“Tell me who he is,” I growled. “I’ll destroy him for doing this to you.”
Tory frowned at me for a moment, reaching up to run her fingers along my jaw.
“He wasn’t the one who said no,” she said slowly.
I opened my mouth to reply, but my Atlas started ringing at the same moment. Tory’s eyes slipped from my face to my hoodie which was on the floor by the door, my Atlas still in the pocket.
“You should answer that,” she breathed.
I wanted to object, but it was the middle of the night now. No one would call me at this time unless it was important. I reached out to heal the bite on Tory’s neck before I got up. Blood was staining her pillow and had run down her chest to her nipple. I leaned forward and licked the line of it off and she watched me with hooded eyes.
The call rang out then started again instantly.
I forced myself to leave her in the bed and dug around in my hoody until I located my Atlas just before the call rang out again.
I raised an eyebrow as I realised I’d received thirteen messages as well as the calls. I’d obviously been too distracted with Tory to even hear them coming in.
Before I could read any of them, it started ringing again and I spotted Seth’s name on the ID before I answered it.
“Hey, man. What’s going-”
“Cal...fuck we don’t know what to do. He won’t say anything...this is bad. Just get to King’s Hollow now. We need you,” Seth sounded completely panicked, but the call cut off before I could reply. A lump of ice formed in my chest. Something was wrong. Really fucking wrong.
I grabbed my sweatpants and pulled them on, looking up at Tory guiltily.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t urgent. But something’s happened. I don’t know what, but-”
“It’s fine,” she said, not even seeming surprised. “Just go.”
“I’ll come back if I can,” I promised her, not wanting to leave her like this but not really having any other choice.
“I’m sorry, Caleb,” she said, her voice cracking. She was chewing on her bottom lip and tears slid from her eyes.
“Why?” I asked, frowning as I moved towards her again but she shook her head and I knocked against an air shield before I could get close. “What’s wrong?” I asked in confusion.
“I shouldn’t have told you to come over,” she said, her breath hitching as she fought against the tears. “It was selfish, stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking, for a moment I forgot that you’re his…I’m sorry.”
“Why would you be sorry?” I asked with a frown, trying to push against the shield as Tory scrubbed the tears from her cheeks but more just fell to replace them.
My Atlas started ringing again and I glanced down at Max’s name before frowning at Tory with a sinking feeling in my chest. The stars would have been pushing her towards her mate before tonight and there was only one other Fae that I knew who she’d been drawn towards like that. If I hadn’t been so caught up thinking with my dick then I might have connected the dots sooner. Why the fuck hadn’t I connected them sooner? It was so obvious, so fucking obvious. My heart pounded against my ribs hard enough to hurt and there was a faint ringing in my ears as I fought against the desire to voice my fears. Because if I was right then what we’d just done…
Tory looked at me for a long moment and I couldn’t help but stare at the dark rings in her eyes. I was seriously hoping that my hunch was wrong but as my Atlas started ringing again, I got the strongest sense that I wasn’t.
I swallowed against a thick lump in my throat and took a step back.
She still hadn’t answered my question, but I found that I didn’t want her to.
“You should go to your friends,” she said, raising her chin in an attempt to hide just how much she was hurting.
“I don’t want to just leave you here like this…”
“I told you, I shouldn’t have let you come. I was just trying to forget, but it was wrong, especially with you... I really am sorry, but I just want you to go now.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked slowly, unsure if I should really leave her while she looked so fucking broken.
“I’m a big girl, Caleb. And I have to own my choices so you shouldn’t feel any pity for me,” she said, pulling the blankets up to cover her as she sat back against the pillows. But I didn’t get the impression she was really going to sleep.
“Okay. I’ll see you later then.” I hesitated for a moment but she didn’t say anything to stop me so I kicked on my sneakers, grabbed my sweatshirt and headed out into the corridor.
My Atlas had stopped ringing so I sped out of Ignis House with my Vampire speed and raced straight through The Wailing Wood to King’s Hollow.
I skidded to a halt at the base of the enormous tree and took a deep breath as I psyched myself up to go inside. I chewed on the inside of my cheek then blew the breath out again. If I’d fucked up, I had to just own it. I had to deal with it.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside but before I could set foot on the stairs, Max appeared at the bottom of them. I felt his silencing bubble crash over me half a second before his fist collided with my jaw. Pain flared through me and I staggered back a step from the force of the blow.
“What the fuck, Cal?” he roared, closing in on me and crowding me back against the wall as he seemed to be fighting the temptation to hit me again. “Where the hell have you been?”
“What was that for?” I cursed, my fangs snapping out as tension coiled through my body from the attack and I snarled at him, squaring my shoulders.
“I could smell the fucking lust on you from half a mile away,” Max growled. “You’ve been with Tory Vega, haven’t you?”
I swallowed a thick lump in my throat because there was only one reason why that would be making him this angry and the thought of it made me sick.
“It was Darius?” I asked in a hollow voice, the fight going out of me in a heartbeat. I deserved anything he wanted to throw at me.
“Of course it was! Who the fuck else would it have been?” Max bellowed and his anger crashed into me as his emotions danced on the air as his Siren gifts flared.
I had to work at reinforcing my mental shield to stop myself from succumbing to the potency of his rage and I knocked my head back against the wall behind me, groaning as I took on the full implications of what he was saying.
“I’m sorry, man,” I breathed. “I just…I don’t even know how I ended up going over there tonight. I was drunk out of my skull when I went to bed but then I just woke up, stone cold sober and thinking about her…more like obsessing over her really. And I couldn’t settle at all until I acted on it-”
“It was the stars,” Max growled suddenly, dropping down to sit on the bottom step and pushing his hands through his hair. “They’re already working to force them apart…”
I frowned as the rage in the air fizzled out and slipped into despair which licked keenly against my mental walls. Max’s heart was breaking for Darius and the chasm of grief opening up in my chest told me plainly enough that mine was too.
I thought about the way I’d been drawn towards Tory tonight, how I hadn’t been able to resist the urge to go to her and how devastated she’d seemed when she apologised to me for letting me come over. She’d been pushed at me too. The stars were already playing their games in payment for her choice.
“Fuck,” I breathed, dropping down beside Max. “What do we do?”
“This is my fault,” he groaned. “I could feel the pull between Darius and Tory. He even tried to ask me for help with it and I…I just shut him down. I pushed him to keep on working against her. If I’d just listened to him, made myself consider the bond I could feel between them properly then maybe I could have given him better advice.”
“I just slept with the girl he was destined to love and you’re blaming yourself?” I asked incredulously.
“I could feel it, Cal,” Max insisted. “I just didn’t w
ant to. I’m the only one who could have seen this coming. I’m the one who should have realised that the pull he felt towards her was more than just lust and infatuation. If I’d just spent the time listening to him when he tried to talk to me-”
“This isn’t on you, Max,” I growled, wrapping my arm around him and pulling him close. He drew me into an embrace so tight it was bruising and I could feel his agony trickling into me as his skin was pressed to mine and the contact enhanced the power of his gifts.
“It’s not on you, either,” he replied roughly. “The fucking stars…a Vega. Shit, who could have come up with something so fucked up? It’s like they wanted this to happen to him. I’m starting to think he’s fucking cursed. He’s had to deal with so much shit in his life and then he’s finally offered something good and pure and light and it has to be with the one person he could never offer the world to.”
“We should go to him,” I said, though my gut twisted uncomfortably with the feeling that I’d betrayed him.
“Don’t tell him where you’ve been,” Max breathed and I stilled at that suggestion. I’d never lied to one of the other Heirs like that.
“I have to,” I replied, shaking my head as we both stood and started up the stairs. “He deserves more from me than lies.”
“I’ve never felt emotions like the despair he’s feeling right now,” Max breathed. “I don’t know what he might do if he finds out.”
“He can do what he likes to me,” I replied darkly. “I deserve it.”
Max frowned like he wasn’t sure if he agreed with that. “It’s the stars that deserve it.”
“They might have pushed me at her, but I’m my own man. I’m responsible for my actions.”
“I don’t know about that,” Max muttered before dropping his silencing bubble.
We headed up the stairs and the tightness grew in my chest as we made it to the door at the top. Max clapped a hand to my shoulder, pushing a sense of calm at me to soothe my anxiety but for once I didn’t let his power influence me. I had to own this. No excuses.
Darius was sitting in the large, wing backed chair beside the fire, his gaze distant as he looked into the flames but as Max closed the door behind us, he looked our way. I inhaled sharply as I spotted the ring of black circling his irises. The difference in Tory’s eyes had been confronting, but I’d seen Darius practically every day for most of my life and despite the fact that his eyes had been dark before this, the change in them was profound.
Seth was pacing back and forth behind him, soft whimpers escaping him as his Wolf instincts clearly pushed him to comfort Darius. Though I was guessing his comfort hadn’t been welcomed when he’d tried.
Max moved to take a seat on the couch while I lingered by the door.
I shot forward and pulled Darius into my arms before he could stop me. “I’m so sorry, man,” I breathed, holding him tightly as he just sat there and let me.
The heat of his skin was almost burning but his posture was slack, like he didn’t even give a shit about anything anymore.
I didn’t let go and eventually he released a long breath. “You smell like her,” he muttered.
I flinched back like he’d punched me, glancing at Max for a moment but he only frowned.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice cracking with how much I meant that. “I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to… Not that I’m excusing it. I should have realised when I saw her eyes, I just-”
Darius looked at me for a long moment, his jaw grinding and I waited for him to unleash his rage on me. Which was really the least I deserved.
“She chose not to be mine so it’s not like I get any say in what she does now, is it?” he said eventually, dropping back into his chair and looking away from me towards the fire once more.
Seth released a low howl and I ran a hand over the back of my head, feeling about ten times worse than I would have if he’d just punched me.
“We can fix this,” Seth said, looking between me and Max encouragingly. “There’s gotta be some way to get the stars to change their minds, right?”
“Don’t you listen in class?” Max growled.
“Everyone knows you only get one shot at it,” I added in a low voice like that would make my words mean less somehow.
“We’re the most powerful Fae in Solaria!” Seth snapped. “The stars will listen if we tell them to!”
Darius got up and walked across the room to the chest where he kept his gold. He pulled out a bunch of rings and pushed them onto his fingers one by one then threw a handful of gold chains over his head to rest against his bare chest.
He lifted the huge chest into his arms with a grunt of effort and tipped the rest of its contents all over his chair before sitting down amidst the heaped gold coins and jewellery.
“I need to focus on Lance. Not impossible ideas about defying the stars,” Darius said and I frowned in confusion.
“What’s wrong with Lance?” I asked.
“I found him half dead in a cave in Aer Cove,” Seth muttered. “It was some dark magic gone wrong. It took everything me, Darius and Darcy had to keep him alive. And I’m still not convinced he’ll stay that way.”
Darius growled darkly at that suggestion and Seth promptly stopped talking.
“What the hell happened tonight, Darius?” Max asked softly, leaning forward in his chair and pressing his Siren power out around the room to try and comfort him.
Darius dropped his gaze to the rings on his fingers and shook his head. “I can’t talk about it. When Lance is better, he might be able to explain but my…” He trailed off, not even able to finish that sentence thanks to the Dark Coercion his father had used on him.
“For fuck’s sake,” Max growled, his jaw clenching with rage over the situation.
“And what about Tory?” Seth asked, moving closer to Darius then backing off again like he was at war with his instincts over what to do for him. “Why did she say no?”
“Why do you think?” Darius snapped, glaring at Seth with enough venom to make him growl back before he could stop himself. We were all Alphas and direct confrontation between us never ended well for anyone.
I shot between the two of them, laying a hand on Seth’s arm to sooth him before Darius flipped. Seth forced the tension from his limbs and looked away, dispersing the atmosphere between them before it could escalate.
“He’s just trying to understand,” I said in a low voice.
Darius’s eyes flared with his temper for another moment as he looked at me, but then the fight went out of him again.
“She didn’t exactly give me a full list,” he said bitterly. “But I would imagine it includes the time I almost drowned her, when I burned her clothes off in front of my entire House, when I shoved her in the mud and called her a whore, when I took part in that whole Halloween fiasco where we tried to destroy her reputation and a thousand other things besides.”
“It’s because they lived too long in the mortal world,” I said, hunting for an answer even though there wasn’t one. “She just didn’t understand. She didn’t realise how final this decision would be. She can’t have. She told me she was drawn to you at the Eclipse, if she’d just had a chance to act on those feelings with you then she wouldn’t have-”
“We did act on them,” Darius snapped. “After I caught her when she destroyed my bike and again at the palace at Christmas. Sex clearly wasn’t enough to change her opinion of me.”
My eyebrows rose at that admission because I’d had no goddamn idea about that.
“But if you were sleeping with her then she must have gotten to know you more?” Max asked with a frown. “Surely she saw beyond all the power claiming shit and-”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, princess, but it wasn’t some declaration of love. It was the two of us giving in to the heat that burns between us when it flared too hot to resist. But she made it clear enough that that was all it was to her.”
“And what about what it meant to you?” Seth asked.
“After everything I’d done to her it didn’t really seem like my place to expect any more than she was willing to offer, so I didn’t push it.” Darius leaned back in his chair and rested his head against it. “Obviously now I wish I’d dealt with it differently…I just didn’t realise we were running out of time…”
Max’s face scrunched with pain as he caught a hit of Darius’s emotions and Seth released another mournful howl to the ceiling.
“This isn’t right,” I growled even though I knew it wouldn’t change anything.
“It’s what I deserve,” Darius said, his tone hollow once more. Darkness seemed to shift across his eyes for a moment but before I could look more closely, he closed them. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Okay,” I agreed because I couldn’t think of a single thing to say that might be of any use anyway.
“Let me help you sleep,” Max offered, getting to his feet and walking towards Darius with his hand extended.
“I don’t deserve to escape this feeling,” Darius muttered. “Besides, I have to go home as soon as I’ve recovered my magic. I have to face my father, he’ll want to decide how the press deals with this and…there are other things going on at home which I’ll need to check on.”
“I won’t take your pain if you don’t want me to. I’ll just make you sleep,” Max swore. “Just for a few hours before you have to face Lionel.”
Darius hesitated a moment longer then reached out to take Max’s hand.
I could feel Max’s power pushing me towards sleep too and Seth yawned widely beside me.
I caught his arm and guided him out of the room before we fell under Max’s spell and we headed to the bedroom I’d claimed for my own here in the Hollow.
The room was big with white sheets on the bed and all kinds of my crap strewn about the place from Pitball medals to textbooks. There was a long window along the far wall with a view looking out over the snow covered trees.
“What do we do?” Seth asked with a soft whimper as I closed the door behind us.
“I don’t know,” I admitted as I dropped down onto the edge of the bed, gazing out at the view.
Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates: An Academy Bully Romance (Supernatural Bullies and Beasts) Page 3