Title: Tempted by a Rogue Prince (Eternal Mates Romance Series #3)
Author: Felicity Heaton
Synopsis: 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?
Tempted by a
Rogue Prince is available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble
Nook, Apple iBooks stores and other retailers. Also available in paperback.
Books in the Eternal Mates paranormal romance series:
Book 4: Hunted
by a Jaguar – coming in 2015
About Felicity
Heaton:
Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today
international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books.
In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action,
intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from
dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful
angels and hot demons! If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara
Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then
you will enjoy her books too.
If you love your angels a little dark and
wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong,
powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her
stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that
are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic
Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded
alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and
angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.
Tempted by a Rogue Prince – Excerpt
Vail lay face down on the black ground,
each hard breath stirring dust that choked him, fighting to muster the strength
to push himself up and find his feet again. He pressed his hands into the sharp
rocks but his muscles turned to water and his bones ached so fiercely his head
swam with the pain. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on breathing instead,
but even that was a struggle now.
He tilted his head to one side and stared
at his left hand as he curled his fingers into a fist, clawing at the dirt.
He couldn’t stay like this. He couldn’t
give up. Even when he wanted to surrender and find an eternal end to his
suffering. If he stayed like this, he would fall asleep and the hold the
nightmares had on him would grow stronger. Those terrible memories overwhelmed
him too often now, dragging him deeper into insanity, until he found it hard to
distinguish between reality and the past.
He couldn’t sleep.
Vail gritted his teeth and growled as he
pushed himself up, his arms shaking violently with the strain, causing his
entire body to tremble and his heart to race from the effort. He snarled and
kept pushing, refusing to give in to the lure of sleep. His arms gave out and
he hit the dirt again. The taste of blood on his tongue mocked him. He would
have been strong enough to stand if he had been feeding.
He didn’t want to eat.
He didn’t want to sleep.
He just wanted to keep walking.
He didn’t care where, as long as it was
away from his past.
Vail shoved his hands against the sharp
tiny rocks and grunted as he forced himself up, not relenting this time,
pushing past the pain and the fatigue, and the weakness invading him. Sweat
dotted his brow and trickled down his back beneath the skin-tight scales of his
black armour, and white spots winked across his vision, the exertion
threatening to render him unconscious and deliver him into the arms of the mad
beast waiting within him. It wanted out.
It wanted blood and violence.
Retribution.
Vail managed to make it onto his knees and
slumped, his breath sawing out of his lungs and his head spinning, sending the
ugly world around him twirling with it.
He clawed at the ground, bloodying his
fingertips, aching for the connection to the earth that this despicable land
refused to give to him.
Nature hid here, buried deep, shying away
from the darkness and the demons.
He longed to feel her again, to sense her
warmth flowing through him and the peace that came with being connected to her.
He shifted onto his backside, crossed his
legs with effort, and laid his hands in his lap. He couldn’t have the link to
nature that he craved right now, but he could find a sliver of peace through a
different connection.
The one with his older brother, Loren.
Vail closed his eyes as they stung, the
bridge of his nose burning with them and his throat tightening. He shoved aside
the pain and focused on his blood, on his brother, and lifted the barrier he
normally kept in place between them, shutting Loren out and making it
impossible for his brother to find him.
The connection bloomed between them like
warm sunshine, infusing him with peace and calm, with the constant affection
his brother held for him despite all his sins and all the pain he had caused
him over the past four thousand two hundred years they had been at war.
Four thousand two hundred years in which
Vail had been a slave to a dark witch, forced to do her bidding against his
will, whether it was massacring innocents, igniting wars between kingdoms,
attacking his brother and his people, or things that were far worse.
Unmentionable.
He rubbed at his arms, subconsciously
scrubbing the feel of her hands from his body, the sickening lingering touches
and the caresses.
And the other things.
Cold engulfed him, darkness rising from the
pit of his soul as his mind travelled black paths that led him downwards into
madness. He clawed at his arms and his armour covered his fingers, transforming
them into sharp serrated black claws.
Vail brought his hands up and clutched at
his head, digging his claws in deep and drawing blood, using the pain in the
present to battle that in his past. His fangs grew longer, stabbing into his
lower lip, and his pointed ears flared back against the sides of his head.
The warmth inside him increased, chasing
back the icy cold, and he trembled with relief.
Loren.
His brother was aware of him.
Reaching for him.
Tears spilled down Vail’s cheeks and he
held the connection between them for as long as he could without risking Loren
discovering his location, savouring it and using it to ground himself and
anchor him to the present. The connection grew stronger, his brother
reinforcing it from thousands of miles away, flooding him with love and
affection, with memories of being with Loren back in their kingdom, and then
even further back, to the old elf kingdom in the mortal realm, laughing like
fools as they played as children in the lush colourful gardens of the castle.
Loren.
Vail severed the connection, swiftly
bringing up the barrier to shut his brother out, unable to bear any more.
He clumsily stumbled onto his feet, almost
falling on his face again when his knees turned to jelly beneath him, and
staggered onwards, heading for the horizon.
The gods only knew where he was going. How
many days had it been since he had seen his brother?
Since he had protected his brother’s sweet
mate?
Since he had felt magic around him again
and sensed the presence of a witch?
Vail snarled, his lips peeling back off his
fangs. He should have killed her. His fingers flexed at the thought of
shredding her flesh, peeling it from her bones slice by slice while she
screamed for mercy. He had no mercy left in him. No goodness. No kindness. No
hope. A witch had made sure of that.
A witch had made him the enemy of all her
kind.
They all deserved to die.
For every life that witch had forced him to
take, he would kill one of her own treacherous, vile breed. He would wipe out
their entire species, freeing the realms of their trickery and magic.
His thoughts flickered back to that moment
on the battlefield, when Loren had stood before him, offering his hand.
Gods, Vail had wanted to take it.
He had been so close to placing his hand
into his brother’s one and taking the comfort he offered, the acceptance and
forgiveness.
A small part of him had even dared to hope
that he could return to the castle in the elf kingdom and things could be as
they were before Kordula had enslaved him and he had turned on his people,
making an enemy of himself in order to protect them all from her, thwarting her
plan to set herself up as their queen and enslave them all.
A fool’s dream.
Vail shuffled forwards, barely able to
place one foot in front of the other. His ankles wobbled with each step and his
muscles screamed in protest. His stomach growled, hunger riding him hard,
dragging up replays of battles where he had gorged himself on blood, making himself
stronger.
He denied it, too lucid right now to give
in to its demands and risk awakening the beast within him, but he knew there
would come a time when he blacked out again and woke with the taste of blood on
his tongue. Rather things happened that way than while he was conscious. He
didn’t want to remember the terrible things he did. There wasn’t room in his
soul for any more of them. It was filled with the hideous, despicable things he
had done, so black with them that not a speck of light could penetrate it.
Turning.
Vail had seen elves turn. He had seen them
degenerate into monsters, tainted by darkness, craving blood and violence.
He knew that his own turning was overdue.
He should have become the embodiment of darkness millennia ago, his mind warped
by the things Kordula had done to him, his soul blackened by the lives he had
taken, and his body contaminated by the pleasure she had wrung from it.
Bile blazed up his throat. He collapsed
onto his hands and knees and vomited, dry heaving until he shook all over and
his heart laboured.
He meticulously blanked his mind, killing
thought after thought, memory after memory, image after sickening image, until
nothing remained but cold emptiness.
His heart settled.
He stared at the black earth and his vision
swam out of focus.
He needed to stop thinking about the past.
He needed to stop courting the darkness, leading it on a dance as it did the
same to him, luring him ever deeper into the black abyss within his soul.
He needed to think about something else.
Vail dragged himself back onto his feet and
trudged onwards, staring at the ground. He recited sonnets in his head, filling
it with words to keep the shadows at bay.
The terrain grew hilly, challenging his
limited strength on every ascent and his ability to maintain his balance on the
descents.
At some point, he crossed a border.
Vail became aware of it the moment three
large bare-chested demon males teleported in front of him. Warriors. They were
mostly human in appearance, but the painted black tips of the grey horns that
curled from behind their ears and their vivid green eyes warned him that he had
wandered into dangerous territory.
The Fifth Realm.
The three demons advanced.
Vail stood his ground. There was little
point in running, and he didn’t have the strength left to teleport or call his
swords to him. He couldn’t even muster a telekinetic blast to drive them away
from him.
They eyed him suspiciously.
The largest of them, a black-haired brute
with a thick scar that cut a diagonal line across his muscular bare chest,
stepped forwards and curled his lip.
“Elf.”
Vail bit back his desire to point out that
the male was stating the obvious. No other creature in Hell shared the
appearance of an elf, and none other had the black armour he wore.
His fangs itched with a need to sink into
their flesh. It wouldn’t appease his hunger. Demon blood tasted wretched.
Toxic.
The darkness in him began to push, filling
his head with visions of attacking these three males. They couldn’t give him life
through their blood, but they could give him something far sweeter. Something
that had eluded him for so long now.
Death.
He snarled and launched himself at the
leader, slamming into him and knocking him back into the other two. They
immediately attacked him, pummelling him with powerful blows that only served
to unleash his hunger for violence and bloodshed, giving it free rein. He
turned and took on the weakest of the three, slashing across his chest with his
claws and raking them down his arms, cleaving flesh and spilling blood. He
laughed as the scent of it drove him onwards, pushing his fatigue to the back
of his mind.
The demon blocked his next strike and
delivered one of his own, a powerful punch that cracked the left side of Vail’s
jaw and snapped his head to his right. His vision wobbled and pain blazed a
path across his face, numbing it. The demon struck him again, harder this time,
and Vail’s knees crumpled beneath him. Darkness encroached at the corners of
his mind.
He shook it off and tried to shove to his
feet, but large hands clamped down on his shoulders, two on each, and the third
male grabbed his arms. Vail cried out as the leader twisted his arms behind his
back, almost popping his shoulders out of their sockets with the force of his
actions.
“We take him and put him with the others,”
the leader growled in the demon tongue behind him. “The king will be pleased we
have an elf. He will want to question him about the war and the Third Realm.”
They thought he was part of Loren’s army that
had attended the war between the Third and Fifth Realms on the side of the
Third, under the banner of King Thorne.
Vail struggled but it was useless. His
strength gave way before he could wrestle himself free. The darkness rose
within him again, the mad beast snarling for freedom, caged by his weak body
just when he would have embraced it and used it to escape and goad these demons
into killing him.
A black hole appeared beneath him and he
dropped into it with the demons still holding him. They teleported him into a
dark stone room that smelled of fetid things, the odour so foul that it choked
his lungs.
“You think we should remove his armour?”
one said and Vail growled and used all of his limited strength to fight their
hold.
“It needs to go. He’s dangerous with it
on.” The leader this time.
Vail shook his head and refused to
relinquish it as the three demons set to work on him, trying to slip their
fingers into the neck of the black scale-like armour. He snarled and mentally
commanded it to form his helm, forcing their hands off him as the scales
crawled up his neck. They thickened and smoothed as they covered the back of
his head and chased across his forehead, forming a point above his nose and
then sweeping back over the top of his head into a series of curved spikes that
flared backwards like dragon horns.
“Get it off him.” The leader released his
arms and pulled at his helmet, jerking his head with the force of his attempts.
Vail snapped and lashed out at him,
catching him across his chest with his claws, adding more scars.
He wouldn’t let them take his armour. It
was his only protection right now when he was so weak. As wrecked as it was
because he didn’t have the strength to repair it, his claws were still intact
and he needed this small connection to his people. His armour was his talisman.
He had never been without it. He had always cherished it. It was his sole
connection to his past.
To better days.
It kept him sane.
The leader grabbed a heavy black club and
swung it at him. It connected hard with his left arm, fracturing the bone. One
of the others followed his leader, picking up another of the clubs. Vail ground
his teeth and desperately blocked their blows, snarling through his fangs as
they beat him, stripping away the last of his strength as his tired body began
to give out under the pain and damage.
The third demon, the one he had mercilessly
clawed, punched him square in the face, breaking his nose. Blood streamed over
his lips. His vision distorted. No. He couldn’t pass out. He couldn’t give in.
His mental link to his armour fragmented.
He managed to muster the strength to call a pair of black trousers to encase
his lower half before the scales peeled away, rapidly running over his body,
and disappeared into the twin black and silver metal bands around his wrists.
Vail collapsed onto the dirty slick stone
flags, a black void rising up to swallow him.
The last thing he heard was the leader
ordering the others to take him to the cells and have him healed.
Healed.
He snarled, but barely squeezed the sound
out from between his bloodied lips before he sank into the black void, into
nightmares filled with horrific replays of Kordula and the cruelty she had
inflicted upon him, a torture of mind, body and soul.
Vail swore an oath.
If this healer was a sorceress…
He would kill her.
Tempted by a
Rogue Prince and the Eternal Mates series is set in the same world as the
Vampire Erotic Theatre series, so if you’re a fan of that series, you will love
Eternal Mates. Throughout this series, you’ll have a chance to catch up with
the cast of the Vampire Erotic Theatre series and learn more about their world.
In Claimed by a Demon King, you’ll get to visit the theatre, and some of the
favourite characters in the Vampire Erotic Theatre series.
****All of the author's profits and royalties from the sale of this ebook will be donated to MacMillan Nurses for the wonderful work that they do. 
Kirsty Moseley lives in Norfolk, England with her husband and son. After discovering Wattpad, an online writing site, she decided to take the plunge and upload one of her stories on there. Seven million reads later, she then decided to try her hand at publishing. The Boy Who Sneaks in My Bedroom Window was her first novel, published in April 2012. Over two years later, she now has five books under her belt, an international bestselling title and over thirteen hundred five star reviews on Amazon.
