She stroked the points of her daughter’s little ears, humming to her softly as she rocked her. She must act as though her child were of inferior birth and leave her to grow in the human realm. It was the only way to keep her hidden from those who would harm her. Luckily, she had the creamy silver skin of a higher elf, and her emerald green shimmer was starting to become apparent. No disfigurements or added limbs as could happen with certain Goblin species, thank the Goddess. She was perfect, and she had to stay that way. Shielding her was the only way to ensure her survival. Callista would ensure her daughter was protected from discovery.
Her heart breaking, she sifted out of her chambers in the Elven Kingdom to the crowded and iron-filled streets of Indianapolis. Before she stepped foot in the city, she grimaced. The overpowering taste of metal filled her mouth. Plastic and rotten food perfumed the air with a pungent odor. The cramped spaces between buildings almost overwhelmed her determination to leave her baby here. Prolonged exposure to iron was harmful to full-blooded Fae, especially Elves. Due to Callista’s heritage, her precious daughter might have a better tolerance in this city than she did. Either way it would help dampen her abilities once she reached maturity.
Walking the short distance to the compound founded by similarly displaced elves, goblins, and other magical beings from centuries ago, Callista called forth a basket to lay her baby girl in. She wrapped the child in a hunter green silk baby blanket. Before she turned away, she placed a feather soft kiss on her babe’s forehead.
“You will be safe here, my little darling, and always remember, Mother loves you.”
She placed her into the basket and allowed herself one last tearful look before sifting back to her rooms within the Light Elven Castle. The soft sounds of her sleeping baby no longer with her left her chambers hauntingly silent. Sitting on the large chair she kept next to the baby’s crib, she wept silently. Callista’s chin trembled as she pressed her hand to her quivering lips. Pain washed over her as she clutched her stomach in one hand, her baby’s blanket in the other.
As she fell asleep, she vowed to do everything in her power to ensure her daughter would survive no matter what the foolish declaration stated.
The previous Light Elven King was delusional anyway.
Chapter 1
Present Day- 23 Years Later
“Shit! Gods. Effing. Damnit!”
I pick my ass up off the pavement and run after the ancient higher elf gone mad. Brushing the hair that escaped from my ponytail out of my face, I take off after him. Figures, the night I, Ever Leath, actually have plans, I’m chasing after this asshole who’s hell bent on wreaking havoc all over downtown Indianapolis. I grumble under my breath. Doyle’s deep rumbling laugh echoes in my ear. I’m not paid enough to deal with this shit. But it keeps people safe and keeps the peace between species, so I do it.
I pant as I chase after the rogue elf. “Laugh it up, asshole. First round is on you.” I run full speed ahead after the spry older elf. He stops dead at the end of the trash-filled alley. The rogue spins around and locks eyes with me. His body is visibly shaking.
His hysterical laughter bubbles up from his thin and cracking lips. My ears are pierced with pain every time I hear the incoherent babbling that emerges when he opens his mouth. His once dual-colored eyes flash between flat slate grey and green and blue. He looks left to right looking for an escape.
He won’t find one. My team has me covered, but I get the fun task of getting up close and personal with the poster child for unstable and psychotic elves. I’m lucky enough to have the job of hauling his ass back to the Light Elven Kingdom, where they will deal with him in whatever way they deem fit. My job at the Magic Enforcement and Containment Agency, or MECA for short, is to guard the fragile humans from the darker side of being goblin, elf, Fae, or magical being in general. Sounds awesome, right? Tell that to my now bruised ass. Being a Guard isn’t easy, and even though I complain about it I love every second of it. Well, most of the time I do.
Humans know we exist, but they only know about those who look similar enough to pass as human.
Half-human, half-elven, or half-goblin children are common. Fae love to take advantage of their effect on the human race, and they leave a string of children behind that their human parents have no idea what to do with. Thus MECA was created to teach and employ those considered leath cine—literally translated as half breed—to work as members of a little piece of society that understands who we really are. MECA raises us as warriors, scholars, and political ambassadors to the full blooded Fae who employ us to do their dirty work.
I’m damn good at corralling these little fuckers. So here I am, my ass sore from being knocked on it and my elbow scraped. I look down. My new pair of jet black combat boots are scuffed. Oh, hell no.
I point at my boots and then the demented elf in front of me, snarling. “You’re going to regret that, asshole.” If there is one thing I am girl about, it’s my shoes. I hate the anxiety that comes with the first scuff appearing on them. Something so beautiful shouldn’t be scratched.
“Catch me if you can, little girl.” He shifts from foot to foot.
I brace myself for his next move. The only way out of this is through me, and he knows it, if the determined glint in his eye is anything to go by. He lunges at me, and I brace myself for impact. I grab his bony shoulders, flip him to the ground, and land on him. We both let out an oomph as we struggle on the ground.
All the while his mumbling is making less and less sense. “It’s the entirety of life that doesn’t make sense, you know.” He focuses on something behind me. “Eyes like your father’s you have, my dear.”
“Stay still, dude. It’s over.” I ignore his comment about my eyes for now, storing that for later. Any information about my father warrants further investigation but now is not the time.
“Augh!” I lose my breath as his elbow digs into my kidney. I struggle to drag in air.
“Fuck! Any time would be nice, guys.” I know they can hear me through my ear piece. “But just take your time. I enjoy playing ‘what shape is my newest bruise?’”
Boots slap the pavement, and two of my team of five other Guards appear around the corner, distracting me.
The elf swings at my eye making contact. “Son of a bitch!” I grapple for the rogue elf’s hands and pin him down as Doyle gets down on our level. I grind my teeth at his face-splitting grin.
“You’re lucky I love you or I’d slap that smug smile off your face.” I grit my teeth as the elf continues to struggle to break free beneath me.
“Having fun, Ev?” Doyle asks, his playful grin still twisting his lips.
“Oh, you know, just bunches of it,” I snap back, frowning.
Leaning closer, he lays his hand on the elf’s. Instantly the elf goes lax under me.
Being able to control people’s movements with his hands is his greatest asset. Mine is speed and glamour. My own personal glamour is undetectable to most people, but being able to make people see things that aren’t really there is the other part of it. Houdini didn’t have shit on me.
Doyle and Kirin haul up the elf and place cold iron shackles on his wrists. Both of them drag him toward the large black van idling at the entrance of the alley. I look around and make sure nothing is left behind from our scuffle. I limp toward the van with my hand on my sore ass and glance back to make sure there are no scuff marks on my leather pants.
“That looks like it’s going to leave a mark.” Eryn says. She’s one of my best friends and the only other girl on our team of five. She’s in the front passenger seat of the van. She points at my face and winces.
“I’m sure it will. Dude could pack a punch.” I lightly press against my eye to make sure nothing is broken. I nod to Axel, twisting my lips into a semblance of a smile.
He is the quietest one and he prefers to keep his commentary to a minimum. Axel and I have a lot in common. His mother abandoned him at a young age too. The only difference is he couldn’t care less about
having a relationship with her, and I can’t blame him. After how she treated him, I might think the same way. On the other hand, I would love to have a relationship with my mother—someone to talk to about my strange elven abilities or even about how I’m doing, but every time we talk we end up fighting. Usually it’s about my position as a MECA guard. She disagrees with my choice of employment, instead wishing I were a researcher, something less physical and more suited to a lady. But I want to keep people safe, not hide behind a desk.
Axel smiles back, wincing a bit as he searches my bruised face, his own face still sporting a bruise over his right eye. The bruise extends to his chiseled cheek bones, adding to the black-and-blue he got from a fight a few days ago with another MECA guard.
I settle back into my seat and wait. Doyle and Kirin are securing our rogue elf in the back of the van. I lay my head back against the head rest and close my eyes. I’m going to destroy a bottle of vodka at the club tonight. I smile and wonder what type of music will be playing at our favorite spot this week.
“I know that look.” Doyle’s booming voice cuts into my fantasy. “You ready to get plastered, Ev?”
“Hell, yeah. Let’s get rid of him and get there already.”
Axel starts the van and sets us on the route to the closest entrance of the Light Elven Kingdom. Most Fae hate anything modern or metal, so the hour-long ride to the middle of nowhere Brown County to the giant tree that serves as their entrance will be spent relaxing and recharging. Doyle and Kirin joke about who will go home with a woman from the bar first, and I’m examining the new scuffs on my boots. These were expensive. Both practical and sexy, the practical part allowing me to work in them. Stupid insane elf. I look behind me and give the guilty elf a dirty look.
Turning around in her seat, Eryn catches my annoyed expression and her eyes flick down to my boots. “Just think of it this way, they are now officially broken in, so you can stop trying not to scuff them.”
Eryn always looks for the positive in any situation. She’s the gentlest of all of us and her patience knows no bounds. She is always trying to instill some semblance of manners into us. She’s an empath, so she knows how each of us feels at any given moment. We try to tone down our emotions around her so we don’t overwhelm her. Empathy is a useful ability in the field, though. She can tell when someone is lying to us.
“Yeah, sure.” I scoff at her and shake my head. There’s nothing I can do now. I’ll just have to glamour them tonight while we’re out so I don’t look like I’m homeless.
Eryn offers me a small mirror. Not bad considering. My blood-red hair is unusual for my lineage, while my pale silver skin with the emerald green shimmer gives away my royal bloodline. My skin is only slightly marred after the elf got me in the face. Nothing a quick thought can’t make disappear when we’re in public. My eyes are wide set. Lilac ringed in azure and framed by long red lashes are nothing like anyone in my family line.
Specially crafted hoops decorate my pointed ears, completely covering the outer shell of my left ear. The hoops signal my guard status with MECA. I’m lucky I didn’t end up as a researcher or just one of the protected—those not so lucky of the half breeds. The protected end up wearing those ridiculous looking half spectacles. Not a good look on me.
Eryn hands me a mirror, her pale white-green skin shimmering. “Here, fix your face.” Eryn is half elf but not of royal bloodlines.
I stick my tongue out at her.
“Yeah, Ev. Fix your face.” Kirin laughs. He hits Doyle’s massive shoulder as he chuckles.
“Up yours, you big oafs.”
Doyle and Kirin are both half goblin, and they prefer to go without glamour. They enjoy the stares they get.
“Hey, don’t group me in with these two.” Axel chuckles as he hikes a thumb over his shoulder. His skin shimmers bronze in the overhead light in the van. Axel is on the small side for a goblin but he holds his own. He’s one of the few male offspring from a human and goblin coupling to survive within the Goblin Kingdom for a few years before he joined us at MECA.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” I finish adjusting my face and flip the compact mirror closed. “Finally.” I throw up my hands.
Nods of assent and noncommittal grunts follow my comment. “It’s so beautiful here. The thousands of lights. The trees’ branches so high they dance with the clouds…” I sigh. After driving for what seems like forever, we approach a large angel oak tree with a trunk as wide as a warehouse. Every time I’m here I’m reminded that I don’t belong in this world. My place is with MECA and my crew. The thought leaves a pressure in my chest making it hard to draw in a deep breath.
Halting the van, Axel signals to Doyle and Kirin to proceed with caution. Both Doyle and Kirin jump out of the van and move toward the back. Both are tall and muscular, inhumanly so, with wide set shoulders and bronze skin shimmered in green, alerting anyone to their goblin heritage. I grip the metal of the door frame tightly while I step out of the van.
I turn and approach the large wooden door covered in scrolling designs and outlined in warm yellow light that sits dead center in the trunk of the massive tree.
Before I can knock, the door swings open, and the keeper of the entrance appears. He is short for an elf and obviously part troll. His deep brown skin matches the color of the bark on the tree. Tree branches grow out of his head like hair, emulating the rack of a deer.
“Ever Leath and crew, here to drop off a rogue.” I bow as I talk.
He turns around and scurries away. His antlers scarcely miss the doorjamb as he slams the door in my face. I turn and watch the nut job behind me as he struggles between Kirin and Doyle.
I glare harshly at the elf. “Would you stop it? You’re going nowhere, so struggle is futile.”
Both Kirin and Doyle chuckle at my outburst, their shoulders shaking slightly. Suddenly sobering, they stand at attention as the door behind me opens again. The light from within the tree shines on our group once more.
I take my time turning around. When I do, I size up the men who are here to deal with our prisoner. I shrug and wave my hand toward them and say to Doyle and Kirin, “Give him to them.”
The twisted lips and scrunched eyes on the elves stop Doyle and Kirin short.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I scowl. “Yes, they’re half goblin, but they did your asses a favor retrieving this psycho you couldn’t control. So suck up your prejudices and accept what they have to give you.”
Growing up, MECA taught me that elves have a bit of a superiority complex. MECA seems a bit biased against full-blooded goblins and elves though, as the leath cine had been thrown from their home realms and sentenced to live amongst the humans in their realm. Luckily, the full-blooded Fae I know and consider allies don’t seem to care that I’m a leath cine. In fact, they appreciate my status because I can cut through the red tape and go places they can’t without violating treaty laws and land boundaries. I tend to collect lost things or people, trying to help them heal. I know I can’t save everyone, but I try my hardest nonetheless. I just can’t seem to take my own advice and work through my issues with my mother.
“Or we can just let him go and he becomes your problem.” I cock my head to the side.
At their continued stare, I shrug and raise my hand to give the signal to let the rogue elf loose. I hold my hand at my neck, one finger about to draw a line in the air across it. Doyle and Kirin both play their parts. Kirin grabs the prisoner’s shackled hands in his own and Doyle pats his pockets with exaggerated movements as he searches for the keys. Either way, we’ve done our jobs. The elf is back on Light Elven territory.
“W-Wait! Okay fine. Hand him over,” The tallest of the elves shouts begrudgingly. His lips press together after his outburst.
Not the most humble bunch I’ve ever come across.
“Your payment for bringing him back to us will be delivered to the MECA compound. Safe travels,” The elves add with a pointed stare that indicates we are free to go. They turn their backs to us.
Kirin and Doyle spin around, and their heavy footsteps crunch through the hard dirt.
Catching up with them, almost skipping in glee, I link my arms through each of theirs. “Let’s party!”
Keep Reading Ever’s story in, Mark of Truth, here!
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, as always, I’ve got to thank my Ma for dealing with my cranky ass as I wrote this book. It was a long process full of re-writes, fixing plot holes, changing shit half way through, and I was probably a terror to be around while I finished it. It doesn’t help that I’m not a morning person and Jinx refused to be written any time after 3pm. She’s rude that way.
I’d also like to thank my fellow wolf, Kel Carpenter, who checked in on my writing progress daily as I slogged through this one. You’re such a sweet bitch, you know that?
To Dee Miers, my co-writer, my best friend, and my sister from another mister. You helped me work through every bump and hole in my plot and wouldn’t let me give up on this book no matter how many times I threatened to delete it. I love you, wifey, and I couldn’t imagine my world without you in it.
To my cousin Katelyn who Face-timed with me during the early morning hours, telling me how much she misses me and can’t wait for me to come home… One step closer now that this book is done, beeyotch!
To Audrey Carlan, who listened to me babble on about this project, and three others I had rattling around in my head at the same time, and assured me I could do it and it would be awesome, even if it is some weird Fae creature she’s never heard about LOL! Thank you!
A Reluctant Huntress: Tales of the Wild Hunt | Book One Page 16
