Awful Intentions: Friends-to-Lovers Romance (The Celestial Bodies Series Book 2) Read online

  I decided evil looked like the Prince of the Underworld,

  before I met true evil…

  Elena Monroe

  © 2020 by Elena Monroe. All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without the written consent and permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, dialogues, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead, businesses, locales, or events other than those specifically cited are unintentional and purely coincidental or are used for the purpose of illustration only.

  The publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. The author and publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. The publisher and author do not have any control over and do not assume any responsibility for third party websites or their content.

  First edition.

  Cover Design: Maria with Steamy Reads

  Editor/Formatting: Sarajoy Bonebright

  Proofreader: Liz Argote

  Photographer: Michelle Lancaster

  Cover Model: Thomas

  Mac –

  For the endless think tank sessions, the inspiration, the full character act outs in the office and endless theory chats. These characters will always provide a kind of bond that is forever immortalized.

  Amber –

  Girl.

  My Twin.

  This is your man and I can only hope to do him justice in every word.

  I hope Nyx is everything you hoped him to be: dangerous, sexy and the prince of your darkness.

  George –

  For the endless understanding in scrolling through hot men, sexy teasers, and loving my tribe from afar, knowing these books are all consuming. You are patience in a human form, and I love you for letting me run wild in my mind, this world, with these characters.

  Ash –

  Girl. Seriously. You are my eyes to my words. I don’t think I can even try to summarize the magic and voodoo you do. My stories would be nothing without your visuals. I’m biased, but you are the hardest worker I know, most dedicated, and literally the community’s biggest cheerleader. We’ll get you a black and gray uniform.

  Liz –

  You went through some of the biggest transitions with work and life this year, and I am so PROUD. You still found time to proofread and support me. I am so grateful to have you on my side. Thick & thin.

  Sarajoy –

  DON’T EVER LEAVE ME.

  I wanna say that’s all, but it isn’t. You are an ANGEL. You turn my words, broken characters, and complicated webs into GOLD. You give me such good feedback, notes, and are continuously teaching me to write better. You are the challenge I need to keep pushing myself to be better.

  Give Me Books Promotions –

  You guys are BOMB. I am always so stress free and, dare I say it, enjoying releases more and more. I would recommend GMB for days and to everyone. You guys are AMAZING.

  Maria at Steamy Reads –

  MAGIC.

  Seriously, I respect you so much as a designer for taking my very vague notes and making these beautiful covers that get attention so easily. That speaks MOUNTAINS of your talent. We all have a long way to climb.

  Rule Breakers –

  I write for you guys.

  All day.

  Every day.

  All of my stories belong to you.

  They may be my characters and worlds, but once they go free, once I write with all your considerations and hopes behind my pen, they become yours too. So own them, play with them, and make them even more yours.

  Prologue: Nyx

  Chapter 1: Luna

  Chapter 2: Nyx

  Chapter 3: Nyx

  Chapter 4: Nyx

  Chapter 5: Nyx

  Chapter 6: Luna

  Chapter 7: Arianna

  Chapter 8: Luna

  Chapter 9: Nyx

  Chapter 10: Nyx

  Chapter 11: Nyx

  Chapter 12: Luna

  Chapter 13: Nyx

  Chapter 14: Luna

  Chapter 15: Nyx

  Chapter 16: Luna

  Chapter 17: Caellum

  Chapter 18: Nyx

  Chapter 19: Luna

  Chapter 20: Luna

  Chapter 21: Nyx

  Chapter 22: Hades

  Chapter 23: Luna

  Chapter 24: Caellum

  Chapter 25: Luna

  Chapter 26: Luna

  Chapter 27: Nyx

  Chapter 28: Nyx

  Chapter 29: Nyx

  Chapter 30: Luna

  Chapter 31: Nyx

  Chapter 32: Luna

  Chapter 33: Nyx

  Chapter 34: Bolton

  Chapter 35: Nyx

  Chapter 36: Caellum

  Chapter 37: Luna

  Chapter 38: Kate

  Chapter 39: Caellum

  Chapter 40: Nyx

  Chapter 41: Nyx

  Chapter 42: Luna

  Chapter 43: Luna

  Chapter 44: Luna

  Chapter 45: Nyx

  Chapter 46: Caellum

  Epilogue: Avery

  Danny Avila & The Vamps ft. MGK– “Too Good To Be True”

  Meek Mills ft. Justin Timberlake – “Believe”

  PVRIS – “Dead Weight”

  G-Eazy ft. Tory Lanez & Tyga – “Just Friends”

  Halsey– “Young God”

  JoJo ft. Wiz – “F*** Apologies”

  Delacey ft. G-Eazy – “Cruel Intentions”

  No tree, it is said, can grow to

  unless its roots reach down to

  - Carl Jung (Astrologer)

  Nyx

  T he glowing sun was hanging in the sky, like paper amongst the disappearing stars, stuck between day and night still. The sky was shifting right along with us. Pushing my line of sight down and sweeping over the group, I realized we were all broken, limp rag dolls, only functioning on leftover adrenaline.

  Nothing about the ritual went the way we planned.

  Nothing we thought ended up as truths, and nothing we planned for happened.

  I was drowning in the painful honesty that nothing was what we wanted it to be.

  Luna kept wiping silent tears with her thumb, trying to be less inconspicuous. She was always trying to be less of a burden. Little did she know, she wasn’t a burden at all. Anyone to say otherwise was going to deal with me.

  She was my plaything.

  I wanted to be the one who broke her obedience; I wanted to make her my own personal sacrifice.

  Having my fill of death was clearly moving my body onto sex without me agreeing.

  Smoothing my fingers down her palm, I let the warmth of my hand capture hers. The ritual broke my plaything before I could.

  “You okay?”

  Her head spun to my direction with a glare pronounced over her small features and freckles. “I killed Cheyanne, and Omari is still in the woods bargaining with dead gods to get her back. No, I’m not okay.”

  My eyebrows arched up in surprise. I just silently looked at her. She wasn’t the Luna we knew.

  She didn’t want me texting her profanities, and she didn’t want the nice version I just offered up on a silver platter. All I had
left was the jagged edges that were going to end up hurting her more than she already was.

  I looked back over my shoulder one last time at the campus I had spent less time trapped in than the others, but Arcadia Prep was an illusion. Not one building was real or authentic. Not one person was human; they were just there to make us feel less lonely.

  Didn't work.

  The one person on my side was now firmly in the middle of a battle of two truths. She isn't as innocent as she thought herself to be, so who does that make her now.

  She was too preoccupied to remember to kill my loneliness.

  I didn’t know where we were going now. Everything seemed new again, even her.

  The street Arcadia was on was vacant, quiet, and a kind of creepy I found myself comfortable in—more comfortable than the monotony of pretending to be normal when I had the powers of gods. My powers weren’t particularly useful in everyday life, but when it came down to testing my patience, I had the strength and speed to get myself out of there with as much effort as a blink.

  That wasn’t one of these moments, but I swore to the gods if Bolton tried to make demands with no bargains, my patience would drain to empty.

  Bolton and Caellum were always battling to wear a crown with no meaning—aluminum and fragile. I couldn’t care less. If a crown meant everyone leaving me alone, then I’d throw myself in as a candidate.

  Caellum had the dazed and still confused Arianna slung over his shoulder.

  Caellum, not Bolton.

  Bolton was cracking. Our king was cracking, and I couldn’t be the only one to see the imperfections as he walked further ahead of everyone.

  Even the neighborhood right outside of Arcadia, everything was abandoned and rotting into its true form—a lie. There were still abandoned cars, so someone pulling these powerful strings gave us a glimmer of hope, because I knew how to hot-wire a car.

  I wasn’t walking to the ends of the earth trying to figure out if we were trapped in Pandora’s Box or in our humanity after all. I broke away from the group and walked over to an SUV parked in a driveway, like an apocalypse had happened and there wasn’t any time to take anything with you.

  I yanked the door open, since it was unlocked—another red flag. I twisted to see under the steering wheel. Ripping the wires I needed down, I stripped them of the coating meant to protect you from getting shocked, which made me chuckle. We had a girl with lightning in her fingertips, a little wire shock was nothing in comparison.

  Rubbing the wires together, I created a spark and jammed my pocketknife into the ignition, forcing it to turn over and the engine purr for me.

  I didn’t bother yelling for anyone. Instead, I made my way to the end of the car and whistled.

  It was still communicating, just less verbal.

  Luna used to berate me for not communicating well. Glares, whistles, body language… none of that mattered if it wasn’t my words.

  That was the thing about Luna: She demanded more from me, even if I couldn’t give it to her. She always wanted more of me, always.

  Now, she was a shell of herself trying to recover and find a happy medium between being the good girl I knew and the bad one that came out to play last night.

  My fingers closed around her arm, dragging her closer to me. She was in the middle of the road, as much dazed and confused as the rest of them, waiting to be run over by the cars that weren’t existent here.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I barked in a low whisper in her ear, as I forcefully yanked her to me and dragged her to the car.

  Her empty expression didn’t change, not even slightly or for a second. She was a shell.

  “Look at me, Luna!” I demanded things from her too, but this sounded more like pleading.

  She twisted her head, with her gaze still stuck to the ground. I knew she couldn’t be my Luna right now, and I had to accept that or I would end up breaking her more.

  “You guys take this car. We’ll follow. We aren’t all gonna fit anyways.” I made sure my voice was casual and not alarming.

  Every alarm was going haywire in my body, screaming at me to fix Luna, because if she ended up being a lie and not who I fell for, then… Well, whatever I did wouldn’t be good or bad; it would be diabolical in response.

  Still holding on to her arm, I waited for them to all hug her goodbye. They all looked at her with such sympathy and remorse, taking on her role for her. I watched the car drive down the road and stop at a stop sign. Since when do any of us follow the rules? Let alone a stop sign on an abandoned road.

  Dragging her with me, I searched for a suitable car—nothing fancy, something with wheels was all I expected—but when I peered into a garage, I saw a 1978 Pontiac Firebird.

  My heart skipped a beat, and for a second, I forgot how empty it was with Luna like this.

  We didn’t have cars in Olympus; we envied humanity for all it had—all the unnecessary accessories to their skin suits.

  Using my strength—something I was forced to hide more than display—I pulled the handle up, and the garage door nearly came apart. I examined the Firebird, making sure it went untouched, and glided my fingers along the perfect paint job.

  Someone was definitely pulling some strings, somewhere. No one knew this was a car I lusted over from our kingdom in the sky.

  Who? And why? Are all our gods dead? How do we know for sure? Because Bolton said so? He says a lot of half-truths to go with his half royalty.

  Luna’s dirty white tennis shoes scrapped the pavement, with her eyes stuck to the ground again. I felt something in my chest collapse just looking at her.

  I guess most people call it a heart.

  I call it an open wound with no cure.

  Arianna never pushed her fingers into my wound like Luna did. I killed Zeus more than once for Arianna, for her freedom and affection, but that all paled in comparison to Luna.

  When I transferred to Arcadia, I didn’t expect anything. I barely remembered who I was, my past, or how I even got there, really. I just ended up there, like the school pulled me to its door.

  The first person to say hello to me was Luna, but a more lively version with freckles that sparkled against her pale skin. Her hair resembled the fire I was used to.

  It wasn’t until she touched my hand to introduce herself that I started remembering things.

  I don’t believe in love at first sight, or love in general. It's like religion, created by humanity to make life less lonely. Luna was something different. When her green eyes bore into me, I felt the same sting in my open wound that I was feeling right now.

  She wanted me to save her; I just didn’t know from what. Now, I’m just as lost.

  Herself?

  The bad parts we all have hidden underneath?

  Me?

  I stopped staring at her in the distance and made long strides to her side. Standing almost flush against her, I cupped her face. I could feel my eyebrows furrowed with tension. “Luna, tell me what I’m saving you from.”

  Her bottom lip trembled, and her eyes watered so much they held an ocean. “It’s not me you need to save… You should save everyone... from me.”

  I held her small features in my hands, still too stunned to respond. I should have told her that she could go on a killing spree, and I wouldn’t love her any less.

  We were a match made in Hell.

  Luna

  L ife outside of Arcadia wasn’t much different.

  Humanity wasn’t much different than the amalgamation of personalities of this, now broken, circle.

  The only thing we were all agreeing on was not putting ourselves in the same position with school.

  Fourteen years’ worth of school, and you grew a disgruntled employee vibe when it came to textbooks, tests, and even hallways.

  Here, none of us were considered royalty or children of gods; we were considered exactly what we looked like: humans. It was exactly what we all needed: a break from being ourselves and being normal for once.

&nbs
p; Maybe if I wasn’t myself long enough, it would trigger my brain into remembering who I was before I killed Cheyanne.

  Maybe if I stopped waking up covered in a sticky sweat and my stomach turning, while my heart raced, I could forget it happened long enough to remember who that girl was.

  I sat up in bed, trying to breathe through my nose, as I looked at Arianna’s empty bed. It was always empty now.

  At least living with me meant, she didn’t have to explain her disappearing acts to Bolton. I had no room to talk; I pulled the same trick she did at Arcadia, except my activities went unnoticed—

  drowned out by me killing Cheyanne and forcing Omari to run away.

  Something inside of me told me he didn’t run. Everything inside me felt like he vanished into thin air along with his sister.

  We really didn’t know; no one went back for him.

  We betrayed them threefold: making him hate us enough to sabotage the ritual, killing his twin, and leaving him behind. I wouldn’t be shocked if he came after us for vengeance.

  He could have been planning it out all this time. It had been quiet for months as we settled into our new roles in normalcy.

  I pushed my baby hairs off my forehead, which was still wet with sweat from my bad behavior haunting my dreams.

  It was always the same nightmare: Cheyanne screaming for me to help her, with Omari dead in her arms, instead of how it really happened.

  I reached for my phone and saw that my alarm hadn’t gone off yet. Until the nightmares subsided, I was positive they would be my alarm from now on.

  Opening my phone to my texts, I ignored all other messages to text Arianna (still roommate, best friend, and fellow mangled character flaws victim) first.

  Me: You didn’t sleep in your bed again. Do I need to tell Bolton?

  Bolton was the only threat she respected, and I only pulled out the big guns when I felt her slipping further into the darkness.

  We were each other’s flashlights. Without her, I would be trapped in the dark forever.

  My phone buzzed in my hands, and a banner at the top with Nyx’s name flashed above my threat. I sighed, knowing he was going to remind me who I was, in the least amount of words possible.