First Dimension
The Saga of Safe Haven Book One
Rebecca Royce
(c) 2010
First Dimension
The Saga of Safe Haven Book One
Rebecca Royce
Published 2010
ISBN 978-1-59578-650-0
Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © 2010, Rebecca Royce. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Liquid Silver Books
http://LSbooks.com
Email:
[email protected]
Editor
Maria Rogers
Cover Artist
Anne Cain
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Dedication
To my parents, with love, for all imaginable things.
Blurb
The only person who can save not one but two dimensions, Hadley Pettigrew is living a simple, undisturbed life on Earth, completely unaware of who and what she is. That is, until a dark, seriously sexy stranger kidnaps her off her science vessel and forces her to change all of her beliefs about what is and is not possible in the course of twenty-four hours.
When faced with the decision of letting his princess continue to suffer or using her daughter to return to his own dimension, Hawk easily chose to kidnap Hadley. What he didn’t anticipate was how much he would admire her intellect or desire her body.
Together Hawk and Hadley will have to overcome past obstacles to carve out a new future, not just for themselves but also for more people than they ever dreamed possible. The first year in a new dimension has arrived. Who will live and who will die is almost as important as who will fall in love.
Prologue
Almost 150 years ago
It had been sixty years since Annabelle died. How the hell was that possible? Hawk took a swig of the liquid they called alcohol that he’d been nursing, and toasted the universe for its perverse sense of humor. Zamara was still lost to them, living in whatever madness possessed her to continue on with this charade, and he was no closer to rescuing her and bringing her home than he had been when he watched her first born child wither away in a matter of hours and die years before her time.
Walking to the other side of his vessel, he felt the sea-swept air blow his hair out of his face as he seriously contemplated jumping overboard. Oh, he knew it wouldn’t kill him, but at least it might give him some peace to be by himself on the bottom of the ocean for the next decade or so.
His Warrior instincts stood at attention and he knew Jeremiah stood behind him before he ever turned around. Taking a deep breath, he forced the malaise off of his face and brought himself under control.
“What is it, Jeremiah?” He whirled around to face what he was sure would be an accusation of his becoming a traitor or worse, his second in command would be forced to box him up, a fate worse than death.
“So what is the plan, my Prince?”
“Pardon me?”
Jeremiah laughed, raising his head to the sky. “I’m asking you, Prince Hawk, what the plan is now that we’ve both abandoned Zamara. I know you didn’t just do this to us without first making a plan.”
“We didn’t do anything. I walked away. You haven’t done anything of the kind.” Hawk clenched his teeth. His own dishonor was his to bear. He couldn’t have the men following in his wake. That would simply be too much to shoulder.
“If you think I am going to sit there year after damned year and watch as he breeds her for his own sick enjoyment you are hugely incorrect, sir. If you hadn’t left, I would have.”
“We swore a blood oath to do just that—to be by her side, to protect her.” Hawk closed his eyes and leaned against the back of the ship’s railing. He missed his birds. If he could just fly for a few minutes back home in his own dimension he could find some clarity.
Jeremiah’s hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality. The blond-haired Warrior had raised an eyebrow. “Are you drunk?”
Hawk shrugged. “A little bit.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drunk before.”
“Men in my family don’t get drunk.” Was he slurring his words? He wasn’t sure. “It’s not the Warrior way.”
“Nor do the men in my family.” Jeremiah put out his hand and took the bottle from Hawk. He took a swig and made a face. “It’s disgusting.” Hawk noted it didn’t stop the other man from downing another large sip.
“You haven’t answered my question about your plan.”
Hawk sighed. “We obviously need help. Ninety years ago we arrived here on Zamara’s lifetime’s trip. We have no business still being here. I think we have to go home and get reinforcements. Some kind of mystical help.”
He closed his eyes again. If he’d only realized what was happening sixty years ago, he could have found a way to get back then. Annabelle might still be alive. A tear spilled down his cheek and he wasn’t embarrassed to let Jeremiah see it. He’d already lost so much credibility, how much worse could it get?
Sweet Annabelle who had never harmed a soul. Each day he had known her had been a joy. He couldn’t save Zamara, but her daughter he could protect. The day he’d fallen in love with her, on her twenty-second birthday, and realized she loved him too, had been the best day of his life.
The woman’s soul was pure like the snow that lined the purple mountaintops in Haven. She never needed answers; she never prodded him with questions. It hadn’t mattered to her at all that he hadn’t aged a day in all the time they’d known each other. She was just happy to be with him.
Her red hair had looked like sunset, an unexpected contrast to the dark brown of her eyes. But now they were gone—had been for sixty years—decomposing to nothing more than dirt and ash.
Every second with her had been … such a relief.
“If we want to go home, we’re going to need either Zamara or one of her daughters.”
Hawk’s eyes flew open and his thoughts returned to his present dilemma. “I know and therein lies the problem. I can’t get to Zamara and you and I together are not going to be able to get to the newly born princess.”
Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Did you see her before you left?”
“I couldn’t watch Deirdre die and I didn’t stay to see the next one born.”
“I did.”
“We have to go back, Jeremiah. We can’t leave the Princess there to wallow.”
“What we need, Hawk, is the others. There are more Warriors who feel as we do.”
Hawk slammed his hand down on the railing. “I won’t ask anyone else to follow in my traitorous behavior.”
“I don’t think you’re going to have to ask.”
Hawk spun around. In front of his face, one man after another materialized onto the deck of the ship. Hawk did a quick head count. Fifty souls. He hadn’t expected any help, let alone so many. His heart swelled with pride while he worked at looking aloof and in control.
“I told them to give us a few minutes to talk before they arrived.”
“You did this?”
Jeremiah shrugged. “I did.”
For the life of him, Hawk couldn’t understand why Jeremiah would still feel such loyalty to him after such an abysmal failure, but he would take all the help he could get.
&nb
sp; Raising his voice to be heard over the wind, he stepped forward. “I can’t ask this of any of you. What we are doing goes against the blood oath we all swore before leaving Haven.”
“We’ve spoken of that.” Jeremiah walked towards the other men and put his hand on the youngest member, Stone’s, shoulder. “It seems to us that not to do something at this point would be to continue to break our oath.”
“Everyone must not have agreed.” About half of his fighting force was not on deck with them.
“Some people did call us traitors.” Stone’s voice rang out from the crowd. He sounded harsh and his eyes flared with anger. “They’re all traitors. Addicted to what is happening to them and to Pettigrew’s power.”
Hawk shook his head. “Some of them are simply fulfilling their duty.” He wouldn’t, couldn’t condemn them. Not when he was still so unsure about his own decisions.
“You are kinder than I am, Hawk.” Jeremiah’s voice held venom in it and Hawk wondered silently how long his men had been fuming like this and why he had thought he was alone in his worries.
“If you are with me, and I cannot ask you to be, then we need to steal one of the children.” He couldn’t bring himself to call them princesses or ladies anymore. They were abominations. Bred to die and the reason Zamara was locked in her drug induced stupor. He was through fooling around.
A ringing hit Hawk’s ears and he looked abruptly at the sky. Something was coming. The first bolt of lightning hit the ship, sending him backwards and almost overboard. Not wanting to give them a second shot, he jumped up. The humans whom he’d hired to help man his ship didn’t deserve this. They all slept below deck.
It looked like he’d be getting his swim after all.
“Follow me overboard.” He commanded and was glad to hear each of his men jumped into the ocean. They wouldn’t die, couldn’t drown, and hopefully they could draw the fire away.
Pettigrew’s message was clear. He’d just declared war. Hawk didn’t care how long it took, he would get one his daughters and he would use her to get back home. One way or another, no matter how long it took.
Chapter One
Present Day
Hadley squinted to get a better look at the man who had dragged her from her bed early this morning, tied her arms to the back of the mast, and now informed her the whole thing was a mistake. Below deck, she could barely make out the sounds of a television blaring and some distant rock music. People were obviously enjoying themselves. Hadley clearly was not. The truth was, she could barely see without her glasses and the midday sun’s heartless glare didn’t help. If she wasn’t so completely stunned by what had happened, she would have demanded to be taken down below and spared the onslaught of the heat on her pale, red-headed skin.
He cleared his throat and repeated himself as if she was a child, or a very dense adult. “On behalf of my entire crew, Ms. Pettigrew, I owe you an apology. We didn’t mean to kidnap you. It was your sister we were looking for.”
“You know what?” She wished not for the first time that she had a glass of water. “I didn’t even know pirates still roamed the Atlantic this close to Europe. Sure, I’ve seen you guys on television robbing ships and taking prisoners in places like the Indian Ocean and off the coast of Africa, but I’ll be damned if I ever expected to be taken hostage—mistake or not—this close to Great Britain.”
He raised what looked like to her to be a blurry eyebrow. She thought she might have seen a momentary smirk on his face before it disappeared, but since she was basically blind without her very thick glasses, she couldn’t be sure. Kneeling in front of her, he held something out for her to see. She looked down and joy filled her heart. He’d brought her glasses.
Opening them up, he pushed them onto her face awkwardly so that one side was too high over her ear and the other poked into the side of her head. But she didn’t care. He’d given her back the gift of sight and now that she no longer looked at the world through a veil of unclear fog, the anger that had been hiding at the base of her spine rose inside of her threatening to spill out. Within moments, her cheeks burned.
Her ears hadn’t deceived her. They were still in the middle of the ocean, or at least as far as she could stretch her head left and right, she couldn’t see any land. But her own boat was missing from view too. Since they’d been travelling for what seemed like hours it was likely she was nowhere near anyone who could help her escape from the clutches of these lunatics.
In her wildest dreams, she’d never anticipated that anyone would actually kidnap her. But there they had been at dawn’s break, bursting into her cabin like a herd of wild beasts, ripping her out of her bed, and forcing her off her science vessel and onto their ship. The whole experience had taken less than ten minutes. As far as she could tell, they’d left her crew entirely alone, which meant they’d been looking only for her. Or thought she would make the best victim in whatever outlandish plot this happened to be.
She hadn’t been able to see who had actually taken her this morning, but she could now see the man who stood before her as clear as day. She swallowed. Even squatting down, it was obvious he was huge. If she’d run into him in a regular social situation she would have avoided his presence, very tall men made her nervous. Given a choice, she preferred the men she associated with to be only a few inches taller than she was, coming in around five foot eight or so. Shaking her head, she forced herself back to the present. She needed to focus on getting off of the ship.
Hadley didn’t know that much about boats—which was funny considering her family heritage—but she knew this one was huge. Maybe ninety plus feet, making it at least three times the size of the science vessel she’d been on. It had three giant masts, including the one she was currently tied to. She’d imagined boats like this when she read travel magazines. People rented vessels to take vacations and she’d fantasized they looked just like this one. Who knew she would end up being carried away to God knew where on something straight out of her imagination?
She had to look out over the horizon to see the ocean, which told her she was very high up. That meant that there were multiple floors between them and the ocean. Although she was no expert, she would guess it was somewhere between five to seven floors, maybe more. Wherever they were, they were on a significant vessel that required a large crew. Hadley took a deep breath knowing she was in big, big trouble.
“First of all, thank you for my glasses.” She couldn’t help it. Years of boarding school had driven manners into her psyche and right now they were all that kept her steady and sane. Why wasn’t the man answering? “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
Nothing irritated her more than being ignored, except maybe being humored. If he really wanted to watch her explode, he could pat her on the head and say something patronizing.
He shrugged. “You’re welcome.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She was pretty sure he knew to what she referred.
His laugh was a rich, warm caress over her shoulders, not a sensation she should be having while she sat in the blistering sun with her hands tied behind her back. Unless she had come down with Stockholm Syndrome. Was that possible? Could that happen in only a matter of hours?
“What makes you think I’m a pirate? Maybe I’m just a kidnapper looking for ransom from your father.”
His accent was American, the first she’d heard in weeks, since she was the only non-British person onboard her science vessel. She would guess he was somewhere from the south. Being raised in New York City, all the southern American dialects sounded the same to her. His mention of her father did nothing to calm her nerves. Very few people actually knew who he was. For more years than she could imagine, her father had worked on secret government contracts to build weapons. Well, that was what she knew he did. Most people thought he ran a shipping company. Her sister, Hailey, still thought he built boats—the story he’d told them as children. But if this man knew who her father was, then it was likely he wasn’t bringing him up because he
was unhappy with the date of arrival of his manufactured shampoo products. She needed to stay calm, not give away that he’d just thrown her for a loop.
She smiled. “I think it must be the get-up you‘re wearing. It screams ‘pirate’.”
Why was she being so pleasant to this man? He and his crew had invaded her ship before the sun had risen this morning, terrified her crew, and literally stolen her from her bed, dragging her onto their boat. She still wore her pajamas. In all truthfulness, she should be glad she’d worn clothes to bed at all. Her quarters were right next to the boiler room and some nights she had no choice but to sleep in the nude. Now, that would have been humiliating.
Five minutes ago, she’d been ready to gouge out his green eyes and now, because he’d brought her glasses to her, she was treating him with civility. She closed her eyes at her level of pathetic. Even with her feathers ruffled, she could never muster enough gumption to tell someone to fuck off.
“The get-up I’m wearing? It screams pirate?” His tone told her he was genuinely confused by what she’d just said to him. She let her eyes scan his body just to make sure she hadn’t been wrong in her assessment and tried not to blush at the amused glint that lit his eyes.
Six foot three inches tall and all of him toned and fit, he looked like a man who knew how to handle himself in a fight. She wondered, not for the first time, what his name was. Stick-straight, dark brown hair hung to his shoulders; a look that might have seemed feminine on someone else, but on him said sex god.
But the lengthy hair was nothing in comparison to the rest of him. His face was long and chiseled, with black stubble covering his chin and cheeks. His eyes were almond-shaped and green like the color of the sea they currently swept across. Long eyelashes she couldn’t help but envy covered them, as if they kept the secrets of his soul hidden from the world.
A sleeveless white shirt allowed her a view of the multitude of tattoos illustrated on his arms. The most noticeable was a giant black bird in mid-flight, which sat on the bicep of his left arm. His green pants stopped mid-calf, a look she wasn’t used to seeing on grown men, and his feet were bare.
First Dimension Page 1
