WHEN KINGS FALL: A Dark College Reverse Harem Romance (VICIOUS THINGS Book 2), page 1
WHEN KINGS FALL
VICIOUS THINGS, BOOK TWO
LEIA KING
Contents
Don’t Miss A Leia King Update
Welcome back to Stonewell
WHEN KINGS FALL Blurb
Author’s Note
1. ~Mason~
2. ~Levi~
3. ~Brianna~
4. ~Brianna~
5. ~Levi~
6. ~Colton~
7. ~Levi~
8. ~Mason~
9. ~Brianna~
10. ~Levi~
11. ~Colton~
12. ~Levi~
13. ~Mason~
14. ~Colton~
15. ~Brianna~
16. ~Levi~
17. ~Mason~
18. ~Brianna~
19. ~Roman Knight~
20. ~Colton~
21. ~Levi~
22. ~Brianna~
23. ~Mason~
24. ~Colton~
25. ~Brianna~
26. ~Mason~
27. ~Levi~
28. ~Brianna~
Epilogue 1
Epilogue 2
Mythic Cry Lyrics
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About the Author
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
When Kings Fall. Vicious Things. Book Two.
Copyright © Leia King (2024). All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.
Cover Design by Maria Christine Pagtalunan (Artscandare Book Cover Design).
The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed”. Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book”.
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Welcome back to Stonewell
See you on the other side, Wildflowers
WHEN KINGS FALL Blurb
Six years ago, my life was shattered to pieces.
Now it’s happening all over again.
I thought information was true power.
But as awful secrets come to light, it’s clear it’s also pain.
He’s pulled me back in.
He’s started something that can’t be undone.
Now they’re coming for us.
History is repeating.
They want us to crawl.
But we’re different now.
This time, monsters will weep and false kings will fall.
Author’s Note
This is a dark college bully reverse harem romance with scenes of M/M.
A list of TWs can be found here
1
~Mason~
“Anything on Royce?”
“Nothing yet,” Levi reported.
He stepped back from his laptop, then bolted from the coffee table and slammed his fist into the nearest wall. “Motherfucker! Argh! Argh!”
“We’re analyzing right now, it’ll come. We’ll figure out how he’s gonna come at her, even if we can’t pinpoint exactly when it’s gonna be quite yet,” I assured him.
“Yeah,” Colt piped up from the couch, where he was far from his usual relaxed self, not leaning back at all this time, and rather right on the edge.
Hell, we all were, more than just literally speaking.
“Mason and you have Hex watching the borders, so we’ll know the moment they cross over.”
“Meaning we can act to intercept before they get to Brianna,” I added.
Expecting Levi to pull back from the wall and take comfort in what we’d just told him, the reassurance we’d given, we were both surprised—and worried as fuck—when he instead started roaring and wailing on the drywall furiously.
“I fucked up! I fucked up!”
“Shit,” Colt uttered, getting to his feet and rushing over to Levi.
I dodged into his path, stopping him.
It was rare that Lev lost his temper in this sort of way, by hurting himself. It meant that all bets were off, that it was dangerous to approach him and that it would be a bitch of a thing to pull him out of it.
It was hard enough as it was not to show how pissed I was that something he’d done had driven Brianna away from us.
I knew that showing that wouldn’t do any good. In fact, it would only make things a great deal worse. Working Levi up, especially when it came to Brianna, was not a healthy idea. Besides, he was already hurting badly, the last thing he needed was an I-told-you-so thrown in his face, or a reprimand.
What he’d done had occurred before we’d all grown close together and before he’d agreed to tamper down his reckless and lone wolf ways, so I couldn’t get on his back about something caused by a version of him that didn’t exist any longer.
Lev was yelling about breaking us and the train wreck that is Chloe ruining everything, then moving on to say that he was the one responsible, that he ruined everything he touched.
I eased Colt back further, then I came up behind Levi and swiftly trapped him in a body lock, then used all my strength to rip him off the wall.
He fought me, yelling in so much pain that it had me and Colt fighting to swallow down the emotion it was evoking in us both. That wouldn’t help right now. Levi needed stability.
That was what Brianna had brought to him once she’d stopped running from him, and now she wasn’t here with us, it was really destabilizing him.
“I need you, Levi,” I spoke as I tightened my grip to a brutal hold that constricted his airflow, so I could weaken him enough to make him stop. “She needs you to fix this Royce Humphrey situation.”
Slowly, he started to calm in my hold.
When he was no longer fighting me or resisting, I released the pressure around his throat.
“Fuck,” he breathed, as I helped him into the armchair adjacent to the couch. “I messed up.”
“Lev,” Colt began. “As much as it sucks not having her here with us right now because this revelation came out, we also know that whatever you do regarding Brianna is out of love for her, protection, what you figure is in her best interests. We can’t fault you for that.”
“And this is something you did before we all got together.”
“She didn’t see it that way,” he murmured, shoving a hand through his hair.
“Give her time,” Colt said.
I sat down beside him on the couch and told Lev. “She just needs time for the shock of it to wear off. It’s raw now. It’s why we insisted you don’t bombard her with messages and fight to contact her.”
“Or, worse, actually show up at her door,” Colt added.
“Exactly,” I said.
Levi sighed heavily then pulled his phone from his pocket, scrolled for a moment, and handed it to me. “These are all the draft texts I wanted to send her, but stopped myself from doing since we agreed to give her space.”
I took them in, Colt reading over my shoulder too.
Levi: I’m so sorry it came out like that.
Levi: It’s not as bad as you think.
Levi: I mean, I know it’s bad, I can actually recognize that, but I meant it wasn’t done for a bad reason. I didn’t do it to isolate you or anything. It wasn’t like that.
Levi: I truly am sorry, Wildflower.
Levi: What can I do to make it better?
Levi: I can’t stand the thought of losing you.
Levi: We can work through this. However you need, on your terms.
Levi: I care about you so much, we all do. Please don’t leave.
“Aww, oh my God,” Colt said.
I handed the phone back to Levi, still stunned that he’d actually shown it to us, put his vulnerability on display like that.
It just went to show how much he was hurting, and how much he needed us to understand that, to understand he needed us so badly right now.
The thing with Levi Knight was, when he was hurting, he needed a distraction.
Well, in his case, a focus.
And we had one.
Not a good one, a really fucking bad one.
Royce Humphrey and his mercenaries were coming for Brianna.
“Lev, it’s actually best that she’s distanced herself from us right now. If not, we’d have to tell her about Royce, and that would cause major panic, considering the brutal history there. So, I need you to focus up and put the rest on hold at the moment, so we can deal with this. And then once it’s done, if she still hasn’t reached out, we’ll go to her, all three of us together, and talk it out. We’ll fix it.”
“We will, Lev,” Colt uttered, bolstering my words to him.
It took him a moment to absorb it all.
And then he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.” He rose to his feet. “I can find Royce.”
“Good, and then we’ll run him and his mercenaries into the ground.”
“They won’t get near her,” Levi g
We all would.
Estranged right now or not, she was ours.
And nobody threatened what was ours.
2
~Levi~
She wasn’t home.
According to the eyes I’d had Mason put on her again, she was studying late at the library.
Trying to avoid us.
Well, me.
Thanks to Chloe’s big fucking blabbering mouth.
Clearly it had been some form of payback on the part of that train wreck for me pulling her out of Stonewell U by playing on her mother’s issues with her being here in the first place and not attending the elite fashion design institute in the City of Tolhurst like Celeste Anders had desired in the first place for her daughter.
I leaned against my Harley as I waited off the dirt road across from Brianna’s apartment.
Again.
But this time I wasn’t here to observe her in her natural habitat.
Or, stalking her, as some less open-minded people might tar it.
I was here to decimate a threat against her.
Against all of us by extension.
We were at that stage with her now where if anyone came at her, they also came at us.
All right, I’d been in that stage for six fucking years, but now I had Colt and Mason there with me too.
Mason and I had determined that Royce’s mercenaries would target her at the apartment, rather than anywhere else. These guys were ghosts, they didn’t draw attention, so they’d never come at their targets in a crowded area, or anywhere at all public. No, they’d break into her apartment quietly, then attack from within.
My plan was to put them down while she was in class back at the campus, and then we’d tell her what was going on, give her the whole truth.
This threat from Royce changed things and as bad as it was, it did mean we could finally be done with the secrecy that had been twisting me up.
Her and I had come a long way and I couldn’t handle the idea of that being set back, and our closeness being compromised made me sick to my stomach. It was already eating me up inside that the whole Chloe thing had put a dent in things. Fortunately, it was connected to the rest, so once I was able to lift the veil of secrecy, I’d be able to explain why I’d had to do it.
Until then, being cut off from her was something I had to weather for a little while longer.
Movement caught my eye and I watched as a black unmarked van carefully pulled into the lot.
I pushed off my motorcycle and kept myself concealed as I approached the building, keeping an eye on the van as four overly musclebound guys decked out in the cliché all black—jeans and leather jackets—to blend into the night emerged.
They were here.
It was time.
I darted up the opposite entrance to the stairwell and took the steps two at a time toward Brianna’s floor.
Fortunately, Mason had managed to empty the building citing a fake gas leak or something—we’d have time to discuss the details later, once this immediate threat was taken care of.
I made it to the fourth floor just as I heard heavy footsteps rushing up the opposite stairwell, coming in hot.
Sliding my tactical knife from the sleeve of my hoodie, I spun it in my hand, then readied a long-practiced fighting stance.
The first one appeared, rounding the staircase, and I reacted instantly, tossing my knife and watching as it embedded in his chest. Unfortunately, not his heart, as Mason had outlawed me taking their lives tonight.
Chaos erupted then, roars and threats spilling forth.
I launched myself at the now injured guy, ripped my knife out of his chest, then slammed my boot into his gut.
The power behind it blew him down the stairs into one of his asshole buddies on the way up behind him and he crumpled into a heap on the landing below.
Another two leapt over them and came at me.
A roundhouse kick that clocked one across the side of the head and had him stumbling back into the wall with a nasty thud took care of one of them, buying me a little bit of time to deal with the other.
He tried to land a punch to the underside of my jaw, but I deflected it easily. His eyes flashed and he tried harder, now realizing what they were dealing with.
That rush that took me when I was street fighting was more intense this time, more raw, because of the stakes involved.
And it fueled everything.
Every move I made, every decision to be absolutely brutal.
Before I knew it, I was beating the motherfucker into the concrete with punch after punch, destroying his face.
As another bolted up the stairs to assist, I snatched his wrist, twisted it mercilessly until I heard that telltale crack and his satisfying cry of pain, then I used it to force him around, wherein I smashed my boot into the back of his knee. As he went down, hitting step after concrete step painfully, the impact knocked him out.
I wrenched the shoulder of another, dislocating it and making him scream.
The fourth came at me and I dodged his blow, then fisted his hair and used the leverage to smash his face into the banister and knock him out cold too.
The two remaining tried to move in to take me together, but as one made his move to snag me, I used it against him and reacted, turning it around and forcing him into a sleeper hold.
I kicked back his buddy and as he staggered down two steps and jarred against the wall, I tossed my blade. He shrieked as it drove through his palm and pinned him to the wall.
The guy in my hold went limp and I released him roughly, watching as he fell into a heap like a ragdoll.
Before I could put the pinned guy out, a whizzing sounded and a tranq embedded in his throat.
He slapped his free hand to it, then Mason was there ripping the knife from his palm. His scream was cut off as he passed out and hit the stairs hard.
I stepped back, wiping sweat off my brow.
“A little slow on the timing, brother.”
“Did the best I could with the short notice.”
His eyes darted all over at the four guys. “They’re all still alive.”
“For you. You made it clear you didn’t want the mess.”
“And major complications, Lev.”
“Sure, that.” As far as I was concerned, they deserved death for coming at our woman. But Mason and I had a deal, one she had gone to great efforts to broker.
“All right, you deal with this. Call in Hex and have these shits transported far from Stonewell. I’ll get Colt up to speed and keep an eye on Brianna.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Go. Watch her. Closely, Mason.”
“Got it.”
“No,” I said, grasping his arm. “Do whatever it takes.”
“I will,” he vowed. He laid his hand on my shoulder. “We’ve got her, brother. She’s ours now and we’ll protect her as ours.”
Damn fucking straight.
3
~Brianna~
I was exhausted.
It had been almost the crack of dawn when I’d finally arrived home last night.
Again.
For three days and nights running now.
I hadn’t trusted that the guys would stay away when I’d really needed them to after that messed-up revelation about what Levi had done.
Urgh. It was beyond invasive and a violation of my freedom and choices, something he knew was so important to me.
I couldn’t believe he’d actually done this.
So I’d come home really late yet again, and I’d had to get up far too early to go to my first class of the day.
As I finished getting dressed, I checked the text notifications I’d heard as I’d stepped out of the shower.
I was more than a little surprised when I didn’t find anything from the boys.
Nothing at all.
Not for three whole days.
There hadn’t actually been any contact whatsoever since the night I’d kicked Levi in the balls.
Instead, there were some from Chloe.
Chloe: Are you okay?
