by Aya DeAniege
Those windows were dirty, in need of cleaning. It was likely that much of the house needed cleaning. Gerrid had probably started the repairs, but he had no idea what it was really like. He would see to it that the water ran, but there’d probably still be cracks in the bathroom tile unless I pointed it out to him.
The bedroom likely didn’t leak, and he probably saw the hole in the roof as a natural skylight. To him, it wasn’t bothersome. Alphas might live in fancy estates, but they knew how to live with the barest necessities. During the civil war they had gone without any sort of comfort.
Gerrid approached the house, then went around it. He followed a beaten path around the house, having travelled that way often before. At the back, he stepped off the path and headed for the trees. I rushed to catch up to him, not wanting to get lost.
Just inside the treeline, there was a hill that we walked up. It was, perhaps, a little more than a hill, and had me huffing and puffing as I made it halfway up.
At the top, Gerrid let out a sigh of a breath, and pointed.
“There,” he said.
Near as I could tell, he was pointing to more green. There was green all around us, forest stretching in all directions.
The only opening I could see in the green was behind us, the house sitting at the bottom of the hill and the road leading away from it.
Land owned by Alphas had cities, but they were kept to certain areas. Basins and the like, I think I had read somewhere. Alphas encouraged old growth of forests, and had been known to protect the forest as they might their own companion.
Normal people saw it as them becoming rabid over trespassers on their territory, but looking around, there was no denying the effect of Alphas on a land. Other nations were overpopulated and reaching for the sky. Their land was polluted, and smog rose up from their factories.
Under the old regime, that had happened. Our nation had suffered those same faults. But under the new Alpha law, they restricted so many things.
We no longer had frozen dinners or the newest fashions. Mass produced items still made their way into the country, but they were harder to get.
No one could explain why Alphas protected the untouched land, or why they had ripped down factories and entire cities, planting forests in their wake. None of them had stopped to ask, and none of us had the courage to suggest someone research it.
Was it a genetic connection to the land?
Did an Alpha who grew up among the forests and parks of the new world order grow stronger and healthier than his city bound counterparts?
Gerrid had said that he had spent much time in a home just like the one behind us, off in the country somewhere. Blane had not, both were of the old generation, but both were fit enough that they were considered higher blood.
There was something, though, that set the two apart. Some little quirk. Gerrid was the one who said it, that physical stimulus turned genes on and off.
What if nature turned on certain genes in Alphas? What if they were bound to protect the forests like they were drawn to others with their genetic marker?
Like a woman nesting, salmon swimming up river, it was simply something so deep in their blood that they couldn’t fight it any longer.
I glanced at Gerrid, then looked out over the forest again.
Right then was not the time to bring up the theory. I’d talk to Blane about it the next time I saw him. He’d probably laugh me out of the lab, but then I’d bring it up again later on and he’d take me seriously then.
I squinted, holding my hand over my eyes and looking out over the area. Gerrid turned me slightly and pointed again.
“Right there,” he said. “It looks like dead tree.”
I spotted that boney white-grey and tried to get my eyes to focus. It almost looked like a window, which wasn’t possible. The window was in the side of a hill. I squinted again, struggling to make sense of what I was seeing. Because it wasn’t what I was expecting, I couldn’t make my brain see it right.
“It’s an estate,” Gerrid said.
He rubbed at his nose as I stared at him, not understanding.
“No, that’s a window in the side of a hill.”
“Law says, anyone can take over these places. Alphas built for the generations. Your heir would come in and live in the same place. Blane’s place is something like two hundred years old, they’ve only had to do updates recently for the electricity.”
“Who lived there?” I asked.
“Alphas don’t trace like that,” Gerrid said.
“Okay, what’s the history of the place?”
“In order to know for certain, I’d have to have the information to look up the information, if that makes any sense. There are all kinds of people who sit online, waiting for you to log in the information, then they slip in and steal your find.”
“It looks like a window in a hill,” I said. “Why don’t you just claim it?”
“The law doesn’t just mean pointing at a hill and saying that it’s yours. To reclaim, you have to rebuild and live in it. There’s no road left. It’s an hour trek on foot. That’s without stuff bogging me down. I found it five years ago and have been working on the guts of the place since then. It’s perfect.”
“Perfect?” I asked.
“It was last renovated in a lavish period. The rooms have clawfoot tubs bigger than my car. Marble everywhere. Old fixtures. We’d have to live without electricity for about six months, which I think is pretty cool. I’d like to keep those old fixtures. They’re worth so much just the way they are. Six months in, pay for a retro-fit. Retro-fit makes it sound like an afternoon job, but it takes longer than that, could take years. But that? That is a home.”
“And this?” I asked, motioning behind us.
“That’s where I have sex with you until you don’t ask questions about how long until we get in there,” he said with a motion toward the hill.
“We haven’t discussed yet, how you pay for things.”
“At the moment, with the buying and selling of real estate. Reclaiming projects like this makes quite a bit of money. Can’t do that with you at my side, unless you want to hop buildings with children.”
“How are we going to pay for my schooling, then?”
“Rachel didn’t tell you?”
“She told me a lot of things. It’s hard to keep track of it all.”
“Your father served us in ways we can’t repay.”
“Yes, I remember she told me that part, but what’s that to do with my schooling?”
“Your way, Rachel’s way, your brother’s way, are all paid. You want to go to school, they will pay for it.”
“That’s not what Alphas do.”
“He saved Morgan.”
“So?” I asked. “Morgan isn’t exactly broken, and he broke my father’s legs.”
“And in doing so, somehow saved Morgan. Not to mention during the war itself. He was the reason why we found the breeding houses. Why we were able to save all those women, including your mother, you, and Rachel. While what we gave him isn’t something an Alpha would do, because we believe the deeds of the father do not get passed onto the children, it, well, it was something that we had never seen before.”
“If he had just told us, so much trouble could have been avoided.”
“If the Doms had shared, if Alex hadn’t died. There are a lot of ifs in the world and if you spend too long thinking on them, then you’ll get dragged down by the past.”
“Yes, that’s what my therapist says.”
“My mother used to say the same thing,” Gerrid said, slipping his hand down my arm and taking my hand in his.
“What if Rachel wants to visit?” I asked.
“You should visit her first, establish that link,” Gerrid said. “What with Blane’s new plans.”
Blane’s plan for Rachel had to change, because I had changed those plans.
It had been a sound plan, technically. He had only been looking out for us. But the other Doms didn’t want to
touch Rachel, and that was before Morgan had gotten involved. With them together, working together, and training together, there wasn’t an Alpha that wanted to try them. They were too afraid of what Rachel would do.
And if they weren’t afraid of that, they were afraid of what I would do to them, or what I would tell their mothers and what their mothers would do to them.
With a little push, we were finding that I was more able to alter the behaviour of those who had lost their mothers. And the mothers were surprised and even encouraged by me. When one had said that she was too old to be bending her son over her knee, I had helped her do it.
I looked behind us, I looked down the hill toward the little house, and I made a sound at the back of my throat.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m thinking I don’t want my children living in a house with a hole in the roof,” I said.
“Fair enough.”
“No, I don’t think you understand. I want them living in that one,” I said, motioning to the window in the hill. “You had best get that sorted out, and soon.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“I’m serious.”
“As am I, have you never seen an Alpha at work?”
“Heard tales, but no, never witnessed it first hand.”
“Oh, well, this is going to be fun.”
***The End***
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Preview Of:
Seed
The Reaping Book I
My name is Kazimir DeElysia. I am four thousand years old, well, just shy of four thousand, but I am told that mortals prefer rounded numbers, and I am closer to four thousand than thirty-five hundred. I hardly look a day over two thousand, I have been told.
I was twenty-seven when I was captured, taken to what you know as Crete, and then turned into a vampire. My turning was consensual, though I did not quite understand what she had offered me. Partly because of a lack of knowledge, partly because there was a language barrier between us. I knew immortality and hunting the night, but my Maker was little more than a fledgling when she turned me.
That is the term that mortals are familiar with, correct? ‘Maker,’ as if we create toys and set them loose in the world, as if the one who turned me could be summed up with such a hollow title.
I called her ‘Love’ then, and through most of history.
Maker... no wonder the vampiric world is so weak and pathetic.
They have a name for me, you know. They whisper it to one another and fall silent as I pass by. Few see me these days, as I am a wanted man. I keep a territory in the name of my matriarch and thanks to modern advances in technology, I have been able to keep track of those trying to sneak into my city. There are some few who I employ or have employed in the past, but, for the most part, my city remained empty of vampires.
Because I do not like their faces, and they cannot be trusted to not to be catty and run back to the Council to tell them who owned the city.
I reside outside of Council control. I always have. The Council and I simply do not see eye to eye on so many important topics of conversation.
Such as the place of a child in the life of their ‘Maker.’ The Council views all as free agents, a ridiculous belief. Some have made children only as a blood bag, or weapon, or whore. That is their only use. Just as not all humans are leaders and ‘go-getters,’ not all vampires are meant to be left to their own devices. There is a place in our world for each of us, and a Maker should always turn with that place in mind. A child without a place will cause problems.
Only an heir might come and go as they please, and only one heir is needed. All other children are only there to serve the will of their Maker.
Yet these are the same people who believe a vampire should be destroyed if that vampire does not meet their very strict requirements. If they’re too young or too old, if they aren’t perfect upon turning.
Not even the hermaphroditic are welcome amongst Council lands any longer. One must be male or female, nowhere in between.
Oh please, like you believe every fantastical tale they tell you about honesty and equality, about being the great saviour of mankind? The Council does not believe that. They believe in only one thing: control.
And they will gain that control by whatever means necessary.
I suppose some of you might be eager to hear how I have spent my four thousand years on this planet. Well, too bad. I am not going to ramble like dear, soft Quintillus about my daddy issues.
My father and mother raised me to be a fighter, a warrior among my people. For that reason, when I was captured, I was sold. Perhaps to be a guard, or perhaps they knew to whom they sold me, knew what would happen to me. The reason why no longer matters, I was sold into slavery and turned. That’s about as much of my history as I’m willing to share with any mortal soul.
Do not take me to be a pathetic loner just because I live outside of Council lands. I have made my way and lived in factions before. I know how to ‘play nicely’ as Elysia would say, though only ever for her.
Whatever my dear Elysia asks for, I try in earnest to deliver. She has kept me sane all these years and given me a reason to do more than simply be.
So, when Elysia picked up the book of the Prophet, hot off the presses as it were, and she became interested in such narrations and their effects on the mortal world at large, I agreed to take up the task.
But only for her.
Oh, who is the Prophet you ask?
Well, dear reader, just because you have seen the vampire world through Quintillus’s eyes, does not mean that you have seen the whole world. He always had a knack for knowing just a little too much, has happened to slip into town as I was just getting comfortable.
But we have never met face to face. He does not know what I look like. Besides seeing him in passing, covered in blood and a mask, I had not seen his face until his televised interview last year. I simply know the man by reputation and knew to stay out of his way as much as he knows to stay out of mine.
Most vampires ignore the obvious, their little minds too shallow to accept the whole truth, but it’s paying attention to those details, following the interviews and reading the books that the Council expects other vampires to ignore, that has given me such a keen edge.
They call me the Warlord.
If only they knew how appropriate the name was.
Coming Soon:
Awakened:
The Last Prophet*
Every human is capable of magic, it has been a part of the world since the beginning of time. In the other races magic was rare, one or two a generation might have it, but all humans had it, which aided them in conquering and finally exterminating the other races.
In the modern era, only a small percentage of humans ever become able to actively use their magic. Laws have been built to both protect and control those who have awakened to magic.
Dave Archon works with the Magical Protection Agency. It is his job to investigate and then capture Awakened who break the laws, but when mages start turning up dead, he’s the one called in. No one kills the Awakened, they might not have the skill necessary to all be called mage, but they are dangerous. Violence against mages is practically zero, the cases before Dave are the first mage murder in modern history.
Abby is a new Awakened. Her mark is not yet healed and she has no idea what she’s doing, or how she’ll pay the taxes on her magic use. Her roommate takes her to a party at the estate of a man looking to become a patron of a mage.
In a world where fate is as real as magic, Dave doesn’t hesitate when he meets Abby at the party and his heart skips a beat.
Prototype
An Aurora Novel
(Working Title)
My name is Maggy Doyle. I have a three-year-old daughter, a husband, a home, and an extended family. I work a secretary job for a lawyer’s office and spend my days just trying to fly under the rad
ar of pretty well everyone.
See, five years ago, I was found wandering around a field. I don’t recall anything before that moment. I had no idea who I was. If it weren’t for Harry, if not for how much he loved me before the incident, I would have probably been lost forever.
Imagine my surprise when I opened my front door one day to find men standing there, demanding my daughter and I go with them. They wouldn’t answer my questions or tell me where they were taking us.
There’s this nagging at the back of my mind telling me that it has to do with Aurora. The still new, third world we were linked to, ruled by a woman who is said to have not only created the world, but also animals, and who knew what else.
What could she possibly want with twenty people ranging from late teens to middle-aged? The only thing we have in common is amnesia. Our lives before a certain point were erased. We didn’t do anything wrong, none of us know each other and our incidents were months or even years apart.
We’re completely harmless.
I think.
My name is Nathaniel Edwards, I am just over forty years old as I write this introduction. I’ve chosen to write this of my own volition, I was not pressured into it, nor was I commanded by my wife and Mistress, Isabella. Today she may be Mistress, but tomorrow she will be my sub once more. Most likely you are reading this because you read Isabella’s books and were curious about my part of the story.
Or you whined about how you didn’t get all the details in the middle portion of her books and now you’re hoping my absolutely detailed account with her will rectify the situation.
I’m not the least bit sorry to say, you will be disappointed. This is not a detailed account of my time with Isabella Domme. You already know what happened when she was around me. I lost my mind, my lust got the better of me.
