Hunted (The Fae Sundering Book 1)

The world ended on a Tuesday. It could have maybe been a Thursday. Either way, it was universally agreed that it was completely over by Friday.

Two hundred years later, Darcy’s world was ending again, just on a smaller scale than total world upheaval.

After all, it was only the afternoon before her wedding.

Instead, she was staring at the scene before her like it was a crime documentary. The victims just didn’t know they were dead yet. Though if she squinted hard enough, she could almost reject the fact that her fiancé was naked in bed with her best friend. That the two people intertwined were strangers instead of the people she loved.

The longer she stood there, the harder it was to deny what was in front of her. She couldn’t pretend that what she was seeing was something different. It wasn’t an innocent mistake that they could all laugh over later with drinks.

Donavan and Becca were naked together in her bed.

Her skin was on fire as the thought beat a rhythmic headache between her eyes until she couldn’t take it anymore. She ran her hand through her copper hair until it tangled around her fingers as her chest tightened until she couldn’t take a breath. It was all too much.

Darcy turned from the bed and took in the rest of the room to calm her panic. It didn’t help.

Clothes were strewn everywhere, and she was certain a pair of lace thong underwear was hanging off of her precious pothos by the window.

She would need to sanitize her poor baby thoroughly.

The couple in the bed moved, twisting the sheets around them as she looked back at them with anger ripping her heart in two.

Her fiancé’s hand was on the hip of her best friend, her body curled against his. Little spoon to his larger one.

Donavan always complained about her hair when they cuddled this way. That it got in his mouth and suffocated him in his sleep. He didn’t seem to have an issue with Becca’s hair.

Violence raged in her belly and just couldn’t hold back. “What. The. Ever. Fucking cliche is happening right now?”

Her soon to be ex-fiancé startled, eyes opening slightly before he settled back down next to his bed partner. Oblivious to the storm brewing, he pulled the sleeping woman to him and nuzzled the side of her head.

As a guard, Donavan had always been lousy at discerning threats. He had told her that when it mattered, it would be different.

She guessed that had been a lie, just like everything else.

Darcy gave a low growl deep in her throat. She had heard the same sound from many she-wolves over the last few years. Normally, it seemed reserved to their cubs, and the sound was hollow coming from her human chest, even though it got her point across.

It took him a moment; the sound resonating to the sleeping man. She actually watched as the world seeped into his sleep starved brain as he woke, his wolf brain triggering before his human it seemed. His arm raised to protect his eyes from the filtered light from the window, hiding his gorgeous eyes from hers.

She used to love his hazel eyes with their little flecks of gold and green. Now she couldn’t stand the sight of them and was happy he hid them from her.

Donavan turned to the woman next to him as she pushed her back against his chest, hiding her face against a pillow. He wrapped a protective arm over her waist as he pulled her towards him, hiding her nakedness from Darcy’s sight under the sheets as he did. The pretty sage green sheets with their tiny white lace flowers pooled between them as the man murmured softly into the woman’s hair.

She made out the whispered words and Darcy’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces.

This was the man she loved. Her forever.

It had all been lies.

She watched them with quiet terror as the man finally realized they weren’t alone. He blinked against sleep as he scanned around the room, taking in everything. They only stilled as they came to rest on her.

He really was a shit Loup-Garou if he couldn’t target a threat, yet all Darcy could rationally think about was that she had specifically chosen those pretty green sheets as they had reminded her of her mother’s garden. Right now, it was becoming the color of betrayal and rage that she was focusing on the two people in her bed.

His eyes dropped to the woman next to him, her own eyes wide as they stared up at Darcy. Their pretty blue sparkled with something she couldn’t put a finger on and she didn’t really care at the moment.

“Up here dumb-ass.” Her voice warbled as she stalked over to the edge of the bed, arms crossed as she looked down at the two people who she should have been able to trust. Karma had a seriously piss poor sense of humor.

As the words filtered into his post climax brain, panic slowly crept in, seeping into his eyes like a bunny being hunted by a big bad wolf. The idea would have been amusing if her heart wasn’t cracking in two.

She should have known better than to depend on a Beastkin. Never one to be biased towards the Otherworld, she had ignored when everyone told her not to trust a wolf-man, that his kind of Other would lead her to troubles. She had laughed it off, now she was silently crying. They had been right, and she had ignored the red flags.

Darcy knocked her knee into the plush mattress to emphasize where she was, reminding the pair that she was between the bed and escaping. She may have been a fool before, she wouldn’t be now.

Donavan scrambled to sit up against the weight of the woman next to him, his messy brown hair sticking up away from his face. She used to love running her fingers through it first thing in the morning. Right now, she just wanted to rip it from his scalp.

“It’s not what it looks like Pet.” He quickly found his voice as he fisted the sheets to his groin, bunching the fabric there as he pushed the woman away from him with his other hand, trying to put as much space between them as he could. Not that it mattered. The image of them together burned into her mind’s eye, and it was too late to take that back with pet names and some distance.

As she stared at him without humor, it became painfully clear that the accent she had once loved now felt like acid to her soul. “Not what it looks like? So you’re saying that you just tripped and fell right into her crotch accidentally? Should we sue for damages?” She couldn’t help but find the entire concept deranged.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her when the Others in her life paired off, leaving her to pick up the pieces of her heart. Wolf and leech, just two shitty sides of the Otherworld community playing with the poor little Veil touched human. She had brought these two together, and that hurt even more.

Becca, the woman in question, gave a slight growl under her breath. Leech that she was, the icy blue eyes of her former best friend and maid of honor narrowed as she held the sheet to her ample breasts. There was laughter under that threat. “Don’t be jealous babe, he just realized that you weren’t worth waiting for.”

The snake gave a sly smile that Darcy wanted to rip off her smug face. Normally she wouldn’t be able to go toe to toe with a Strigòi, a vampire, but right now she felt like she could with the rage that was boiling in her stomach.

Darcy tightened her fists until her knuckles went white. The urge to smash something was rising, and she knew if she fell into that they would just tell everyone that she had overreacted. That it was her fault because she was emotional. That they clung to each other because she was unbalanced and they were seeking solace from each other.

That she had been the violent one.

Becca had done it before, Darcy just had never realized how she had achieved it. Now that the rose-colored glasses were off, she saw the magic trick for what it had been. It left her feeling like a fool.

“No, no, she means nothing to me Pet. She never has, she never will.” Still clutching the sheet to his waist, he searched for his boxers that were a casualty in what was most likely a frantic removal of clothing.

Darcy hissed, “Like that makes it any better?” She took a deep breath and counted to ten before letting it out. “She meant something enough for you to do this. To break us up because that is what it looks like to me.”

The man she had loved until that moment looked up at her, his eyes catching the overhead light. “I just needed to take the edge off.”

“So instead of waiting for our wedding night, you decide to do this?” She waved at the woman in bed with him, “Telling me you didn’t love me couldn’t be any easier Pet,” she spit his pet name for her back at him with venom, “might as well posted it on a god damn billboard.”

Becca shifted on the bed, causing Darcy to look at her, “And you, my God Becca… could you be any worse of a friend? Sleeping with Kathy’s boyfriend, Jen’s fiancé… and now mine? Could you be any more desperate?” She hissed through her teeth as she shook her head. “I was stupid. I defended you from them when they told me how horrible you were. How fucking stupid of me!”

The woman on bed made to speak but Darcy lifted a hand, silencing her, “If you open your damn mouth I can’t promise I won’t do something dumb Bexs, I’m mad enough to make a deal with the Wild just to get you away from me and you know I will.” It wasn’t an idle threat, even if they both knew that the Wild were just Otherworld myth to keep their children well behaved.

The Strigòi might not fear Veil touched humans, but they sure as hell were afraid of the boogeymen that stalked the gray mist between realms.

It may have been an idle threat, but it was one that she was mad enough to pull off with the righteous fury that was bubbling in her belly. Unlucky for them, she might actually pull it off thanks to her little quirk, the same quirk that had brought both Donavan and Becca into her life. How she wished she could go back and stop herself from walking into that bar.

She turned back to Donavan, unable to hide the contempt in her eyes. Not that she was even trying as she watched as he twisted off the bed to reach for his boxers. It was almost comical, his attempts to find them until he lost his balance and ended up naked ass up next to the bed.

Now he was just a pathetic man looking for his underwear while trying to cover himself.

Laughter bubbled in her stomach at the pure absurdity of the situation she was in, like some bad romantic comedy that was playing out in her real life. Though she doubted she was the main character that would find a White Knight to come to her rescue. Most likely, she thought of herself; she was some background character that would be uncredited at the end.

Comedy or not, she would need to burn those sheets.

The thought caught her off guard. The laughter she had been keeping in check exploded, catching the cheaters off guard as Becca was trying to help Donavan up from his prone position. They stopped mid-motion and stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

Maybe she had, maybe she was as crazy as they thought she was?

The laughter stopped just as quickly as it started, until only the silence remained, which was more than enough to set off a rage that was boiling her blood. She craved violence that she wouldn’t feed. They weren’t worth the jail time.

She ignored them and turned to move towards the bedroom door. She had left it open when she stumbled on the scene.

When she reached it, she paused with her hand on the knob, “Get your crap and get the Hell out of my apartment, the both of you.” She looked over her shoulder before adding with a snap to her voice, “You got ten minutes. If you aren’t gone, I’ll call down all the ghosts in the Veil to rip you apart.”

Idle threat or not, she knew it would get their asses moving. One thing that was universally understood by the Otherworld community, threats involving the Veil had a tendency to come swiftly and with little fanfare before the screaming started.

Darcy walked out of the bedroom and made her way to the kitchen, where a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream was waiting to soothe her broken heart.