Snippet Saturday – Tempted by a Rogue Prince (Eternal Mates Paranormal Romance Series Book 3) – Excerpt

Snippet Saturday is brought to you today by Tempted by a Rogue Prince, which is the third book in my popular Eternal Mates romance series. Read on for this Saturday’s snippet…

Rosalind stared at the unconscious male lying on the stone slab in the middle of the cell. Torchlight from the corridor beyond the thick metal bars lining one side of the dank windowless room flickered across his battered and bruised body, darkening every ugly mark and deep gash, and all the blood that stained him.

Was it his or had he hurt the bastard demons who had put him here?

She liked to think he had given them hell. Mostly because she couldn’t.

He hadn’t stirred in the five minutes she had been kneeling beside him, transfixed by the sight of him. He lay as if dead. Only the slight rise and fall of his chest was indication otherwise.

His hands rested on his stomach, his wrists bound by the same heavy metal cuffs that held hers. She wanted to find whoever had discovered this metal and how to impregnate it with a spell and blast them to hell. The manacles weakened her, stripping her of her powers. The only one available to her was the ability to heal, and she only had that one because the new Fifth King of the demons had given it back to her so she could heal all of the warriors who had been injured in the war with the Third King.

A war the Fifth Realm had lost when the old Fifth King had lost his head.

A war she had fought in on the side of King Thorne of the Third Realm.

A war that had changed her forever.

Since returning her ability to cast healing magic, the new Fifth King had used her whenever he had needed someone fixed, forcing her to do his bidding, and up until today, all of her patients had been demons belonging to his army.

But this man was no demon.

Her knees ached from pressing into the damp uneven stone floor but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He radiated dark energy that warned her away, telling her that he was dangerous, even as she felt drawn to him, snared by an unbreakable pull towards him.

Shuffling caught her attention and she looked across the unconscious man to the cell opposite his. A handsome man with long dark brown hair flecked with gold tied back with a thong and an unkempt beard leaned against the thick stone wall close to the bars of that cell, as bare-chested as her companion, although his skin was flawless with the exception of the fae markings that tracked up his arms and over his shoulders.

An incubus.

Rosalind muttered a protection spell beneath her breath, even though it wouldn’t work. It was a habit with her. She preferred to arm herself against an incubus’s charms before he could use them on her, luring her under his spell and having his way with her. Code of honour, her arse. These men pretended in public that they upheld their vow to never use their powers to seduce a woman who didn’t want to be seduced, but in private they employed those powers without a flicker of regret or care about their victim. She had seen it.

The man eyed her patient, blue and gold spotting his green irises, a sign of his incubus nature as much as the markings that announced his lineage.

“Let him die,” the man said, his voice a low growl of warning without a shred of compassion, and the swirls, dashes and spikes of his fae markings shimmered in hues of dark blue and burnished gold. Not anger. She knew that an incubus’s markings flared crimson and obsidian when they were angry. Judging by the look in his green eyes, this was something more like apprehension.

Why?

Rosalind glared at him and flicked her knotted blonde hair over her shoulder in defiance. “It isn’t in my nature to ignore the needs of another, especially if I feel I can help them, and I do feel I can help this man.”

He was gaunt though, sick and not from his injuries. His skin was sallow and grey, and he was too thin, the bones visible in the backs of his dirty hands. Many of his nails were cracked, caked with grime and dried blood.

“Let him die,” the incubus whispered. “This one isn’t worth saving, Little Girl.”

Rosalind turned her glare on him again. “Why do you say such nasty things? Do you know him?”

The incubus dropped his green gaze to the man, narrowed it, and then shifted it back to her. “Only by reputation, and if I were in your place, I would kill him and not save him. By killing him, you could be saving many lives, one this man may take if you allow him to live.”

Rosalind looked at the man in question, a cold heavy feeling pulling her insides down. She knew he was dangerous, but she knew nothing else about him. She didn’t know the incubus from Adam either, and for all she did know, he could be a compulsive liar or a sadistic bastard itching to get a hit of pleasure from watching her kill an innocent man.

She lifted her hand with the intent of touching her patient’s arm and funnelling a spell into him to sense whether the incubus was telling the truth about him, and remembered that such spells were beyond her right now. Locked away. She had never been without her magic. It was unsettling, strange, and left her feeling vulnerable.

The man on the cold stone slab before her twitched and moaned, the sound strained and filled with agony that tore at her and compelled her to help him.

“I don’t have power over this man’s life,” she whispered to him in reply to the incubus, her eyes fixed on his face, taking in the dark circles beneath his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks. “I don’t have the right to choose whether he lives or dies.”

“Because the demons told you to heal him?” the incubus said.

“No.” Rosalind shook her head and looked across at him. “Because it isn’t in my nature to do such a thing. I will heal him.”

The man scoffed. “And you will live to regret it, Little Girl.”

“I’m not a girl. I’m over one hundred years old… and do I look like a girl to you?” Rosalind stood and ran her hands down her tattered black dress, the traditional garb of a witch on duty.

The incubus’s eyes followed them, the blue and gold in his irises increasing, and he muttered, “No.”

He turned away, pressing his bare back against the bars of his cell and revealing the twin lines of markings where they joined between his shoulders and formed a line down his back that ended in a diamond above the waist of his low-slung black jeans.

At least he would be quiet now. She hoped. Healing always required focus, and something told her that this time it would need the highest level of concentration she could manage.

Something else told her that the incubus might be right. She might regret healing this man. If he was as dangerous as he felt, he might well kill her upon waking.

But maybe that would be what she deserved after the things she had done.

Did you enjoy today’s snippet?

Tempted by a Rogue Prince
Felicity Heaton
An elf prince on the verge of losing himself to the darkness, Vail is maddened by the forty-two centuries he was under the control of a witch and forced to war with his brother. Now, he roams Hell seeking an escape from his terrible past and the heads of all who bear magic. When demons of the Fifth Realm capture him, he sees a chance to end his existence, but when he wakes in a cell to a beautiful female, he finds not death but his only shot at salvation—his true fated mate.

Captured by the enemy of the Third Realm when the war ended, Rosalind has spent months in the cells of the Fifth Realm with her magic bound, forced to heal the new king’s demon warriors, and haunted by the lives she has taken. When she’s brought to heal an unconscious man, she discovers her only hope of escape has come in the form of her worst nightmare and the first part of a prediction that might spell her doom—a devastatingly handsome and dangerous dark elf prince.

Unwilling to fall under the control of anyone ever again, Vail must escape before the Fifth King can use him as a pawn in a deadly game of revenge, but he cannot leave without Rosalind, the woman who looks at him with dark desire in her stunning eyes and awakens a fierce hunger in his heart. A witch who drives him mad with need even as the darkness within whispers she will enslave him too.

Can Rosalind escape her fate as they embark on a journey fraught with danger and resist the temptation of her rogue elf prince? And can Vail overcome the memories that madden him in order to seize his chance for salvation and the heart of his fated female forever?

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If you haven’t had a chance to read any of the books in the Eternal Mates romance series yet, they’re all available at major ebook retailers and in paperback, and you can find the links and samples of the books at my website:

Kissed by a Dark Prince (Eternal Mates Romance Series #1)
Claimed by a Demon King (Eternal Mates Romance Series #2)
Tempted by a Rogue Prince (Eternal Mates Romance Series #3)