Prologue

SULLY SINCLAIR USED MASKS and murky morality to hide who he truly was. Our first meeting painted him as the villain, the procurer of women, and the ruthless mogul of his Goddess Isles.

However, day by day, spark by spark, his masks slipped, one by one, revealing that I wasn’t a lunatic to fall head over heels for such a monster. I was justified because he was worthy.

Worthy of trust and love and a happily ever after.

I wanted to fight for that. To give him that. To give him me.

But...all things worth fighting for demanded pain.

Pain that sometimes cost far too much.

I wished we’d been immune to such a trial.

I wished Sully was an only child.

I wished he didn’t have a brother called Drake Sinclair.

Where Sully wore devilishness to hide his decency, Drake wore decency to hide his devilishness. He was Satan walking amongst goddesses. Lucifer with no redemption. Pure evil in Sully’s paradise.

And what was worse?

He ruined it all.

The spark, the bond, the happily ever after.

Sully made me come alive.

Drake made me want to die.

He stole everything.

He killed everything.

He murdered...us.

Chapter One

“EVERYTHING YOU LOVE DIES, Sinclair. Everything you treasure is gone. That’s your true curse. The one you can never run from.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, doing my best to squeeze out the voice of my nightmare. The nightmare I’d had just before the bomb destroying Serigala ripped me awake.

I’d hoped the warning was some version of closure from my distrusting brain, throwing the masks of my past in my face, freeing me from lies and deceptions. A strange kind of acceptance that I was in love, that I’d felt joy, that I’d been happy mere hours before this shitstorm came knocking.

But I was wrong.

It’d been the opposite.

I couldn’t shed those masks because they were a part of me. They were my armour against a world I could no longer survive in. They were my tools to reap death and decay on those who deserved it.

Those masks were the walls between Eleanor and our forever, condemning me with the truth that I was fucking delusional to think I could keep her, suicidal to give my heart to her, and utterly demented to think I could claim hers in return.

I’d done this.

I’d fallen for her and fallen from my power.

I’d adopted, rehabilitated, and nursed so many innocent creatures, and now they were chum in the sea, mangled paws and broken tails, missing ears and blown apart skulls.

I’d made a promise to keep them safe.

Safe?

Christ, my safety came with extermination.

Nothing was safe around me.

Nothing.

Especially not her.

Three hours.

He gave me three hours to save her.

My disgusting, gore-painted hands curled into fists as I leaned back and bashed my head against the plush helicopter upholstery.

Eleanor.

It didn’t matter if I had three hours or three years, it was all the same—just a matter of time before I hurt her.

If I keep her...she’ll die.

It was inevitable.

Inescapable.

My nightmare wasn’t closure...it was a forewarning.

An omen filled with premonition and intuition that no matter how much time passed, no matter how hard I tried to find redemption, I hadn’t been forgiven by fate.

I hadn’t earned her.

I’d never earn her because I’d never fucking change.

I liked my life. I hoarded my privacy. I enjoyed playing with myths and falsities.

I was just as bad as the guests who visited.

I was owed no singular forgiveness for what I was. I wasn’t any worse or better than my brethren. My one saving grace was I preferred the animal kingdom over my own and tried to buy better karma through their protection.

And I kept failing fucking spectacularly at it.

Humans were the disease. Animals were the pharmacon.

Eleanor was human.

I was human.

Drake was human.

And because Drake was a psychotic bastard, and I was a love-struck fool, and Eleanor was a girl trapped by me, we all had blood on our hands. We were all responsible for this animal carnage because Eleanor had distracted me from my calling, Drake had found my weakness, and I...

I’d been too busy being fucking happy to notice.

Fuck!

Groaning with fresh nausea, I glowered out the helicopter window. Down below with black-shrouded oceans and star-dusted shores, life went on, things got eaten, new life was birthed, and a goddess existed who’d almost convinced me of the impossible.

The impossibility of us.

I bent forward again, digging hands through my hair, not caring that I spread viscera and biohazard, contaminating every part of me. Yesterday, I’d been making sarcastic quips to Jinx in Nirvana. I’d felt joy. I’d laughed. I’d indulged.

I’d forgotten about everyone and everything.

I’d allowed the very thing that I despised about the human race to intoxicate me.

I’d become selfish.

I’d become greedy and narcissistic—only thinking of my life, my lust, my love.

I’d given in to every dream and fantasy I had, thinking I could finally have peace.

And now...

I snarled in the din of helicopter blades. Fury tangled with loss, despair blended with violence, and every wall I’d dropped, every mask I’d shed, every denial I’d erased stabbed me with a thousand blades.

Eleanor.

She’d done this. She’d made me become this.

This...man. This blind, stupid man who’d forgotten his responsibilities and commitments. I was wrong to think her hex on me was purely about us.

It wasn’t.

It was about my life. My future. My animals who’d died because I’d fallen in love.

And that...? Fuck, that was a price I wasn’t prepared to pay.

Not again.

An avalanche of hate slithered over my shoulders, chilling me. My bones froze over, cracking with frost and filling with loathing for Drake. For me. Even for Eleanor.

She’d made me love her.

She made every drop of my frosted blood panic for her safety.

She came first.

Over everything.

She meant more.

Over anything.

And look what fucking happened.

Those animals would still be alive if it wasn’t for me.

Drake needed to die.

Slowly.

Painfully.

Piece by piece.

That was a stone-chiselled certainty...but the rest?

The rest of my fuck-ups and failings? The fact that my heart belonged to a woman who had made me weak? The goddamn truth that I’d fallen for a goddess who’d shaken apart my dynasty and left my borders wide open for attack?

How did I fix that?

How do I stop the undeniable urge to sacrifice everything if it means I can keep her safe?

Dropping my hands, I sat tall again. I was a fidgety, violent mess trapped in a tiny cabin, rapidly losing control, quickly fraying with the sickening desire to murder.

Cal sat quietly beside me, knowing not to interrupt.

He’d seen me on this knife-edge. He’d seen me this restless before. He’d felt what’d happened when I snapped and watched what I’d done when I broke.

I’d left a trail of corpses in my wake for payment for ten animal lives. A mix of mouse, monkey, and rabbit from a cosmetic group in Chicago. I’d made national news for the disgustingly gruesome and frankly morbidly-inspired retribution I’d delivered.