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

Today’s tease comes from the book Tempted by a Rogue Prince, which is the third book in my popular Eternal Mates romance series. Read on for this Tuesday’s tease…

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,” Rosalind 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.

She had vowed to protect lives, to do all in her power to tend to people’s needs, and she had been protecting lives in the war between the Third and Fifth Realms, but she had also been taking them.

If this man was a killer and deserved death because of it, then surely she deserved the same fate in order to maintain the balance and order of the world?

She closed her eyes against the memories that welled up, lashing at her. She hated that she now knew how to kill. She hated knowing she was capable of that darkness. It scared her.

She feared becoming like her sister, a dark witch drawing on the shadowy other side for her power—the realm of death.

But worse than that, she feared that now she knew how to kill, she could do it again if she had to, and next time it would be easier.

Rosalind opened her eyes and focused on the man in front of her, on the present rather than the past or what might lay ahead in her future.

The aura of danger clinging to him was growing stronger. He was healing himself. Was he one of the warriors from the war? If he was, what side had he fought on and what species was he?

The only way to find out the answers to those questions was to complete the task she had been sent here to do.

She blew out her breath and held her hands over his bare chest. As she lowered them, bringing them almost into contact with his skin, she channelled the only power available to her into him, seeking out his wounds and fixing them as best she could. There were so many.

Her power drained quickly and she had to take regular breaks to avoid overtaxing herself and passing out. She didn’t want to lose consciousness in a cell with this dangerous stranger, not when she didn’t have the power to protect herself.

The fast drain on her power confirmed something for her though. This man’s injuries and wounds ran deeper than those of the flesh that she could see. He was weak for a reason, whether that was a sickness of the body or of the mind.

His eyelids fluttered and she withdrew her hands again, her breath lodging in her throat as she waited. His long black lashes lifted, revealing steel-blue eyes. His dilated pupils swiftly narrowed and his hands shot up above his head. He snarled at the cuffs and pulled his wrists apart, tugging the chain between them taut. He heaved harder, his muscles tensing and rippling beneath his bloodstained pale skin, and growled when the chain didn’t break.

“They dampen our powers,” she said.

His gaze darted to her and narrowed, steel blue-grey that burned into her, sending a fierce shiver of awareness through her that drew every drop of her focus to him. What species was he? Vampire? Werewolf? Both of them had a human appearance and she had met many of their kind in the past, but none had affected her as this man did.

He struggled harder against his bonds and the metal sliced into his wrists, spilling blood down his arms. It didn’t stop him from fighting the restraints.

“Stop!” Rosalind snapped, her voice echoing around the stone cells.

He turned a murderous glare on her and flexed his fingers. His demeanour changed instantly, becoming distraught as his eyes went to his wrists and he flexed his fingers again. Over and over. He did it at least ten times before he began to growl and try harder, struggling against his bonds at the same time. Was something supposed to happen whenever he flexed his fingers?

He kept trying, clearly convinced that if he just kept doing it, whatever he was expecting would happen.

It wouldn’t.

She could sympathise. After the demons of the Fifth Realm had captured her during the battle and she had awoken in her cell, she had tried for hours to blast the bars and every demon who had strolled along the corridor and smirked at her.

She had been convinced that she could find the trick to get around the spell embedded into the metal.

This man was too.

His eyes went glassy and he sagged against the stone bench, his cuffed wrists dropping and slamming hard into his heaving chest.

Rosalind inched closer.

The man managed to slide his gaze her way, and passed out.

She sighed, carefully moved his hands back down to his stomach, and went back to work. She held one hand over his forehead and the other above his heart, closed her eyes, and shut the world out as she channelled as much energy as she could spare into him.

“Let him die,” the incubus whispered, a seductive proposition when healing the man was weakening her, leaving her more vulnerable than ever.

She lifted her head and gave the incubus a sorrowful smile. “I cannot. I must heal him. I took a vow.”

His expression turned solemn. “I understand the power of a vow, but if he wakes and kills you, I will say I told you so.”

She smiled properly for the first time in weeks. “I can take that.”

The incubus smiled too and muttered in the fae tongue. “We’re all fucked if he wakes up.”

Rosalind ignored that, sure that he knew she could understand the fae tongue since most witches could speak the language as they worked closely with his kind. He was doing it on purpose to distract her from her work. One tiny mistake and she could kill her patient.

She had to maintain rigid control over her healing spell. They were dangerous, with a tendency to go awry if the controlling witch’s link to it broke.

Awry being a polite way of saying inflicting crippling pain on the patient by attempting to heal anything and everything, even functioning organs and joints, before it fizzled out.

When she had no more energy to expend, she sat back on her heels and her shoulders sagged as she wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. He was looking better, but was nowhere close to being healed. She couldn’t do anything more for him right now. She needed to rest until her strength returned, and then she would begin again.

She stared at him, the incubus’s warning ringing in her tired mind.

Who was this dangerous and deadly male?

She willed him to wake and tell her.

She wanted to know him.

Did you enjoy today’s tease?

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?

Available in e-book from:
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Available in paperback from:
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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)