by I. T. Lucas
Dark Operative
The Dawn of Love
I. T. Lucas
FOLLOW I. T. LUCAS ON AMAZON
THE CHILDREN OF THE GODS
Series Reading Order
Kian & Syssi’s story
1: Dark Stranger The Dream
2: Dark Stranger Revealed
3: Dark Stranger Immortal
Dark Stranger Trilogy + Goddess part 1
Amanda’s story
4: Dark Enemy Taken
5: Dark Enemy Captive
6: Dark Enemy Redeemed
Kri & Michael’s Story
6.5: My Dark Amazon Novella
Andrew’s Story
7: Dark Warrior Mine
8: Dark Warrior’s Promise
9: Dark Warrior’s Destiny
10: Dark Warrior’s Legacy
Bhathian & Eva’s Story
11: Dark Guardian Found
12: Dark Guardian Craved
13: Dark Guardian’s Mate
Brundar & Calypso's Story
14: Dark Angel's Obsession
15: Dark Angel's Seduction
16: Dark Angel's Surrender
Turner’s Story
17: Dark Operative: A Shadow of Death
18: Dark Operative: A Glimmer of Hope
19: Dark Operative: The Dawn of Love
Annani’s Story
Goddess’s Choice
Anandur’s Story
20: Dark Survivor Awakened
TRY THE SERIES ON AUDIBLE FOR FREE!
Books 1-19 are narrated by the incredible
Charles Lawrence.
As of 4/26/2018, books 1-17 are available for download.
Books 18 & 19 are coming out on Audible soon.
Copyright © 2018 by I. T. Lucas
All rights reserved.
Dark Operative: The Dawn of Love is a work of fiction!
Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations and/or events is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Prelude
1. Kian
2. Sharon
3. Turner
4. Bridget
5. Turner
6. Julian
7. Eva
8. Bridget
9. Kian
10. Turner
11. Bridget
12. Anandur
13. Eva
14. Nick
15. Turner
16. Bridget
17. Anandur
18. Losham
19. Bridget
20. Turner
21. Bridget
22. Ruth
23. Robert
24. Bridget
25. Turner
26. Bridget
27. Roni
28. Turner
29. Anandur
30. Turner
31. Bridget
32. Losham
33. Kian
34. Eva
35. Kian
36. Jackson
37. Bhathian
38. Turner
39. Tessa
40. Kian
41. Bridget
42. Turner
43. Bridget
44. Turner
45. Bridget
46. Turner
47. Bridget
48. Turner
49. Bridget
50. Kian
51. Bridget
52. Kian
53. Bridget
54. Kian
55. Bridget
56. Turner
57. Bridget
58. Turner
59. Turner
Epilogue
Also by I. T. Lucas
Sneak Peek at my next book
Prelude
“You should join in,” Mordan huffed between one push-up and the next. “We need to keep up our strength.”
Sitting on the thin, dirty mattress and leaning his back against the iron bars of his cage, Grud watched the guy going through his fourth set. “What for? We are never getting out of here.”
Mordan was stupid, working out and sweating like a pig on a hot day when there was nowhere to wash up. He was just adding another layer of stench to that of unwashed bodies, and the dump Shaveh had dropped on the grate at the far end of his cage.
There were no windows to open and let the stink out, and their prison didn’t have air conditioning, or if it had, it was never turned on.
After his many days in captivity, Grud was still trying to figure out where they were being held, and what had been the original purpose of the place. At first, the rows of large cages lining both sides of the chamber had made him suspect that it was an interrogation facility. The examination table and other pieces of discarded equipment piled against the room’s narrower side only contributed to that impression.
But a few odd features made him rethink his original assessment. Like the plastic tube that supplied drinking water to each one of the cages and was activated by pressing a lever. Or the grate in the floor for hosing down excrement and other refuse.
Those two items made him suspect that large animals had been kept in those cages. For what purpose, though, he didn’t know. Except, there was no residual smell to indicate the type of animal that had been caged there, suggesting that the facility had been closed for a long time, probably decades.
But that didn’t make sense. Why keep the property for so long and not convert it into something else? After all, he was pretty sure they were still somewhere in San Francisco, where even the most crappy building was worth millions. Like the one he and his fellow soldiers had been housed in. Or at least that was what Gommed had said to explain why four soldiers had to share one small room. There was no budget for something better.
Except, what if he was wrong and they’d been taken further away?
Grud’s immortal body should have repaired the damage from a blow to the back of the head quickly enough, but what if he’d been hit again while still unconscious?
Shaveh, who’d been thrown into the cage next to him a few days later, believed that he’d been transported in a trunk of a car. He based this on the type of bruises he’d woken up with. His other theory was that the facility had been used for training circus animals.
Mordan, who’d been the last addition, had said something about experiments, but he had no idea what kind or for what purpose.
It wasn’t as if warriors at the Brotherhood’s training camp were taught anything other than fighting. Hell, most of them used to be illiterate until not too long ago. At some point Lord Navuh, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that it was time for his soldiers to learn how to read and write so they could handle modern weaponry.
Right now, Grud would have given anything to be back at the island. The training was grueling, but at least he could enjoy the outdoors and have access to as many hookers as his free time and money allowed.
He was losing hope of ever getting out.
Gommed probably assumed they had defected or that they had been taken by Guardians. In either case, their commanding officer was not organizing a search party for them. No one was coming to rescue them.
In a way, it was good tha
t no one was coming. The shame of being captured and held prisoner by a female would have been too much to bear. They would have been stripped of their warrior status and sent to do some degrading work not worthy of men, like cooking or cleaning.
Grud would rather die with honor than live in shame.
Oh, dear Mortdh, the shame.
The woman had disabled him with a fucking Taser gun, and instead of wasting time searching him for weapons, she had stripped him naked while he’d been twitching uncontrollably on the ground. She’d then slung him over her shoulder as if he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes and carried him to her vehicle.
A blow to the back of his head had knocked him out until he’d woken up in the cage.
At first, Grud had thought she was a Guardian even though it was a preposterous idea.
Who ever heard of female Guardians?
But the woman was a freak, strong as an immortal male. She could’ve easily been one.
For days she’d kept him caged naked, with only a thin blanket to cover himself.
When his two comrades had arrived, much in the same way he had, she’d brought them clothes—filthy ones that she must’ve stolen or pulled out of the trash. Nevertheless, he was grateful to finally be covered. Even men who were not ashamed of their bodies felt stripped of their dignity when kept nude by a female. She’d reduced them to animals.
Who was she?
When she’d started asking them questions, he’d realized that the female knew nothing about anything. It was either that, or she was pretending ignorance to get them to talk. She’d kept asking where they came from, and if there were other immortals out there, but of course they’d told her nothing.
Doomers were forbidden to talk to outsiders. It was considered treason. The punishment for revealing the Brotherhood’s secrets was worse than any torture their capturer might put them through, which Grud was sure she was going to do at some point.
The woman had tried to starve them a couple of times, but never for more than two days in a row. She was either too softhearted to keep it up for longer, or maybe she’d been playing mind games with them, demonstrating her power over them. When there was no rush, starvation was a very effective form of torture.
“When is she going to bring food?” Shaveh asked. “It’s already noon time.”
It was hard to tell time in the windowless chamber, but when she brought them food, she usually called it lunch. It was the same thing every day, except for the days she’d brought them nothing. Once every twenty-four hours or so, she shoved a big bowl of beans and rice through the small opening at the bottom of the cage. They had to stand against the far wall while she did it, or they didn’t get any. Their drinking water came from the plastic tubes in their cages.
Mordan finished his last set and got to his feet. “That was a good workout.” He walked over to the tube, pressed the lever with his foot, and splashed water on his face, then dried himself off with his filthy T-shirt.
Grabbing the iron bars separating his and Grud’s cage, Shaveh said, “We need to escape. Between the three of us we can overpower her. What kind of warriors are we that we can’t take on a single female?”
“She is smart,” Grud said. “And careful.”
And merciful, but he kept that one to himself.
She’d known what they had been about when she’d caught them.
Grud’s story was exactly the same as that of the other two. He’d picked up a human female in a club, walked out with her to look for a secluded corner, and had gotten busy fucking. The moment he’d flashed his fangs, though, their jailer had come out of nowhere, Tasered his ass, and then set the human free. He’d been too busy twitching and shaking and trying to keep his heart going to notice if she’d thralled the human, but he’d figured she must have.
Later, when he’d accused her of trying to kill him, she’d said that it had been her intention and that he’d been lucky she couldn’t bring herself to cut out his black heart.
An immortal going around and killing human females had to be taken out.
She referred to them as murderous scum, letting them know she thought of them as the lowest of the low. And yet she was feeding them, even hosing down their cages once a day. She could’ve treated them much worse.
Which was proof that females were too softhearted to be warriors.
The starvation tactic would’ve eventually worked. Maybe not on him, but Shaveh and Mordan’s characters were not as strong. They would’ve broken down after a few weeks with no food and told her whatever she wanted to know.
Not that he had any idea what she could’ve done with the information. It wasn’t as if they could tell her where the Brotherhood’s home base was, or where the clan was hiding.
She would have gained no useful knowledge.
Letting them go, however, was not an option, she’d told them that multiple times. She couldn’t bring herself to kill them, but she would never allow them to harm another woman again.
Would it help their cause if he told her that he was actually grateful for her stopping him from doing so? Or that killing females was not something he and the other two wanted to do?
They were simple soldiers, and Doomers did not refuse orders.
1
Kian
“Anything else?” Bridget asked as she typed Kian’s last comment on her tablet.
“No, we are good.”
Well, he was, but Bridget wasn’t.
The doctor should have been soaring on cloud nine, celebrating her success. Instead her expression was pinched, and her hair, which usually hung in soft waves around her shoulders, was all messed up and frizzy as if she hadn’t bothered brushing it after getting out of bed.
Perhaps heading a project of that magnitude was too much for her. It wasn’t like her research, which she could conduct in a leisurely manner with no timelines to stress about and with no one monitoring her progress. In contrast, her new job put her in the spotlight, required endless hours of work, and was stressful in the extreme. And that was before the rescue missions even began.
“You look troubled,” he said.
Bridget sighed. “I’m sorry. You have enough on your plate without wondering why I’m in such a shitty mood.”
“Be honest with me, Bridget. Are you overwhelmed? Is this project too much for you to handle?”
She shook her head. “It’s not about that.”
“Talk to me.”
“It’s personal.”
“Is Turner misbehaving? Do you need me to beat him up?”
Meaning it as a joke, Kian expected Bridget to smile and retort with something witty. Instead, her eyes misted with tears.
What the hell?
Bridget wasn’t an overly emotional female, the opposite was true. What he admired the most about her was her no-nonsense attitude.
“I wish it was as simple as that. It’s the chemo. He is not reacting well to it. In fact, it has gotten so bad that he stopped taking the meds without telling me, but frankly, I can’t blame him.”
“Is he going back on them?”
“I made him promise that he would resume the treatment once all his current files were closed. One of the reasons he stopped was that he couldn’t think clearly and was afraid to mess up.”
She smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s not like he is an office clerk. If he botches up a mission, people die.”
“Understood.”
Taking a deep breath, she raked her fingers through her messy hair, wincing when they hit a snag. “On the remote chance that it might work, Victor wants to attempt transition before going back on the meds.”
“Are you okay with that?”
“Yes. I’m terrified of losing him, and I would’ve preferred to drag it out for as long as I can, but I can’t. It’s not fair to Victor.”
“You love him.”
“Yes.”
“Does he love you back?”
“In his own way, he does. Victor has a limited
range of emotions, but I know him well enough by now to realize that what he feels for me is as close to love as he’ll ever get.”
Kian tapped his fingers on the surface of his desk. Bridget’s torment was making him uncomfortable. Seeing her like that and not being able to come up with a solution was aggravating. The best he could offer her was to volunteer to induce Turner, which, providing the guy was indeed a Dormant, would give him the best chance at transitioning.
“We should send Turner to Amanda for testing.”
Avoiding his eyes, Bridget flicked a speck of dust from her tablet’s screen. “I thought about that. But what’s the point? He either is or is not. And he either transitions or not. Unlike the others, Turner already knows about us, so why not go for it? We know that paranormal abilities are not the only indicators. By the same token, we need to consider that not all who have them are Dormants either.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but the quiver in her voice betrayed her emotions.
Kian hadn’t considered that possibility, but Bridget was right. Not every human with paranormal talent was necessarily a Dormant.
Still, he felt that Turner should get tested, even if the only benefit would be satisfying Kian’s need to ensure that every possible avenue had been explored. “Nevertheless, I want him to go through the tests. What’s the harm in him doing so?”
