Their Vicious Darling (Vicious Lost Boys #3)(5)

I have a flash of The Crocodile lapping up Hook’s blood after we cut off his hand.

Roc reveled in it.

I thought it was just a weird quirk. That fucker is insane as far as I’m concerned. I never questioned it and Hook lost his fucking mind, so I guess the act did its part.

The Seven Isles are home to so many creatures, so much magic, so many myths and legends, that it’s impossible to guess at what Vane might be. But now I have to wonder if it runs in the family.

There may be numerous monsters in the Isles, but those that thirst for blood…those are not so numerous.

Vane takes a long drag from the cigarette.

Beyond the trail, the wolves prowl in the late darkness.

As the road curves south toward the treehouse, I snap my fingers at Vane and he hands off the cigarette so I can take a hit, hold it in.

The smoke doesn’t burn like it used to and I’m surprised to find I’m disappointed.

“So what are you saying?” I ask him after I’ve exhaled.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do know but you don’t want to tell me.”

He sighs. “To Winnie, I am a blade and a predator with sharp teeth. If I don’t cut her as one, I will tear through her as the other and I don’t know what the fuck to do about that.”

Hearing him call her by her name is an odd thing. An intimate thing. I have to push aside the flare of jealousy that they might be closer than I realized. Because of course they will be. It's inevitable. I am a king. I will always be held at arm's length. And the twins will never be closer to anyone than they are to each other.

It was always meant to be Vane.

We will all have her, but Vane might get a part of her that the rest of us can never see.

I have to be okay with that. I am okay with it. But it means I need to hold them both together, because without one, I will lose the other and without both...

The wolves come closer and I spot one darting through the underbrush on my left.

“So what you’re telling me is, giving up the Darkland shadow will not solve your problems, so really what we should do is find you the Neverland Dark—”

“Motherfucker,” he says, but there’s a ring of laughter on the edge of his voice. He steals the cigarette back.

“Listen,” I say, “I know what it feels like to try to grapple with being two sides of a bad coin. If there is anyone who understands it, it’s me. So just fucking talk to me.”

The hair lifts along my arms as the twins slow up ahead and a wolf peers out from the woods.

I am connected to Neverland once again, but it's been so long, I don't recognize the syllables of the land's language, the sharp edges of the constants, the softness of the vowels. I have to learn it all over again.

What is that gnawing in the back of my head? The feeling that something is wrong?

I look over at Vane.

Perhaps I’ve pushed him too far. Maybe his dark shadow is chafing against mine.

We have never been side by side in this way, two shadows of different lands.

It annoys me that I didn't consider this.

It terrifies me that it might turn out to be a problem.

“Do you feel that?” I ask.

He nods at me, his violet eye going black.

The wolf trots out to the middle of the path in front of the twins.

Vane and I slowly make our way forward, flanking the princes so that we face the wolf in a formidable line.

“This is unusual,” Kas says, keeping his voice low and even. The wind shifts and his hair billows in front of his face but he doesn’t make a move to fix it.

A very, very long time ago, I would run with the wolves, but the memory is so old it’s more smoke than fire, barely there at all.

I haven’t seen the wolves this close since I lost my shadow.

Bash whistles at him and then says, “Whatchya doing, boy?”

The wolf dips his head. Even hunched, he’s still about half as tall as the twins. His coat is like a dark twilight sky—mostly black with flecks of white and gray.

He looks at us with vivid blue eyes.

“What do we do?” Kas asks.

The wolf is standing between us and the treehouse.

I am impatient to return to my Darling.

I step forward.

That feeling that something is wrong grows.

“Go on,” I tell the wolf. “Back to the woods.”

He straightens his shoulders and lifts his head, pulls back his lips to show gleaming sharp teeth.

“Go on. I won’t tell you again.”

I take another step and he turns around and runs.

But he doesn’t go to the woods.

Instead, he follows the road straight to the treehouse.





2





PETER PAN


I can sense the wolf’s destination immediately.

At my side, Bash says, “Maybe we should—”

But I’m not listening and I’m sure as fuck not waiting.

I bend my knees and push off Neverland earth with all the urgency of a mortal jet plane.

I take to the air in less than a second and I’m breaking the sound barrier not long after that.

The trees rattle beneath the force of my flight.

There’s no time to revel in being midair again.