Merciless King

These boys weren’t born cruel, savage, and merciless. Someone made them that way.The boys who started out as my tormentors saved my life.From who? None of us are quite sure. But when I wake up, somehow alive and mostly in one piece, I wake up to a changed house.Cayde and Dean seem to have turned over a new leaf. Instead of hurting me, they want to protect me. Instead of terrorizing me, they want to make me feel safe. And instead of punishing me—well, actually, I’ve learned to like that part.But even if they think the game is over, I know it’s just begun. There’s still people out there who want me dead, and secrets I need to uncover. Secrets that will shake the very foundations of what I’ve always believed—and if I keep going down this path, Blackmoor itself. There’s just one more piece I need in order to win. Jaxon King.

Merciless King is the third book in the Blackmoor heirs series. It contains material that may be sensitive to some readers. There are no heroes in this series, and it will get much darker before the dawn. This book is for those who like their men cruel and damaged, their romance dark and questionable, and their emotions toyed with until the very end.

Reading Order

#1 Cruel Lord

#2 Savage Prince

#3 Merciless King

Jaxon

Moonlit nights were always my favorite.

         There’s something about riding a motorcycle on a clear, cloudless night in early fall. Something about the crisp cut of the air across my face and filling my nose, the smell of pine and dying leaves, the ache of knowing very soon it’ll be too cold, too icy, too snowy to ride, and I’ll have to wait months to feel this feeling again.

         When I met Natalie, she said she hated motorcycles. I’d thought then, in my fourteen-year-old head, that she was gorgeous, but she’d never be the girl for me. How could I be with a girl who hated the thing I loved more than anything else?  I was determined at that moment to forget about her, even though when I’d first seen her walking across the campus of Blackmoor Academy, black hair shining in the sun like a raven’s wing, I’d felt the sort of instantaneous, desperate desire that seems unique to teenagers, the need for something I didn’t fully understand yet, but knew would matter more than anything in the world to me if only I could get my hands on it.

         On her.

         I couldn’t forget about her, no matter how much I tried. I tried to avoid her, but she always seemed to be there, gray eyes glinting, casting glances at me from where she stood with her group of friends, and that’s when I knew she’d noticed me, too.

         Our relationship grew in fits and starts. I was like a lot of boys my age, prone to picking on a girl I liked—something that didn’t change all that much over time—but Natalie could give it back as good as she got. There was a fire in her that I’d never seen in any other girl. It made me want her more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life, maybe even the motorcycle I was saving up for.

         My father was solidly against me owning one. He said it was for a lower class of people, for the bikers that worked for us, and certainly not for me, the son of one of the founding families. “The others already look down on the Kings as the least of the families,” he’d told me over and over again. “The more you associate with those who aren’t of our class, the worse you make it.”

         The less likely you’ll be to take the spot of the heir is what he’d meant. From the time I was old enough to understand that either I or one of my two friends—practically brothers—would run this town that I’d grown up in, it was impressed on me that I was supposed to be the hope of the King family, the one who would do what only one other King had ever done in the history of the town—take over.

         I’d known all my life that there was no leaving this place—and I resented it deeply. It felt as if there were no point in having dreams or goals of my own when I could never choose where I lived, never choose my own path, never do anything other than what I’d been told I was born to do, whether I liked it or not.

         That resentment, mixed with teenage rebellion, just pushed me to spend more time with the Devil’s Sons. I was determined to have my own bike when I turned sixteen. Since my father wasn’t inclined to buy me one, I started cleaning up at the underground fights, scrubbing changing rooms and bathrooms, and doing any odd jobs the organizers needed me to do. I knew as soon as I was old enough—they told me sixteen, the same age I could get my license and my motorcycle—I’d be down there fighting too. It pushed me to work out, train, and do the things that would eventually mold me into the adult I’d be.

         And Natalie was there for all of it. By the time we were fifteen, she was spending more time with me than her group of friends, and yet we still hadn’t kissed. She filled my every dream, every aching moment I spent in my bed and in my shower with my hand on my cock, I thought of her, but I hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to back her against the wall of the gym or the lockers between classes and take the kiss I so desperately wanted.

         But that all changed when I turned sixteen.

         The morning of my birthday, I skipped school. I skipped the fancy breakfast the cook made for me too, dodging my parents in the dining room to snag a muffin out of the kitchen and make a break for the part of town where the Devil’s Sons’ clubhouse was located and where I’d be able to get the motorcycle I’d been saving up to buy for two years.

         I rode it to school right after that, just in time to see Natalie in between classes. She took one look at me and the bike, and the most brilliant smile washed over her face as she strode towards me.

         “Take me for a ride, birthday boy?”

         I’d never forget those words. I took her out to my favorite spot, a little grassy meadow on the cliffs near the edge of town. There, under the brilliant early fall sunlight, I kissed Natalie Browning for the first time—my first kiss, and hers. We kissed for what felt like forever, slow and awkward, fast and clumsy, hands and mouths everywhere.

         “I thought you hated motorcycles,” I said when we came up for air. “You told me that the first time we met, when I was hanging out with the bikers’ kids.”

         “I’m pretty sure I still do,” she said with a laugh, tossing that shining hair over her shoulder. “But I love you, Jaxon King.”

         And then we were kissing again, wild and desperate, until Natalie rolled me onto my back in the grass and straddled my hips, laughing with delight as she looked down at my flushed face and lust-filled eyes.

         “Take me for a ride, birthday boy?”

         That’s how, on my sixteenth birthday, I got a motorcycle, a first kiss, a girlfriend, and lost my virginity all on the same day.

         But that’s just how Natalie was. When she decided she wanted something, she went after it. When she loved, she loved hard. And she wasn’t afraid of anything.

         Even the things that she probably should have been.

         Before Natalie, all my time had been spent with Cayde and Dean, my best friends, who were both a year younger than me. It didn’t matter, we’d been raised basically like brothers, and a year meant nothing, especially when, as a King, I was treated as the sidekick anyway. But with Natalie, I was an equal. I was her partner, lover, and best friend, and everything fell away except her and me. Our world narrowed down to that patch of grass on the cliff, where we’d go after dates to lose ourselves in each other, night after night. It was perfect. It was everything I wanted—she was everything I wanted.

         Until my family got wind of the two of us.

         No one would tell me why she wasn’t appropriate, only that I wasn’t allowed to date her. That she wasn’t the right kind of girl for a son of one of the families, for an heir, but no one would explain why. And predictably, neither Natalie nor I was having any of it.

         And neither of us was prepared to keep our relationship a secret for long.

         “I want to get the fuck out of this town,” she’d said one night as we lay breathless and panting in the grass, fingers entwined as we looked up at the stars. “I know you do too, Jaxon.”

         “I do. But my family will never let me go. They don’t even want us to be together.”

         “Fuck them,” she’d said fiercely, rolling towards me. “Let’s just go. They can’t stop us. They won’t. We’ll go as far as we have to to get away. Let’s just leave.”

         “When we’re eighteen?” I frowned at her.

         “No, soon. As soon as we can. Before something can happen that keeps us apart.”

         Natalie couldn’t have known what was coming. But it was like she’d had a sixth sense, some instinct that terrified her into thinking we were going to be forced apart sooner than later. We hatched a plan—not a good one—but a plan to run within a week, to take off for a state that would let us marry without parental permission, or we’d just hide out until we were eighteen and could marry wherever we wanted. I took my hidden savings from the fights and used a small amount of it to buy her the tiniest ring I’d ever seen, a sterling silver promise ring with a diamond so little she could barely see it, but she’d cried when I gave it to her the night before we were supposed to leave.

         I didn’t care about the money I was leaving behind. I didn’t care about the nice things, or the lifestyle, or the parties. I didn’t care about the fancy college education I’d never have. All I needed was Natalie and my motorcycle, and those two things belonged to me without question.

         Until she was taken away from me in an instant.

         The shape of her, walking across the street towards me, her hand raised in greeting. The crash of the car hitting her, a sound I would only later realize wasn’t accompanied by the squealing of brakes that would have come from someone trying to stop to avoid hitting her.

         Natalie’s scream, a sound I’ll never forget.

         The car screeching away, her body lying in the middle of the road.

         Blood on her mouth.

         Blood on the asphalt.

         The feeling of my chest cracking open, like dying, like nothing I’d ever felt before.

         The night that made me who I am today.

---

         My eyes fly open as I’m jerked out of the nightmare, but I don’t move. Years ago, I might have sat bolt upright, gasping and sweating, but not now. I’ve had it too many times, to the point where now sometimes I know I’m dreaming before I even wake up. But it doesn’t help because everything in the nightmare actually happened. I’m just reliving it, over and over again.

         Usually, the nightmare ends with me holding Natalie in the middle of the street, screaming, crying, begging for her to wake up even though it’s clear that she’s dead, that her skull is cracked open, that no one could lose that much blood and live. It never includes everything that came after, the months that I couldn’t go to school that resulted in me being held back a year, the suicide attempt, the days when I thought I couldn’t go on. The way I slowly closed up, becoming a shell of myself, hateful and angry with everyone around me. I blamed myself, even though I couldn’t fully articulate why, and I stopped going to hang out with the Sons. The only place I ever saw any of them was at the fights, but I stopped recognizing them, stopped doing anything except lashing out in every way I could.

         I stopped caring. I wouldn’t leave, but I wouldn’t play their game either, no more than I had to. When Natalie died, so did I.

         But tonight, the nightmare kept going. I found myself back on that street, empty and dark except for the full moon hanging overhead, standing in the middle of it with no real idea how I’d gotten there or why.

         Until I saw her.

         I knew it couldn’t be real, even in the dream. I knew it when I saw the hair matted to the side of her head with blood, not blowing around her face in the breeze, the way her jaw hung slightly askew, instead of delicate and perfect. I knew I was seeing Natalie, but Natalie after the accident, not the Natalie I’d loved.

         Not my Natalie.

         But it didn’t stop the nightmare from continuing, from holding me frozen in place as she wafted down the street to me, as she took my face in her hands, slanting her broken mouth over mine, until I tasted her blood on my lips as she begged me in a hollow, echoing voice—

         Save me, Jaxon. Save me.

         Take me away from here.

         Save me.

         Don’t let them hurt me anymore.

         Somewhere in those words, her voice blended with Athena’s, and then Athena was behind me, her hands on my waist, her broken, naked body pressed against me until all I could smell and taste was blood, the blood of the women I loved, the women I’d failed.

         Until I woke up in my own bed, my pulse racing and my throat dry.

         As I lay there, I know that there won’t be any more sleep for me tonight. I also know that Cayde and Dean have Athena covered, that they don’t really need me to take a shift checking up on her. In fact, it’s probably better if I don’t.

         So instead, I get dressed in the dark and slip out into the hall.

         The temptation to check on her is strong. I know what I’ll find, her in bed, sleeping away her injuries, giving her body time to rest and heal and knit itself back together. We still don’t know the full extent of what those animals did to her, but I can imagine, based on what we washed off of her skin, the cuts and bruises and injuries they left behind.

         And once I know who they are, they’re all going to die.

         I don’t go into her room, though. I fight off the temptation because I know that me being in there with her, being anywhere near her really, isn’t good for either of us.

         All I could ever do is hurt her. And not the way Dean and Cayde have either, but in a deeper, more permanent way. All I could ever be is bad for her, unless I could somehow figure out how to do the one thing that I couldn’t do for Natalie, and that’s get Athena out of here.

         But I can’t.

         And I don’t even know if I want to anymore.

         Something in me shattered when she fucked Cayde at that party. And I don’t know if it can ever be put back together, even if I wanted to.

         So yeah. It’s better for both of us if I don’t go in.

         Instead, I go out to where my motorcycle is parked and kick it into gear, breathing in the cold fall scent of the air as I switch on the headlights and pull away from Blackmoor House. As always, I’m constrained by the boundaries of the town, but I can still go for a ride.

         I can still pretend, for a couple hours, that I’m not.

         Moonlit nights were always my favorite. But tonight, I’m glad the moon is behind the clouds. Glad for the darkness, so I can try to forget that same moonlight shining down on the faces of two women I’ve loved now and two women that I’ve lost.

         Because, like it or not, Natalie is gone forever.

And Athena was never really mine at all.