The Never King (Vicious Lost Boys Book 1)

If the Darling calls for me, I come.

Bash and I have been tasked as her keepers, as we always are.

For decades, we’ve looked after the Darlings.

Look, but don’t touch.

I find her sitting up in bed crying.

Immediately I want to make her feel better.

Pan always says I am the bleeding heart out of the four of us.

“What is it?” I sit on the edge of the bed beside her.

“I’m scared,” she says and collapses against me, her hand curled in my shirt. She sobs and I give in.

How can I not?

I pull her closer. Her body shakes.

I can just hear Bash in the back of my head—this is a very bad idea.

But I know what the fuck I’m doing.

I don’t lose control like Vane and I sure as hell don’t indiscriminately fuck around like Bash. I can handle a weeping Darling without trying to fuck her.

“Winnie,” I say, “it’ll be all right.”

“He’s going to break me.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Yes, he will. Just like he broke my mom.”

Her tears wet my shirt. I can hear the rapid beat of her heart, can sense the pulsing rush of her blood in her veins.

Bash and I are not the same as Pan and Vane, but we are monsters, nonetheless.

She puts her hand on my thigh and sinks closer.

My cock takes notice.

“Darling,” I say, my voice going husky and dark. “I should go.”

“No. Wait.” She tries to wrap her hand around my bicep, but she’s too small. “I don’t want to be alone.”

My chest tightens.

“Please stay.” Her voice is a whimper.

“For a minute,” I tell her.

“Thank you.”

We’re quiet for a beat and the quiet needles at the back of my neck. “Do you want to see something?” I ask her.

She’s suddenly on guard. “Like what?”

“Lie back.”

The chain rattles as she does. The bed squeaks.

The Darling is too trusting. And I am straddling the line.

I lie down beside her.

Moonlight pours into the window behind us and stretches along the walls.

My magic always stirs on a full moon. Just like the tides, it grows in the light.

I don’t even have to think about it as the illusion breaks open across the ceiling.

Beside me, the Darling gasps and I can’t help but smile.

“What is that?” she asks.

The night sky appears above us in shimmering shades of black and blue and violet and stars twinkle in the darkness.

Some Darlings like the magic. Some don’t.

Some think it’s just a trick of the eye.

But it’s all real.

Neverland is full of magic.

Or at least it was, once.

Now it’s dying.

Which is the whole reason the Darling is here.

Save the king, save the island.

It’s a ridiculous notion, all of these centuries later. Sometimes I forget that Pan is a king, that there’s anything left to rule.

It will never go back to what it was before he lost his shadow.

I don’t even know what we’re fighting to get back anymore.

The magic, I suppose.

The land.

But for Pan, sometimes I think it’s the power. He doesn’t give a fuck about the hibiscus or the lilies or the cloudberry bushes.

A king cannot become something else. He will always be a king. Without the throne, he is nothing.

The Darling turns to look at me. The starlight above us brightens and I can’t even hide that the illusion is tied to me.

The others hate when a Darling comes to Neverland. I’ve always enjoyed it.

It breaks up the monotony.

“What are you?” she asks.

I laugh, low and beneath my breath. “I am many things, Darling.”

“But this” —she lifts her hand, gestures to the ceiling— “what is that? How can you do that?”

Bash and I don’t talk about where we came from. Because we can never go home.

“In your world,” I tell her, “I believe you might have called us fairies.”

She laughs and the glimmering starlight plays across the line of her brow. “But I don’t believe in—

I clamp my hand over her mouth and her startled breath rushes out around my fingers.

“Don’t say it.”

She frowns.

“Promise me you won’t.”

She gives me a quick nod, so I pull my hand away.

“Why not?” she asks. “You can’t say you don’t believe in—”

“Darling.” Her name is a growl and my heart is racing in my ears. “If you say it, I’m dead.”

“What?” The question is another trill of laughter. “That can’t be true.”

“Well, it is.”

I am reminded of my mother suddenly. The cut of her wings, the glow of her skin.

“If you say those words, a fairy dies. It’s as simple as that. So promise me you won’t say it.”

She resettles on the bed. “I promise.”

I lie back down beside her.

“If you’re a fairy, where are your wings?”

“I lost them.” The admission is soaked in sorrow and filled with rage.

“What happened to them?”

I sigh. “That is a very long story.”

She regards me with a furrowed brow. I think she thought this conversation would go in a much different direction.

“You said that in my world, you’d be called a fairy. What do they call you here?”

“Fae is a better word.” We are not all creatures of stardust and light, not like my mother. The fae here are bathed in blood. But the fae have one rule: do not kill each other.

Bash and I broke that.

“And Pan?” the Darling asks.

“Is not fae.”

“So what is he?”

I’ve dug myself too far. The starlight on the ceiling flickers and fades.

“Not my story to tell, Darling.”

She huffs and readjusts beside me. The bed squeaks.

I like this Darling too much already. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing after all.

She turns to her side and tucks her hands beneath her head.

Beyond the house, the waves crash against the shore. I can taste a summer storm on the air.

“What about your tattoos?” She reaches across the space between us and traces a finger down one of the curved lines of my markings. “Do they mean something?”

“They did, once.”

“And now?”

“Now they are just a reminder.”

I shiver as she follows a line down my neck to the collar of my shirt. To the fae, the tattoos are a mark of rank and order. Bash and I were supposed to be significant.

Now we’re a cautionary tale.

Her hand trails down my chest, down my stomach, and my abs constrict.

I’m suddenly fucking harder than stone.

Her hand sinks lower.

I snatch her wrist. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“I know what you’re doing.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’re trying to cause tension in the group. You’re not the first to think you’re smarter than us. You’re not, Darling. Whatever strategy you think you’re plotting, we’ve seen it before. We’ve watched every move play out, and all of the Darlings bend. Eventually.”

I want to fuck her just to teach her a lesson.

The tide comes in. My magic beats at my ribs.

We are all tied to the night in one way or another.

Dark creatures are best left to the dark nights.

“We don’t touch the Darlings,” I tell her and then get up.

“I wasn’t…I mean…”

“Good night, Darling,” I say and then leave the room, shut the door behind me.

When I readjust my cock, it almost hurts.

I need…something.

I go through the loft to the balcony. “Where are you going?” Bash calls.

“Out,” I say.

The rest of the Lost Boys are sitting around the bonfire and there are a dozen girls from town. They are always desperate for the attention of the King and his men.

I pick one out. Any will do.

“You,” I tell a girl with dark brown hair. “Get on your knees.”

Her eyes go wide and she looks past me to the others.

“On your knees or leave. You choose.”

She licks her lips then rises from the chair and sinks to the patio. She unzips my pants, pulls my cock out, strokes me in her hand.

Fuck.

The hair along the nape of my neck bristles as magic fills the air.

I can make anything appear real. Make any illusion real enough to touch.

But the one thing I can’t do?

I can’t pretend that I’m not as fucked up as the rest of them.

The girl takes me in her mouth. She’s slow and gentle and unsure and I fucking hate it.

I bury my hand in her hair and shove down her throat. She gags. Tears fill her eyes. The others watch as I fuck her mouth, brutally, mercilessly.

She takes it.

Every inch.

And the whole time, I can’t help but imagine it’s the Darling’s lips wrapped around my cock.

Maybe she knows what she’s doing after all.