Page 128 of Crown of Thorns
Dad nods. “I’m glad to hear that you accept our offer. Tonight, we will say goodbye to both Zachary and Jacques. Either with a friendly handshake or with force. I’m usually not aviolent person, but they should have kept their hands off one of our own.”
My skin glows. My chest tightens. I'm proud to be a Deveraux, and I hope Noah will be too. Because I will marry that man one day, and he will wear my name.
“Thank you, sir,” he says, but I don't miss how his voice cracks just that little. Just enough. He squeezes my hand, too.
“Arthur, I want you to step up and join me on the board.”
Arthur doesn't speak, but when I turn his way, his eyes are already on mine. Waiting for that nod I give him. He nods back at me in agreement. “Thank you, Dad.”
“Good. Then let's head out. You do your thing, forget I'm even there. You won't see me until the time is right.”
Still, the air crackles when we make our way to the cars. Dad and Levi step into one, the rest of us get into the SUV.
He looks at me like I’m something sacred. We slide into the back seat, and the hum of the road falls away. Our knees touch.
“Are you really wearing your lacy panties?” he whispers, voice low.
“Nights like these always make me hungry for more,” I murmur, brushing my thigh against his.
He huffs a breath, but there’s reverence behind his teasing. “I’m not going to chase anyone.”
“I know, baby.” I hold up his briefcase with a grin. “You can work until the initiation.”
His gaze drags over me—tense, uncertain, needing. “Will you still claim me?”
“Always.”
We fall quiet. My fingers find his, and the air between us thickens. The car rocks gently, the night outside pressing in. We move without words, mouths meeting in reverence. Heat curls around us, slow and inevitable. We don’t need to speak.
Later, breathless and undone, we lean against each other—chests rising in sync, skin buzzing from the heat of soft kisses and the lingering taste of him. Whatever fear he brought into this night, he’s left it in my hands.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” I murmur, smiling against his hair, “put on your cloak and mask.”
He buttons the cloak with shaky hands, and for a moment, the heat in the car lingers like an echo—before duty swallows it whole.
“Let’s go hunting.”
Professor Noah Montague is sexy as fuck, running through the forest at night in nothing but a cloak and a mask. The image is almost mythic—dangerous, beautiful, and utterly mine. He was supposed to work, but when I offered him a matching one to my own golden and crimson, he left his briefcase and came with me instead.
He complains about inequality, but his tumultuous, grey glare tells me everything I need to know.
He fucking loves it.
What's not to enjoy about four guys desperate to make it through the initiation of a secret brotherhood? I mean, they all want it.
Tonight’s a brutal one, though. The kind that makes my blood hum and my fingers twitch with anticipation. There’s a hunger in me—not just to watch, but to take part. To remind them what it means to be owned. And yet, somewhere deeper, colder, a question lingers: how much brutality is too much when the price is legacy?
We recently had the pleasure of letting a monster join the Alpha Fraternarii—a mobster whose family does clean-ups for the likes of us. Eduard is built like a brick, and the boy he's claimed as his kitten doesn’t stand a chance. Not that he wants one.
The entire night I'm buzzing with energy. There's plenty of sex, which I fucking love to watch. But Dad's here too, hidden somewhere in the darkness.
And when the Initiation finally ends, I'm not surprised to hear the bell ring inside the castle. Someone walks through the corridors, playing on a drum, wearing an army uniform from before the French Revolution. Blue and yellow.
Here comes trouble.
Three men, equally cloaked and masked, follow him down the stairs—my heart lodges in my throat when I recognize the golden and red between them. Noah has joined Dad and Arthur. He's stepped up for tonight's punishment—not because he enjoys being a brother. He doesn’t. He’ll die fighting inequality. But tonight, it’s personal. He'll die fighting for it in life. But because he needs to avenge his past. The wrong that has been done to his family.
Noah needs to rewrite his legacy. And once he has done what needs to be done, he can take his crown of thorns and own the land that was left to him and make it his.
