The Warrior

by Rebecca Royce

  His eyes found mine in the darkness, and he leaned down to kiss my nose and then both my eyes.

  “I know.”

  “You know?” I pinched him and he yelped. I’d just made a huge declaration for me and he said ‘I know’?

  “You smell like mine. Of course you love me.”

  “Of all the conceited…”

  “Rachel,” he cut me off, “I love you, too.”

  Okay, that felt a little bit better. “You are conceited, you know.”

  “I know. It’s the Alpha in me. Someday, I’ll be in my father’s job. I think a certain amount of conceit comes with the territory.”

  “I’ve never told anyone I love them before. Not even my father.”

  My words seemed to do something to him, something powerful. His mouth found mine, and before I could breathe, he was kissing me, hard. This wasn’t controlled Jason, not the guy who’d kissed me in the house. This was Jason losing his mind for me, and I’ll admit it—I loved it. It made me feel protected and cherished, and powerful.

  I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve never been loved like he loved me before. It just worked. Seconds later, he wrenched himself away so he lay on his back.

  “I’m sorry.” He was breathing really hard. “I have to stop while I can still stop.”

  “My no sex rule is really making it hard for you, isn’t it?”

  “You’re worth waiting for, Rachel. I love you.”

  We didn’t speak again. We simply lay there, both of us breathing hard until I fell off into dreamless sleep wrapped in his arms, feeling the heat of his body next to mine, blocking out the cold outside.

  ***

  I was shaken awake. Andon stood over me and stared down in the morning light. At first, I thought we were in trouble. I mean, I knew he didn’t want us sharing a bed. This was his home; maybe I should have thrown Jason out of the bed. But we’d both been so tired, I hadn’t even heard him breathe once I’d closed my eyes.

  Jason was still out cold, which seemed a little odd. Shouldn’t he be getting shaken awake and screamed at, too?

  “He’s not going to wake up. I drugged him.”

  I jumped out of the bed. “You did what?”

  He raised his hand to stop my fury. “Not permanently. It’s just going to keep him asleep a few hours. Otherwise I’d never be able to get you out of here without him, and he is not coming where we are going.”

  This was it. He was taking me to show me whatever it was he thought I had to see.

  “I’d rather not take you either. Given a choice, I’d wrap you up and keep you safe like I keep my kids. You could get older right here with Jason and then you could get married and give me grandchildren.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But I woke up and thirty-six years have passed. Fate decided that the girl my son has picked for his mate should also be the only person in the world I can find to help me solve this problem. And it’s a problem I have to solve.”

  “It’s okay, Andon.” I scratched my head trying to clear the sleep from it. “Why can’t Jason come?”

  “Because I’m going to let you leave afterwards, and he never would.”

  “I know. I have to report back to my people about what I see, but then I can come back.”

  Andon shook his head. “I hope that’s what ends up happening. Get dressed and meet me outside. The other elders are waiting for us.”

  I nodded, and he left the room. I didn’t like this, not at all. This was sneaky, and I didn’t like leaving without Jason knowing where I had gone. I shook him. He snored and rolled over. Wow. Whatever his father had given him had really knocked him out.

  I bent over to kiss him on the cheek. He was going to be so mad—hopefully not at me—when he woke up. I hurried to dress. The last thing I wanted to do was go back out into the cold or the snow.

  And what was up with my never getting to sleep? It seemed like if I wanted a good night’s sleep, I had to be knocked unconscious or be deathly sick. Couldn’t they leave me alone for a few hours?

  When I walked outside, it was to the sight of grim expressions on Luna and Autumn’s faces.

  I smiled. “Jason is going to be mad when he wakes up.”

  Luna laughed. “That’s an understatement.”

  “Please make sure he knows this wasn’t my fault.”

  Autumn pulled me into a hug. “He may never speak to Dad again. Come back to us.”

  “I’d think you’d all be sick to death of taking care of me by now.”

  Autumn gasped. “No, we love having you around. You’re Jason’s.” There was that phrase again, that wolf phrase I never really got. I loved Jason, but what did it mean exactly to be his? “Besides, up until ten years ago we always had humans with us.”

  Luna smiled. “Our mother was human.”

  I nodded and pulled out of Autumn’s embrace. I hated knowing the truth about their mother and wished I had never asked Andon those questions. If I learned nothing else, I would always know now that some secrets should stay just that—secrets. Whatever temporary insanity had made me think I wanted to know Andon’s secrets had long passed.

  I turned to their father, the man who had raised my Jason. He stood before a group of adults I had not met before. But it made sense that there would be other adults outside of the Kenwood family. They were all male. Apparently, the women weren’t joining us on this jaunt into the woods.

  “Rachel, these are my pack mates.”

  He told me each of their names, but they flew over my head like the snowflakes that fell off the trees above us. All I could focus on was getting this over with so I could get back to Jason and make sure he got through his drugging okay.

  Andon indicated we should leave, and I followed him for a distance without speaking. Finally, he hung back to speak to me, letting some of the other men lead.

  “What are you thinking about? Well, other than how much you want to bash my head in?”

  I smirked, even though I didn’t want to. “How did you know I was thinking that?” I held up my hand. “Don’t tell me? You scented it.”

  “Jason has been telling you what he scents, I suppose.”

  “There’s no such thing as a private emotion around here.” I laughed. “Better not feel something you don’t want to talk about.”

  “My wife used to tell me to keep my nose to myself.” He chuckled at the memory before his face fell.

  “You miss her.”

  I didn’t ask it as a question because it wasn’t one. I’d seen my father do the same thing, and while he chose to hide his pain in the bottom of a bottle of whisky, Andon’s choice to not behave that way didn’t make his grief any less palpable. I didn’t have to smell it to know it.

  “I waver between wanting to go find her and see if we can make our relationship work, you know Werewolf and Undead minion, and wanting to stake her just to give her peace.” He grabbed my arm to stop me from walking. “Rachel, it can end between you and Jason. You haven’t done, well, what you would have to do to complete the mating.”

  I took a step back. Oh God, he was doing the adult thing that I hated the most. He was talking about sex without talking about it.

  “Please stop.” My cheeks were so hot I thought they might explode.

  “I need to tell you this. It’s important. If you do—that—with Jason, then that’s it. He’ll never love anyone ever again. Right now, his wolf just knows that he wants you, that he loves you. But if we leave and you don’t come back, he doesn’t see you again, then after a while, after grief and anger and all of the terrible things that come with the end of young love, he will find someone else.”

  My body physically rebelled against that thought. I didn’t want Jason finding someone else! My stomach rolled, and I felt bile rise up in my mouth. I loved his son. In my whole life, I’d never said the words before, and he was acting like I was fooling around.

  “I am coming back. After we finish whatever this is, I’m coming back. You’re stuck with me.”

 
; His expression warmed. “It’s not a question of want. I want you to be with us. More than you can imagine. I think you can help my daughters stop being silly girls. I think you’ll give the pack hope that all the young people will find mates. I think Jason becomes this wonderful, protective Alpha around you, and less of the surly boy I was starting to worry would never go away.”

  It was hard for me to imagine Jason they way he described him, but I wasn’t here to debate that with Andon. I just wanted this all behind me.

  “I’ll keep the pack here for one week after tonight. After that, we’re leaving.”

  “Why would it take me a week to get back to you?”

  My heart pounded hard in my chest. Something was wrong, very wrong.

  His silence didn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence. “Where are we going? I think you’d better start talking. I’m not taking another step until you do.”

  “We’re going down.”

  I shook my head. “Down where?”

  “Down to the place where the Vampires and Werewolves are keeping their human population prisoner, where they have done so for forty-six years.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He nodded. “I know you don’t. It’s why I have to show you.”

  One of his pack members lifted a covering off the ground. I hadn’t noticed it earlier. It had been hidden by the snow. Even so, it was brown and grey. I would bet ten packs of chocolate bars that it blended in really well even when it wasn’t snowing.

  As he opened the hatch, my Vampire senses went nuts. I doubled over. This was the worst it had ever been. There was something else, too. My arms, oh God, my arms hurt! A thousand needles jamming into me at the same time. I knew what this was, even though I’d never felt it before. Keith had drilled it into our heads a million times: Werewolves.

  “Are you okay?” Andon grabbed me off the ground and pulled me upwards. “Are you hurt? Forget it, I’ll call this off. We’ll go home. I can’t do this.”

  I pulled out of his arms. He wasn’t Jason, and as much as I respected him, I didn’t want his comfort. I’d been afraid to be a Warrior and then devastated by the course laid out for me by people who hated my father. Now, however, I could see all of it as a journey I’d had to take to meet Jason. And now, possibly, to bring me to this spot.

  I wouldn’t be coddled through it. No way. No how.

  “I’m fine.” I looked at the ladder I had to descend upon. “I assume we have to climb that, right?”

  “Correct.” He nodded. “Let some of us go in front of you. We’re hoping we can mask your smell by letting them scent an abundance of wolves. Not that they’ll smell one more human. But we want to be safe with you.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  Two of the pack members, who I now felt badly for not paying attention to their names, went in front of me. I followed, with Andon coming down the ladder right after me.

  It was dark, but lit so it wasn’t the pitch black of night that I’d gotten used to. Small yellow lights illuminated a hallway, and I followed quietly behind the wolves. It occurred to me as I did so that I could very well be walking into some kind of trap. I took my sunglasses off my face and stored them in my pocket.

  I’d followed the pack without thinking too much about it. Of course, if this was an incredibly elaborate hoax to capture me by the monsters, then they’d gone to an incredible amount of effort when all they’d had to do was send two Vampires. Three would have done the trick.

  Andon moved up next to me. He kept his voice down but he spoke, which surprised me since I’d assumed we had to be silent.

  “You’ll not forgive me for this, but I’ve wanted to tell someone, to show someone for ten years. I didn’t dare before now.”

  I still didn’t know what this was. But I had a feeling I’d be finding out any second. “Why not?”

  “At first, all I could focus on was getting the pack out, getting us to safety. Protecting the children. You’re not a parent, and you didn’t have a good one, so you don’t know that the first job of a parent, and even more so when you are Alpha, is to protect your children above all else.”

  I couldn’t argue with the bad parent part. Yes, I’d had a terrible father. He wasn’t a bad man, but he was a lousy parent, which exactly why I knew what a good parent should be. I planned, if I lived that long, to be one someday.

  “What changed?”

  “If something was to happen to me now, the kids would be fine without me. I’ve left the women behind. They’ll hold the pack until Jason becomes old enough to take over as Alpha. They will miss me if I die, but they won’t be destroyed. That means it’s time to do the right thing.”

  We turned a corner and stepped into a large balcony overlooking a room. Andon’s wolf pack surrounded me as I looked down over a large chamber. I covered my mouth to stifle a gasp.

  My Vampire senses that had gone crazy outside threatened to cripple me now even as I shook keeping my balance. The room must be filled with thousands of Vampires and Werewolves. Some of them shifted, some of them not.

  That wasn’t the thing that most disturbed me. What scared me and took breath from my body as nothing had before—not even seeing dead bodies or the Vampires that had come at me in the cage—were the cages. Inside of the cages were humans. Regular humans.

  “That’s right. They’ve had their own supply for forty-six years. They breed them. Somewhere in this place they keep the babies.”

  My eyes filled with tears. “How?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how your people can’t know about this. Whatever they’re doing up there with you Warriors, they’re just fooling around. They have no need of you. They have everything they need here.”

  A large number of the Vampires moved toward one cage. They were going to pull someone out, and I didn’t want to watch. Maybe that made me a coward. I was pretty sure it did, but my mind refused to accept what I was seeing. They hadn’t killed everyone forty-six years ago? They’d taken some prisoner and—heaven help me—they’d kept them here.

  I turned around to leave. I had a job to do, and that was to get this information to people who could do something about this. Abruptly, I stopped. Something lingered in the side of my mind. I’d seen something.

  I whirled back around. There was a picture on the wall. It was too small for me to see well from where I stood.

  I pointed at it. “Who is that?”

  “Their leader. I don’t know who he is. His picture is on every wall in the caged rooms. They worship him like he’s a god.”

  My hands steadied as I forced myself to calm down. I narrowed my eyes as I turned to Andon. “I need to get down there.”

  “Are you crazy? I can’t let you go down there.”

  “There’s no letting here, Andon. Either you take me or I go myself.”

  “Why would you want to do that? You’ve seen enough. Go get help. Come back to us. Stay with Jason. We’ll go away somewhere while this gets sorted out. You kids can be safe.”

  “I’m not a kid. I’m a Warrior. And I need to see who is on that picture.”

  Because I was fairly certain I knew him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I walked in the center of the wolf pack. They kept their head down. The problem, it seemed, was not the Vampires—they would smell wolf. And one wolf to the Vamps seemed to be the same as any other wolf. If they smelled human, they’d assume I was theirs and, barring any incident of a Vampire insisting it had to have me, I would be fine.

  The problem was the other wolves. If any of them spotted this group and realized they were different, then we were all royally screwed. Andon continued to protest this up until the point we entered the room.

  I had to handle him exactly like I did Jason. I listened, and then I did what I wanted and ultimately he came around. I pushed away thoughts of Jason from my mind. There was no place for them here. I had a mission. It was clear. Go look at the picture and get out of the room as fast as possible.

&nb
sp; I had stepped into a conspiracy I would have preferred to know nothing about. Even knowing that, I was still going to try my hardest to do this correctly.

  When we got close enough to the picture so I could see it, Andon’s pack spread out around the room. They didn’t want to look obvious and it would be strange if we all crowded around that one spot. Andon stayed next to me, his hand on my arm like he was my captor. I could feel his fingers shake on my arm.

  He might be Alpha of his pack, but his son was ten times braver than he was. Jason wouldn’t have been shaking. I knew that in my gut. I’d been with Jason in enough high intensity situations to be sure of it. I raised my eyes slowly. No abrupt movements, no strong gestures. Even my gaze had to be subtle.

  I blinked as I stared at the man who had sent me here, and I found I wasn’t surprised at all to see Dr. Isaac Icahn staring back at me. He was younger here, but there was no doubt it was him. He’d sent me out into this world to die.

  And yet here I was. Alive. And I knew what he’d done.

  “Well?” Andon’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Let’s go.”

  I looked back at the floor as Andon escorted me from the room. We were almost out. I’d done what I needed to do. Until I saw him.

  I think it was his posture that caught my attention. He stood straight while most of the other captives were sitting or hunched over. He was my age. I knew it immediately and his eyes—a captivating green color—watched me as I crossed the room. He didn’t utter a word, he didn’t make a sound.

  I didn’t know who he was. All I knew was I wanted to get him out. He was a teenager, and if Andon was correct, he had spent his entire life in this horrible place. It could be Jason.

  I swallowed. Well, no it couldn’t.

  Because Jason was a wolf.

  And the boy in the cage was a human.

  Just like me.

  My heart sped up. I had to get him out of his cage. I had to get them all out.

  “Take me to that cage.” I moved in the direction I wanted to go. Andon would have no choice but to do what I wanted or risk exposure. I could tell from the way his hand flinched on my arm that he didn’t like this one bit.