The Summer King Bundle 3 Stories - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,78

way or another. You can’t stop me, and frankly, I’m done talking to you. Goodnight.”

I started walking again, getting halfway down the street before I realized that I was going in the wrong direction.

Damn it.

Not like I was going to turn around now. No way. Nothing screamed “skilled badass” like going in the wrong direction in the damn city you had grown up in.

“What’s your plan, sunshine? Find Neal? Then what?” He caught my arm, stopping me at the mouth of a dimly lit alley. “How do you plan to make him talk? To bring you to Aric? You plan to use your feminine wiles?”

“Feminine wiles? Buddy, it’s not the fifteenth century any longer.” I tugged on my arm, but he held on. “And I plan to use an iron blade in his throat. That’s how.”

“Really?” The King’s grip was hard, but his palm felt like fire on my skin. “Neal may not be much of a fighter, but he is still an Ancient, capable of throwing you across the street without even touching you.”

“I will have the element of surprise.”

“That’s a godforsaken terrible plan.”

My face flushed under the layers of foundation. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“You should ask someone.” His eyes widened with surprise. “Anyone. They’d tell you the same thing.”

“I have a plan,” I seethed, pulling on my arm. And I did. Kind of. Not that I was going to share it with him. “Why do you even care?”

His eyes flashed a stunning tawny color, and somehow, he was even closer, and we were no longer on the sidewalk but in the alley. Each breath I took was filled with his fresh scent. “Because if you do happen to find Neal and force him to bring you to Aric, he will kill you, and it will be slow and painful.”

The image of Aric formed in my mind. Short, with light brown hair and a scar that cut through his upper lip. Coldly, cruelly handsome. He had the most…malicious laugh I’d ever heard.

“I already lost someone—” He cut himself off, and I frowned. “You have no idea what you’re up against and the type of cruelty he is capable of. He already knows we’re connected. You do not need to be on his radar any more than you already are. You’re…” He trailed off, but my mind decided to fill in the blank with something he’d once said to me.

You are a treasure, Brighton.

Yeah, what he’d told me before had obviously been a lie. What had he said about us? Not like I’d forget that anytime soon. He’d said it was a mistake—a stupid mistake.

It hadn’t been for me. God, it had been the opposite. I had opened myself up for the first time since the attack, feeling comfortable enough to talk about how I needed retribution and about that night. Because I had believed…I believed that he understood. I’d let him in.

I pushed all of that aside. “Let go of me. There’s nothing I want to talk to you about.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Agree to let this need for revenge go, and I will.”

“How about you agree to do the same thing? Oh, wait, we’ve had this conversation. You think it’s different because it’s you.”

The King’s eyes swept over my face. “You want to know about Aric. I think you’re being this way because of us.”

“There’s no us,” I shot back.

“You’re right.”

The sharp slice of pain returned, cutting through me as if he’d jammed a knife into my chest.

His nostrils flared, and he took a step toward me. “Shit.”

Damn it, he was sensing what I was feeling. There were a lot of things that annoyed me when it came to Caden, but this was probably in the top three.

The King looked away, jaw hard. “I’m—”

“Don’t.”

He ignored me. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care.”

“But you do.”

“And that’s the problem, right? You know, I do have something to say to you. You led me on. But for what reason? That’s what I don’t get. What did you have to gain by pretending you…wanted me? Were you just bored and decided to mess with my head?”

His gaze snapped back to mine. “That was not it.”

“Then, what? You felt like you owed me because I let you feed on me when you were dying?” I demanded. “Or were you just slumming it with the thirty-year-old human?”

The King’s eyes widened, and when he spoke, his voice was so low that I almost didn’t hear him. “Why do you view yourself so