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  Fever Fae

  DARK FAE KINGS BOOK 1

  Meg Xuemei X

  Fever Fae© 2020 by Meg Xuemei X

  Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Cover art by Jay Villalobos

  Edited by Christina Walker

  The novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence. Novel intended for adults only.

  Books by Meg Xuemei X

  THE FIRST WITCH SERIES

  The Dragonian’s Witch

  The Witch’s Consort

  OF SHADOWS AND FIRE SERIES

  The Burn of the Underworld

  The Fall of the Underworld

  THE WAR OF GODS SERIES

  A Court of Blood and Void

  A Court of Fire and Metal

  A Court of Ice and Wind

  A Court of Earth and Ether

  HALF-BLOOD ACADEMY SERIES

  Magic Trials

  Magic Secret

  Magic Fury

  Magic Unchained

  Magic Flame

  THE CURSED DRAGON QUEEN & HER MATES SERIES

  The Fury Queen’s Harem

  The Dragon Queen’s Harem

  The Fae Queen’s Harem

  TRUE MATE SERIES

  Claim the Wolf King

  Claim the Leopard Princess

  THE WICKEDEST WITCH SERIES

  Wicked Witch

  Dark Vampire

  Fallen Angel

  DARK CHEMISTRY SERIES

  The Siren

  The Prince

  The Red Queen

  DARK FAE KINGS SERIES

  Book 1: Fever Fae

  Book 2: Frost Fae

  Book 3: Night Fae

  Book 4: Blood Fae

  Fever Fae

  Yes, to the hottest, baddest Fae Kings. No, to being their bitch.

  When my parents mysteriously disappear, leaving me to raise my six crazy, younger siblings, my dreams for college are dashed.

  It gets worse when someone sends a slew of monster assassins after me and my family. Their untimely arrival is followed by three devastatingly hot Fae assholes who stalk me.

  Baron, the pompous and dominating Summer King, thinks I’m a dark Fae and wants my head. Then he changes his mind and declares me his fated mate. Hells-a-no. Especially now that he wants me to prove my worth. Really?

  Then there’s Rowan, the possessive and cruel Winter King, who offers to protect me from the assassins, but only if I accept his obnoxious courtship requests.

  And finally, there’s Night King Rydstrom, a dangerous and mysterious Fae with an ass that doesn’t quit, who thinks he has every right to play me like a fiddle.

  Too bad for them, I’m not the docile type they're used to commanding. I might want to screw them, but I have no intention of joining the trail of broken hearts and bodies in their wake.

  For I hold a deep, dark secret. Their arrival has woken in me the very forbidden magic they’ve been hunting, and I, Evelina Greene, am going to have a wicked good time teaching these Alpha Fae a lesson.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Books by Meg Xuemei X

  Fever Fae

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Author’s Note

  SNEAK PEEK: WAR OF THE GODS

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The alarm blared in my ears.

  Jerking awake, I swung an arm to hit the retro clock’s bell to stop the shrieks, only to knock over a hummingbird desk lamp. It hit the floor, and its gold-accented glass panels shattered.

  Shit. Mom was going to kill me for breaking her favorite touch lamp. What excuse could I give her?

  A sharp pain surged to my brain, clearing any sleepiness.

  Mom was gone, as was Dad. They’d vanished without a trace three days ago. I’d dropped out of college and left my hot boyfriend to come home to take care of my six younger siblings.

  I hit the clock and the shrieking alarm shut up. I forced my eyes open and stared until the clock came into focus. The needle pointed to five.

  I groaned. Five AM was a goddamned hour.

  I had to get up and make breakfast for my siblings. I’d clean up the mess of the broken lamp after those little buggers were out of the house.

  It sucked to be the oldest child.

  Why did my siblings need to eat? Couldn’t they just grow up like the weeds in the backyard instead of requiring maintenance?

  My mouth drooping, I dragged myself to the edge of the bed and perched there. For a second, I debated throwing myself back onto the pillow and letting the world burn.

  And then my siblings would miss school. Chaos would whip the house with them all home, and I wouldn’t have a moment of peace. Then social services would pay us a visit and take them away because I couldn’t provide for my siblings.

  Anxiety throbbed in my veins.

  I tramped to the window and wrenched open thick curtains. A mass of gray light splashed across the sky. The tiny hairs on my nape bristled. Someone was watching me.

  I scanned the street, skimming beyond the tree lines along the driveway that curved around my Spanish-style house. I didn’t spot any movement, yet I knew for sure I was being observed closely.

  Did this new development have anything to do with my parents’ disappearance? My heart rammed into my ribcage. I’d have to wait until my siblings were out of the house to scout the neighborhood and investigate.

  I yanked back the curtains to obscure the view of any stalker. A foreboding chill slithered up my spine, knocking the last trace of sleepiness from my system. I threw on a pink T-shirt that said: What’s my weakness? Six pack abs and a trail of golden hair. The hem settled a few inches above my knees. I opened the door and bumbled downstairs.

  The house was quiet. All of my siblings still slumbered. Sweet dreams, I thought bitterly. Pausing in the middle of the stairs, I yelled so my voice filled the house. “Wake up! I’m not nice like Mom!”

  “You’re a bitch, Evelina!” A high-pitched voice came from an upstairs room. Safiya was my least favorite sibling, a fifteen-year-old who demanded the world revolved around her.

  “This bitch is the one who puts the bread and butter on the table now
,” I said. “Unless you can do the same, you’ll get up, eat something, and go to school to get the fuck out of my sight.”

  None of my siblings reacted to my swearing, not even a sigh. I wouldn’t have dared to whisper an F-bomb in my parents’ presence.

  I stumbled down the stairs to the ground floor, yet I didn’t hear anyone getting out of their beds, other than that three of them pulled up their blankets to cover their heads.

  I had superior hearing. I always knew what my siblings were up to in their rooms. Like Emmett, my sixteen-year-old brother, would always masturbate heavily if he obtained new manga porn comics.

  I jogged to the common room, and from under the counter, I snatched a hyper whistle I bargained off eBay for an occasion like this. I returned to the base of the stairs, put the silver whistle in my mouth, covered my ears, and blew it with my full lung capacity.

  The piercing sound blasted through the house, worse than the fire alarm.

  “Stop, Evie! Just stop!” Siblings shouted their pleas.

  Emmett traipsed down the stairs and shook his head at me in disgust. “You’re the most terrible sister on earth.”

  I grinned. “Depends who’s judging.”

  Safiya stomped after Emmett, glaring at me. The rest of my siblings charged out of their shared rooms toward the three bathrooms, bumping each other out of the way to claim the first right to use the bathroom.

  Those little buggers were unruly. As long as they didn’t bite anyone, I could deal with it. I understood how hard it was for the seven of us fighting for limited resources all these years.

  Turning on my heel, I padded into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was mostly empty now. I’d have to go shopping today.

  Tomorrow I’d head to the police station again to check on my parents’ missing case, though I knew it was a long shot that the cops would find anything.

  I also needed to find a job within a week if I wanted to feed a family of seven.

  I forced back the sudden tears stinging my eyes.

  I got this. I can do it, I murmured to myself as I took out a crate of eggs.

  When I was almost done with mixing butter and scrambled eggs, all my siblings arrived, except for Fawn, my six-year-old sweet, youngest sister.

  Asuka and Nox, the dirty-blond twins, rubbed their eyes and yawned at the same time before one of them snatched two bowls and the other fetched milk and Honey Nut Cheerios. The twins took care of each other, and only each other. I had no problem with that since they didn’t bother anyone else.

  “Emmett, could you microwave the pre-cooked bacon, please?” I asked. “Safiya, I need you to set the plates, please. Everyone, I’d highly appreciate it if you could get your lunchbox ready and put it on the counter after your breakfast.”

  “I don’t eat bacon!” Safiya pouted, flapping her long hazelnut hair. “Mom always made me omelets with lots of spinach, mushroom, and a pint of ricotta cheese.”

  “I don’t have time to make omelets,” I said. “There are so many of you, and I don’t want any of you to be late for school again!” I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t know how to make an omelet.

  “Then at least make some pancakes,” Safiya sneered.

  “Make it yourself,” I snapped at my sister. “You’re a big girl.”

  Until this day, I’d never realized how rotten and spoiled we all were. And now these little leeches expected me to take Mom’s role until they could sip me dry.

  “I don’t do kitchen work,” Safiya said.

  “That’s too bad, princess,” I said. “You’re under new management now.”

  Safiya shot me a venomous glare.

  “Evie, I think the eggs are overdone,” Emmett said, laughter in his voice.

  Among us, only Emmett and Safiya resembled my parents. They both got Mom’s hazelnut hair.

  I dumped the overcooked scrambled eggs onto a big plate. They were still edible.

  “I want waffles!” shouted Cassidy, my eight-year-old, pain-in-the-butt brother. He was the only one among us who had curly hair. He could use a haircut soon. Guess I would have to do it for him.

  “We ran out of waffles, buddy,” I said.

  “My name is not Buddy,” he barked. “And I only eat waffles!”

  At the smell of burned bread, I rushed to the toaster and yanked out the toasted slices. I tossed them onto an empty plate. The brown bread looked mostly fine other than the blackened edges. My siblings wouldn’t get cancer eating them, right?

  “You’ll eat whatever I put on the table,” I said, glaring at each of them in turn.

  They didn’t understand that our lives had changed. One moment, everything had been fine. One moment I had giggled in my boyfriend’s lap and drunk my fill of pungent draft beer in a wild Manhattan party. The next I received the phone call that my parents hadn’t returned home.

  The pale-green family van was still parked in the driveway.

  It’d been useless to ask our neighbors if they’d seen anything the day my parents vanished. Our house sat alone at the end of the lane, and the nearest neighbor lived a few hundred yards beyond the trees that lined our property.

  “Cassidy, I got you strawberry jam.” Fawn sounded like a sweet angel as she entered the dining room. She wore a uniform skirt and high knee socks. Her silver-blonde hair flowed down her tiny shoulders.

  Nox poured her a glass of milk as she climbed onto the chair beside Cassidy.

  I strolled to the table and picked up Fawn’s glass of milk. “I’ll heat it for you, angel.” I kissed her crown, and she hugged me. Ever since my parents had adopted my younger sister at age three, I’d always had a soft spot for her.

  “Mom and Dad won’t be back for a while,” Fawn said like a prophet. “But monsters are coming.”

  A chill sliced up my spine, not at my sister’s prediction, but the sudden drop in temperature. My breath puffed out in a little cloud. It was followed by a terrible stench that had me gagging.

  From the corner of the dining room, a beast stared at us, its crimson eyes glowing with a murderous light. It stood over eight feet tall with fangs protruding from its giant, hideous jaw.

  Fear punched my guts. My heart beat so fast that I was afraid it would tear out of my chest.

  My siblings screamed.

  “I locked the doors,” I shrieked. “I closed all the windows last night!”

  “It didn’t come through a door or a window,” Fawn said. “It must’ve escaped my dreams.”

  The monster snarled. Thick fur rippled and muscles flexed along its massive shoulders.

  I glanced at the glass of milk in my shaking hand—the only weapon at my disposal.

  Dad had trained me in swordplay since I was old enough to hold a stick, but the strenuous physical training was useless without a weapon in reach. Even if I’d had my dagger on me, I had no advantage over a monster from a nightmare.

  The monster growled gutturally, and the terror that kept my siblings frozen in place hit me like a living black wire. My anger rose to a blaze of fury. I leapt around the counter with the glass of milk still in my hand and stepped in front of my siblings, shielding them from the fiend’s view.

  “Dark. Princess. Kill.” The fiend uttered the three broken words, its fangs dripping a string of saliva.

  I didn’t recognize its speech as any human language, yet I understood the words perfectly.

  It raised its claws and lunged.

  I chucked the glass of milk at the monster’s snout. The glass slammed into its nose hard enough to stun the beast, and the liquid splashed into its eyes.

  “Run!” I shouted as the glass crashed into pieces on the floor.

  My siblings screamed and bolted toward the stairs.

  Every one of my instincts urged me to follow them before the monster finished wiping the milk from its eyes, but running would only doom my siblings. Trembling with fury and fear, I snatched a fork and a butter knife and jumped onto the table, planning to flip and land on the fiend’s back so
I could stab it in the eyes.

  I prayed I wouldn’t miss.

  The beast snapped its eyes open and snarled viciously. An answering roar tore out of my throat, a sound so savage I could scarcely believe it was my voice.

  A wave of unexpected energy rolled across my belly, and a surge of shadow fire blasted out of me, crashing into the monster. The nightmare sailed across the kitchen and smashed out of the window, howling in pain and surprise.

  The glass shattered and shards fell all over the counter, followed by a loud thud outside.

  I shook, staring at the broken window. I’d somehow shot out a dark fire, and it had flung the monster out of the house.

  What kind of freak was I?

  Panting, I looked around wildly in search of more threats.

  “You’re the Night and Dawn Star, Evie,” Fawn said with pride.

  I gazed down, my pulse still pounding in my ears, as my sister hugged my leg from behind.

  My other siblings had fled, locking the door behind them and not making a sound.

  “Go up the stairs, angel,” I warned as I extracted myself from her. “And don’t come out under any circumstance!”

  When she disappeared upstairs, I padded across the kitchen to the mudroom by the back door. An umbrella with a wooden shaft and a metal point leaned against the corner. I grabbed it, then saw a bottle of bathroom refresher on the bench, and snatched it, too.

  I yanked the back door open and peeked into the backyard, checking for the whereabouts of the monster.

  The sky had brightened, gracing me with more pink than gray now. It promised a lovely California sunny day, yet I still shook in dread. I’d have crumpled onto the red wooden stairs outside the door if I hadn’t been running on a rush of adrenaline.

  I surveyed the butterfly bushes all around the fences. The beast could be badly wounded or even dead, but I needed to be sure it got the fuck off my property. I wouldn’t allow it to remain a threat to my siblings.

 
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