by S. E. Smith
“The oath is permanent.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you swear fealty, there’s no going back. There’s obligations on both sides. You’d have my back. I’d have yours.”
She nodded.
“Right. Option A, you stay unaligned and solo. You mind your own business. Option B, you swear fealty to me. Option C is I pay your expenses, and you leave now. We keep tabs on you and the baby. We need to know how that goes. Clear?”
“Sure.” Hundreds and hundreds of demons and magekind were sworn to the warlord, and they could be called on at any time, up to and including fighting for him in a war.
“I’m hoping you’ll join me.” He looked around the room, smiling like he was at a party, and he was an extrovert. She had to remind herself he was dangerous.
“Why?” She didn’t want to stop working with Maddy. She didn’t want to leave town. She didn’t want to leave Palla. She didn’t. And she could not promise she would kill.
“Fair question.” He cocked his head. “Straight talk, all right?”
“Please.”
“You have an ability I want on my team.”
She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and got herself settled. The tension in the room was high, but not out of control. There wasn’t anyone itching to start a fight, except maybe Palla, and that was his natural state.
“The work’s dangerous, I won’t pretend it isn’t, we’re in the middle of a fucking war with magekind who want to go back to the old days of demons should be dead or under control.”
“Believe me, I get that.”
“I don’t want Palla pissed off at me for not giving you the hard sell about joining up.” He gave a dazzling grin. “Generous salary. You won’t have to worry about that. We offer a 401-K and other investment opportunities, full health benefits, including maternity, childcare, lots of other perks. Housing subsidy, company car, transit pass, gym membership. Maddy can go over the basics with you.”
“There’s just one problem.”
The warlord looked thoughtful.
“You said there’s a war.”
“I did. There is.”
“I am not a violent person. I do not believe violence is ever the answer. I can’t hurt people. I just can’t. I will do anything but kill for you, sir.” She swallowed hard, twisted up so hard her body was rigid. “I can’t live a life where I’m asked to do that.”
“Jesus, Palla, what the hell?” Nikodemus put a hand to the center of his chest. “I’m not asking you to give her up.”
Wallace took her eyes off Nikodemus to look at Palla. Like Nikodemus, he had a hand on the center of his chest. Palla bowed his head and pressed three fingers to his forehead. “Warlord. That is not her gift. Her talent. If it comes to that, I will keep her alive in a fight. I’ll make sure she doesn’t face that choice. I swear it.”
Nikodemus put his hands on his hips and chewed on his lower lip. “Not an assassin then.”
Palla started to answer, then checked himself, and that made her heart lurch. She didn’t know how to make this work. Not if Nikodemus was going to ask her to do something that would kill her soul.
“No.” Wallace watched both of them carefully. She couldn’t read either of them. “No, sir, I could not do that.”
“Let’s get clear. Fealty to me means if I tell you I need you to kill some asshole for me, then, Ms. Jackson, you are going to feel my need to have that happen.” He touched the center of his chest. “I’m going to feel what that does to you, and I can promise you, if it’s true that does you harm, I will suffer the consequences. To the point where you may no longer be bound by your oath.” His eyes flashed silver. “I have a team of people who can do that for me if I need it.”
Her tension ebbed. “You’d never ask, is that right?”
“No.” Nikodemus spoke softly. “It means I’d never ask unless there was a damn good reason why you need to do the deed for me. It means the reason I’m making the request is worth losing you.” He held her gaze. “It does not mean I would never ask. I can’t promise you that.”
Nobody said anything for a long time.
“So.” Nikodemus clapped his hands. “You need a minute with Palla to talk about this?”
She looked away from Nikodemus to Palla. “Do I?”
“Stay,” he said, low and soft. He stared into her eyes. “Stay with me. So we can both bear witness.”
Wallace turned back to Nikodemus with a shrug. Her oath to the warlord took about five minutes, start to finish, and at the end she was hollow, and the warlord took a step back and instead of the quiet, she had this sense of him in her head. And then Palla was there, steadying her while that whip of Nikodemus’s power flowed through her, and through that, there was a connection to Palla and all the others in the room.
“That is just—” She went from being alone to belonging. Palla slipped his arms around her waist.
“I am whole again,” he said into her head and along with that was a rush of his relief because all this time he’d been prepared to lose her. He didn’t mean he would not miss Avitas or stop mourning her loss, but he’d no longer be alone in that sorrow. “Whole.”
She faced him. He was right. Together they would bear witness.
“Both of us.”
“Don’t you know it, Angel.”
About the Author
Carolyn Jewel was born on a moonless night. That darkness was seared into her soul and she became an award-winning author of historical and paranormal romance. She has a very dusty car and a Master’s degree in English that proves useful at the oddest times. An avid fan of fine chocolate, finer heroines, Bollywood films, and heroism in all forms, she has three cats and two dogs. Also a son. One of the cats is his.
Visit her on the web at:
carolynjewel.com
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Books by Carolyn
Historical Romance
Reforming the Scoundrels Series
Not Wicked Enough, Book 1
Not Proper Enough, Book 2
The Sinclair Sisters Series
Lord Ruin, Book 1
Other Historical Romance
One Starlit Night, Novella From the Midnight Scandals Anthology
Midnight Scandals, Anthology
Scandal, RITA finalist, Best Regency Historical
Indiscreet, Winner, Bookseller’s Best, Best Short Historical
Moonlight A short story
The Spare
Stolen Love
Passion’s Song
Paranormal Romance
My Immortals Series
My Wicked Enemy, Book 1
My Forbidden Desire, RITA finalist, Paranormal Romance, Book 2
My Immortal Assassin, Book 3
My Dangerous Pleasure, Book 4
Free Fall, Book 4.5 (a novella)
My Darkest Passion, Book 5
Other Paranormal Romance
A Darker Crimson, Book 4 of the Crimson City series
DX (A Crimson City Novella)
Erotic Romance
Whispers Collection No 1 Erotic Short Stories
Fantasy Romance
The King’s Dragon A short story
Chimera Born
Book 1 of the Chimera
Michele Callahan
About Chimera Born
Aron of Itara, Forbidden Son, has been a prisoner of fate since before he was born. Captured as a child by the evil Triscani, it’s been centuries since he’s felt the sun on his face or the tenderness of a woman’s touch. Determined to help humanity break the elusive but powerful Itaran Triads’ hold on Earth, Aron escapes with one goal, to find the one man who can help him save humans from
an eternal prison. After that, he’ll fight to the death, but he’ll never go back in the cage.
Zoey Williams watched her sister die at the hands of monsters, and no one believed her. She’s spent the last five years using her journalism skills to track aliens, investigate paranormal activity, and hunt for answers. But she got too close to the truth, and now it’s not just monsters hunting her, but her own people. Zoey doesn’t believe she needs a guardian, but once Aron finds her he can’t leave her to the vicious hunters that would turn her to ash or to the power-hungry humans who seek to silence her. In fact, he discovers that he doesn’t want to leave her at all….
Chapter 1
Aron stumbled over the rocky terrain, his life’s blood dripping from a multitude of small cuts and two deep ones. Had he been human, or mortal, he would have been long gone from this world. Instead he ignored the pain and willed his body to take the next step, and the next. The manacles on his wrists and ankles clinked loudly against the rocks that he scrambled over. His blood left a trail that the Hunters would follow all too easily.
A brisk mountain wind cooled the burning pain in the flesh of his bare chest and back. His leg muscles screamed at him, exhausted and shaky, weak after his time in the cage. His enemies weren’t far behind, but he refused to give up, refused to go back under their control. He’d waited centuries sealed inside that tiny metallic room, chained like a dog in a pen, beaten and sold like a slave to the highest bidder, passed from one Triscani Lord to another every couple of decades. They all kept him locked in that same room, starving and weak. They all tried to break him. They all waited like fat spiders with him trapped in their web.
He had feared that they’d be right, that he’d surrender his will to the dark power rising like a tidal wave from within. He’d feared the moment he would lose himself to the evil of his brethren.
He would not go down without a fight. Those bastard Triscani had starved him like a mythical vampire sealed in a sterile steel coffin. Surrounded by metal walls and a freezing steel floor, he’d had nothing but the remains of his black Scout uniform to keep him warm in their dark world. The torture was worse, hours upon hours as they’d stretched him on a rack and carved his flesh with their black crystalline blades, demanded information about his brother and sister. His power.
He’d given them nothing. They’d taken his freedom, but never broken his will. Perhaps that was why the Triscani ruling Lords kept him alive. He’d realized after the first few years that they didn’t want him dead…they wanted him to surrender, to become what they were. They wanted a new king and the hell on both worlds he’d give them if he succumbed to his dark side.
Gods how he’d wished for death. He had nearly lost hope. He could admit that now that he had escaped that prison cell. Hope was a precious and dangerous thing for someone like him. He’d spent so many lost years imprisoned that he’d nearly forgotten what it was to walk free. And all those long centuries, hope had fed him equal parts determination and agony. That was until two days ago, when the Timewalker had popped into his prison cell. Starving and barely conscious, he had attacked her like an animal, bitten her flesh and covered himself in her blood. That was when he realized who she was, who she must have Marked and claimed as her own.
He tasted his identical twin brother’s D.N.A. in her blood. His own D.N.A.
“Ajax, stop! Don’t you remember me? I’m here to help you! What are you doing?”
Her soft plea caused him to recoil in shock and disgust at what he’d done. His brother Ajax’s cherished female had somehow landed in the very heart of darkness and saved Aron’s life, had set him free. And he’d attacked her like an animal. He’d nearly become what the Triscani had wanted all these centuries…one of them.
Thank the gods his brother’s name had stopped him in time.
“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His apology had come out a gargled mess of words no one could’ve understood. The words held little weight when his mouth and chest were already covered in her blood.
“You’re not Ajax.” She’d watched him like a rabbit watches a hawk, without trust and poised to flee. He thought she looked like a dark angel with her dark brown hair and pain-filled eyes. Shame filled him when she placed her hand to her wounds and flinched in pain. He’d hurt her. Gods be damned.
“No. Please. I’m sorry. I didn’t know who you were. Ajax is my brother.”
“Oh, my God! There are two of you?” The woman had looked around once more, inspected the metal room with her gaze, and froze when she noticed the cuffs circling his ankles, wrists and neck. She had backed away from him then, her eyes round with fear. “What is this place? This is not where I meant to go. Why are you here? Where is Ajax? I must find him!”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry I hurt you. Please? Please help me.” Aron had held out his hand, too afraid she’d vanish to do more than beg from his knees. How many times could a man apologize for being a monster?
“I can’t. I’m sorry I have to go. I have to find Ajax.” White as a sheet and shaking, she’d held her hand to her bleeding throat and backed away before he could recover from the shock of her refusal. “I’ll send someone for you if I can.”
She didn’t say, “if I survive”, but he’d seen the desperation in her eyes. Her dark brown gaze had held a deep sorrow, one he recognized too well from his own black heart.
With that, she’d walked back through the time gate that had brought her to him and he’d been left alone, again. Locked away and forgotten. But she’d given him the one thing he’d desperately needed after months of complete starvation. Shocked, he’d looked down to find that no trace of her blood remained on his body. His skin had absorbed her blood the way a dry towel soaked up water. And her blood filled him up, fed him power and knowledge like he hadn’t felt in centuries.
A few moments after the Timewalker disappeared the door of his cell had burst open. Two Scouts and one Lord invaded his space, obviously hunting the female. They must have felt the massive energy disturbance caused by her arrival.
But they charged into his cell expecting to find him weak and semiconscious with a female Timewalker for company.
What they got was a pissed-off Immortal unleashed and drunk on power.
The Lord’s telepathic voice had been a screech of sound. Contain him!
Aron smiled as he remembered the maniacal laughter that had escaped his throat. He’d opened his arms in welcome and ripped the bolts holding his manacled feet to the wall as he rose. He’d answered the dark Lord and his minions in kind.
Today you die.
He’d turned the less-powerful Scouts to ash first, their power flowing through his body had felt like a scalpel scraping over raw nerves. Aron had turned on the dark Lord next, and in his final moments of life the bastard had inadvertently given Aron the will to turn back the tide of evil flowing through him.
The dark Lord wilted in Aron’s arms, faded willingly into nothing but dust. But before he’d let go he’d called Aron, “My King.”
Aron looked him in the eye and made a solemn vow. “Never.”
Thank the gods for the Timewalker’s blood. Her strength had soaked through his skin, gifted him with the will to fight for his own dark soul. With her blood came memories of the isolated mountain home he’d become determined to find in this place called Colorado. She’d gifted him with the strength to ash those bastards. He’d walked out of that prison and opened a portal to Earth.
He’d hung on to sanity by his fingernails, but he’d survived.
For now, he had a purpose that drove him, that kept him fighting. The human doctor’s name had come from her blood and her memories. Doctor Jacob Hansen. Casper Project. Black Gate. Colorado. He’d seen the home in her memories, the names and faces of a few men she trusted and admired. They were warriors already. He would find them and give them this gift, this weapon. The human soldiers would know their people and understand the ways of this new human world. He did not.
Whe
n the Triscani killed his mother and took him from his home he’d been fourteen years old. Earth had been different then. Simple and open. He did not understand this new reality or its machines. He’d been gone too long from his home. Too much had changed. The Triscani Lords had taken his life, locking him in that prison cell for centuries. But the changes in the world hurt his soul. He did not belong here any longer. Everything he’d known and loved had long ago been erased. Not just gone…forgotten.
He was a relic, a prisoner from an ancient war. He’d get to the doctor and give his gift to humanity. After that, he’d track the Hunters down, lead them away from the human at the Casper Project, and end this game they played with him once and for all.
He’d walked for hours now, too tired and weak from his battle with the three Triscani in his cell to summon another portal. He crouched on the earth, welcomed the cut of rock and the sharp jab of dried weeds into his bare feet and palms. After the smooth sterility of the box, he welcomed the sting of this wild, living place.
He’d hoped the portal would have settled him closer to the home. Isolation might be good for the humans, but it made his job that much more difficult. No humans. No help. No cover for his chest or shoes for his feet. No food. So far he’d survived on what she had given him in her blood. It was late spring, with the mountains still cold and the peaks wrapped in snow. There were no berries yet, nothing to eat but the wild animals lucky enough to survive the frigid lack over the winter.
And he didn’t have time to hunt. He was hunted, and the Triscani were fast, ruthless, and strong. Move. Keep moving. That was all he had time to do.
