Kings & Carnage: A Dark New Adult College Romance (Aventine University Book 3) - SIGNED PAPERBACK

I was floating on a dark sea. The tide flowed gently under me, lapping at the shore of a distant beach. There was no moon, no stars. Just the dark sky overhead blending into the black fathomless waters.

And then, a crash.

Metal on metal.

I tried to right myself, hoping to tread water while I looked for the origin of the sound, but my body was paralyzed. I was frozen, a prisoner of the water that held me captive in its dark embrace.

The sound grew louder, accompanied by the guttural growls of an unseen monster.

Panic clawed at my insides. Where was this dark place? Why couldn't I escape? Why couldn't I see anything? I tried to flail my limbs to no avail, attempting to force my eyes open as the sounds in the distance grew more recognizable as shouting.

Someone — or something — was with me in the great sea.

And then, little by little, a sliver of light appeared.

I wasn't floating after all. I wasn't even in the water. I was lying down on some kind of bed.

My relief at being able to open my eyes was short-lived. The light was piercing, its brightness like a power drill in my brain, and I closed my eyes quickly against the pain before attempting to open them again.

"She's waking up," a woman said from the other side of my closed eyelids.

"What's taking security so long?" another voice — this time a man — said.

"I don't know, but keep him out of here," the woman said.

I tried again, forcing my eyes open against the pain shrieking in my brain, and was blinded by fluorescent lighting shining down from a white ceiling.

"Willa? You're okay,” the woman said. “You’re in the hospital, but you’re okay."

I blinked again and she came into focus above me, a middle-aged woman with brown hair and creases around her comforting blue eyes.

"What's happening?" I asked.

 

The commotion in the background was getting louder, a deep voice angry and insistent.

Animalistic.

And now that I was awake, I knew that voice.

I knew it in my blood. In my bones.

Neo.

Then I remembered: leaving the island with Oscar, Rock, and Neo. Driving with Rock to meet my mom, to tell her the truth about Roberto.

I remembered something else too. Gurneys being rolled past me in a long white hall, blood seeping through the clothes of the unconscious men on them.

My men.

I tried to sit up and winced at the pain that shot through my sternum. It was so powerful it took my breath away and I sucked in air as I fell back onto the pillow.

"The airbags in the car and your seat belt saved your life," the woman (doctor? nurse? I didn’t know) said. "But you got pretty bruised up."

The pain was enough to make my eyes water, but now that I remembered what had happened, nothing mattered but them.

The Kings.

My Kings.

“My… friends… Rock…" I remembered seeing Oscar and Neo being rolled past me in the hospital hallway right after the accident.

 

But I didn’t remember seeing Rock.

"Your friends— " It was as far as she got before the door to the hospital room !ew open.

I lifted my head from the pillow and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

Neo, his massive frame somehow looking vulnerable in a hospital gown, looming in the doorway like a raging bull, his amber eyes lit with chaotic fury.

His gaze landed on me and relief washed over his eyes.

"Willa… thank god." He started through the door and headed for the bed but he only got a few steps in before two security guards grabbed his arms and started pulling him back.

I started to protest but didn't get very far before Neo's roar tore through the room.

"Get the fuck off me!” he bellowed, shrugging one of them off like he was nothing but a fly. The guard stumbled backward. "You can't keep me from her! No one's going to keep me from her!"

"It's okay!" My shout was feeble but desperate. I needed to see him. Needed to know he was okay. Needed to know what had happened to Oscar and Rock. "Let him in! I want to see him! Let him in!"

The security guards looked at the woman still standing by my bedside and she nodded her approval.

They let go of Neo with a scowl and he lurched toward my bed, unsteady on his feet, as if he were drugged, a vicious gash above his left eye.

He seemed to reach me all at once, pulling me into his arms gently but ferociously.

He lowered his head to my hair. "Thank god," he breathed. “Thank fucking god.”

I wrapped my arms around him and sank into the solid feel of his body.

He pulled back and held my head in his hands, studying my face. “Are you okay?” He ran his hands carefully down my shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

“My chest hurts.” The pain had disappeared into the background in the wake of my relief at seeing Neo, but it was still there, a throbbing ache that started on the left side of my chest and radiated through my upper body. “But I think I’m okay. What about you?”

I studied him for signs of an injury other than the cut that had been stitched above his left eye.

“I’m good,” Neo said.

The nurse bustling around us snorted and I narrowed my eyes at Neo.

“Why don’t I believe that? And where are Rock and Oscar?”

“Drago took a bullet to this thigh and— ”

“A bullet?!”

“He’s okay,” Neo said. “But…”

 

“But?” My heart was hammering in my chest and my brain beat out a rhythmic plea.

Please let them be okay, please let them be okay, please let them be okay…

And then, just one word.

Please.

Neo hesitated, then took my hand in both of his big ones.

It was such a tender gesture, so out of character from his usual roughness, that the drumbeat of fear beat even louder, threatening to block out everything as my head filled with a strange buzzing sound.

“Rock has a head injury,” Neo finally said. “He hasn’t regained consciousness.”