AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sir, we didn’t—” Peter stuttered, and Hunter wished he could see the terror on his face at least. “Take him! We didn’t know!”
The tall figure wordlessly tilted his head and the two at his back darted forward faster than Hunter’s poor vision could follow. There were screams though, this time not his own, and as the figure approached him, Hunter found an inkling of the fight still left after all.
It took all of his energy to force himself into an upright position, and he needed to lean back against the wall in order to stay that way. On this side of the warehouse, the only light came from the broken windows and the holes in the ceiling, and that wasn’t enough to help him see who was before him.
The figure crouched down, close, making a shushing noise when Hunter tried to press back with nowhere else to go.
“If you were going to end up this broken, you should have waited for me.”
Hunter froze, sure he was mistaken. He’d expected a Dominus, but not this one. Never this one.
“Don’t worry,” Odin Snow, Head of the Snow family, one of the three Dominus of the Brumal mafia, leaned in and whispered against the curve of Hunter’s ear, “I’ll put you back together again.”
Even if he’d been capable of speaking, he wouldn’t have. Suddenly, Torn seemed like a godsend. All the pain he’d just endured seemed like child’s play compared to what the man in front of him was capable of.
This was worse than being beaten to death. So much worse.
“And then I’ll take you apart with my own two hands.” As if to precursor what was to come, Odin’s fingers wrapped tightly around Hunter’s throat and squeezed.
* * *
Someone was singing.
Hunter could only catch wisps here and there, struggled to surface from the deep sleep he was under, but couldn’t. Everything around him was dark, but there was warmth too, the kind that seeped in and engulfed a person, clutched them close. He burrowed deeper into his dreams, grateful for the reprieve from pain, wishing he could stay like that forever.
* * *
He dreamed of fire and ice and gold.
Of three laughing faces, beautiful as gods, mercurial, and always just out of reach.
Of his sister playing with the stray cat she’d named and had been taking care of in the alley behind their trailer, between the butcher shop and the laundry mat.
He dreamed of coins pressed into the tight slot of a machine. Clink. Clink. Clink. And thought about how he couldn’t pay for dinner because of it.
He dreamed of freezing to death.
He dreamed of drowning in liquid gold.
He dreamed of burning alive, too, but just when his skin was about to splinter and crack, a soft hum filtered through the horror, soothing his heated flesh, dampening the flames.
That singing again. Some song he felt like he should know but that he couldn’t place. A song about three kings and a warning not to get too close.
The word Joker, in particular, hit a nerve, and he struggled to figure out why.
But then something cool was pressed against his cheek, smoothed across his forehead, and Hunter found himself sighing in his sleep, turning into whatever it was, chasing that bit of relief.
With the steady beat of the song in his ears, Hunter was lulled back into that deep sleep where, blissfully, he didn’t dream.
* * *
Kiland Soto was a country rife with many things, including what was believed to be the world’s lingering source of remaining magic. Magic, as everyone knew, was fickle and tough to control, making those who were born with the ability to wield it capricious and inscrutable. For the most part, real magic, true magic, had died out, leaving behind remnants of a grand world that had once been filled with wonder.
The Brumal mafia family Heads were different. Frost, Snow, and Shen. Dominus who also happened to be Shouts. And not just, Shouts who happened to possess more magic than anyone else in over three decades, including their predecessors.
For two generations the three families were at a tentative peace, and warring between them on the streets was at an all-time low. A marriage merger between the eldest Snow son and the eldest Frost daughter roughly fifteen years ago was ironically what destroyed that peace.
Both had sons from past relationships, boys of the same age, who were introduced at thirteen and raised together as step-brothers up until they’d turned eighteen and all hell had broken loose.
