The Forgiven Read online

  The Forgiven

  Nikki Hunter

  The Forgiven

  Copyright 2019 Nikki Hunter

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by Amanda Walker PA & Design Services

  Editing by EDC Editing

  The content of this book is protected under Federal Copyright Laws. Any unauthorized use of this material is prohibited. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without express written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales are entirely coincidence.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – Sarcasm and Sex

  Chapter Two – The Watch

  Chapter Three – Maps and Metal Boxes

  Chapter Four – Off With Her Head

  Chapter Five – Sleep

  Chapter Six – Disgraced

  Chapter Seven – Blessed and Warned

  Chapter Eight – Beautiful Fool

  Chapter Nine — Hold Onto Your Dicks

  Chapter Ten – Mates

  Chapter Eleven – Deemo

  Chapter Twelve – Captain Steroids

  Chapter Thirteen – Problems

  Chapter Fourteen – Bekket

  Chapter Fifteen – The Plan

  Chapter Sixteen – Jasmine

  Chapter Seventeen – King and Queen

  Epilogue

  About Nikki Hunter

  Chapter One

  Sarcasm and Sex

  Between the waves of pleasure Camila closed her eyes shutting out the blur of features and the occasional pattern of the overhead ceiling tiles. Her senses were overwhelmed. It wasn’t just the feeling of Bekket’s soft hands tugging until her nipples peaked, no, it was that and the rough feeling of Lance’s stubble on his chin running down her thigh as he kissed her.

  The hum of their bodies so close together. The passion. Who knew one room could be filled with so much lust? Lust and love. At least she thought, no, at this point she knew. The only thing that kept this from being exactly what she felt she needed was the few men who were missing. Well, that and the fact that she was technically prisoner, again, in another realm where they actually took from her magic until she faded away into nothingness.

  Empty. It always left her empty.

  Guards didn’t bother them, except to pull them from these moments of heaven to cause her agony. She was thankful they hadn’t had another bout of fists between Lance & Bekket. She couldn’t stand thinking what would happen if the queen’s wishes did come to happen.

  “Let them fight to the death.”

  Those words would ring in her mind relentlessly every time a guard came for her. Fear tormented her. So in these moments when they were alone, she would give. Give what she could to the men she loved. The ones she knew were still living.

  She grieved alone when the small-scarred girl, Jasmine, would rip away her magic. Crying from the pain of it, crying for the loss of Yehven, Kade, and Zayn. They didn’t talk about it openly. Rather they put off any serious conversation they should be having. They hadn’t opened up the can of worms that was the possibility that Yehven was truly a demon.

  Sometimes she thought he couldn’t possibly be a demon, other times she didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it all along.

  She turned away from the thoughts she didn’t want to relive only to lift her hips as Lance swiped his tongue across her most sensitive parts. The pool between her legs a mixture of his own saliva and her want for him.

  Bekket’s lips trailed along her neck, his breath catching as she reached down to claim his erection in her palm. With each swift movement of Lance’s mouth against her sex she pumped her hand over and over Bekket’s throbbing cock.

  These moments of pleasure, seemed to always turn into something similar to this. Lance pleasing her while she pleased Bekket. She thought it was Lance’s way of feeling like he himself was taking Bekket to the height of pleasure.

  Another taboo topic that wasn’t discussed, the heat that riled up between the pair when they looked at each other too long or too hard. Camila didn’t miss how Lance always seemed to lose himself in her while he was also watching the way Bekket’s body tensed and released with his own climax.

  One day they might talk about it. Clear the air of everything that was haunting them. But for now it was just pain and pleasure. Every day. Every damn day.

  Camila squirmed as her orgasm took control. Her insides tightening as she gasped in ragged breaths. Lance pulled away from her, his smile wet and glistening in the early morning light that shown through the parted curtains.

  He grabbed her hips pulling her until she turned over, her ass lifted for his own viewing pleasure before he sat on his knees. Bekket was even used to this new routine. Camila thought he even knew why Lance seemed to enjoy it so much.

  It wasn’t Bekket who was afraid to be with a man or to love a man, or much less to love both a man and woman at the same time. That was Lance’s own personal feelings he would have to sort out one day.

  One day. The day when we escape Queen Katrice.

  So just as Lance would have it, his own view of Bekket, Bekket followed the happy hum of Camila as she licked her lips and guided his ready cock into her mouth. Lance let out his own moan as he watched Bekket thrust against the warmth of Camila’s mouth. Lance wetted his hand against the moisture Camila was expelling, stroking his dick as his eyes drifted between the pair.

  Bekket’s breathing picked up, his orgasm almost at the ready. That was when Lance let himself plunge into her. Camila growled against each firm pump of Bekket’s cock as Lance filled her. That day he didn’t wait. Didn’t take the time to wonder if he could bring Camila over the edge again and again like he so often did.

  Instead he rocked against her. Hard. His momentum pushing her forward until Bekket was deep in her throat. She sucked in air through her nose as Bekket was pulled away from her in this rhythm they were mastering. The three of them together was bliss. A new high.

  But it was that still small voice in the back of her mind that told her it could somehow be better if the others were here.

  Camila told that voice to quite. Ignoring the heartbreaking words to focus on the here and now. The spill of hot liquid against her tongue, salty and familiar. Lance falling forward against her back as he followed Bekket’s release.

  All that was left of them was sweat.

  Lance’s chest swelled as he inhaled against her back, his forehead leaning against her as he folded himself over her. She knew better then to try to push him to talk now. Let him find his peace against her flesh and eventually he would get up without a word to use the washroom and dress. Their morning routine. He would leave and Bekket would hold her while she worried. Not that she would tell him.

  Camilla was too proud to muse aloud all of the terrible things that played repeatedly in her brain. Better yet, sarcasm and sex.

  As Lance pulled away, Bekket fell back against the headboard, opening his arms for Camila to join. Together they watched Lance saunter away.

  “He looks more tense today,” Bekket mumbled into Camila’s hair line, his lips leaving a small kiss against her temple. “He is losing more weight too.”

  “Yeah, he is finally losing all that weight from his balls.” She rolled her eyes, snorting at her own bad joke, internally she cringed at the awful line from a bad human porno. “All that time without giving it up.”

  “Sometimes I wonder why you act like such a sick freak, you know?” His laughter was light and airy.

  “The sickest freak.” Camila grinned, kissing up Bekket’s torso, along his neck,
until she paused at his lips flicking her tongue against him just once before rolling out of his arms.

  “Really though. Should we say something?”

  No. She thought. No, saying something would ruin this. Ruin these small bits of happiness she had in her stay at Queen Katrice’s castle.

  Camila stood without acknowledging his question. Instead she picked up her battered clothes, gingerly putting them on for fear they would rip more if she hurried. “Here.” She tossed Bekket his own clothes.

  “Dear, we can’t ignore our problems forever.”

  A swift knock against the door told her it was time. She pulled her shirt over her chest, the pity of sadness, fear, and anger knotting in her stomach.

  “No, Bekket. I suppose we can’t.”

  Chapter Two

  The Watch

  Layla fidgeted, her legs restless as she waited for the queen’s meeting to end. Vargan shot her a dark stare from under his perpetually broody looking eyebrows. He hated her impatience with these meetings. But what he didn’t know was that she had yet to tell Camila the one thing that had been weighing on her since she joined this group. He didn’t know how much it hurt her heart that her brother was locked up in that bedroom for all hours wasting away until the queen ultimately decided when he would die.

  The queen droned on and on but Layla’s mind continued to spin. That night. That first night here in this gods’ forsaken castle would forever stain her memory. It was like a brilliant crimson glow outlined every image of that night, red like the blood that would be spilled when someone was bound to die. Layla was familiar with blood, even familiar with the roaring war cries of dying men in battle, but when it was the possibility of it being her brother’s blood it made it so much worse.

  Memories of the first moment she saw him up close since she had found him in Queen Noreen’s castle flooded her thoughts. That point in time a stain on her mind.

  The door had swung open revealing the three prisoners bloodied, bruised, and tired. Camila, the prisoner of war, the jin, or now as they call her the realm renegade. Layla’s brother, his large brown eyes searching her face over and over for some sort of answer for something that could confirm that she was real. Then there was Bekket, prince denounced to duke just to stay alive, as a chess piece of the queen.

  The shock on their faces had been almost unreal. Well, most of their faces. Camila seemed almost uninterested as she narrowed her eyes on the two of them standing outside her door.

  Layla had planned it perfectly. Befriend the dying king, the one person the queen cared for most in this world and befriend him she had. As soon as she was able to tear herself away from Vargan she had gone on to find his rooms. The king was withered and small but he still held his head high.

  Sometimes sickness could overcome the fae too. No one knew why or how. Perhaps it was just a terrible joke the gods played on them to remind them how easily they could be removed from this plane of existence.

  The king still welcomed Layla’s company eager to see someone, anyone, as it was clear the queen kept him in solitude most of the time. So she tended to his needs, helping him sit closer to the window where the sunshine could fall over his lap like a warm blanket and assisted him when he needed a drink of water. She let him carry on in a dazed jumble about his golden years, about the years when he fell in love with a beautiful dark princess. It was when he finally quieted that she asked if he wished to see his nephew.

  He too bore the look of surprise that eerily mirrored the one Bekket would later wear at the thought that his last living relative, next in line for his very throne, was back on their home land. His brittle looking hands shook with excitement and horror. There was a deep rooted fear for his nephew.

  While the king had a spotty memory and didn’t seem lucid at all times, he knew his once beautiful dark princess had now turned into an even darker evil queen. It wasn’t hard for Layla to get him to agree to let her wheel him down to where they were staying.

  Their journey down the grand halls of the castle was quiet as they both contemplated how they would start the conversation, how they would respond to their loved ones they hadn’t seen in so long.

  Guards quickly moved away from their door at the sight of their beloved king. It was no secret the queen was quickly losing followers. It was that man, that poor, ill stricken man that this territory loved and would fight for.

  The heavy door swung open and there they were. It took all of her might not to run into the arms of her brother, and thankfully she didn’t need to hold back. As soon as her name fell from his lips and she nodded in response he had rushed to her. The hug was awkward and strange with him being so much wider and taller than she remembered when they parted. His arms felt so strong and safe as they wrapped around her.

  “I can’t believe it’s you,” he whispered.

  Layla wanted to stay in that moment forever or at least a minute or two longer but Lance pulled away.

  “Are you okay? Healthy? Happy? How did you get here?” Questions buzzed from his lips like the water that teetered over the edge of a cliff.

  “It’s a long story.” Layla paused squeezing his hand in reassurance. She glanced away from her brother to where Bekket now knelt before his uncle. “Here, let me get him inside your room for a bit and we can all talk.”

  Bekket and his uncle had yet to say a word to each other as she wheeled him in his chair inside the confines of the room, closing the door firmly behind them. Layla supposed maybe they didn’t need to speak, perhaps it was just the reassurance of seeing each other that calmed their spirits.

  That wasn’t enough for her though. Not enough for her brother either.

  The room, Bekket’s old room she was told, grew quiet and tense as they tried to wait respectfully for their king to speak first.

  Finally, his voice quivered as he brushed back the blonde strands that had fallen onto Bekket’s face. “My sweet boy, how my brother would have wanted so much more for you.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed the lump in his throat. “I fear I have failed him in many ways as I haven’t been able to protect you from Katrice.”

  “Uncle, no. You have not failed anyone. It’s going to be okay,” Bekket whispered. How was it going to be okay? Layla frowned at his words and at his easy going apathetic attitude about the entire situation.

  “It’s not. It can’t be okay. Something evil has sprouted in my lovely wife. She isn’t the woman that I used to know.” The king’s already sunken face seemed to fall a bit more as he spoke.

  “You’re right, something evil has sprouted in her. I would dare to say it’s those demons that lurk by her side at all times. Those greedy, power hungry, lunatics speaking darkness into anyone they can sink their claws into.” Camila planted her hands against her hips in disgust.

  “Those advisors are rotten, I would agree,” the king answered solemnly.

  Lance leaned closer to Layla trying to speak quietly as Bekket and the king continued their conversation. “How did you get here?”

  “I’m a part of the queen’s army, now. I came with Vargan.”

  “They let a woman join?” Lance’s mouth dropped.

  Camila cocked her head to the side glaring at him. “Lance, you don’t think a woman can defend herself? Or fight?”

  “It’s not that.” His eyebrows furrowed. “Camila, you yourself can’t even fight.”

  “That’s not the point here.” Camila shook her finger at him then pointed at Layla.

  “So are you upset that I’m part of her army?” Layla cooed. Their banter felt easy, like they were kids again.

  “Perhaps upset that you work for such a terrible person, though I did too, so I get it. But, no, I’m definitely proud that my little sister was the first woman to weasel her way into the troops.” Lance grinned widely.

  “How sweet,” Camila deadpanned. She tore her gaze away from Lance and glanced down at Bekket before she reached for Layla’s hand. Layla was hesitant but let her take it.

  “Can I tal
k to you?” Camila asked.

  “We are talking now,” Layla responded not wanting to leave Lance’s side.

  Lance glanced between the pair. “Do you know each other?”

  Camila waved at him in dismissal. “She is the noisy girl from the camp. Just let me steal her for one second.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Lance said, his eyebrows raising in question. He watched as he wrung his hands together repeatedly.

  Camila snorted and ignored him, dragging Layla away from the group. “I need a favor.”

  “What kind of favor? I’m already trying to do what I can to help you.” Layla hoped she didn’t look too innocent in Camila’s eyes, those eyes that looked like Camila could eat her alive if she wanted to.

  “Please.” Camila’s features turned soft.

  With a heavy sigh, Layla crossed her arms and peered over Camila’s shoulders to where Lance was watching them and biting his fingernails. Surely he could hear them. What was the point of even walking away?

  “I’m listening,” Layla answered.

  “I need you to get something for me.”

  “Okay, out with it genie.”

  Camila squeezed her eyes shut and pursed her lips to contain the nasty bit of words she wanted to spew at Layla. Now is not the time to be a Negative Nancy. So, instead of releasing whatever dark phrase was teasing at the back of her mind Camila reached up with both hands and gripped Layla’s face.

  Cold and gentle fingers met Layla’s flushed skin. Layla stilled as she felt what little power Camila had worked up since it had last been siphoned from her flow into her mind. With her eyelids closed she could see in her mind a white watch and a large home. Where was this home?

  Go through the tear. Camila whispered into her.

  This object, this home, it was in the human’s realm. Layla had never seen another realm firsthand.

  Camila dropped her hands to her sides, her fingers twitching from the happy feeling of magic that had now drained. There wasn’t anymore. Not for a while at least.