Table of Contents
Copyright
Title
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
Thank You
Also By
Author Bio
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents depicted in this work are of the author’s imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locations, or events is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2016 Madison Stevens
No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.
Cover designed by Najla Qamber Designs
Marcus (Luna Lodge: Hunters of Atlas #5)
by
Madison Stevens
Café-owner Courtney has one Christmas wish: to get a little alone time with the grumpy but sexy Marcus. Unfortunately, he seems to be going out of his way to avoid her. The only glimmer of hope she has is that he won't let any other man get near her.
Hybrid Marcus is conflicted. Every part of him is calling for him to be with the doe-eyed woman, but being with a human goes against everything he has vowed to fight. After all, humans were the ones that imprisoned his people and experimented on them.
When the pair are stranded together because of a storm, their mutual attraction threatens to explode, but the real threat is a deadly and cunning beast stalking them in the snow.
Marcus is forced to decide what’s more important, defending his people’s honor or protecting his own chance at happiness.
Chapter One
Marcus sighed as he entered the meeting house, grateful to be inside. The blistering outside cold seeped through the layers of his clothes down to his bones. The warmth from inside enveloped him and almost instantly he could feel his toes and fingers start to thaw.
The only good thing about the weather he could think of was that it kept snooping humans and potential enemies at bay. Hard to spy on someone when you were freezing to death.
He took off his jacket and placed it on the hook by the door. Normally, he might not need one, but with the coming snowstorm, the temperature had dropped low enough that even he thought it was too cold.
Hybrids stood gathered inside the meeting room for the holiday party they were having. They smiled and chatted with one another as if none of them had suffered, as if they didn’t have a legion of enemies plotting against them.
Whether it was the Horatius Group, who had kept them prisoners, or the sinister Azilians, who probably wanted to harvest their very essence, they weren’t safe. Not to mention the damned humans who’d kill them out of fear of hybrid superiority.
Marcus wrinkled his nose. Humans. More of his people were becoming bonded as time went on, Vestals entering their lives and creating just another layer of trouble the hybrids didn’t need.
Those women weren’t like the hybrids. Even if they could bond with a hybrid, they came from the human world, with their human weaknesses. Every time they allowed a human into the compound, they risked being exposed to those who would destroy them.
No one seemed to care. They all just talked about destiny.
He’d heard the tales. The stories about how his people were fated to be with these special Vestals, women set as their matches by the gods. Maybe that was true, but he doubted it.
The only truth that could be confirmed was that the Vestals put all the hybrids at risk.
He almost growled as he looked around the room. Why didn’t everyone see the risk he did? He didn’t understand. They were all but pretending to be humans at this point with their silly party.
He stayed near the wall, following it until he was at a good point to survey all of the room. Although he might’ve just gotten off patrol duty, Marcus still felt that his number-one duty at all times was to his people, to make sure they were safe.
Next to him, a horrible tree twinkled with its gaudy lights. Who the hell thought up this stupid idea? To go out, cut a tree down, and bring it inside only to have its little needles sprinkle the floor below it seemed like a waste of a tree. But nobody asked him.
The more he had learned about the hybrids around him, the more Marcus realized just how out of place he was. First, he’d assumed when they were all awakened from cryosleep that they’d all been under around the same amount of time. As the weeks and then months passed, he began to doubt that.
So many things that seemed instinctual to the people around him confused him. The use of electronic and modern gadgets, for one, seemed to come easy to everyone else, but he still struggled.
Their leader Rem once mentioned that he thought Marcus might be from an older line. Maybe an even much older line. It would make sense despite his young age, especially when nothing came easy to him in this modern day, not that he’d admit any of that to his leader. Smug prick.
He couldn’t remember his time before the cryofreeze, but a dim hint of a memory suggested he was a man that used his hands, that he was used to hard work and fighting. That made sense, but it didn’t bring him much comfort.
Sometimes it was the fighting that worried him. He felt the pull, like all hybrids did, the aggression bubbling just under the surface. It was something he’d heard a few of the men speak about, but somehow his experience seemed different, something more deadly.
Marcus frowned, thinking of the Glycons, the mindless bestial hybrids the Horatius Group had created via experimentation on other groups of hybrids. They were a pure distillation of aggression and violence. They were animals with no soul.
But they were a modern horror and provided no excuse for something he might have done, even if he couldn’t remember.
He hated the idea he might’ve been a horrible person before, and that those sins might now be forgotten. A man needed to atone for what he’d done, but the first step in atonement was knowing what you did. Worse, maybe he’d received the fate that he deserved, to forever be apart from others, a stranger in a land that had passed him by.
Marcus pushed the dark thoughts from his head and pulled out a pocket knife and the little wooden figure he had been working on. He leaned against the wall behind him and focused on the carving. Better to keep his hands moving than to think of things he couldn’t change.
He heard Rem and Magnus approach before they even said a word. His eyes might have been on the carving, but his ears remained focused on the environment around him.
“It’s damn cold out there,” Rem said to Magnus. “Glad we’ve got most of the supplies already moved into the bunker.”
The bunker was what they had taken to calling the storage facility on the outskirts of their land that was closer to the mountain base away from their eccentric neighbors, the Azilian cult.
Having the Azilians so close by spurred Rem to start stockpiling supplies. Marcus knew that although his leader might not always keep the rest of the hybrids in the loop on his thoughts, it was clear he considered the Azilians trouble. Something they had in common.
Given that the Azilians seemed to understand what hybrids were, and at least, on some level, un
derstood how to drain the life essence from people, they were not a threat to be taken lightly.
Marcus glanced up from his wood carving and stared at Rem. Previously he had been defiant when it came to Rem’s authority, but he’d witnessed the passion the man possessed. The man wanted to protect his people as much as Marcus.
And despite his old-fashioned nature, Marcus knew they needed to move with the modern times. Rem was the man to do that.
Rem nodded once to Marcus. “They’ve been talking all day on the weather station about the storm that’s moving in. Did you keep an eye on the bunker detail during patrol?”
“You mean did I babysit the others as they moved wood?” Marcus said.
Rem raised a brow, his bright green eyes watching Marcus. He could hear Magnus grunt in annoyance, but ignored the second-in-command.
“Yes, the wood is stacked,” Marcus said.
Not that he would give them the satisfaction of knowing, but Marcus hauled his share of the wood. Plus, he had been in his element working with his hands.
Rem took in a big breath through his nose and gave a knowing smile. The bastard could likely smell the wood on him and knew he helped. Fucker. Always one step ahead.
“I think Courtney will be here soon,” Rem said casually.
Marcus bit back a growl as his body tensed at the mere mention of the woman’s name. The curvy human seemed to set his senses on fire whenever she was around. He thought about her every waking second of the day.
“She’s always around,” he said gruffly, ignoring the urge to fight anyone that even mentioned her name.
Rem gave a small chuckle. The sound of it only pissed Marcus off more.
“She does seem to be coming around quite a bit. Not that I mind,” Rem said and patted his stomach. “The way that woman cooks, she can come around anytime she likes. And I don’t think I’m the only one who’s noticed that.” Rem leaned in a little toward Marcus as he spoke the last part. “Jace seems to really enjoy her cooking as well.”
Again, Marcus struggled to bite back a growl. He looked around the room until his gaze settled on the inexperienced hybrid. No doubt the younger man found her cooking as enjoyable as many of the others did.
He narrowed his eyes on him. He’d make sure that little shit ran his weight in cookies if he so much as looked at any from Courtney.
Magnus cleared his throat, bringing Marcus’s attention back to the two men in front of him. He huffed loudly and went back to carving the little figure in his hand.
Lucas stepped up to the men and handed them each a drink. Marcus tossed the burning liquid into the back of his throat and sighed. Something else that was familiar. Alcohol.
He sensed the laid-back hybrid lean toward him as he continued to work on his carving.
“That’s a fair likeness,” Lucas said.
Marcus stopped and stared at Lucas. His sandy blond hair was already starting to fade back to the deeper brown now that it wasn’t bleached by the sun. Marcus still preferred his own naturally darker hair.
He frowned. “A fair likeness of who?”
Lucas barked a laugh and looked to the other two men. They all shared a knowing glance.
“Of Courtney,” he said. “Is that her Christmas present?”
Marcus looked down at the small figure in his hand. The resemblance to her was undeniable. He’d even managed to get the swirls of her long curly brown hair in the details.
Confusion washed over him. Had he been thinking about her when he did the piece? It hadn’t been something he’d thought about, but more like his fingers told him what to do, even if he didn’t have something in mind.
He looked up to Lucas and opened his mouth to say something but stopped at the sound of a car outside. Not just any car, but her car. Somehow it had its own little distinct rattle and hum.
His eyes caught Rem, and the smug prick winked at him. Marcus bristled.
“I’ve got shit to do,” he grumbled and stormed off until he’d positioned himself across the room.
Despite his better judgment, instinct told him to place himself between the door and Jace. He needed to be somewhere he could be sure to keep an eye on the human and her enticing ways. Or at least, that’s what he told himself.
Chapter Two
Courtney sat in the car, staring at the meeting house in front of her. It looked like most of the other houses in the compound, but it was one of the few large enough to hold a big group of people from the community.
It was such a normal thing. They were having a Christmas party, just like many other people might around this time of year. It just so happened that these people were all genetically engineered hybrids with superior strength, speed, and senses compared to normal people.
Every time she came out to visit them, she had to remind herself that although they were hybrids, they were still the same people she’d come to know. They loved, ate, and slept just like anyone else.
Still, living in the tiny little town of Eagle Ridge, she never expected to meet people like them. She’d heard about the hybrids of Luna Lodge from the news, but no one ever mentioned another group of hybrids.
She had been more than a little shocked to find out they even were hybrids. When Rem had explained it to her, she understood that she needed to keep this a secret to keep them safe. Not only were they on the run from the government, but also the very people that made them, the same people that had no problem enslaving them.
Realizing she was living near hybrids also changed what she thought about the Atlantis-worshiping Azilian cult. Before, she’d just thought they were a bunch of crazy cultists living out a fantasy, something that wouldn’t bother others. She didn’t know everything about the cult, but she did know they were a threat to the hybrids and some of her friends who had started living with them.
Courtney shook her head, trying to clear it of any concerns. She didn’t want to be a downer at the party.
She turned to the large basket of goodies beside her in the car. This was the one time of year that she loved most. It was the time when she got to share her love of baking with everyone around her. And this year she had gone all out.
In the past, there had just been a few people to eat her treats: Taylor and her father, Lara, and a few older people she’d come to know in the community. The ones that had known her aunt when she had been alive and run the café. But as each year passed, those numbers also dwindled away, and she grew more distant from people in the slowly dying town.
She wouldn’t exactly call her life lonely. With friends like Taylor and Lara, it was hard to call yourself lonely. But she could still remember what it was like to have a full house during the holidays, back when the town had more people, and they weren’t afraid to cross certain people.
Now it seemed like the town was being pulled in two directions. And if you went against the majority, you were considered a trouble maker. She didn’t need that kind of attention. For the most part, she just tried to keep her head down, but it was getting harder and harder.
Courtney shook her head. She didn’t want to think about where the town was going or where it might end up. Tonight, she wanted to enjoy having people to spend the holiday with.
It was Christmas Eve after all. This was supposed to be a day of good tidings and joy and all that.
She climbed out of the car and made her way to the other side. Day-old snow crunched under her feet as she walked around.
Courtney glanced at the back of the car where another larger basket sat. She reached in and grabbed the canister of soup she’d made and wedged it into the snow to keep it cold.
It still made her chuckle. When she first moved to Eagle Ridge to help her aunt, she’d never seen anyone use the outdoors as their personal refrigerator. But when temperatures dropped low enough, it just made sense.
She’d only have about an half-hour before she’d need to leave to take Mr. Martin the goodies she’d made. He lived pretty far up the mountain, and last she’d heard, he hadn’t been fee
ling so well. Courtney would need to make the trip before the snow started to set in.
She reached into the basket and pulled out a small container inside. Gently, she placed the container inside her satchel. She needed to be prepared for if she could find the courage to give the gift to Marcus.
Heat spread across her face at the thought of Marcus. She just couldn’t stop thinking about the mysterious hybrid.
Courtney grabbed the basket from the front seat and held it tightly as it slung low on her arm, heavy from the goodies inside. If she wanted to enjoy her half-hour, she needed to move quickly.
Before she could even touch the handle the front door opened, and she found herself staring at the one person she couldn’t seem to get off her mind.
His bright blue eyes bore into her.
Marcus caught her interest the moment she laid eyes on him from her café. The huge man’s muscled body was always tense, as if ready for whatever might come.
At the time, she wondered just what they were doing that might make him carry himself that way. Of course, now that she knew they were all hybrids, it made more sense that he would be on the ready.
“Oh,” Courtney said and smiled brightly at him. “Merry—”
The heavy basket was lifted from her arms before she could even finish her sentence. She watched, her mouth still open in awe, as he easily carried the basket inside and continued over to the table.
Not dissimilar to the other times she’d spoken with him, Marcus maintained his silence, but this was the first time he had instigated any sort of interaction with her. That was a small victory at least.
Courtney took off her coat and placed it on the peg next to the door. She lifted off the warm hat from her head and shoved it inside the pocket of her coat. Then she turned around to smooth out the white soft cashmere sweater dress she picked out. The chunky collar dipped low on her shoulder, exposing her collarbone, with the rest of her curves on full display in ways that she wasn’t entirely used to.
Marcus: #5 (Luna Lodge: Hunters of Atlas) Page 1
