savage 05 - the savage protector

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  THE SAVAGE PROTECTOR

  Book Five: The Savage Series

  Copyright © 2013-14 Tamara Rose Blodgett

  http://tamararoseblodgett.blogspot.com

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook 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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to a legitimate retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication:

  Kami Bravo

  Thank you for all you did for me.

  For others~

  Rest in Peace.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1 5

  CHAPTER 2 11

  CHAPTER 3 19

  CHAPTER 4 27

  CHAPTER 5 36

  CHAPTER 6 44

  CHAPTER 7 52

  CHAPTER 8 60

  CHAPTER 9 66

  CHAPTER 10 75

  CHAPTER 11 80

  CHAPTER 12 88

  CHAPTER 13 95

  CHAPTER 14 102

  CHAPTER 15 110

  CHAPTER 16 117

  CHAPTER 17 124

  CHAPTER 18 132

  CHAPTER 19 140

  CHAPTER 20 149

  CHAPTER 21 157

  CHAPTER 22 160

  CHAPTER 23 163

  CHAPTER 24 168

  Epilogue 173

  Acknowledgments 176

  More Books by Tamara Rose Blodgett 177

  Books written under the pen name, Marata Eros. 178

  CHAPTER 1

  Edwin charged into the Gathering Hall.

  Bracus stood.

  “What say you?” He scanned the space beyond Edwin’s shoulder as if an unseen enemy shadowed the man.

  Edwin could have told Bracus it was not an enemy, but fear.

  One and the same.

  Edwin swung his longish hair out of his eyes, caught his breath, and plowed forward with the wretched news. “Evelyn and Calia have departed the sphere.”

  Philip, Maddoc, Daniel, and the foppish Charles stood, their ornately carved chairs scraping across the floor worn from thousands of meals taken together at that very table, which was almost twenty feet in length.

  Edwin scanned the faces of the men. All were brutal and unforgiving, yet filled with the tightness of concern. Edwin imagined a looking glass would reflect the same in his own expression. Philip's face showed the most anxiety, the planes and angles like razors of flesh. His worry no longer etched like a sword of indifference on his features, but one of acute regard for the safety of a female who eluded him. Edwin knew he and Phillip had a mutual purpose, if Calia would but bow to their stewardship.

  “I found a note left for me by my blooded sister. It does not bode well.” He carefully recited the short missive.

  Phillip moved forward gracefully. Though all members of the Band were larger than typical males in other societies, Phillip's size was noteworthy even amongst the Band. He stood closer to seven feet than six, his shoulders so broad he moved through doorways canted, for to pass through them straight would stick him between the jambs. Edwin was very glad that he had never met Philip in battle as anything other than an ally.

  “Oh? And the lass trots off with nary a hello or goodbye?” Philip’s quiet voice of fury said so much more than a loud one ever could.

  “Aye,” Edwin spit out in disgusted agreement.

  “Who would aid two unescorted females Outside?” Charles asked. “I say, it speaks to the undercurrent of dissent that has been flowing unabated within our culture since the war between kingdoms.”

  The troubled silence was broken by Daniel. “There isn't anything we can do about the residual conflict and assimilation of the spheres.”

  The full-blooded Band members were always so persistent in their stubbornness. Daniel thought if he slammed a few skulls they would think much more clearly. Unfortunately, there simply wasn't time. The wee lass of ten and five was with Calia, who had proven to be a piggish female, stubborn as could be imagined. He did not need a long acquaintance with her to understand that Calia would not be manipulated. Why Edwin hadn't seen the obvious was beyond him.

  “She makes herself a target in the Outside, and… she accompanies Evie,” Maddoc said in a voice so low Edwin strained to hear it.

  Maddoc's hard, determined expression made Edwin suck in his breath. “No,” Edwin said, in answer to Maddoc’s unspoken question.

  Maddoc, his Day of Birth having been just weeks past, said, “Oh, most decidedly, yes. We cannot let those two…” He stomped away, large hands on his hips, bronze hair glinting as soft sunlight from Outside bled through the nearly translucent walls.

  As the youngest of the clan members present that day, he was very much about being rash.

  That was relative, Edwin decided, as “rash” was an apt moniker for those of the Band, along with a few other choice descriptors.

  Maddoc spun around, the short tail of his dark copper hair whipping over his shoulder and his seawater eyes blazing anger over all of them. “Tear around Outside!” he finished his earlier sentence in a grated tone. “It is akin to ringing a dinner bell before the Fragment.”

  “A banquet,” Bracus agreed grimly.

  “Protocol dictates—” Charles began.

  The Band gave him a withering look. He was tolerated but not respected.

  Charles allowed a tight smile to move his lips, but the bite of humor never reached his eyes.

  “Whatever you may be about, this issue needs be addressed with Queen Clara.” He paused, too ill to speak the next words. He swallowed what tasted like a dose of arsenic-coated bile. “And your very own Matthew, who will soon be our sovereign, could possibly have insight into this issue.”

  “Issue?” Maddoc yelled, hands flying out like wild birds at his sides. “This is not an issue, you fool! It is an emergency.”

  “Aye.” Bracus nodded then added as Charles's face flushed a dull red. “However, in this, Charles is right.”

  Bracus watched Charles tighten the ridiculous flag of silk at his neck and school his expression with difficulty. Charles was like the magpies that bided their time about the supper table, lying in wait for a morsel and squawking until they received one.

  Bracus continued before an argument took hold of the group, wasting precious time. “Clara and Matthew must know. Charles is accurate in that Matthew is a few short months from becoming king of this sphere. It is an alliance that will protect us all and is conceived in love.”

  Having been the leader of the Clan of Ohio for ten years past, he felt justified in spearing the others with serious eyes. “Many of you do not know the cocoon of love a female provides, that is the missing piece to you, that once found, makes a male of the Band whole. Yet, that is what Matthew has found. It is the potential for us all. Let us make haste, eschewing our grievances on petty issues which do not advance us. Evie and Calia make their way through the Outside even as we debate it.”

  “Bracus is right,” Daniel agreed easily. “The Outside is infested with Fragment. They keep close to the Great Forest, watching the spheres.”

  Daniel did not add that Calia would know that—must know it—for she had remained Outside in a way and for a time
that was not healthy. However, she had prevailed. But there was also Evie, who had lived the life of a protected female. Calia’s confidence could be the demise of them both.

  Maddoc scowled, wrapping his hand around the solid bronze door handle that would put them outside of the Gathering Hall and onto the path of cobblestones that led to the Royal Manse.

  “I do not care about any of it. Evie is with Calia, and if I know the tenor of this female, she will seek to save any wanderers, endangering both herself and Evie.”

  Phillip replied, “Aye. I do not think she has thought about the safety of the extra female. It is one thing to have only your own hide to concern yourself with, but quite another to also have that of an untrained female.”

  Maddoc grunted his assent as he tore open the door, leaving the rest to follow or discuss. He would not tarry further. His female was vulnerable and unprotected Outside.

  It did not matter to him that Evie was unaware of her status as his female. He would simply be patient.

  Not a natural proclivity of the Band.

  *

  Elise

  Elise lifted her skirts as she trailed behind the other escapees who had survived the auction block. She kept the flutter of anxiety at bay by the slimmest of margins, where it sought entrance at the soft points of her mind. Fear sought her like an itch she would not allow itself to be scratched.

  The strange ones who had come from another world had freed them. The Fragment that remained, enslaving her and the others, had disbanded. Many were slaughtered, and more roamed without a henchman. However, Elise knew from grim experience that it would be but a matter of time until one rose to the “top of the heap,” as they were wont to say. And she wished to be far and away when that happenstance occurred. For when it did, she and the other females would need to be out of the path of that particular storm of leadership.

  The coup would be bloody and swift, taking the weak in its path and throwing them beneath the one who would prevail against all comers.

  Elise had seen it time and time again—a rite of succession. Only the fittest would rise to lead.

  She put her hand to her mouth, remembering the kiss given by the young Traveler who had bid her farewell with a smile. It had been the touch of an extreme novice but given so tenderly that the feel of it would remain with her always. Prior, Elise had suffered nothing but brutality.

  They had kept her for the things she afforded the Fragment: her gender and healing skills. Elise was part Band. The select blood ran in her veins. It was not looks or strength that set her apart as special, but her abilities as a Healer. Legend said that some of the Band had a touch of the other, the supernatural. In Elise's case, she could advance healing to a degree that was inexplicable within human norms.

  The Fragment had noticed and done what they normally did: exploited for their own gain.

  Many times, Elise had used her healing to aid those tortured by the Fragment. She would bring them back to partial health only to be forced to watch in a state of numb despair as members of the Fragment resumed the torture to procure yet another precious detail, to gain things they deemed worthy or valuable.

  Too many times. By unnatural convention and coincidence—or perhaps heavenly intervention—Elise and a handful of others were free and moving toward the Clan of Ohio. But the journey was long, and in the interim, her throat stayed tight with fear.

  As Elise hastened through the blond sea of wheat, she caught sight of something twinkling at her in the fading light of the day. Knee-high fronds slithered against her woolen skirt. Patches of snow revealed tufts of the prairie grass like found islands. Elise knelt and picked up the object. She held a necklace of great intricacy, a lone jewel of meaning in the Outside, found by her in that singular moment that gasped like a stolen breath. A pause in her sojourn she could not afford, yet Elise took it in a greedy solitude.

  She held the piece between her fingers, admiring the delicate hammered feathers of fine silver metal and the ancient symbol of catching dreams stamped on in a rough circle with a finely woven spider web of metal. A deep green stone winked at her from its center.

  Elise clasped it about her neck, the cold metal heating as it lay against the base of her neck. She glanced around before moving into the border of the forest—toward safety, toward the Clan of Ohio.

  Elise did not look back, nor did she pause again.

  *

  Theodore

  Theodore staggered to his feet and surveyed the damage to his person. The skin of his knuckles was long gone.

  His body was beaten but not broken. He would fight until his last breath if it took that.

  “Come if you will! Come one, come all,” Theo commanded.

  If they were Fragment enough to take him, then he welcomed it. If they dared.

  Many already had.

  And they had fallen to his fists.

  Bodies littered the ground like broken dolls. Blood and bones shone in the weak light of the sun's winter rays, which bleached the ground, paling the tapestry of death for those who stood facing Theodore with heaving chests.

  “No?” Theodore cocked a brow at the three Fragment brave enough to meet his gaze.

  All but one dropped his eyes from the piercing green of Theodore's.

  He would be the one.

  Theodore pointed at him. “You there.”

  The one with flinty eyes that moved ceaselessly, hesitantly stepped forward.

  Theo thought him wise to approach thus, as the six who had come before him lay bleeding out in the snow, their slit throats appearing like second grinning mouths. Though humor would evade them forever.

  “What are you called?” Theo asked. The boy’s eyes met Theo's then shifted away. “Harvey.”

  Theodore remained silent. Finally, when Harvey looked at him again, Theo said, “You will be my right-hand man.”

  “I don't want to follow ya. You're not natural,” Harvey said, taking a step back.

  Harvey’s two companions nodded a little too quickly, their eyes shifting to what lay around Theo’s neck.

  Theo smiled. He was accustomed to that response. He would use it as all Fragment did—to his advantage.

  “And what has happened to your leader?” he asked, appearing to muse. He rubbed his chin, looking thoughtful.

  Some of the affect was lost as he stepped over the bodies of the dissenting Fragment he'd murdered. But no matter, it was artful really.

  Theo's point would be made, not with diplomacy and tact, for there was naught to spare of that, but with the finesse of a sledgehammer—his way. He threw his hand up in the air with a flip, gore bleeding halfway down his forearm, the hair on his skin clumped with it.

  “I believe Tucker thought that he'd have a nice little happy trading life. He'd capture the queen from the sphere.” Theodore pretended to deliberate on the correct name so as not to appear too clever with the imbeciles. He thought it better to let them think they bested him in some arena.

  “Queen Clara!” He stabbed the air. “Yes, the minx who has escaped the cold, dead fingers of Tucker.”

  Theo spun suddenly, and Harvey cringed.

  “And what of our cruel masters of the Fragment who did nothing for us at auction?” Theo queried. The others exchanged uneasy glances.

  Theo nodded slowly. “You see? When the unnaturals came into this world and threw our good work to the wind, our masters ran and left us at whatever mercy the unnaturals possessed.”

  Theodore had hidden beneath the fallen bodies of the other Fragment until the Travelers from away had gone. He had watched the precious women who were freed as they escaped the Fragment's hold.

  Elise was vital. Her absence was akin to losing an internal organ that kept the body whole. Without her, the heart of the Fragment beat more slowly.

  She could never bear children so was useless for trade, but there were other… things she offered.

  That would be the first objective of the new ragtag group of fractured men he now led: get their female
s back, especially Elise.

  And if more were about, Theodore would net them like the fish that swam in the river.

  CHAPTER 2

  Calia & Evie

  Calia was already growing tired of the young one who accompanied her. Never one to have other females about for an extended time, she had come to understand the logic of that precept—save and dispatch.

  Calia had complicated what she felt to be her prime directive.

  Evie had been stout for the first day. Yet, that night, as they rolled out their bed sacks, Evie complained of being homesick.

  Calia couldn’t comprehend that, as Calia was home.

  The Outside stretched before her, untamed and wild. It was what she knew—all she knew. She was her own master and liked it that way. Calia remained steadfast in her objective to drop Evie at the Clan of Ohio. She did her best not to think of Philip.

  Though she dreamed of him.

  The fragrance of his skin, the play of muscles underneath that smooth shell of steel flesh… he haunted her dreams.

  *

  Evie sighed for the hundredth time. She was sore, tired, and thirsty. But Calia appeared unaffected as she scanned their surroundings, then laid the bedrolls out in a way that put her head at Evie's feet, the best position for sighting wayward interlopers.

  Evie thought Calia paranoid. There had been nary a sign of Fragment, nor of any human for that matter: clan, Fragment, sphere, nothing.

  They were still another day’s walk to Evie’s clan, and she was beginning to rethink the journey.

  It had seemed romantic and thrilling to sail off Outside in secret, giving Maddoc reason to worry.

  However, as they moved deeper into the Outside, just she and the one select female of the Band, Evie began to feel a creeping uneasiness.

  She had thought to teach Maddoc a lesson that she would not be controlled by a male. Evie was already ten and five—mating age. She did not need a male who was not hers to stalk about telling her when she would lay her head down or when she would dine. Her thoughts were her own, and they would stay thus. But the farther she got from Maddoc, the more trivial her rebellion seemed.