Dawn of a New Age
A Sons of Satrina Novel
Kristan Belle
Copyright © 2014 Kristan Belle
First published 2014 Createspace.
Cover Photo © Stokkete | Dreamstime.com
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or deceased, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this digital publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, nor circulated in physical form without prior consent of the author.
Acknowledgements.
I want to say a MASSIVE thank you to Heidi for all the hard work she’s put in making this series what it is, without you this journey wouldn’t have been half as much fun as it has been - You’re a star!
To all the readers who have contacted me, wanting to know what happens in the next part of the story of the Sons of Satrina, here you go! I’m buzzed that so many of you feel as passionately as I do about the characters and I’m looking forward to where the future will take us all.
From the bottom of my heart,
Thank You
Kristan XOXO
Chapter One
Aisline felt like every single part of her body and soul was on fire. Sure, she could feel the pain gradually starting to ease with thanks to the medication they were pumping into her and that floaty feeling was starting to take over, but the aches still lingered painfully in the background, not to mention the numerous bruises that throbbed with an increasing annoyance.
Blinking her eyes several times, the stark whiteness of the room she was in was positively blinding. You would have thought that someone in the medical profession would have had the sense to paint the walls in a calmer, soothing colour than brilliant white. The overhead light was a stabbing brightness that she didn’t need and scrunched her eyes tightly shut in an attempt to block it all out.
Jackson lay asleep in an awkward position in the chair next to the head of her bed. The nurse had tried her hardest to get him to go back into his rooms, but after several attempts, he still refused to budge. He flatly refused to go anywhere. Honestly, Ash felt better for having him close by. They had been through a lot together and even if she wasn’t entirely conscious right now, just having him near her made her feel safer.
That was something else in itself that scared her. She was here at the academy to build a whole new life for herself as a warrior. She was the first female warrior of their race, a role she never in a million years thought she would see herself in. Before it had happened to her, it had never even been considered a possibility. Ash knew that she had to get better quickly and head into the future standing on her own two feet. She had to do this for herself. Especially after what she had been through, she shouldn’t be relying on a man to take care of and protect her.
However, that was exactly what Jackson had done for her. Like the weak little girl that she was, Aisline had managed to get herself tangled up with the enemy and found herself smack bang in the middle of a lethal kidnapping situation. Jackson had been the knight in shining armour that had come riding in to her rescue. If it hadn’t been for Jackson and the other warriors that had got her out of there, Ash knew that she would have been dead.
Even in her floaty, not-thinking-straight state, Ash knew that she was being kind of hard on herself. What happened to her was simply a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, helping out the wrong person. It wasn’t directly to do with the fact that she was female. That had just been an added bonus for the Mortuorum who had taken her.
The trainee warriors had been out on a field exercise. It was their first trip out in the big, bad world and seeing as they had only been training for a mere few months, it was a pleasant surprise that it had been added to their training schedule. The warriors weren’t quite as enthused about sending ill-equipped and ill-trained youngsters out in the field, but the council had insisted. All the warriors could do was plan it so that the trainees weren’t in any form of danger, keeping them far away from the enemy and simply giving them a taste of being out in the real world. Shame it didn’t work out quite like that though…
The trainees had all been eager to get out on the streets, hunting down the enemy. Even though Ash had been buzzing at the thought of the field exercise, the reality of it didn’t run as smoothly as planned. Denver. Yes, she had been grouped with that royal pain the ass. From the moment their names had been called out, she’d been wary of going out onto the streets with him.
They hadn’t seen eye to eye on anything from the moment she had stepped foot into the Sons of Satrina academy. He was an arrogant, cocky guy who thought that he was God’s gift to the females of the world and was deluded to the point that he thought he knew better than the warriors who were training him.
That was where the initial problem on the field trip came from. Denver decided to go right ahead and break every single goddamn rule that was set out for them, too arrogant to stay in line and admit that he still had much to learn. Unfortunately, that was ultimately what led to Aisline being put in the hands of the enemy. Sure, he didn’t know how badly things were going to end up, but the result of his stupidity was just the same. As they say, ignorance is not sufficient defence. He had gone out there and tried to play the big man, thinking that he knew best and it was Ash that had to pay the price for his foolish actions.
A lone tear escaped the corner of her eye as she thought about the stress that she had put everyone through. She had never asked for any of this to happen and she had tried to embrace the changes in her life as best as she could. It wasn’t always easy, but she had fought her hardest to keep up with the rest of the boys.
Ash had come from an aristocratic family who had expected her to play the role of the perfect little girl, growing up to marry some obnoxious jerk who treated her like a second class citizen, pop out a few rug-rats and be content spending the rest of her life knitting and going to charity galas. That had never been the kind of life that she’d wanted for herself. Aisline had always wanted more. She was the rebellious child that was always out looking for an adventure, hanging out with the wrong crowd and trying to get out from under her parents stifling ideals. Now, her sister towed the party line and was the perfect daughter that they had always wanted Aisline to be, but Ash just couldn’t do it.
Sure, she had always been the one out on the search for some big adventure and she sure as hell got a lot more than she bargained for when the Sons of Satrina warrior mark appeared on her temple one day out of the blue. She was the first female warrior that their race had ever known. The first of a kind. The only one of her kind. It was a rather daunting experience, to say the least.
It was a big step up from being a normal teenage girl, learning to fight and protect. It wasn’t always easy. The changes to her life had been enormous and it was lucky that Aisline had the emotional strength to get through it. This wasn’t the kind of life that was meant for ordinary folk. The male warriors were born with the mark and spent their whole lives working towards the point when they would start training. Ash had been thrown in at the deep end.
Plus, being surrounded by big, burly male warriors and trainees was a huge distraction in itself, without having to prove that she was as good as the rest of them. All those fit, toned bodies on display? Yep, it was a hell of a distraction. Lucky she was there to train and not ogle...
Prove herself, she had. When it came to the combat training, she may not have the brute strength of the other guys that she worked with
, but she made up for that in plenty of other ways. Aisline was fast and light on her feet. She picked up the various martial art techniques and combinations quickly, like some inbuilt talent that she’d never tapped into before. She soaked up all the information that was thrown at her like a willing sponge. All in all, when it came to the training side of things, she could more than easily hold her own.
Not that any of that gave her any great confidence right now. The abduction had knocked her for six, wiping any confidence that she’d gained in one foul swoop. She wondered now if she would get any of that back, or if this situation would hold her back and ruin her potential as a warrior.
Closing her eyes again, she didn’t want to think about any of that now. All she could focus on for the moment was the boy sitting next to her. Jackson. He had saved her life. She knew that her thoughts and emotions were totally out of whack because of the trauma of the situation and the medication that was pumping through her body, but he was all that was going through her frazzled mind and she couldn’t stop thinking about him even if she had wanted to. Ash had no way of controlling her mind or her thoughts when she was flying as high as a kite.
Jackson. She couldn’t bear to think of him going out there against the enemy, especially now that she knew personally what they were capable of. The dangerous situations that he could get himself in as a warrior made her shudder. It now made a whole lot more sense to her why he had been acting so weird to her before the field exercise. It was understandable how he had pulled away from her. She got it now. He had feared for her safety. And, his worst fears had been realised when she had been abducted. Now she understood.
Where did that leave them now? She wasn’t in any kind of fit state to sit up and have that conversation with him yet. As it was at the moment, she barely had the strength to open her eyes, so talking was way out of the equation. The only part of her that was working with any sense of speed was her mind and even then, her thoughts were still a jumbled mess. Her limbs felt like they were encased in concrete and her eyes felt like they were made of welded steel. Hopefully, her mobility and sanity would return when the medication was reduced. At the moment, they were pumping her full of pain relief and whatever else they could lay their hands on, anything to help her vampiric healing. Until the time that her body caught up to speed with the healing, she would have to settle for keeping her disjointed thoughts firmly in her head.
All she wanted was to go to sleep and give her head a rest. The thoughts were tormenting. They wouldn’t go away. All she could think was ‘where were they going to go from here?’ A relationship between warriors had never happened before. Well, there may have been relationships, who knew? She was the first female warrior to enter into their elite ranks. The warriors weren’t a homophobic bunch, but if there had been any intimacy, it hadn’t been advertised. The warriors were a pretty private group on the whole, keeping their families and their relationships separate from their life on the streets. That was the emotional detachment they needed to carry out their duties.
Aisline knew that if they really did decide to throw caution to the wind and move forward with what they were feeling for one another, it was sure to be a major complication for them both. Did they want that kind of complication at this stage of their training? Did he? Did she? Her life here at the academy was hard enough, what with all the training and constantly battling to keep up with the other boys. Throw a relationship into the mix and what did they have? A probable disaster.
As time drew near for her next round of medication to be administered, Ash was too exhausted and in too much pain to have any further coherent thoughts. At least they still had their friendship if they chose not to take things any further. She knew that things were sure to be strained between the two of them for a while, but they’d get things back on track eventually. Jackson was one of the best friends and she wouldn’t want to lose that for all the money in the world.
Her last comprehensible thought was a saying that her grandmother used to spout on a regular occasion; what will be, will be.
The medication had finally knocked her out fully. There were no more moans and groans and Jackson thought that he may actually be able to grab a little more shut eye. He could hardly see straight, he was that tired. Worry for Ash and the adrenaline that was running through his body had kept him awake and alert for the most part. Not that he let her see that. She had been tossing and turning in the bed and Jackson had pretended to be asleep, hoping that the silence would soothe her.
It was hard to see her like that, in so much pain, but he couldn’t leave her. The chair he was in was as uncomfortable as hell, but finally, real sleep was catching up to him and he could feel himself nodding off.
The nurse woke him up when she came crashing into the room to dose Aisline up on some more pain meds. It was a good thing really. The way he had fallen asleep in the chair was awkward to say the least and if he had stayed in that position for much longer, he would have had a hell of a pain in the neck when he woke up.
Now that Aisline was in a deep sleep, the nurse lowered her voice so as not to disturb her, telling Jackson that Doctor Phillippe had ordered him to get back to his own room and rest up. Well, he was refusing to go anywhere. That was at least until the nurse implied that she was going to have to do a full examination on Aisline. There was no way he wanted to leave her, but he also didn’t want to stick around for that. Jackson respected her way too much for that.
Grudgingly, Jackson eventually agreed to leave and walked slowly back across the short corridor to his own room. Even though he had wanted to stand guard over her for as long as he could, rest sounded pretty damn good right about now. His injuries were mostly superficial and he had been told that they would probably release him from the medical suite at sunset. Hopefully. He couldn’t bear to be stuck down there, feeling useless. Jackson really didn’t want to leave Aisline, but he felt like he was wasting his time being down there. It was a catch 22 situation.
In all honesty, now that she was back and safe within the academy walls, Jackson was desperately thinking of a way to distance himself from her, without hurting her. The pull between them was so strong and he had gotten caught up in the situation, virtually declaring his undying love for her. How lame was that? He would be forever grateful that she was unconscious at the time and had no idea what a sappy fool he had been. That was the last thing she needed to hear at the moment. Jackson didn’t want to heap more stress on her at the moment. She had been through enough.
Yes, he had feelings for her. That was nothing new. But, saying that, he was determined to bury those feelings deep down inside him, never to see the light of day again. After going out with the warriors on the field exercise and then on the rescue mission, he knew that he had to concentrate on his warrior-ship as opposed to his complicated love life. He had to concentrate. Lives would depend on him and his actions.
She would be better off without him, anyway. At least, she would be better off having him as only a friend. She was too damn good for him. The way that she survived the kidnapping and everything she had done since receiving the mark proved that she only deserved the best. She deserved a man that wasn’t destined for this life, someone that would defend only her. Jackson wanted that for her. However, he didn’t relish the idea of her finding that man all too soon because he knew he’d want to pound the ever living crap out of him.
Hobbling back into his room, holding on to his aching ribs, Jackson grinned when he saw his boys waiting for him. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you guys asleep?”
“We wanted to check on you first. How’re you doing, Jax?” Dylan asked, looking concerned.
“I’m fine.” He waved off their concern and straightened up his stance, holding in a wince at the pain of doing so.
“How’s Aisline doing?” Trey asked, frustrated that they hadn’t been allowed in to see her, hence why they were hiding out in Jackson’s room.
“Better than she was when she came in. She’s still out of
it on a lot of pain meds, but I guess that’s a good thing.”
Both boys nodded and fell silent. They had done what they needed to do to put their minds at rest, seeing Jackson up and about. Still, they didn’t make a move to leave just yet. The night had scared them all, reminding them of what they were going to be facing after they graduated from their training. The mood across the whole academy was sombre.
Realising that they weren’t about to go anywhere, Jackson carefully made his way around the room to the bed. He was shattered and needed to lie down. Trying to make it look like he wasn’t in too much pain, Jackson eased himself down onto the bed. The show he was putting on didn’t succeed as they were watching him like hawks and didn’t miss the flinch of pain as he settled into a laying position.
“Do you want us to leave?” Trey asked.
“No, it’s fine. Make yourselves comfortable. I’m just going to close my eyes for a moment…” Exhaustion over took him quickly. He didn’t even hear if they responded as his eyes began to close all of their own accord and sleep took him away from the pain and the stress of the night.
Aisline woke up a short while later. She felt drained, but much more alert this time. Her eyes opened and stayed open after she blinked away the sand that scratched at her eyes. Her thoughts were finally clear and, although her body ached, the pain was now at least manageable.
The only problem was that with a clear mind came clear memories. It all came rushing back to her with such clarity that a violent shudder ran through her. Her skin broke out in goose-bumps and clammy sweat fogged her brow.
So much had happened to her in such a short space of time. Even with her mind free from the drugged out haze, it was difficult for her to process all that had happened to her. Ash already knew that she would never be able to talk about and share the full extent of what had happened to her at the hands of the Mortuorum. No one. It was way too personal. She knew that warrior Kelton would ask her for a full report as soon as she was fit and able, but how much would she be able to tell him? How far would she be willing to go?
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