Prisoner of Fate
Prisoner of Fate
TWISTED FATE TRILOGY BOOK 3
TAMI LUND
PRISONER OF FATE
Twisted Fate Trilogy, Book 3
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by TAMI LUND
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Cover Design: C.D. Gorri
Editor: SMP
Copyright: 2022 by Tami Lund
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License Notes
All rights reserved. This book is copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes without express, written permission from the author or publisher. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to purchase their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer.
Thank you for your support.
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All entities, locations, businesses, etc. in this book are strictly figments of the author’s overactive imagination and are not to be construed as real.
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Questions, comments, or desires to seek permission to use any part of this book for your own purposes should be directed to authortamilund@gmail.com.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Prisoner of Fate
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Dragon His Heels
Chapter 1
Also by Tami Lund
Prisoner of Fate
PRISONER OF FATE
Twisted Fate Trilogy Book 3
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Lily never knew she had a thing for bad boys.
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She’s a shifter, a virgin, the last of her kind, and she’s been hiding out on a desert island for her entire life. Now that she’s joined the real world she resents her responsibilities to her species: To choose the right mate and get to work repopulating the world with Light Ones who will protect all of humanity.
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Which is the very last thing she wants to do.
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And then she meets Matteo, a Rakshasa—those shifters who like to eat humans as snacks. Her sworn enemy.
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He’s been a prisoner of the Fates for a thousand years, and she has no business befriending him. Or worse, giving him her most precious commodity: her innocence.
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It’s the exciting conclusion to the Twisted Fate Trilogy!
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Twisted Fate Trilogy, in reading order:
Of Love & Darkness
Prim and Proper Fate
Prisoner of Fate
Thank you, Sheila & Jennifer, for Matteo’s name.
Chapter One
“Mate with me, Lily.”
Lily’s eyes flew open and she bolted into a seated position in the bed, clutching the sheet to her breast, her heart hammering in her chest.
What a nightmare. She swore she recognized that voice, yet the idea of taking a mate...
Shudder.
“Is that a yes?” A hand stroked down her bare arm.
She let out a yelp and pulled on her Chala magic to bathe her bedroom in light. Blinking rapidly, she waited impatiently for her eyes adjust to the sudden brightness. When she was finally able to focus, she saw a man kneeling next to her bed. Correction: a shifter. A Light One.
“Ricky,” she snapped, “you scared the heck out of me. I thought I was having a nightmare.”
He was one of the good guys. One of the hundreds who had come together to form a pack when they discovered her friend Sydney was a Chala. But Sydney was mated to the cursed Rakshasa, Gavin Rowan, and was in fact carrying his child in her womb.
Which left Lily as the last remaining unmated Chala in the entire world. And like the song claimed, everybody wanted her.
“It’s no nightmare,” he crooned. “I’m your dream come true.”
She placed her hand on his face and gave him a shove, using her Chala magic to add a bit of oomph to the action, so that he went sprawling on the rug on his backside. He sat there, propped up by his palms pressed to the floor, looking up at her like a puppy waiting for his master’s next command.
“Ricky, what are you doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?” Now that she realized she hadn’t had a nightmare after all, she wasn’t remotely afraid, but she was fully annoyed.
Ricky scrambled onto his knees and placed his hands on the mattress, reinforcing her puppy analogy. “Light Ones are programmed to seek out Chala,” he said, and Lily groaned because she knew what he was going to say next. “It’s a great honor to have a Chala choose you to be her mate.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Based on the look he gave her, she wondered if she’d said those words out loud, instead of in her head. Or perhaps he caught her exaggerated eye roll.
“It’s your destiny, Lily. You have to pick one of us. You have to birth babies. Give us more Chala. Save our species.”
It’s your destiny, Lily. She’d heard that phrase so many times in the last four months, she was surprised she hadn’t developed a superhero complex.
“So let’s mate,” Ricky suggested, as if he were asking if she wanted a piece of pie.
Pie actually sounded good right about now, but mating?
Nope.
She supposed she should give him points for bluntness. No, wait, all the other Light Ones who were wooing her were blunt, too. “You think that’s going to work? The other guys have been trying everything from flowers to diamonds to new cars. Did you know Mike bought me an Audi last week, even though I can barely drive? And you decide invading my personal space in the middle of the night is the answer?”
Ricky shrugged. “All that other stuff isn’t working, and I don’t have a lot of money anyway. People are vulnerable when they’re sleeping. Their defenses are down. I thought maybe you’d be more reasonable if you were half-asleep.”
With his shaggy, light-brown hair, thick, yet manicured beard, and solid muscles, Ricky was as attractive as the next Light One. Despite his unorthodox way of expressing his interest, she knew he would adore her to the end of her days, which would never come, so long as they kept the Rakshasa at bay, whether she mated with him or not.
“I can’t, Ricky. I’m sorry.”
He sat back on his haunches, his shoulders slumping. “Why not? Why won’t you take anyone to mate? You’ve been with our pack for four months, driving us all crazy, not giving us an inkling of what you want, who you’ll choose. We know it’ll be one of us. Why are you dragging this out?”
Lily crossed her arms and lifted her chin. She would not be bullied into this decision, even if it was her destiny to save her species. “Of course I’m dragging it out. I lived on an island with no contact with the outside world for almost two hundred years. Practically since birth. Seven months ago was the first time I’ve had any experience whatsoever with the fun that comes along with living here, in this place where there is something interesting to be done around every corner. And you can’t figure out why I’m dragging out the decision to be barefoot and pregnant for the rest of my existence?”
That was the crux of it, and she was surprised she’d admitted as much out loud. No doubt the entire pack would know her true reasons for not committing by the end of the day, if not by dawn.
“It’s true,” she said, figuring she now had nothing to lose. “That’s my problem. I realize I am almost two hundred years old, but really, I’m more like a twenty-one-year-old who’s just finished college and feels as though she has her entire life ahead of her, waiting to be lived. I’ve been on that desert island for my entire life, Ricky. There were three brownies and Prim to keep me company—”
“Brownies? You mean those tiny people you and Prim brought with you when you joined our pack? The ones who are always cleaning or cooking?” Ricky interrupted. “They sure are cool. I didn’t even know they were a thing.”
“Yes, well, anyway, on the rare occasion when Prim had visitors, I was forced to hide away, so no one would know I even existed. I swam in the ocean, I played with Prim’s makeup, and I read her romance novels, over and over and over again. That was my entire existence, until Gaya took me to New Orleans in February.”
Her first experience with the mainland involved spending the night in a second-story apartment overlooking Bourbon Street the weekend before Fat Tuesday. Despite the fact that an uncursed Gavin attacked them in the middle of the night and very nearly killed Brandon Haines, who was mated to her Fate, Prim, and who was like a father to Lily, the experience had been second to none. One all-night party and she was supposed to become a baby-making factory?
Not if she could help it.
“It’s too dangerous for you not to take a mate,” Ricky said. “The Rakshasa could show up and kill you at any moment.”
“Which they could do after I’m mated, too,” Lily countered. “If being mated was the solution to our Rakshasa problem, we wouldn’t have a problem. As I understand it, back before we practically became extinct, most Chala wanted to be mated. My ancestors were perfectly content hooking up with the f
irst able-bodied Light One and getting to work popping out pups. Except the Rakshasa managed to keep on killing them, despite their mated status.”
“Yes, but you’re protected here. Gavin’s our leader now, and he used to be one of them. He’s the baddest-ass shifter I’ve ever met. And he’s turned us all into a well-honed fighting machine. We can fend them off now. The rest of them will keep the Rakshasa away while you and I get busy making those babies. We need more Chala in the world, Lily. You don’t have a choice. You need to choose one of us and start us on the path toward saving our species. And the humans.”
Save our species, Lily. Save the humans, Lily.
But how?
By laying on your back and letting some guy ram it into you until you get pregnant.
Gee, that sounds delightful.
Of course, she didn’t really think that was how it was done, especially given her experience was strictly from the pages of Prim’s steamy romance novels. The Fates knew that wasn’t how it happened in books.
“I haven’t even properly kissed a guy,” she blurted, her filter once again letting her down. Ricky eyed her like he was willing to be her first, and she stared back, wondering if she should just do it. Get it over with.
“Not the mating,” she murmured, chasing her own thoughts. “But the sex.”
“Huh?”
“They don’t have to be intertwined, do they?”
“Sex and mating?” Ricky shook his head, but she suspected that was more confusion than acknowledging her question. “Are you saying you want to sleep with me?”
“Not necessarily you, no. I mean, if we have sex, you’ll assume I’ve chosen you to mate with, when, really, I just want to lose my virginity. I’m not ready to take a mate.”
She glanced at the window, at the darkness beyond.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.”
Chapter Two
“What’s wrong, Lily? You seem more annoyed than usual.”
Lily wasn’t offended by the comment. Sydney had become her dearest and bestest friend outside of Prim, who was really more of a mother than a best friend, and Sydney knew how unhappy Lily was with the prospect of mating to one of the Light Ones and never truly experiencing life.
They wandered along the beach in front of the massive old farmhouse they shared with the rest of the pack. Hilde, the Fate who owned the home and property, had been thrilled to have the pack join her. She hadn’t enjoyed living a solitary life, but when one was trying to live out an eternal existence in the human world, it was a good idea to not make it so obvious that one would never age beyond their current appearance.
The lake was busy with humans taking advantage of the warmer than usual September weather. They all knew that soon it would be too cold to be out on the water. Winters in this area, so Lily had been informed, could be brutal. She wasn’t particularly concerned. Shifters, even Chala, had a higher average body temperature than humans. And besides, if everyone in this pack had their way, she’d be sharing her bed with someone else before the first snowfall.
She shuddered.
“Cold?” Sydney asked.
Lily shook her head. “No. Just thinking. Dreading the inevitable, as usual.”
Sydney touched her shirtsleeve. “I know the idea of getting stuck with one of these guys for the rest of your life bothers you, but if it’s the actual act of mating with him that does, let me assure you, there is nothing to dread about that aspect. Nothing at all.” She placed her hands on her belly and her lips lifted in a dreamy smile.
She wasn’t supposed to be pregnant. Prim had explicitly told her and Gavin that they should never, ever procreate. Gavin was a Rakshasa, albeit a cursed one, and Sydney was a Chala. Rakshasa were evil shapeshifters. They liked to snack on human bones and generally had no conscience to speak of, unlike the Light Ones, who made it their life mission to protect humans from their malevolent doppelgangers.
The two species did not coexist. At least they hadn’t, until Gavin saved Sydney from a Rakshasa attack and then declared her his mate. The curse Prim put on him two hundred years ago allowed him to feel all of his malicious Rakshasa urges, but also made him believe he was a Light One. In his mind, he saw no issue with mating with a Chala. At the time, they had believed she was the last Chala left in the world, too.
And then, in a moment blinded by lust and desperation, they forgot to protect themselves, and now Sydney was pregnant. With a Rakshasa growing in her belly.
“How are you feeling?” Lily asked, partially to deflect and also because she was truly concerned for her friend’s health—and life. So far, Sydney’s pregnancy had been uneventful, but no one had a clue whether that would continue, or even what she would birth. While Prim had warned them not to get pregnant, she admitted she had no idea what would happen when Rakshasa and Chala genes mixed. This was unchartered territory for all of them.
Sydney patted her burgeoning belly. “Fine, although the bigger I get, the more nervous Gavin gets about continuing to have sex.”
“If this were a normal pregnancy, there would be no reason you couldn’t, all the way up until you go into labor.” Lily knew a whole lot of book-based facts. There had been ample time for learning while she’d lounged on her desert island for the past two hundred years.
“Except it isn’t. But man, other than the first trimester, I have been hornier than ever before in my life.” Her blond ponytail swung back and forth as she shook her head in apparent bemusement.
“Well, that’s good to hear, I suppose.”
“For you, because you’ll end up mating to a Light One. And since that’s the way it’s supposed to be, no one will be concerned that you’re hurting your baby by scratching an almost perpetual itch.” The annoyance in Sydney’s voice was as clear as the sun beating down on them.
Lily winced. “Sorry. I’m being selfish, thinking about my own situation, when I know you are probably scared to death of what is going to happen in the next couple months.”
Sydney patted her sleeve again. “It’s okay. I’m not, actually. I mean, there’s literally nothing we can do until this little peanut decides to make his or her appearance in the world. No point in stressing until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Is Gavin really afraid the baby will come out cursed?”
The curse, according to Gavin, would drive most people mad. In fact, it had, the first time Prim had put it on a Rakshasa. It was far, far too powerful a curse for a child to handle.
“Not anymore. Prim has convinced him that the curse will not have passed from his system to mine to the baby’s. So now he’s worried it will be a Rakshasa, and how do we raise a child that is programmed to kill its mother?”
How indeed?
When Lily stepped into the kitchen later that day, Sydney’s Fate, William, stood at the counter, doing some sort of food preparation, which tended to encompass a large portion of his waking hours. Feeding several hundred hungry Light Ones was a full time job in and of itself.
In his white with navy-blue polka dots halter dress, navy-blue high-heeled sandals, and his favorite curly blond wig, he was a football linebacker dressed as a fifties housewife, a fairly standard look for William.