Grace Goodwin - The Virgins - Complete Boxed Set

“Yes. Take off your armor and step forward. Fight me. Don’t be a coward.”

“Only a coward uses a female as a shield,” I countered.

Neron was two seasons older than I, always just that much larger, stronger, faster. He was a vicious and dirty fighter, going for my eyes or my balls every chance he could get. The battle had always ended in blood and a trip to the medical station for one or both of us, but we’d both reveled in the release of our aggression. I had loved the uncertainty, never knowing if I would be victorious or in agonizing pain, stumbling to medical so they could heal a laceration or broken bone.

I’d been a boy of eight summers when I realized Neron enjoyed hurting me. But his father had served with mine on the council of Seven, the highest ruling body on the planet, and we’d both been expected to live up to certain… standards. Sons of the Sevens were not allowed to be weak. We did not cry. We fought.

For years.

Standing there, trying to figure out how to save the woman kneeling on the hard ground, I suddenly felt as if fighting was the only thing I’d ever done. I wearied of it.

“She’s served her purpose. She brought you here.” Neron laughed, the sound bordering on hysteria, and I knew the friend I’d once known was completely gone. In his place stood a madman. “If you kill her by refusing me, her death will be on your conscience. Again and again your misplaced sense of honor has made you weak.”

“Then show your strength, Neron. Come out from behind her.”

“Take off the armor,” he repeated.

“Why?”

“Because I want to kill you with my bare hands.”

When I hesitated, he twisted his fingers in the woman’s hair and yanked her head back, hard.

“Let go of me, you crazy bastard!” she yelled at him as her face tightened, but all he did was laugh and pull hard enough to make her cry out, this time in pain.

“Come on, Maddox. Take it off. Let’s fight like kids again.”

I weighed my options. I was fast, but so was he. If I made a move, I would reach him, but not before he killed the woman. He didn’t need an ion blaster to do that, just one twist of his wrist and her neck would snap. If I retreated, or turned my cloak back on, he’d torture her first, and kill her slowly just to make sure I heard the screams.

“If I do, how do I know you won’t simply shoot me dead and kill her anyway?” I asked.

His dark eyes narrowed, the glint in his gaze nowhere near sane. “I swear on Maddie’s soul.”

I saw red then. Red, the color of Maddie’s blood as it had seeped from her body. Red in rage that made me growl, but his gaze remained steady. He’d loved her with a fanatical and unhealthy obsession. “Why did you do it, Neron? You loved Maddie. Why did you kill her?”

He lifted his hand and ripped the shirt from his chest, the buttons on the Earthen garment popping off to land on the ground around him. He pointed to his right hand, just below the bone there and my heart skipped a beat. No . It couldn’t be. I refused to believe what he was claiming.

Neron was already nodding. “Yes, Maddox. She was mine . My marked mate. We were bonded, and still your father refused to acknowledge our bond. She promised me everything and then betrayed me.”

Thinking of Cassie, of the instinctive need I’d had to possess her, of my obsession with her taste, her scent, the sound of her cries as she came all over my cock, I finally understood what had pushed my childhood friend to madness. “I didn’t know, Neron.”

He hissed. “No one knew. Your father made her swear an oath, denied me. Had we ever gone public, officially mated, your father would have lost his seat on the council.”

Everything Neron said made sense. The ruling elite were discouraged from joining together two such powerful families. Neron and Maddie’s relationship would have caused political unrest and so my father had done what he always did, he’d taken care of it. He’d ignored the sacred bond between marked mates over politics.

The thought of being denied Cassie made me sick, but I knew that would never be enough to make me lose all sense of personal honor. Being denied would not make me a cold-blooded killer.

“I’m sorry, old friend, but nothing excuses the killing you’ve done. What you’ve become.”

“Remove your armor.” He didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. He was beyond redemption.

It was time. Neron could not be saved, but this Earth woman could.

He watched as I removed my armor and stripped of my clothing. Soon, I stood in nothing but the light gray pants designed to be worn beneath my hunting armor. I tossed it all aside, confident that in Neron’s warped mind, his oath on my sister’s soul, his twisted love for her would ensure he kept his vow not to kill me with the blaster. When I was finished, I stood before him and waited. While I kept my breathing calm, my heart rate accelerated with the adrenaline that was flooding my blood, preparing me for the life-or-death struggle I now faced.

“Step forward ten paces.”

I did so and he immediately released his hold on the woman’s hair. She crumpled to the ground as he threw his ion blaster into the dirt. He shrugged out of his ripped shirt as he walked toward me and threw it aside, forgotten. His pupils were dilated, his gaze fixed on me. “Maddie was mine, and your father ruined everything,” he growled.

“So you killed her.” I tensed as he neared, rising onto the balls of my feet and assuming a fighter’s stance. I could see it in my mind. My sister, distraught with our father’s edicts, sitting in her favorite chair beneath the window in my parents’ home. Neron, sneaking inside and throwing himself at her feet. And Maddie? She had been pure fire with a wild side and a merciless tongue. “Why?”

Neron was before me now, his stance mimicking my own. This close, I could see the hatred, the anger, the grief pouring from him. It tainted the air as it had tainted him. “The day she told me she would never be mine, she fucked me first, Mad. She fucked me, fused our marks and told me she wanted to feel the true bond of a mate just once before she was given to another.”

My heart hurt at his words, but I did not doubt their truth. I loved my sister, but she had been a bit stubborn. She and my older brother were both brought up to believe duty came before pleasure. If my father had pledged her to another, she would have honored his word, even denied her own marked mate. But she would have taken what she could first. Including Neron’s soul.

“So you want to destroy my family as mine has destroyed yours.”

He grinned then, lifted his hands. “We end this now.”

I couldn’t agree more. “We end this now,” I repeated.

We faced off, just as we had in our youth. But now, the stakes were higher. This was to the death. One of us would die on this far-off planet. I just had to ensure it was Neron, for I didn’t want Cassie to live on with the anguish that had ripped Neron’s heart from his body, destroyed his soul.

Our hands slapped as we tried to gain purchase on each other’s wrists, upper arms. It was Neron who lunged first, his head and shoulder in my belly in an attempt to take me to the ground. I dropped to my back and pivoted, tossing him over my shoulder. He rolled across the ground, coming up onto his knees. Dirt and tiny rocks clung to his sweaty skin. Anger flared in his eyes while a smile spread across his face.

“It’s been a long time. You’ve learned some things.”

I came up onto my feet, readied myself again. This time when he lunged, I sidestepped and punched him, hitting his jaw. He moved back, circled, working his mouth back and forth.

“That was to warm us up,” he replied. “Ready?”