When a Moth loved a Bee Read online

  When

  a Moth

  Loved

  a Bee

  by

  New York Times Bestseller

  Pepper Winters

  When a Moth Loved a Bee

  Copyright © 2023 Pepper Winters

  Published by Pepper Winters

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Libraries are exempt and permitted to share their in-house copies with their members and have full thanks for stocking this book. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Published: Pepper Winters 2023: [email protected]

  Cover Design: Cleo Studios

  Editing by: Editing 4 Indies (Jenny Sims)

  Contents

  OTHER WORK BY PEPPER WINTERS

  Dedication

  Letter from the Author

  Blurb

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Preorder & read the first Two Chapters of Book Two

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  OTHER WORK BY PEPPER WINTERS

  PLAYLIST

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  OTHER WORK BY PEPPER WINTERS

  Pepper currently has close to forty books released in nine languages. She’s hit best-seller lists (USA Today, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal) almost forty times. She dabbles in multiple genres, ranging from Dark Romance, Coming of Age, Fantasy, and Romantic Suspense.

  For books, FAQs, and buylinks please visit:

  https://pepperwinters.com

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  DARK ROMANCE

  Goddess Isles Series

  Once a Myth

  Twice a Wish

  Third a Kiss

  Fourth a Lie

  Fifth a Fury

  Monsters in the Dark Trilogy

  Tears of Tess

  Quintessentially Q

  Twisted Together

  Je Suis a Toi

  Indebted Series

  Debt Inheritance

  First Debt

  Second Debt

  Third Debt

  Fourth Debt

  Final Debt

  Indebted Epilogue

  Dollar Series

  Pennies

  Dollars

  Hundreds

  Thousands

  Millions

  Fable of Happiness Trilogy

  SEXY ROMANCE

  The Master of Trickery Duet

  The Body Painter

  The Living Canvas

  Truth & Lies Duet

  Crown of Lies

  Throne of Truth

  COMING OF AGE ROMANCE

  The Ribbon Duet

  The Boy & His Ribbon

  The Girl & Her Ren

  Standalone Spinoff

  The Son & His Hope

  STANDALONES

  Destroyed – Grey Romance

  Unseen Messages – Survival Romance

  MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE

  Pure Corruption Duet

  Ruin & Rule

  Sin & Suffer

  ROMANTIC COMEDY written as TESS HUNTER

  Can’t Touch This

  CHILDREN’S / INSPIRATIONAL BOOK

  Pippin and Mo

  UPCOMING RELEASES

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  Dedication

  Can I dedicate this to a rabbit?

  Because I’m going to.

  To Mo.

  My fluffy muse who always seems to know when I’m writing those kissing scenes.

  Letter from the Author

  The world you’re about to enter is vast and full of complexities. It is a work of fiction and is based solely on the imagination from the author. Inspiration has been gathered from fantastical worlds, elements, and the firm belief that we are all magical…mortal or otherwise.

  There are darker themes and explicit content.

  For Content Warnings please see the tab on Pepper’s website (www.pepperwinters.com)

  All races, creeds, cultures, ceremonies, and lifestyles are purely fictional along with the chimeric animals that the author wishes were truly real!

  Thank you so much for reading this Fantasy Romance!

  Blurb

  “It’s taking everything I have not to touch you. Not because I want to make you mine but because every part of me screams that you already are.”

  A pack of wolves hunt a girl who takes her last b
reath by a river’s edge.

  She is found and nursed back to health by the kind-hearted Nhil people.

  She has no memory.

  No past.

  And is given a choice that could change her forgotten life forever.

  A pack of wolves adopt a man who begs for death in the grasslands.

  Blood revives him. Flesh strengthens him. All while the alpha watches him as if he knows who he is.

  He has no memory.

  No past.

  And yet…he’s drawn toward the smoke of a faraway clan.

  And in that smoke, he finds a girl with the same mark on her thigh, the same empty mind, and the same forgotten language on her lips.

  He’s convinced they know each other.

  She’s certain they are strangers.

  But the more time they spend together, the more tangled the truth becomes.

  Their forgetfulness was deliberate.

  To keep them apart.

  To keep them lost.

  To keep them from claiming their true power.

  Because in that power exists a terrible choice.

  A choice that could destroy the world…

  …or each other.

  When a Moth Loved a Bee is the first volume in the Epic Fantasy Romance Destini Chronicles.

  A heavily romantic, spice-filled fantasy set in a world where life and death, shadows and stars watch over two forbidden lovers whose powers are best left forgotten.

  Recommended for readers over R18 due to explicit scenes, content, and darker elements.

  Map

  Prologue

  . The Stranger .

  THE HEART.

  A simple organ. A vital instrument in keeping mortal flesh alive.

  To pump blood.

  To give life.

  To keep bone and breath from returning to ash and memory.

  But that is not it’s true purpose.

  I wished I’d remembered that when I found her.

  I wished I’d remembered that the pounding in my chest wasn’t from a simple organ, striving to keep my fragile, feeble form alive, but the quintessential pathway back home.

  Back to who I was, what I was.

  Back to every memory of her.

  If only I had remembered that.

  Perhaps then, we could have avoided all the pain.

  Chapter One

  . Girl .

  “ARE YOU…ALIVE?”

  Something firm but kind rocked my shoulder, causing scratchy eyes to open and dry mouth to swallow. Someone rolled me onto my back, forcing me to stare up at the blinding, boiling sun.

  I winced and tried to curl away.

  A tapping on my cheek. “Wake up. Come on. Say you’re alive.”

  “She’s dead, Niya. Leave her to the vultures.”

  “She’s not dead, Kivva.” The tapping grew in earnest, making my head crunch against the stones beneath my skull. The pain dragged me from the thick, foggy place. It tethered me, shedding the empty floating feeling, tying me firmly to a form that’d forsaken me.

  I gasped as my heart beat stronger. My lungs breathed deeper.

  “That’s it.” The tapping on my cheek stopped, sifting sweetly through my hair instead. “You’re okay. You’re not alone anymore.”

  Alone.

  That word stabbed a lightning bolt through my chest. It made tears I couldn’t afford to shed roll down sunburned cheeks. It filled me with such bone-snapping pain I couldn’t catch another breath.

  I choked.

  I coughed and—

  “She’s struggling to breathe, Niya. It’s the sickness. Get away from her.”

  “It’s not the sickness, Kivva. She’s just coming back from the land of death, that’s all.”

  Death.

  Another word that tugged on my heart, digging claws and teeth, ripping my spirit apart.

  Whoever touched me kept running their fingers through my hair, giving me an anchor in this world while I tried to decide if I wanted to return to it.

  “Come on. Open your eyes. I know you’re not dead,” the female voice soothed. “At least…not anymore.”

  Could I come back from the dead?

  Was that where I’d been, ever since I’d collapsed on this river’s shore?

  Her touch went to my eyes, pressing down on my cheek while another pulled up my eyebrow. My eyelashes cracked open under her control, sending a blinding ray of light to pierce my vision.

  I moaned and summoned all my strength to swat her touch away.

  She let me go.

  Darkness descended again.

  But there had been something.

  Something different.

  This world that seemed to hate me had delivered something I’d never seen before.

  People.

  Like me.

  Gritting my teeth, I opened my eyes of my own accord.

  “See?” The girl beside me grinned over her shoulder toward the others. “I told you she was alive.”

  “Yes, but is she sick?” One of the taller figures shifted closer. “Where is her clan? No one survives out here alone. Did they banish her?” He raised a long stick with strips of vines and leaves fluttering from the top. Brandishing it at me as if it would ward off my evil, he added, “We should leave, Niya. We don’t have time to hunt and carry her too.”

  The girl kneeling beside me bared her perfect teeth. “Are you so heartless to leave a mortal to die? A mortal like us?”

  “If she deserves it.” The man nodded, his nostrils flaring. “Look at her. She has no clothes, no possessions. Not even a waterskin. Mark my words, she was stripped of rank and banished from her clan. She wears the mark of the sullied.”

  I flinched as he jabbed his long stick against my upper thigh. “Right there. She is branded by death itself.”

  Again, my heart hitched on the word, tugging with something, only to fade with another beat.

  Niya bent over me, her gentle touch swiping at the mud and dirt clinging to my leg. Spitting on her dark hand, she smeared saliva over the filthy splodge the other man had stabbed. With her forehead furrowed, she studied my thigh far too closely.

  Skin prickles cloaked me as I tried to shift away.

  But I couldn’t.

  My body had no strength. No energy left to fight. All I had were a few remaining heartbeats to fade into the whispering fog and forget about this place.

  “It’s not the mark of the sullied,” Niya murmured, glancing at me with black eyes framed with blacker lashes. “It’s a birthmark.”

  “A taint from the source itself!” The man rattled his stick, sending its vines and leaves swinging. The other men behind him bowed their heads and pressed fingertips to their eyes as if to shield themselves from my monstrousness.

  “It is not.” Niya snorted. “You’re not our Spirit Master, Kivva. Don’t pretend you know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then take her to Solin and have him tell you. But then you’ll be responsible for sickness sweeping through our clan for daring to bring that into our home.”

  “That is a person, same as us,” Niya snapped, her temper revealing itself in a bloom of thorns. “And the mark you’re so afraid of is just a birthmark, like I said. A birthmark shaped sort of like a sunburst, if you must know.”

  The man crossed his arms, his decorated stick clutched in a fist. “She stays here. She dies here.”

  “She comes.” Niya turned on her knees to face me fully. “You need to stand now. You’re coming with us.” She smiled kindly. “We have healers. If you’re sick, we have cures. You need help and—”

  “She needs to be left to die,” the man growled. “Come along.” He strode away from the two other men and one woman he’d been standing with.

  My vision faded in and out as my heart still struggled to beat on starvation fumes. Compared to my sallow skin and prominent bones, these people glowed. The two males behind the suspicious one ha
d skin that glistened as rich and precious as black river rocks. Their dark-skinned hands, etched with tendon and bone, had fingernails that gleamed almost pink, crowning the end of each one. Their eyes were just as dark, glossy with depth and wisdom.

  The male who’d stabbed me rudely with his stick had light skin, splattered with freckles and sun-faded brown hair. The other female had similar colouring to him, unlike the girl kneeling beside me, but it was their intricate braids that made me gasp.

  Long hair on both female and male, all intricately weaved and coiled with feathers, beads, and shells. The wind caught a few feathers, twirling them in a breeze.

  I swallowed, doing my best to ignore the pain of my body so close to fading. My gaze locked onto the flower-threaded braids draped over the standing woman’s breasts.

  I stiffened.

  For all the perfection of their health and vitality, they’d hidden parts of their bodies with slaughtered animal furs. The men wore strips around their hips while the women had an extra piece binding their chests.

  These people had covered their nudity with the dressings of their prey.

  Why did that incite such strange feelings—?

  “Don’t worry,” Niya said kindly, drawing my attention back to her. “We’ll find clothing to cover you.” She glanced at my dirty, emaciated form. My bare skin hovered between the colours of hoof-trodden dirt and sun-bleached earth. The ivory lines of scars on my legs and fresh cuts up my thighs only added to the blisters from my sunburn. My colourless, white hair carried its own version of leaves and bracken but not from decoration. I merely wore despair and survival.