Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,137

sat above it on his pubic bone.

“Is this vajazzle thing something I’m supposed to do?” I asked him and he laughed wildly.

“Firstly, it’s a dijazzle for a guy. And secondly, no you don’t have to do shit.” He smirked. “Nothing wrong with a plain Jane dick, buddy.”

The way he said that was suspicious as hell and now I had to think that some sort of dijazzle was in order. How do they even stick all those gems on? And was it the design that counted or just how many jewels I could stick around my junk? Do I get points for including the balls??

Whatever it took to win Sofia’s attention, I’d do it. I wasn’t going to hide away from Tyler when I wanted to rise up and steal his girl. It may have been shady as shit if we’d just been friends, but we weren’t just that. We were in a herd, and this was how it worked. So I wasn’t going to suppress my instincts.

Tyler’s eyes lingered on my chest like he was trying to figure out the breadth of it, then he turned and shifted into his huge, silver Pegasus form. I leapt after him to do the same and he started galloping away from me to prove his speed. I took chase, soon nose to nose with him as we knocked a bunch of students off the path in an effort to stay side by side.

I tried to pull ahead, but he kept pace with me no matter how hard I pushed myself. It was so fucking frustrating.

Tyler finally turned away, spreading his wings and taking off into the sky. I was hot on his heels, racing after him and squinting against the glare of the sun as I flapped my wings hard to keep up.

I may never have been an heir to anything in my life, but in this herd, I really wanted to be the king. So I was going to dethrone my Dom and take his crown. Then Sofia would be mine.

S omehow, I managed to keep up the ruse of my shadow identity and loyalty to Lionel all week, enduring the company of the K.U.N.T.s during the day and battling through the ache in my blood which drove me to return to Lionel as soon as physically possible too.

In the evenings I stole time with Darcy and Geraldine at King’s Hollow and the Heirs appeared there more often than not too.

Caleb was always full of jokes and smiles for me which lifted my mood whenever I felt down, and Seth was overly tactile which he knew I wasn’t a fan of but he wouldn’t stop all the same. The Wolf also liked to bring me snacks like candy and chocolate and I got the feeling he was trying to fatten me up a bit. The only issue was that if I didn’t eat them right away, he just stole them back and scoffed them himself so I’d taken to hiding a stash which he seemed to have decided was a challenge designed so he could sniff them out and steal them anyway. Damn mutt.

The Darius minefield was growing slightly less daunting with Max's help, but I still found it too hard to speak to him for more than a few words here and there. Darius seemed to be accepting my need to keep my distance from him, but sometimes I caught him looking at me with so much pain in his eyes that it hurt me too. I just didn't know how to do anything to fix it.

When Friday night finally rolled around, I was filled with a mixture of pure dread and unadulterated excitement at the prospect of seeing Lionel again and I hated the damn bond for messing with my mind so fucking much.

It was impossible for me to separate my real emotions and the ones that it forced me to experience entirely. I felt like I was carrying around this horrible secret all the time. Whenever one of the others spoke about hating Lionel or hurting him, a piece of me longed to scream or even attack them in defence of him. And I knew that wasn't how I'd felt before he placed this curse on me, but it was getting harder and harder to remind myself of that when the longer I spent away from him, the more I hungered for him.

Fortunately, I had a valid reason to be looking forward to returning to the palace tonight beyond