Brutal Heir (Court University 1)

Prologue

Greer - age 9

I got sick on my shorts. Hunkering down, the harsh smell twisted my stomach again, my hands on my shaking legs. The bite on my ankle oozed blood, and I brought my leg in, cradling it as I listened for sounds. Some rustling behind me and I was on the ground, hugging my knees and hoping the dog couldn’t find me. Old Man Peabody let it out again.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Please.

Movement behind me and I was almost sick again, trembling as I eased a look behind the tree that hid me. The dog had chased me for nearly ten minutes, exhaustion quivering my limbs as much as the fear. When I saw nothing, I was up, running again as fast as I could. I found another tree and I hugged it.

It was all quiet.

Too quiet, I closed my eyes, listening. The animal cry made me jump, the yelp right after shooting a harsh sense of fear inside me. The struggled cry had sounded like a dog, the yelp the same.

More rustling and movement in the leaves beneath my feet sounded. I left the tree, escaping its security to find two local boys. They were hunkered over something, and both were familiar to me. The one with the blond hair and light-colored eyes liked to play with the master of the house my mom cleaned and cooked for. His name was Royal, and he held down something, his hands white and knuckled over fur.

They no longer knuckled as I got closer, no longer needed. The thing below him wasn’t moving. He sat back on his haunches, staring up at the other boy there. He was the master of the house with his grandfather, only a couple years older than me and the boss of my mom, who was an adult. I hadn’t known kids could be in charge until I met him, moved into his house with my mom.

A twig snapped under my sneaker, and that boy gazed up at me, eyes a coal black even from here, though I knew them to be brown. I stared at him a lot when he couldn’t see, dark and harsh and angry, always angry. A sweep of dark hair breezed across his forehead, shielding eyes that bored into me. Some of that anger descended my way, dark eyebrows above like storm clouds.

Knight Reed wet his lips, a rock raised above his head. Frozen, he stared at me, the thing dripping red onto the mass of fur on the ground below him. Backing away, Royal put space between himself and the scene, but Knight hadn’t moved. He stayed, watching me, and closer now, I saw what he hovered over. Before I had met Old Man Peabody’s dog, I used to like looking at the animal behind the fence. It was so innocent, caged, and I had always wanted to free him.

That was until he’d started chasing me.

Black and cream spotted, that dog lay dead now, its head smashed in and its brain oozing out of its scull like soup. I’d never seen real insides before that, not even on TV, and Knight Reed hovered over it all, raging and breathy with a rock I knew now… was covered in blood. It leaked from it like a river, and Knight only dropped it when I slammed to my knees. My head falling forward, I got sick again.

At least this time I missed my shorts.

Chapter One

Greer - age 19

The water in the sink shifted to red, deep and crimson like a vision pulled from my memories. My thoughts traveled back to the past when I’d been nine, a bleeding dog before my eyes and a boy with a dark and sinful stare looking at me. Wicked, he peered on with nothing but a pointed gleam at me.

Just like he did now.

I was aware of that same gleam hovering over me at the present, lingering as I scrubbed and scrubbed at the skin stained red. The friction of the wash burned, my skin threatening to come off as I washed it so hard. All the while that glare found me, a large presence following as the boy with the brown eyes made his way into the bathroom with me. He was no longer that boy, but a man of size and firm stature. He was a man of presence and heat that did nothing but make my heart race.

If only it could be for the right reasons.

A slow reach and Knight Reed tugged at my sleeve, exposing skin covered in the same red I was attempting to rub away. It’d made it everywhere, even up my sleeve.

“You’ll miss your arms,” he said, and I found his eyes again. They immediately swallowed me up in their ebony depths, a dark sea as rigid and harsh as when we’d been kids. He’d had so much anger as a child, and that same anger stared right back at me through the mirror. Those eyes shifted, and mine did too, to me this time in the mirror. It seemed I’d missed some of that red I was attempting to wash away...

The blood coated my face like freckles.

Earlier that night

Chapter Two

Knight