Текст книги "Fable of Happiness book three"
Автор книги: Pepper winters
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Fable
of
Happiness
Book Three
by
New York Times Bestseller
Pepper Winters
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Fable of Happiness (Book Three)
Copyright © 2021 Pepper Winters
Published by Pepper Winters
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Libraries are exempt and permitted to share their in-house copies with their members and have full thanks for stocking this book. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Published: Pepper Winters 2021: pepperwinters@gmail.com
Photo: Chris Lawton from Unsplash
Cover Design: Ari @ Cover it! Designs
Editing by: Editing 4 Indies (Jenny Sims)
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OTHER WORK BY PEPPER WINTERS
Pepper currently has over thirty books released in nine languages. She’s hit best-seller lists (USA Today, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal) almost forty times. She dabbles in multiple genres, ranging from Dark Romance to Coming of Age. She lives on a farm with six horses, one rabbit, and one very obliging husband.
For more information, please visit: www.pepperwinters.com
Or go straight to her Amazon page for all the books below:
Pepper Winters AMAZON PAGE
DARK ROMANCE
Goddess Isles Series – 5 x USA Today Bestseller
First book, Once a Myth, is free.
Monsters in the Dark Trilogy – New York Times Bestseller
First book, Tears of Tess, is free.
Indebted Series – New York Times Bestseller
First book, Debt Inheritance, is free.
Dollar Series – 6 x USA Today Bestseller
First book, Pennies, is free.
SEXY ROMANCE
The Master of Trickery Duet
Truth & Lies Duet – 4 x USA Today Bestseller
COMING OF AGE ROMANCE
The Ribbon Duet – USA Today Bestseller
Standalone Spinoff
The Son & His Hope
STANDALONES
Destroyed – USA Today Bestseller. Grey Romance
Unseen Messages – USA Today Bestseller. Survival Romance
MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE
Pure Corruption Duet – 2 x USA Today Bestseller
ROMANTIC COMEDY written as TESS HUNTER
Can’t Touch This
UPCOMING RELEASES
Souls of Sand and Smoke
Dark Romance, High Fantasy.
Add to GOODREADS
Too bad he waited too long to end her.
Too bad he preferred her in his bed than in the ground.
Too bad a simple mistake ensures a different destiny.
For both of them.
For 2021, 2022 titles please visit www.pepperwinters.com
RELEASE DAY ALERTS, SNEAK PEEKS, & NEWSLETTER
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Pepper’s Newsletter
SOCIAL MEDIA & WEBSITE
Facebook: Peppers Books
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Facebook Group: Peppers Playground
Website: www.pepperwinters.com
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Contents
OTHER WORK BY PEPPER WINTERS
Fable of Happiness Book Three Blurb
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE ONE
EPILOGUE TWO
WOULD YOU LIKE REGULAR FREE BOOKS?
OTHER WORK BY PEPPER WINTERS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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Fable of Happiness Book Three Blurb
From New York Times Bestseller, Pepper Winters, comes the third and final book in Kas and Gem’s fated romance.
A stranger full of rage.
A battle that has no victors.
A decision that has to be made.
And a future that has to be fought for.
Scarred and learning how to live again, Kas might never be free of his darkness.
A life full of triggers is no life at all. But a love full of pain can only grant heartache.
Gem made the decision to stay, but at what cost?
Kas made the choice to claim her, but will he ever be worthy?
To love is the simplest choice.
But healing is the hardest struggle of all.
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"This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess."
Rainer Maria Rilke
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PROLOGUE
STICKS AND STONES MIGHT BREAK my bones, but words will never hurt me.
I’d first heard that chant from Wes a few weeks into our captivity. He’d whisper it in bed, hidden in the dark, his voice barely audible in the heavy silence. I’d follow along, repeating it silently in my mind, changing the words to fit my current level of hell.
Cuffs and chains might steal my freedom, but they will never own me.
Some nights, I’d twist the chant into whatever nightmare I’d lived through that day. I’d ball my hands and hiss at the night, trembling with pain and rage. Sometimes they’d rhyme, sometimes they wouldn’t. Sometimes other Fable kids would join in, but most of the time, it was just Wes and me, muttering the words like a vow of retribution.
It was one of the many things we turned to in order to survive.
A way of reminding ourselves that this couldn’t last forever.
Either death or escape would eventually save us, and I built my entire existence on those two possibilities. Even while living alone, I still trusted in those two inevitabilities.
Until she arrived.
A trespassing girl with a heart of fucking gold who showed me a third possibility.
One that successfully shattered me into irreparable pieces.
Love.
Death, freedom, or...love.
It wasn’t physical or mental abuse that destroyed me but her.
Her selflessness and her strength.
Her drive to save me from myself.
She pushed me until I cracked.
Perhaps I’d die striving to be worthy of her.
Or maybe...maybe I’d finally find a way to live.
Kindness and kisses might’ve destroyed me, but she...she might finally set me free.
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CHAPTER ONE
“LET GO OF ME!”
I twisted my arm, trying to get free of the bastard’s grip.
His fingers merely tightened, digging into my flesh, keeping me well and truly trapped at his side. His strange, bi-colored eyes scanned me up and down even as his question hovered in the air. Licking his lips, he repeated himself, his voice scratchy and too-loud in the night. “Who the hell are you?”
I kicked out, aiming for his knee. “Someone who doesn’t take kindly to being held against her will.” My bare foot struck his leg.
He stumbled sideways as I connected, his fingers loosening a little but not letting me go. “Ow.” He sounded vexed and pissed off but not hurt. “That was unwise.” The level of blackness in his tone was even darker than the night. Keeping hold of me, he bent a little and rubbed where I’d kicked him with his free hand. His backpack squeaked as it slipped on his back. “I wouldn’t do that again if I were you.”
I sneered. “Let go of me, and I won’t have to.”
“I’ll let go of you when I have my answers.”
“Answers you haven’t politely asked for!” I bared my teeth. “Say please, and maybe I’ll—”
He yanked me into his body, brushing our noses together as he stood to his full height. “Say please? Ha. How about you give me answers that I’m entitled to, seeing as you’re the one walking around my valley in your fucking nightgown.”
“Your valley?!” I squirmed and tried to get free. “I think he would have something to say about that.”
His eyes lit up, glowing brown and blue. “He being...”
“None of your damn business!” My self-defense training kicked in. Memories of getting free from attackers swamped my muscles, and I spun beneath his arm, forcing his wrist to twist at an unnatural angle. The evil pouring off him coated the back of my throat like tar.
My hackles warned he wasn’t a good guy.
I needed to go.
Now.
I spun the final way, ripping his fingers off me and parrying backward.
Hissing beneath his breath, he shook out his twisted wrist, his eyes narrowed and sharp. “You’ll pay for that.”
Backing faster, I grabbed a stick from the ground and brandished it at him. “I think it’s my turn to ask a question.” I swished the stick through the air. “Who the hell are you?!”
Dropping his arm, he slipped his shoulders back. Ever so slowly, he shrugged out of the backpack, not looking down as the bag dropped to the ground with a thud.
He didn’t answer me, his eyes skating all over me with fascination bordering on obsession. His stare made my skin crawl. Waving my stick, I snapped, “Eyes up here, buddy.”
A half-smirk twisted his lips. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
I hid my shudder. “Don’t flatter yourself.” I arched my chin at the cave where he’d appeared from. “Leave before I hit you. You’re trespassing.”
His eyebrows shot up his forehead as a choked laugh rumbled in his chest. “Shit, this just keeps getting better.” He held up his hand, shaking his head. “I’m the one trespassing?”
“Yes. Leave.” I looked over my shoulder, searching the night forest, wishing that Kas was close. Where had he gone? Worry over his state of mind and what he’d intended to do as he’d run from the house trickled ice down my spine.
I didn’t have time to fight this asshole. I had to find Kas before he did anything stupid.
“I won’t tell you again,” I hissed, taking a step toward him as if he was a raccoon who would run at my show of dominance. “Get.”
He laughed fully then. A deep, rich, intoxicating rasp that threatened as well as ridiculed. “Ah, fuck...you’re really quite adorable. If you weren’t already under the thumb of a master, I’d be tempted to keep you.”
“What?” My nose wrinkled. “I’m not under anyone’s thumb.”
He pointed at the last remaining links of the chain Kas had padlocked to my ankle. The same chain I’d smashed with an ax and looped like a thick anklet up my calf. “I told you. I belong in this valley far more than you do. That chain isn’t just a chain. It has a name. It has a history.” He stepped smoothly toward me. “And I know that history very fucking well. Better than you, I’m guessing.”
More chills darted down my spine. My arm shook, keeping my weapon high. All instincts told me to ignore him. He wasn’t just talking; he was doing his best to undermine my strength and resolve. Yet...there was something.
I studied him, truly studied him. I followed the scar on his cheek, the taut way he held himself, and the barely concealed violence in his stance.
He had blood on his hands, without any doubt.
He had nightmares in his soul and death in his veins, but...
He reminded me of someone.
Someone who’d run from kissing me and vanished into the forest after remembering something that he couldn’t forgive himself for.
Someone who’d been raised in this valley, groomed, molested, and then left to die.
Kas belonged in this valley.
He was more animal than human and more broken than whole, but he was healing...slowly. He was trying. He was learning how to live one hard, horrible day at a time.
This man reminded me of Kas.
His bi-colored eyes held the same haunting. His body pulsed with power, ready to kill instead of accepting another bruise from someone else.
His head cocked as if he couldn’t understand why I’d stood down, but he never stopped assessing me, poised to attack.
I lowered the stick.
His nostrils flared as the stick rested on the ground, no longer aimed at his face. “Wise move. If you’d struck me with that, I wouldn’t have been responsible for my retaliation.”
I swallowed hard.
My arm bunched to bring my weapon back up.
If I was wrong about this. If I was seeing things that weren’t there, then I was more stupid than I thought.
My mind raced with names that Kas had moaned in his nightmares. The names written in books resting on pillows of slaves, binding them to a particular fable, ensuring their fates were no longer theirs but written by their so-called master.
Balling my hands, I whispered, “Wes?”
The stranger stiffened to steel. His eyes narrowed to slits. “What did you just call me?”
“Zanik, perhaps?” I stepped toward him, dropping my stick on the way. “Umm...” What other names had Kas said? What other names had been on those books? “Neo? Maliki?”
He seemed to grow, gathering all the shadows and wrapping them around himself. His boots snapped a twig as he stepped toward me, closing the distance I’d put between us.
The air crackled as he approached. The forest went thick with anticipation.
I stopped moving as he came nearer. My body buzzed with adrenaline and warning, but I wouldn’t run. I had no doubt if I ran, it wouldn’t end well. It was either fight or persuade. Those were my only two options. I would never turn my back on this man.
Not when he was so similar to Kas but also entirely different.
Kas had been rough and brash when we’d first met. He’d been cruel and fierce, but beneath it all, there’d been an endearing sort of fumbling. He’d invoked terror but also summoned empathy.
This man wasn’t like Kas in that respect.
There was no humanity buried beneath decades of protection.
There was nothing in him that struggled to understand who or what he was.
He knew.
He knew he was dangerous.
He knew he could kill and get away with it.
He knew who he was and wasn’t afraid to use every skill he had to his advantage.
There’d only been one family member Kas had moaned about in his sleep who seemed different from the way he talked about the rest. Whenever he mentioned him, reverence and shame would fill his tone as if he was both in awe of his adopted brother and guilty that he wasn’t able to protect him better.
A boy who’d stepped into the darkness with Kas and hadn’t walked back out again.
“Jareth?” I whispered.
The man froze.
His one blue eye and one brown locked onto mine. His blue one blazed almost aquamarine while his left seemed to feast on every shadow inside him. With a predator’s grace and a hunter’s power, he crossed his arms over his chest. He inhaled, making his jacket creak and rib cage expand. For a second, I didn’t think he’d answer, but then his lips twitched, and he cocked his head in a small bow. “It seems you know more about me than I thought.”
I let out a small exhale, triumph filling me to have figured out who this random nightwalker was. “You’re Jareth? One of the Fable children?”
His jacket creaked louder as his arms tightened. “Never refer to me as that again, understand? Mention the word fable, and your heart will be pumping in my fist.”
I shuddered but didn’t drop his stare.
Icy silence swirled between us.
Finally, he sniffed and asked, “Where is he?” Stepping into me, he dropped his arms to his sides as his hands curled into stone. “Are you running from him? Did you think tonight was a good night to escape?”
I fought the urge to back away, standing my ground. “I have nothing to escape from.”
He chuckled black and low, his gaze dropping to the chain around my ankle. “That so?”
I dug my toes into the earth. “That isn’t what you think.”
“You so sure about that?” He swayed toward me, his breath tickling my cheek as he sniffed the air around me. He sniffed me as if a simple scent could give away my lies and secrets. “I know someone else who wore that chain, and he refused to escape too.”
I braced my shoulders as memories of Kas holding me in the bath, washing my hair, and kissing me hard filled me. “He didn’t escape because he refused to leave you.”
His face shut down. A switch from curious toying to stark unreadability. He studied me as if he couldn’t figure me out. As if the effort might not be worth his while. His knuckles cracked as he fisted tighter, shifting on the balls of his feet.
I didn’t like the look in his eyes.
I didn’t like the way my instincts went from wary to downright panic. “If you hurt me, you hurt him. Kas is mine. Just like I’m his.”
He jerked back. “So he is still here.” He tripped a few steps before his knees locked into place, his gaze locking onto the chain around my ankle. His surprise gave way to pure rage. “The day that fucking cunt buckled that chain on my brother...it was the beginning of the end for him.” His voice dropped to a husky murmur, his memories thick with fury. “His mind cracked after a month of wearing that.” He looked up, his face etched with moonlight, sharp like blades and carved with pain. His clean-shaven cheeks and trimmed dark hair were a stark difference to Kas’s heavy scruff and wild locks, but they mimicked each other in stance, in mannerisms, in blatant denial of being someone’s possession.
Stalking around me, he raked a hand through his hair, his voice like a snake wrapping around my shoulders. “Bet he didn’t tell you that. Bet he didn’t tell you a lot of things. You say you’re his, but do you know how far he’ll go for those he loves? How much fucking shit he’ll endure just so you don’t have to?”
I rubbed at a flood of goosebumps over my arms. “I know enough.”
“You know enough,” he repeated with scorn, nodding as if I’d said something ridiculous. “Bullshit.” He paced around me again, his eyes all over me. “Did you know I told him to stop volunteering? To stop trying to save us all?” He wiped a hand over his mouth, his body turning jerky with history. “Some nights, he’d shit blood for hours after they were through with him. He stopped eating. His nightmares kept us all awake. He could barely walk after the guests finished using him. Yet he never once stopped protecting us. Never once turned his back on our pain, even when his was greater.” He spat on the ground, his voice slipping to rage. “So you can understand why I’m protective of him. Why I’m not inclined to believe you. Why I will do whatever it goddamn well takes to keep him safe.”
“Well, that’s rich.” I snorted. “You left him for eleven years.”
He slammed to a stop.
Lightning-fast, he grabbed my cheeks, digging his thumbs against my cheekbones. “Do you think that was a fucking choice?!” His lips pulled back over his teeth. “You don’t get to question me when I’m finding it hard to believe a single fucking thing you’re saying, when you’re out here in the dead of fucking night, running away with a broken chain—the very same chain that broke my brother’s mind.”
I gasped and grabbed his wrists, trying to pull his hands off my face. “Let me go.”
His thumbs just pressed harder against my cheekbones, threatening to crack them. “Not until I get the truth out of you.” He bent forward, grazing his lips over mine. Dry and papery, death and destruction all in one. “I’m very skilled at getting the truth out of people these days.” He kissed me again, a fleeting threat. “So, I suggest you use these pretty lips to tell me what I really want to know.”
I fought him, but he just held me as if I was nothing. Nothing more than a moth about to be squashed. “Did he take you for his own? Did he use you like he’d been used? Did he break you like they broke him?” He shook me. “I hope he did. I hope he found a way to get retribution. To prove to himself he’s more than just a fuck toy. Is that why you’re running? Because he trapped you? Abused you? Where the fuck is he? Answer me.”
My teeth clacked together, biting my tongue. Blood filled my mouth as pain bloomed along my cheekbones. I scratched at his wrists, digging my nails deep. “You have it all wrong.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“I’m not running from him.”
“Try again.” His hands slipped from my cheeks and clamped around my temples, crushing my skull. “Go on, hurry up. My patience is almost gone.”
Tears oozed from my eyes as I continued to fight. Fight against an unmovable wall with no heart. “You’re hurting me.”
“I’ll do a lot worse if you keep lying to me.”
“I’m not lying!” I kicked at his legs. “Let me go!”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know!” Fear once again crashed through me. Where was he? Was he okay?
God, Kas! Where are you?
“Convenient.” He crushed my head harder, a vise ready to crack me in two. “One last chance.”
“Stop it!”
“Tell me what I want to know!”
“Stop hurting me, and I’ll—”
“I’ve had enough.” His fingers feathered out over my head, delivering pinpricks of agony as he pressed harder, building pressure and shoving me into blinding pain. “I’ll find him myself.”
“Please—!”
Jareth—if it even was Jareth—suddenly disappeared.
A blur barrelled into him, his hands ripped from my head, his fingers taking strands of hair with him as he was snatched away and yanked into the dark.
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