Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 29381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 147(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 147(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
Raiden
My family is cursed, so I swore I’d never take a mate…
Especially while the war decimating magickind grows bloodier every day.
But my heart refuses to let go of Tabitha Lowery—soft, stubborn, brave…
And carrying my youngling.
I have a target on my back. I should keep my distance.
But when the unthinkable happens, I’ll burn the world down to protect her.
And the secret her father died to keep.
Even if it means handing her over to the man her parents chose to keep her safe.
Tabitha
Raiden’s abandonment was the worst pain in my life—
Until my family was murdered before my eyes.
Then the wizard who broke my heart comes roaring back.
Ready to sacrifice everything to save my life…even at the cost of his own.
I should walk away.
I should honor the safe mate waiting for me.
But when Raiden risks everything to protect our unborn child and claim what’s his…
There’s one truth left: love like ours isn’t chosen.
It’s fate
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter
One
Ice Rykard’s Caves
Wales
December 29
* * *
Raiden
* * *
“Mathias attacked the Lowery estate last night,” Bram Rion announces behind me. “He burned it to the ground.”
At the news, I whirl to him. Instant terror grips me as I fixate on one question. “The family?”
Solemnly, he shakes his head. “Dead.”
My heart plummets. The cave tilts around me. I stagger, slamming my palm against the nearby wall to stay upright as his terrible words ricochet in my skull.
The entire family dead? Including Tabitha...and the unborn youngling she carried?
My youngling.
Fuck, I never said good-bye to her, never had the chance to hold her one last time.
Pain detonates in my chest, an inferno torching every nerve. My knees buckle as my thoughts rebel against Bram’s news. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe, somehow, she was magically spared.
As soon as the hope flares, I force myself to snuff it. I’ve seen the aftermath of other such Anarki attacks. My head knows the odds of her still living and breathing—still growing my son in her womb—is zero.
But my stubborn heart refuses to believe she’s gone until I see her body myself.
After recently returning from exile to wreak havoc on magickind, the evil wizard, Mathias d’Arc, has been quiet for weeks, his indiscriminate raping and killing of his enemies among magickind’s elite paused. He claims he commits his crimes against the wizarding upper class, the Privileged, in the name of uplifting the lower class, the Deprived, to power.
Liberation based on blood, pain, and torture? I shake my head. That’s not liberation, but terror.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I won’t let you go alone.” Bram blocks the doorway, his voice flat. Even in the dim light, a darkness simmers under his surface—something coiled and volatile that sends a chill up my spine. It wasn’t there a few weeks ago.
He leads the Doomsday Brethren, a ragtag band of warriors devoted to stopping Mathias. We’ve taken to hiding in a fellow warrior’s caves like damn underground rodents scurrying for shelter. While others above us die.
Like my beloved Tabitha.
Her fiery hair, her laughter, her hazel eyes, her sweetness…all gone?
Anguish and fury assail me at once. It’s all I can do not to charge across the room and rip Bram’s blond head off his wide shoulders. “I have to go. I must know if there’s any way…”
I rake a hand through my hair. I can’t even speak about Tabitha’s death. I tore out my heart and left her behind so she would be safe. Off Mathias’s radar. Hopefully immune from the violence.
Instead, I left her to die.
“The neighbors reported fires. When Caden and Ice”—Bram references two of the Doomsday Brethren’s other wizards—“teleported there to investigate, they found no survivors. You won’t solve anything by going.”
“If someone had attacked Emma’s house, wouldn’t you investigate personally?” I snarl about Bram’s mysterious mate who bonded with him one night, then disappeared the very next dawn.
Bram raises a brow. “It’s not the same. Tabitha wasn’t your mate. In fact, didn’t you spend last night with another woman?”
I did, and his reminder is a gut punch. She was human. I don’t even recall her name. And don’t I regret that choice now? While trying to avoid Tabitha so she could live a safer life, I’d left her and her family to face Mathias’s murderous wrath alone.
Self-loathing eats my stomach like acid.
I shoot Bram a glare. “I’m going. I don’t care if you come with me or not.”
Forcing myself to tamp down the turbulence roiling inside me and concentrate, I take a deep breath, struggle to center my magic, and teleport to the Lowery estate.
The grand home lies in ruins, a skeleton against the rising sun, charred and ransacked, as if someone has searched it high and low. The devastation is absolute. It guts me. Bodies are strewn on the lawn, eyes still open wide in terror. One by one, I find them. First, her mother’s twisted body near the door. Next, her father face down in ash. Finally, her brothers, Javen first, then Russum. Each corpse another nail in my chest.
But no sign of Tabitha.
Hope—and dread—grip my throat. I can hardly fucking breathe.
I prowl through the charred remains of the house—foyer, sitting room, bedrooms, servants’ quarters. Smoke chokes me. Debris crunches under my boots as I call her name until my throat turns raw. Every wall, floor, and surface still smolders, black and twisted, with the aftereffects of the fire. Every room lies empty.
Ash coats my hands. Fear squeezes my heart. And with every step, my dread burns hotter. My hands shake. Sweat—or is it tears?—burns my eyes. She has to be here. She has to.
But she’s not. Panic balloons until it feels like an elephant sitting on my chest, threatening to crush me.
I can think of only two reasons Tabitha’s body isn’t among the dead. First, she miraculously escaped. Or second, Mathias took her with him. And if that’s the case, the evil bastard will torture my beloved and unborn son unmercifully before ending their lives in a cataclysm of humiliation and pain.