Chapter One

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“EVERYTHING YOU LOVE DIES, Sinclair. Everything you treasure is gone. That’s your true curse. The one you can never run from.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, doing my best to squeeze out the voice of my nightmare. The nightmare I’d had just before the bomb destroying Serigala ripped me awake.

I’d hoped the warning was some version of closure from my distrusting brain, throwing the masks of my past in my face, freeing me from lies and deceptions. A strange kind of acceptance that I was in love, that I’d felt joy, that I’d been happy mere hours before this shitstorm came knocking.

But I was wrong.

It’d been the opposite.

I couldn’t shed those masks because they were a part of me. They were my armour against a world I could no longer survive in. They were my tools to reap death and decay on those who deserved it.

Those masks were the walls between Eleanor and our forever, condemning me with the truth that I was fucking delusional to think I could keep her, suicidal to give my heart to her, and utterly demented to think I could claim hers in return.

I’d done this.

I’d fallen for her and fallen from my power.

I’d adopted, rehabilitated, and nursed so many innocent creatures, and now they were chum in the sea, mangled paws and broken tails, missing ears and blown apart skulls.

I’d made a promise to keep them safe.

Safe?

Christ, my safety came with extermination.

Nothing was safe around me.

Nothing.

Especially not her.

Three hours.

He gave me three hours to save her.

My disgusting, gore-painted hands curled into fists as I leaned back and bashed my head against the plush helicopter upholstery.

Eleanor.

It didn’t matter if I had three hours or three years, it was all the same—just a matter of time before I hurt her.

If I keep her...she’ll die.

It was inevitable.

Inescapable.

My nightmare wasn’t closure...it was a forewarning.

An omen filled with premonition and intuition that no matter how much time passed, no matter how hard I tried to find redemption, I hadn’t been forgiven by fate.

I hadn’t earned her.

I’d never earn her because I’d never fucking change.

I liked my life. I hoarded my privacy. I enjoyed playing with myths and falsities.

I was just as bad as the guests who visited.

I was owed no singular forgiveness for what I was. I wasn’t any worse or better than my brethren. My one saving grace was I preferred the animal kingdom over my own and tried to buy better karma through their protection.

And I kept failing fucking spectacularly at it.

Humans were the disease. Animals were the pharmacon.

Eleanor was human.

I was human.

Drake was human.

And because Drake was a psychotic bastard, and I was a love-struck fool, and Eleanor was a girl trapped by me, we all had blood on our hands. We were all responsible for this animal carnage because Eleanor had distracted me from my calling, Drake had found my weakness, and I...

I’d been too busy being fucking happy to notice.

Fuck!

Groaning with fresh nausea, I glowered out the helicopter window. Down below with black-shrouded oceans and star-dusted shores, life went on, things got eaten, new life was birthed, and a goddess existed who’d almost convinced me of the impossible.

The impossibility of us.

I bent forward again, digging hands through my hair, not caring that I spread viscera and biohazard, contaminating every part of me. Yesterday, I’d been making sarcastic quips to Jinx in Nirvana. I’d felt joy. I’d laughed. I’d indulged.

I’d forgotten about everyone and everything.

I’d allowed the very thing that I despised about the human race to intoxicate me.

I’d become selfish.

I’d become greedy and narcissistic—only thinking of my life, my lust, my love.

I’d given in to every dream and fantasy I had, thinking I could finally have peace.

And now...

I snarled in the din of helicopter blades. Fury tangled with loss, despair blended with violence, and every wall I’d dropped, every mask I’d shed, every denial I’d erased stabbed me with a thousand blades.

Eleanor.

She’d done this. She’d made me become this.

This...man. This blind, stupid man who’d forgotten his responsibilities and commitments. I was wrong to think her hex on me was purely about us.

It wasn’t.

It was about my life. My future. My animals who’d died because I’d fallen in love.

And that...? Fuck, that was a price I wasn’t prepared to pay.

Not again.

An avalanche of hate slithered over my shoulders, chilling me. My bones froze over, cracking with frost and filling with loathing for Drake. For me. Even for Eleanor.

She’d made me love her.

She made every drop of my frosted blood panic for her safety.

She came first.

Over everything.

She meant more.

Over anything.

And look what fucking happened.

Those animals would still be alive if it wasn’t for me.

Drake needed to die.

Slowly.

Painfully.

Piece by piece.

That was a stone-chiselled certainty...but the rest?

The rest of my fuck-ups and failings? The fact that my heart belonged to a woman who had made me weak? The goddamn truth that I’d fallen for a goddess who’d shaken apart my dynasty and left my borders wide open for attack?

How did I fix that?

How do I stop the undeniable urge to sacrifice everything if it means I can keep her safe?

Dropping my hands, I sat tall again. I was a fidgety, violent mess trapped in a tiny cabin, rapidly losing control, quickly fraying with the sickening desire to murder.

Cal sat quietly beside me, knowing not to interrupt.

He’d seen me on this knife-edge. He’d seen me this restless before. He’d felt what’d happened when I snapped and watched what I’d done when I broke.

I’d left a trail of corpses in my wake for payment for ten animal lives. A mix of mouse, monkey, and rabbit from a cosmetic group in Chicago. I’d made national news for the disgustingly gruesome and frankly morbidly-inspired retribution I’d delivered.

I’d been arrested.

I’d been trialled.

I’d been released because I had something that they didn’t.

Money.

Lots and lots of fucking money and with money came untouchability.

But not this time.

Instead of coming after me, Drake had gone after my most vulnerable.

Bullshit.

Motherfucking bullshit!

I punched the fuselage in an explosive strike.

Cal flinched beside me, his voice piercing my ears via our headsets. “Just to distract you from your chaotic thoughts, I’ve called ahead. The guards have set the snares. They’re armed. They know their position and protocol. She’ll be fine, Sully.”

I snarled in his direction. “What makes you think I’m worried about her?”

He snorted. “If you could sprout wings right now, you’d be down there with her already.”

“I’d be looking for Drake.”

“Well, whatever your first priority, she’ll be fi—”

“She won’t fucking be fine. Not while she’s mine.”

He shrugged as if this was a fucking shrugging matter. “Everyone has family they’d rather keep hidden.” His lips twitched, delivering the twisted joke, hoping it’d shatter my rage but only adding to it.

I was not in the mood to let go of the shit I’d seen.

I was not going to be pacified just because I had men on my payroll who knew their jobs and were proven in merciless warfare.

The things inside me?

The fact that I would die for her? The knowledge that I would turn into anything, sacrifice anything, destroy everything for her...it made me a highly dangerous individual.

It made me volatile.

It made me unpredictable...even to myself.

She can’t be near me.

“I want her gone.” I glowered out the window as we began our descent. “Now.”

His voice crackled, offering solutions to my fury. “We’ll arrange for the goddesses to be sent to Lebah. They’ll be close by and safe while we deal with Drake.”

“There is no we.” My knuckles cracked as I fisted my hands. “His pain belongs to me and every fucking creature he’s just snuffed out.”

“Fine.” Cal nodded curtly, his reflection bouncing off the window. “I’ll evacuate the guests too. They can go to Angsa. The fortified encampment there will keep them out of harm’s way for a day or so. We’ll ensure those who want to go home have transport available.”

Two islands named after creatures with wings. One with feathers and one with membrane. A swan and a bee. Both far too delicate and defenceless.

My goddesses and guests could go there.

Frankly, I was done with humans for the time being. They could be casualties in this war; I didn’t fucking care.

But Eleanor...she wasn’t going with them.

She’d done this to me. She’d stripped me down to my final mask and shown me how lacking I was. I was a man who’d turned off his empathy toward his own race, only to cripple beneath the swarm of it for fragile animals.

I’d once told her that too much empathy could kill a person and not enough would kill someone else.

Well...my empathy had become a double-sided weapon, and I didn’t want to be responsible when I wielded it.

Therefore, all my promises, ill-fated joy, and unbearable pleasure were over.

“Tell the pilots they have a flight to Java in one hour.”

Cal stiffened beside me. “You’re sending her to the mainland?”

I tensed, doing my best to stop my heart from leaping from my mouth. “She’s going home. I’m done.”

His silence was as damning as his sarcastic ‘sir’.

My goddess island came into view, the helicopter sank, and I gathered up all the masks that Eleanor had stripped from me with bloody, gory hands, and put them back on...one lie at a time.