by Cate Corvin
He touched the slowly-healing mark on my forearm. With Locke around, I’d almost forgotten what it was like to bleed, but this was something I’d wanted to make a choice on alone.
“I took out the obstaculum charm,” I said contemplatively, holding my arm up. In the darkness of midnight, the pockmark on my skin was almost invisible except for the drop of blood.
A shiver went through Roman. “Did they all agree to it, too?” he asked, his voice a purr now. Roman had been the first one to gleefully ask for the removal of the charm when I’d tentatively voiced the thought after we’d collapsed in a sweaty heap a few weeks ago.
“Shane Saw some interesting things. I asked Dominic what he thought, and he was… perfectly fine with the idea of letting things fall as they may. Everyone’s on the same page now.”
Fine was a mild way of putting it. Dom didn’t want to hear a word of what Shane had Seen, but the loss of the obstaculum charm was no hardship in his view.
“I’m going to keep drinking contraceptive tea. It might be a few years before anything happens.”
Roman touched the mark where the charm had been. “You don’t have to do that,” he said gruffly. “We’re settled here, we’re a family now, aren’t we?”
I smiled, gripping the arm he’d wrapped around my chest. “Yeah, but I’d still like a few years of peace with you guys before children come along. We’ve still got a whole academy to get moving. Shane says more are on the way.”
The side effects of the obstaculum could linger for several years, anyways. Even with the tea, it might be a few years before we had little ones of our own.
As intrigued as I was by the idea of my own future children and what Shane had Seen, I wanted to work on turning this place into a home for others as soon as possible. He’d Seen more therianthropes, an earthshaper, and a teen girl with uncontrollable witchwater. Part of me hoped she was another force of nature, blessed with tides, and together we could begin charting the ancestry and genetics of forces of nature while we helped her master herself.
Now that I’d not only come to terms with but was proud of what I was, I’d made up my mind. Somewhere out there I had more family, and I was going to find my father. I wanted to know where I’d come from, and I wanted to help others like myself.
But first...
“And we’ve got a five-way handfasting to plan.” Roman bit the top of my ear, sending a shiver through me.
“I wonder how many people will show up just to gawk.”
“Hundreds, but just because Shane and I will be naked the entire time-”
“Oh no you won’t!” I spun, pressed against Roman’s warm chest. “If I have to look respectable, so do you.”
“Does fur count as respectable?”
I shook my head, close enough that the tips of our noses touched, then changed my head in mid-shake and nodded. “If you want to go as a wolf, go ahead. But I won’t be held responsible for any mass hysteria.”
I could already envision it: a witch, a Warden, a vampire, and two wolves walk into a handfasting… we’d disrupt polite society for years with that one. The idea appealed to me much more than it should have.
Roman’s wicked grin was close to my own. “Wolf it is, then. We’ve got a lot of status quo to overthrow.”
I wrapped my arms around him, brimming with hope for the future. As long as I had them, we’d always be a home, one family, for the lost and the wild at heart.
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Read ILL WILL, a reverse harem bully romance set in an urban fantasy universe!
Mercilessly beautiful cruel. Relentlessly sensual vicious. Utterly delicious vile.
Marrying into the famous Godalming slayer-clan was supposed to be my family’s big break. Our clan is fractured, my brother is dead, and my mother’s spirit was broken by the ordeal. I’d do anything to make her proud and see her truly smile again.
I’d even spend a year in the snobby, prestigious Libra Academy with Lord Godalming’s gorgeous son.
I don’t know what I did to earn Will Godalming’s seething hatred, but he’ll do anything to get rid of me for good, even if he sometimes seems like the only one who understands me. Sura Enver is almost irresistible with a cruel streak a mile wide, but he’s hiding dark secrets under those knockout looks. And when I put a dying vampire out of her misery, I end up at the very top of an ancient warrior’s hit list. No sane slayer angers Càel the White Wolf, the fiercest knight of the vampires’ Clouded Court.
They’re unstoppable. Wicked. Malignant. And each wants to make me suffer. Between the torment of Libra’s eat-or-be-eaten rules and the rising threat of a new vampire king, enemies prowl on all sides.
But they’re messing with the wrong slayer.
Ill Will is the first book of Victoria’s Trilogy in the Bonds of Blood universe, a steamy, medium-burn reverse harem bully romance in a college-age academy setting. This book is for mature audiences and contains triggers.