Kissed by a Dark Prince (Volume 1) by Felicity Heaton Read Free Book Online Page A

just killed him before. You’ve been at war for four thousand years. There must have been opportunities.”
    “I almost succeeded once.” He began pacing again, long strides eating up the stone floor with ease. The man couldn’t keep still whenever he felt agitated and watching him pace only served to agitate her. It showed off his body in far too good a light and gave her a terrible excuse to stare. “I came close to killing Vail’s ki’ara... it would have given me a chance to capture him.”
    Olivia didn’t miss that he had said capture him. Not kill him. Now she knew why they had been fighting for so long. The prince couldn’t bring himself to kill this psychopath. Why not?
    “What’s a ki’ara?” She figured it was safer than probing about his reasons for not killing his enemy.
    He glanced across at her. “It is our term for our fated female... our eternal mate. You are my ki’ara. The dark witch named Kordula is Vail’s ki’ara.”
    So his enemy was another elf, and he had a fated female too, and the prince had tried to kill her.
    “Do you get like a harem of them... or is it a one-time deal?” She hoped he didn’t say that each elf only got one ki’ara, but the solemn edge to his purple eyes warned that he was going to shatter that hope the moment he spoke.
    “We have one fated female.” He looked away from her again, his head lowered now, his focus on his knee-high black boots.
    Whatever this ki’ara thing was, she had the impression that elves placed a lot of value on it and it wasn’t something they gave up lightly. She couldn’t imagine having just one shot at true love. The prince was five thousand years old and now he had found his ki’ara, in her, and he didn’t need to say it aloud for her to know that he was thinking about giving her up. He didn’t act or look like a man who was happy to have found his soul mate and was going to fight to keep her.
    “What happened with Vail and his ki’ara?” Olivia said and he stopped pacing, his gaze on the floor and his eyes widening.
    He frowned and spat out what she could imagine was a vile curse.
    “I am a fool. I have been looking at this all wrong.” He threw his head back and growled, his fangs sharp and ears pointed again. “Vail will seek you out and torture you to drive me to the brink. He is seeking revenge and desires me to suffer as he had. He will use you to hurt me.”
    Olivia’s blood chilled to sub-zero temperatures and she stared at him, struggling to get past the part about this madman torturing her.
    She managed to reach the end of what he said and realised that what he had told her earlier hadn’t been something romantic or noble at all. He had meant it literally. If someone hurt her, then he would feel it. He would share her pain.
    Olivia couldn’t comprehend that. It was too much. She couldn’t breathe as the weight of it pressed down on her and the thought of being tortured closed her throat. Her head spun, the room viciously turning with it.
    “Calm yourself!” he bellowed, a dark commanding snarl.
    No. She was damned well going to have herself a major panic attack and he could damned well deal with it. She was sure that a panicking woman wasn’t on his list of things he enjoyed dealing with, but he had just announced that someone was out to torture her and considering this man had beaten the crap out of the prince, she felt her demise at his hands was somewhat inevitable.
    “Female,” the prince gritted out and Olivia tried to focus on him.
    He wobbled into focus and she frowned when she saw he was clutching his chest and was paler than ever, on the verge of collapse too.
    Oh my God. He didn’t only share her pain.
    His knees gave out, sending him crashing to the floor, and he whipped out a vicious curse in English this time, his handsome face contorting, revealing how much he despised what was happening to him. Olivia rushed to him and crouched before him. He inhaled hard, his shoulders heaving with each