CHAPTER 1
Darcy
“She’s mine.”
“No. She’s mine.”
“You’re both wrong. She’s mine.”
I wish I was wearing more than my school pajamas. Even at twenty years old, these things are juvenile. They’re really not the attire to be facing three very large, very frightening men who are looking at me with competitive, possessive lust in their handsome gazes.
I’m used to getting in trouble, but not like this.
Each and every one of them is a musclebound fighter. Each one of them is capable of great violence and even greater cruelty. That’s all I really know. Other than that, they’re strangers to me. Three very attractive strangers who I individually managed to start some shit with and who now want me for… well. There’s no delicate way to put this.
Mating.
They’re more like animals than men, and that’s saying a lot, because I’m more beast than most.
I shouldn’t be in their presence, let alone in their captivity. But I wouldn’t run away even if I could.
Because I’m feeling the same thing they are.
Imagine the most intense desire in the world. Then imagine it multiplied by three. Imagine knowing you love someone more than yourself, but they’re a complete stranger. Then imagine that happening all at once again, and again, and again, one after another, all in a row.
I’ve been in trouble my whole life. Right now, I’m in more trouble than I could ever have imagined being in.
“We’re going to have to share her,” the dark, smoldering one with the piercing blue eyes says.
“I don’t share,” the stunning blond responds. This man should be on the cover of a magazine. He should be on the cover of all the magazines.
What the hell am I doing? I try to fight my way through the fog of lust to make some sense of things.
“There’s no choice. For any of us.” The oldest one speaks. He’s in his forties, with dark reddish hair, glittering green eyes, and the most intensely vicious paternal energy I’ve ever encountered. You can talk about dominant men. You can talk about alpha men. But this guy makes every other commanding male I’ve ever encountered seem like a… well, a sub.
I can usually trust in my ability to rebel, but right now, I’m regretting every choice that led me to this place of no sexual return.
I could have made better decisions. I could have stayed safe and sound in a literal fortress designed to keep me safe. But no, I had to sneak out one more time. Had to break the rules…
Yesterday, or maybe the day before…
The royal city of Eclipse sprawls out beneath the hallowed walls of the King’s Guard Academy. The city is bright, incandescent with brilliant yellows, purples, and greens. I can’t hear it from here, but I can imagine the sound of it. There’s traffic and life, people shouting, screaming, cursing, laughing. Eclipse is even busier at night than it is during the day. I’m not allowed there at any time.
I’m supposed to stay here behind thick walls of old stone construction where those loyal to the king train to guard his highness. This is where I belong, they tell me.
I crouch at the highest point of the academy, teeth bared to the wind, ears pinned back against my head as I breathe in the night just as it turns the corner to day.
There is nothing more invigorating than the night and the full moon. Energy flows from it to me. I half-close my eyes and let myself bathe in it. Sometimes I feel alone, but not here, not when I am like this. A wolf is not capable of feeling loneliness in the same way a person is. A person, finding themselves separatedfrom society, struggles to stay sane. A wolf finds out who they truly are and becomes it unapologetically.
“Darcy!”
My name is shouted by an annoyed woman, standing down below on the level where the ladder to the rooftop sits. She’s the matron, and she has some limited authority over me when I take the human form that makes me smaller, weaker, and infinitely less interesting than this one.
“Darcy, come down from there this instant!”
Matron’s strident tone irritates me. Makes me want to leap from the very top of this rampart, but I know I’ll be hurt if I do, and wild as I am, I have been trained. My wildness has been blunted.
My fur abandons me first. I feel the cold of the air that was enjoyably bracing now beginning to chill me to my bones. I shiver as I become human again. Small, naked, curvy, short.
