Equinox: Celestial Awakenings Book One

by Lux Miller

  I nod, swallowing hard and blowing out an unsteady breath, “Nova, some legends are true...”

  Chapter Five

  Nova

  When Drake lays out what amounts to an ultimatum that I either help him sail the boat out of the harbor or jump into it, I’m more than a bit aggravated. I really don’t have much of a choice in the matter. There’s no way in hell I’m willingly going back in that water now that I know a Kraken is circling its depths, and I’m not leaving without my parcel. It’s already gotten me in enough trouble that I may as well double-down and make it worth my while. So, I snatch the first rope I can grasp out of his hands and glower at him. I'm hoping that my glare will somehow burn a hole in his hand or something for being such a class A butthole… and that’s when I realize how big of a fool I’ve been.

  The rope I happen to jerk out his grasp jerks back, slipping free of my palms as I try to hold onto it. As it does… the enormous sails above my head unfurl and reveal a familiar symbol that makes my stomach drop… the Navian sigil. Yeah, this boat that Drake claimed to be his? It belongs to the freaking Navians who already have a bounty hunter on my trail and pretty much don’t care if they obtain me dead or alive. And now I’m apparently helping a rogue Kingsman steal their ship! Could my day get any worse? Why yes, yes it can...

  I’m halfway between impressed and irritated, but unfortunately for him, the aggravation in me wins out and I snap at him, “This isn’t your boat, is it?”

  Drake shrugs, flashing a hundred watt smile in my direction as he smirks, “Define what you mean by ‘my boat.’ “

  Oh, hell no. He did not just pull out air quotations. He has absolutely no claim to this boat, other than the fact that he’s standing on it. And trying to get me to help him steal it! I’m in enough hot water with the Navians without adding Grand Theft Flagship to my resume. Truth be told, they’re ready to feed me to their hellhounds over the parcel as it is. It's not like they’d suddenly be forgiving if I foiled Drake’s plans to steal it, anyway. And letting him get away with something this important to them would be a nice, little exclamation point on my sentiment of fuck you.

  And then Drake has to open his big mouth. “Once we get this old girl out to sea, she’ll definitely be my boat. But if you’d rather, we can tempt fate in that one...”

  I look to see what he’s pointing at and notice the most pathetic, little dinghy barely staying afloat in the water. In fact, one good wave and she’s done for. Was his plan to steal this ship all along? Did I just happen to bumble along in the middle of it, or is he making this up as he goes?

  The next few seconds whizz by so fast that I can barely think as I'm yanking on a rope. Drake’s yelling at me to duck, and I’m hitting the deck just in time for the sail rigging to fly over us, narrowly missing my head by inches. When I climb back to my feet, he hurls the rope at me and hollers to tie the thing down. I do, thinking back on the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sailing class Skink put us all through. Of course, we failed miserably, so the idea of going waterborne was scrapped because Skink said we wouldn’t last a month on the seas. He was probably right, too. We were pathetic, though this time, my knot’s not half-bad and judging by the way Drake smiles when he looks at it, he agrees.

  But his voice is playful as he taunts, “Well, well… aren’t you just full of surprises?”

  I whirl around, wagging my finger like I’m scolding a child as I stomp across the deck and practically spit at him, “I’m full of surprises? Better than being full of shit…”

  My witty comeback sparks a battle of banter back and forth between us. He makes it abundantly clear that he’s blaming me for alerting the Navians that we’re in the process of stealing their ship. And they don’t look happy about it, either. He barks off a few more orders as he gripes about me assuming he’s a Kingsman. I mean, he’s dressed like one… what else was I supposed to assume?

  Ninety percent of the people left on this planet are aligned to something and proud to show their alliances to any who cares to listen or look long enough. But my fighting spirit falters as he throws off the mantle of the Kingsman, revealing a simple tunic beneath and a tattoo that immediately catches my attention.

  The symbols etched into his skin are familiar to me, but not because of what they stand for or what alliance they betray. It’s because these symbols, along with the words that come out of his mouth, make me realize that the odd sense of familiarity I felt upon the first moment we met was no accident. I don’t know him, but I know men like him. Wanderers that’ve banded together into a tribe of misfits surviving on the edge of humanity. I’m not sure we could’ve planned our meeting if we’d tried, but this is the first time I’ve come into contact with someone like me outside of the Lost Isles. I’m not even sure how to react as his words chill me to the core, “I am nobody and nobody is mine.”

  My earlier anger melts away as I’m drawn to him by a cosmic force that I can’t explain. My fingers itch to touch him the moment I lay my eyes on the intricate ink permanently inscribed into his skin. Even though most of the design is obscured by his clothing, I know the basics of the full design without seeing it. I have one inked on my own back that Skink put there himself using primitive equipment in the back of a cave on the Isle we call home. It’s the sign of the Nomads…

  What pulls me into his orbit, though, is the rogue symbol that appears to be carved into the back of his right shoulder, far away from the protection ring. And I’m fascinated by it, drawn in like a moth to a flame. I reach my fingertips out and touch it without bothering to ask if I can. Tracing it gingerly, I feel him shudder, and beyond that, I feel a disturbance in my very being, like everything has been leading up to this moment. But he’s guarded and defensive when I ask why on Earth he’d get a tattoo like this. This symbol is one of darkness and danger, and certainly nothing that Skink or any of his men ever would’ve tattooed on someone.

  I shudder to think who would’ve damned this man to bear this mark, but when he tells me he was born with it, I feel something inside my gut. It’s an emptiness, an aching loneliness that tells me without a doubt that he’s telling the truth. The details of how his mother abandoned him when she couldn’t obliterate the mark from his body dredges up empathy from the pit of my stomach. I didn’t think I could feel for a man who’s both saved my life and nearly gotten me killed more than once today. And it’s just now daybreak.

  His body is tense as he tries to pull away from my touch, warning me that he’s dangerous, but what I sense from him isn’t danger. Confusion and conflict in copious amounts, yes… but not danger. The symbol that I rest my hand against is one that has been adopted into the English language as one to describe someone who has lost all control and cannot be contained. But the stories that Drake is referring to are just that… stories. They're from a civilization that fell a thousand years ago when Atlantis sank, the remnants of her people scattering across Scandinavia and beyond. He’s standing here talking like he’s some kind of modern day human weapon, and while I’ve seen some crazy stuff in my time, this is ludicrous.

  “They’re legends, Drake…”

  He blows out an unsteady breath, then turns to face me, his gaze meeting mine, and I can see the earnesty with which he answers me. “Nova, some legends are true…”

  My breath catches in my throat as I realize that this man legitimately thinks he’s a Berserker. While there’s nothing saying they were never real, there certainly hasn’t been a report of one in modern times. Things got a bit crazy and out of hand after the zombie virus changed the fabric of humanity. But even when our people were facing the height of the zombie threat, there was nothing even remotely close to a Berserker… on either side. The zombies were killing machines, but they were programmed to blindly hunt to eat. They weren’t carrying out orders of some ghost god trying to win a war.

  Drake might be a big dude, but when I read the legends of the Berserkers, I pictured some kind of muscle-bound freak who was like seven feet tall wielding an axe. Drake’s
obviously someone that can hold their own in the wilderness, but he’s no legendary godly weapon. Shaking my head, I bring one hand up to his cheek and pat it gently.

  “Maybe so, but the legend also said Odin could only activate a Berserker that had been chosen by one of his maidens. That they’d fly down to the battlefield and select the biggest and best warriors to become Odin’s weapons. Only once they were marked by the Valkyrie sent to choose them could they be controlled by Odin, and once they died, they were whisked away to Valhalla to everlasting glory.”

  Drake raises an eyebrow as he looks at me, his green eyes narrowing. “You know the legend of the Berserkers?”

  I nod. “Apparently we’ve both come under the tutelage at one point or another of a certain sly, little fox-like man. Well, most everybody on the Lost Isles knows about the whole raging badass warriors that can mow down a whole army. But you know what else the legend says? About how a Berserker is actually created?”

  He grabs my wrist in his palm, tugging my hand down off his cheek with a barely concealed growl. I swear I see his green eyes darken to an almost black color right in front of me as he keeps his gaze focused on mine. “Trust me when I tell you that I’m well aware. It’s one of the reasons I’ve avoided allowing myself the intimate pleasure of a woman. Because of the off-chance that fate would be cruel enough to pair me with one of Odin’s maidens, and seal my fate.”

  Nothing about anything that has happened this morning should invoke any feelings in me other than frustrated fear. For some inexplicable reason, Drake’s show of raw masculinity twists my belly with an entirely different kind of frustration. It’s almost like his very declaration of wanting nothing to do with a woman is igniting a fire inside me that shouldn’t be burning for anyone, least of a snarly pirate of a man who ticks off every box on the “do not get involved” list. And yet, here I stand toe to toe with a devil of a man who’s all but growling at me as he bosses me around. I should be kicking him in the nuts! Instead, I’m squeezing my thighs together as I feel a familiar dampness there that makes my cheeks flush with mortification at the very notion that I could find this… beast of a man… attractive...

  Chapter Six

  Drake

  The muscles tense in my arm as I focus my gaze on this pixie of a woman. I lean down over her so that my shadow obscures her from the morning sun. My voice is husky as I murmur. “And yet despite knowing better than to get involved with a woman for any reason, I find myself breaking every rule I’ve ever set for my self-preservation. All to save an obnoxious, little sprite who can’t even say thank you...”

  Her heart-shaped face jerks up to mine in surprise. She opens her mouth to probably retort something that’s going to get my blood pressure boiling. But she doesn’t get a single word past her lips before an arrow zings into the tall wooden rigging above our heads. I growl as the bastard thing grazes my cheek and I reach up and jerk it down by its fletching. I snap it in half over my thigh as I bellow hedonistically. She jumps away from me, her face turning crimson. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve resorted to acting like a wild animal, or if it’s because she knows I know she’s affected by it.

  Either way, whatever the hell was hanging in the air between us a moment ago is best left there. My voice deepens as I swipe my hand over my cheeks, growling as it comes away dotted with blood that I know in an instant is mine. “We have to move. If we don’t go now, we’ll never make open water. Their shoreboats will never catch us, but we’ve got to put some distance between us and them or it won’t matter…”

  Panic shows all over her face. She shakes her head and grabs hold of my arm, swallowing hard as she asks, “Why?”

  I thrust the broken arrow into her hands, a thin line of blood smearing across her skin as she holds it in front of us at an arm’s length. I snarl and wipe my hand on my tunic, then grab hold of her arm and tug her up against me. She coughs, startled, as our bodies collide, and I roughly wrap a strong arm around her. She struggles against my grip, squirming to try to wriggle free of my impossibly tight hold I have on her, but I refuse to let up.

  “What the hell, Drake?”

  I grunt, and my entire body tenses as I jerk her sideways. I slam my back up against the central rigging that sticks up skyward from the middle of the deck. It shudders from our combined weight, and she mutters something under her breath that I don’t quite catch. It doesn’t sound pleasant, nor does the whizzing sound of another arrow lodging itself in the wooden planks next to our feet. I keep my body wrapped around hers as much as possible to try to reduce the amount of space on her that can be used for target practice. I’m much bigger, anyway and far more likely to get hit, so I may as well ensure she doesn’t.

  I can feel my heart thundering against her back as I snatch and tug on ropes with one hand, keeping her securely tucked against my side with the other. At first, she fights against me, making things even more complicated. Soon enough, though, she realizes how frivolous her struggle really is. When another arrow misses her arm by a fraction of a foot, she stops trying to wriggle her way free. Especially when she realizes that there’s a far more pressing matter at hand than the obliteration of her personal space.

  “Drake… the rocks!”

  I snatch my attention up but don’t let go of either her or the ropes in my hand. I’m somehow managing to manipulate the sails without crashing us into anything so far. The passage between the outcropping of rocks is so narrow that we’re going to have to be precise to slip through. If not, we’re going to crash into them, and at the rate of speed we’re going, the boat’s going to be splintered to smithereens if I’m even a fraction off. I’m dumping everything I can into keeping our course as straight as possible by manipulating the sails, despite her desperate squirming.

  She pushes back against me, trying to wiggle free, but I tighten my arms across her like the stubborn hero that I’m trying to be. Her voice is demanding as she stomps on my boot with her bare foot. “Let… me… go…”

  I shake my head wildly, refusing. “Nova, if you go out there, they’ll shoot you!”

  She elbow me in the gut, and I bend over halfway, my arm loosening just slightly, but not enough for her to slide out of my grip. Her voice is pleading as she claws at my arm, tearing open the skin with her sharp, little nails, but still I hold tight to her. “If I don’t turn the boat, we’re going to crash!”

  She fights against me for what feels like forever, then growls in my ear and relaxes in my arms just enough for me to let down my guard. She slips to the deck on her knees and scurries across the rough surface, being careful to dodge the flying projectiles as they skitter across the planks next to her. More than one whirs by her head and she swears in frustration as each one hinders her progress. Finally fed up with her rate of speed slithering across the deck like a snake, she pushes up onto her knees and lurches for the wheel. She grabs hold of it and yanks hard to port.

  The boat skids across the surface of the water, veering suddenly to the left and just barely skimming by the rocks on the starboard side of the boat. I release the breath I was holding, my body sagging with relief as she holds the wheel steady to push us through the narrow passage. I wince as the starboard side of the board scrapes against the outer edges of the outcrop of rocks. We’re almost clear through the passage when I see the glint of an arrow being notched onshore. I fling the enormous weight of my body against her, knocking her forward into the wheel.

  The blinding pain that tears through my body the moment the arrow makes contact is nearly unbearable. I collide with Nova, knocking her forward. Thankfully, her face misses the center of the ship’s wheel and she’s able to to steady herself and shove my body that’s already growing heavier off of her. I crumple into a heap of quivering man beside her, a chill coming over me that confirms what I suspected. The arrowheads aren’t merely cold steel — the Navians have tipped them in a poison they’ve become infamous for using, which means that time is of the essence. I’m now at pixie girl’s mercy.

&
nbsp; And boy is she furious as she whirls around with an expression on her face like she’s ready to spit nails! But I guess there’s something disarming about seeing a man my size curled into the fetal position in a state of absolute vulnerability to take the edge off of one’s fury.

  I try to throw a charming smile in her direction, but I’m not sure it conveys that way because she looks absolutely horrified as she stares at me in shock. I can already feel the paralytic agent in the neurotoxin starting to take effect, and I give her a call to action. “You can thank me later, but if you don’t get that arrowhead out of my back, you’re gonna be navigating this boat all on your own…”