’s high on the madness of it. “Everything’s a game when you live here, Your Majesty.”
I nearly come undone at the way she spits the title like a challenge.
“Keep running then,” I mutter darkly. “I want you winded when I take you down.”
She veers left, a path that skirts the very edge of the cliffs, where volcanic glass juts up like spears and one wrong step means a plummet into nothing.
I follow without hesitation.
Let her try to lose me. Let her make it hard. Let her make it hurt.
The fire inside me grows with every step. Every foot of stolen distance between us. Every second she remains unclaimed.
The ground softens beneath her next step, thin and breakable, and she slips.
Just for a heartbeat, but it’s enough to send panic down my spine.
I move like a shadow, like fury, like a demon drunk on the scent of his mate. My hand closes around her waist, and she twists, elbow aiming for my jaw, but I catch it midair. Her body crashes into mine with a ragged curse, both of us landing hard on the black stone as I pin her under my weight.
She thrashes like a cornered animal, breathing fire and hate and something else neither of us knows how to name.
I release her wrists and drag her upright before she can blink. My hand fists in her hair, and I tip her head back until she meets my gaze, locked and breathless and furious.
And then I throw her over my shoulder.
She screams, claws, kicks, curses me like a hellion, but I’m already walking toward the isle’s edge.
My grip tightens when she wriggles, relishing the feel of her body, the scent of her sweat, salt, and blood.
“I’m going to kill you.”
My grin grows. “Yes, you will.”
Her brows snap together, clearly not understanding her own promise. “I hate you.”
“You think you hate me now?” I chuckle lowly. “Just wait until you love me.”
I throw us both over the fucking cliff.
The moment my feet leave the soil of the island grounds, my chest lurches, yanking my shoulders and head back, in an invisible yet physical tug that leaves us suspended in the air for a split moment rather than falling as we should.
I grit my teeth as white-hot pain sears through my veins like fire.
And then we’re free-falling again.
The ache is still there. It’s like nothing I’ve ever known and can explain, but it must be a bond thing. I look forward to every little sting she brings me, but not as much as I look forward to giving it in return.
Hope you’re ready for what comes next, little menace.
You’re mine now.