Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
“Are you sure you want to experience what it’s like to be him?” Meg asks with a smile. “It’s crowded in that head of his.”
“I’ll take my chances, wife,” Beck replies and kisses me hard before resting his forehead to mine. “Is tù mo ghrà.”
I hold his head in my hands and give him back his words. “You are my love.”
I press my forehead against his, thankful for the strength Cian is lending me. He holds my shoulders and lets me feel his devotion. I open my mind and, in a second, I become Beckett Finn.
Such rage. The emotion floods me like it did the first moment we connected. It’s different this time because he isn’t pushing it through me. There’s no madness to this. This is merely a piece of Beck. I hear Cian groan behind me and know he’s formed his connection. Cian pushes nothing outward but helps me take in what Beck needs to give.
Need. The idea takes over as I fall into Beck’s mind. He needs so much. He’s a lonely child. He misses his brother. They spent every second connected from the moment they were conceived until they turned five years old. That’s when his father decides it’s time for the warrior to learn to be a king. He discounts the importance of Cian’s input. In their father’s mind, the warrior is all that matters. Cian is an afterthought.
Beck often wishes he could trade places with his brother.
I’m suddenly staring out a palace window. In the background, there are men droning on about something or other. They usually complain about taxes or crop yield. Beck’s seven-year-old self doesn’t care. He gazes out the window and watches Cian running after their cousin, Dante. Cian catches the young vampire and screams something about him being “it.” Beck wants to run and play, but his father explained that he’s different. He’s better. He can best his brother at running and fighting. He can best anyone at those things. He trains only with the greatest warriors. His physical skills are not things to toy with.
But Beck wants to play.
He’s only twelve the first time he kills a man. It’s the first time someone tries to assassinate him. He can still remember the feel of the bright sun on his face as he follows after his father. There’s an Unseelie ambassador in town, and it almost caused a riot in the square. His father is trying to normalize relations with the Unseelie, but there’s a faction of sidhe who will never accept it. They hate the Unseelie tribe. Many lost relatives in the wars.
Beck shadows his father through town. His father is arrogant and sure of his peoples’ love for him. He only brings one guard with them. His name is Carlin, and he is the one who taught Beck how to play cards. Carlin is sympathetic to Beck, sometimes slipping him a candied fig. He has two sons of his own, after all.
The arrow hits the guard squarely in the chest, knocking him back and off his feet. He’s dead before he hits the ground. I feel the anger that suffuses young Beck’s being. His father tries to pull him to safety, but Beck unsheathes his sword and opens his senses for the first time. It’s instinctive. His eye follows the logical track of the arrow. He rolls out of the way of the next one to come after him. I feel a charge of excitement as he shoots to his feet and pursues the assassin and hears his father’s anxious cries.
I see the blood on his hands when he catches the assassin. He ignores the man’s pleas for mercy. Beck’s beast is loose, and he has no mercy. The large man took something Beck valued. He took from Beck, and he will never do so again.
It’s the first time Beck realizes his father is afraid of him.
I groan as the scene in his head changes. Sex. This is Beck’s outlet.
A woman named Sorcha, one of his mother’s ladies, takes it on herself to teach him. She gives him permission to do what he wants, and he takes her at her word. He dominates her. He owns and possesses her. He fucks her when and where he wants, and she obeys. It takes the edge off his rage knowing someone soft trusts him. Only Cian ever trusts him. Even Bronwyn looks at him with fear sometimes. Sorcha begs him to fuck her. She cuddles in his arms afterward. That time is sweet, too. He enjoys taking care of her after.
I gasped at the pain I feel. His father hits him with the flat of his sword. He does it in front of fifty of his strongest soldiers. He humiliates his son for his perversity.
Beck swears to never give in to those urges again. Shame becomes a mantle to wear as he does armor.