I had no intention of her discovering my biggest secret, but I must be careful. I nod my head in assent. “I am alpha.”
Her eyes light up. “As was your grandmother. She worked very hard to keep that side of her quiet. She faced a great struggle and didn’t always succeed. Her wisdom was invaluable, and we overlooked her violent tendencies when they happened.”
“She wasn’t a pacifist?”
Endura’s head shakes, and she rocks forward in the chair, bringing herself closer to me. “She was our greatest pacifist. She fought her nature each day and for the most part succeeded.”
I actually feel sad for my grandmother. I need Endura to understand exactly who I am while keeping my Nova side hidden. “I refuse to fight my nature.”
She watches me intensely. “This is not the time for you to fight your power. You are alpha, and this world needs you.”
“But you won’t fight with us?” I ask cryptically.
“We will not engage.” Her eyes tell me I won’t change her mind no matter our need.
We need their help, humanity needs them, and it’s impossible to hide my anger at her selfishness. Bad people have done horrible atrocities, and no one should be willing to stand by and allow it to continue. “Why are you even here?” I ask with more vehemence than I want to reveal. I feel it. I just hate this woman seeing and hearing my emotion.
Her smile remains. “Your grandmother left her journal for the offspring of her blood. Her daughter, your mother, refused the journal. It’s been in my family’s keeping since your grandmother’s passing.”
My heart stutters. It might hold the secrets of my past. “Have you read it?”
She shakes her head. “No. It was your grandmother’s private journal, and there are things in it that were personal to her and her Beast. I am also gifting you with the journals of our women’s history.”
Technically, as alpha, I am Keeper of the Shadow Warrior texts. I study them when I have time but don’t really understand all the significance of the title. “Why would you want me to have your texts?”
“Our history must be protected, and my time as Keeper of the Past has concluded. The new keeper will teach her children of our heritage. Those children have a chance of being male or female and the second union of a Shadow Warrior pair this century.”
The second?
Chapter Two
King
Landan says a few words as we walk away from the cabin. His voice dies out when he realizes I’m paying no attention. He’s quickly learned the nuances of dealing with Shadow Warriors, and he makes his escape with a muttered excuse of checking on things, whatever that means.
My Beast has fully accepted Marinah as Alpha. Unfortunately, there are two beings inside this body, and I personally wanted to bite her head off for dismissing me so abruptly. I no longer have delusions over who could kill who. Marinah takes her training seriously, and every Shadow Warrior has seen her change into a deadly fighting machine even when she’s not in Nova form. She’s been working on that too. Her control isn’t great and pulling forth her Nova takes a lot out of her. If she’s angry about something, it’s easier which doesn’t make her happy. She wants absolute control over each facet of her Warrior, and I have no doubt she’ll achieve it, eventually.
Beast finally grumbles, mate.
I want to kick him or rip his throat out.
You worthless bowl of jelly, she dismissed you. Technically not true, she dismissed me, but I’m not in the mood to placate Beast.
He growls for good measure just to prove he’s not the sissy he actually is when it comes to my mate. He’s a wishy-washy idiot when she’s around. With a mental shake, I head to the Warriors who came with us. They’re lounging under a large awning. Their seeming nonchalance doesn’t fool me. They’re aware of everything going on around us. Two of the Warriors are circling the encampment, watching our backs. Not that the “encampment” is really a camp any longer. Under Landan’s leadership as governor, the place is prospering. Before leaving today, I need to cement our trade agreement. Our harvest this season was exceptional, and we have food to spare if it’s needed at the outposts. We won’t let them starve, but there are things we need too, and our trade must be mutual. The so-called “delicacy” of a thousand cases of Spam does not sit well with me, but that was Landan’s first offer. Even Beast shuddered.
“Did you see her?” Labyrinth asks from my left.
Slowly, I turn. At least his eyes remain low. I would hate to remove his head from his shoulders, and my current mood would make that easy. “I saw her.”
His lips crook the slightest bit. “Young, old, ugly?”
I’m startled by the question, and I shouldn’t be. I found the only female Shadow Warrior in existence or so we thought. Now we know there are more. It was Marinah’s reaction to the woman that told me she was Warrior. I didn’t feel her Warrior essence, but Marinah did.
“Warrior.” It’s what he really wants to know.
His eyes grow thoughtful, and he changes the question slightly. “Young, ugly?”
My lips twitch even if I don’t want them to. “Would you care if she looked like a hyena with crossed eyes?”
Now he smiles and meets my gaze before shifting his away. “No, I wouldn’t care. If she’s Warrior and single, I’m in line.”
“You think there will be a line?”
“You have Marinah. All the men want a Nova.”
I look toward the cabin where Marinah is doing her Alpha thing. “You don’t want a Nova.”
“Your Beast grumbling?”
I walk away to do my own reconnaissance but look over my shoulder and grumble, “Not at all and that’s the problem.”
No laughter follows my admission because the men know Marinah might be their boss, but I’m still fully capable of killing them.
Mate.
Oh, shut up!
Chapter Three
The Island (Cuba)
Marinah
I kick the door closed with my boot. It makes a satisfying thump loud enough to show maybe a tenth of my displeasure. It would feel even better if there was a block-head skull for me to kick along with it. Primarily, the skull of my irritating mate.
The island women are revolting. For some reason they think with me in charge they have a voice. They’re female, I’m female. I guess that makes us sisters? I cross the room and kick the wall for good measure, ignoring the boot-sized Doc Martens hole crumbled into the plaster when I’m finished. It accomplishes something. I feel slightly better.
The women have always had a voice on the island. From their current rumbles, I’m gathering they were too afraid of King to use that voice. And now they have me. I’ve been sitting in a closed room with a delegation of women for the past six hours, and all I have to show for it is a list of demands and threats of a possible strike. This should have been King’s problem.
Can you strike when you aren’t being paid?
It’s not like we live in a society where money holds value. Food, clothing, safety… Those have value. The women are no longer happy with this arrangement. The Shadow Warriors provide safety, and the women and men of the island provide food and clothing with a lot of help from our Warriors. It would be quite easy to find out who needs who more. I lived off MREs for years, and though the thought turns my stomach, I’d survive if I had to do it again.
I long for our home at Homestead One at the northern part of the island or even a quick trip to Jardines del Rey, christened Love Island or shortened by the Warriors to Del Rey. King appropriated it for me as a place to decompress. But no, I’m stuck here at the citadel playing queen bee to a bunch of harpies.
I glance around our chamber. The entire citadel is stone from floor to columned ceiling with miles of tiled floors that sound nice beneath my boots when I’m angry like I am now. Of course, the tile doesn’t give when I kick it so the walls with their brick and mortar are better for boot assaults. The citadel is a sprawling castle-like structure with hundreds
of rooms and behaves more like a city. The walls tower above the buildings surrounding us. The rooms are filled with everything from offices for military intelligence to our arsenal and our sleeping chambers. With high windows located only on the top two floors, the citadel offers a great defensive position if we’re under attack. We’ve built our food storage to withstand a siege for up to six months. That’s if the entire island hunkers down with us. The kitchen is almost a home in itself with five ovens and a staff of over one hundred to keep the Shadow Warriors fed along with sleeping quarters if they prefer to live where they work. While my mate ruled the roost, the citadel ran like clockwork. Now, it’s my job to muck it up daily.
The door opens behind me and I glance at the last man I want to see. No, I won’t look at his enormous muscled chest which removes oxygen from a room and usually has me licking my lips. Or examine his unorthodox face that just seems to fit together in a way that takes my breath away. I almost groan out loud. My thoughts flash to his long gold braids that shift over my body when he’s making love to me. Nope, I won’t think any of those thoughts because I don’t like him right now, not even his blue eyes that say he loves me. I’m not in the mood.
He studies me closely before his gaze moves around the room and he sees the newest hole in the wall. His eyebrows rise, but he doesn’t say a word. Smart man. He takes a seat on his chair in the corner of the room, splaying his legs and making himself comfortable. Callie, my traitorous cat, jumps onto his lap and purrs when his palm rubs over her fur. His eyes shift to mine while he continues stealing my cat’s affection.
This. Won’t. Do.
I clomp across the floor, my Doc Martens making a statement, and snatch Callie from his lap. She’s not happy to be removed from beneath her glorified groomer’s comforting touch, but I don’t care. I plop down on the bed with her on my lap. It’s where she belongs, not sucking up to the big jerk in the room. Her claws dig into my leather-clad thigh, and her purrs fill the room with an even louder rumble.
I provide a satisfied smile for King’s benefit. He isn’t the only one who gets Callie’s motor running. The sound she makes comforts me, and slowly, the crappy day I’ve had recedes a bit. I inhale deeply and allow my nerves to settle. I’m almost in the zone when someone has the audacity to knock on our door.
“I’ll get that,” King says and strides across the room.
He steps back and Beck enters. The only way to describe Beck is lifetime military. I saw too many of these men with my father, and they wear their role like a shroud. Beck’s hair is braided like King’s, and he has the same steel-blue eyes. There the similarity ends. He’s an inch shorter than my mate, and his muscles are a breadth smaller, maybe. His face is hard but malleable because he wears his opinions on his sleeve. Beck has a bit more scruff on his face than King, and his eyes look tired. Not that I care.
He carefully takes in the atmosphere of the room, and I swear he’s about to step out when King prods him. “We haven’t had dinner, and some of us are rather cranky, so I’d get it over with if I were you.”
Beck lifts his head a bit higher, meets my eyes, and quickly looks away because the last thing he wants is Ms. Beast to think he’s challenging us. “We have a problem in the motor pool. You might want to check on it.”
I can’t help myself. “Are women revolting there too?”
Beck glances at King, lowers his head again, and grumbles, “Not that I’m aware of.”
Callie decides this is a good time to jump off my lap and rub herself in circles around Beck’s legs. From the look on the man’s face, Callie would make a delicious snack. Not that he would eat her. That would result in pulling off his arms and legs one at a time while he screamed. The entire island knows you don’t mess with my cat even if she is a traitor.
I’ve had enough and if I want King and his friend to survive the day, I need to bolt. “Tell it to King,” I say and practically fly off the bed. I grab my grandmother’s leather journal from the nightstand and whisk Callie off the floor, charging from the room. I need space. The only place I know to find it is below the citadel at the pool. It’s not exactly Callie’s favorite spot but too bad. She’s stuck with me. My stomach growls in hunger and I ignore it.
My flight isn’t just about the women. I’ve barely been holding my own in the leadership department. It was hoisted upon me after my Warrior form warped to Nova which is a term for a Beast form on steroids. King was, well, king. Now it’s me as leader and nothing comes naturally. My days are frustration and tension rolled into one.
I’ve been training as much as possible, learning to handle every weapon we have. My knowledge on guns was nonexistent, especially the Russian weapons available on the island. Now, I can look at a firearm and give you the make, model, and caliber of bullet it fires. I spend hours each day working with swords, developing my skill, magnifying the damage I can do. King and Beck drill me endlessly on military strategy, and the amount of knowledge I’ve dumped into my brain should make it explode. And still, I feel inadequate as alpha of the Shadow Warriors. How long before I simply take my role for granted and stop worrying about how many people I’ll kill with my decisions?
I look down at my grandmother’s journal. I’ve been trying to find time to decipher it. Whereas the male Warrior’s history was translated from their home planet’s language, my grandmothers was not. I’ve flipped through a few female texts, and they are all in the home language which even King admitted he didn’t know. I guess the women wanted to understand their original language. Unfortunately, reading has been painstaking. If it weren’t for a semblance of a dictionary one of the female Warriors put together, I’d have no luck at all.
I’m not happy.
My Grandmother Veda writes in a tiny, shaking scrawl, making it even more impossible to decipher. Each word must be translated, and I’ve only made it about a quarter way through the third chapter. The beginning of her story recounts the downfall of the home planet. Her text has more graphic detail than the male history. I guess the men thought if they glossed over violence, it would make them appear, what? Better? Gentler? The male Warriors were a vicious species who destroyed everything in their path. They fought among themselves and killed each other without remorse. I knew this about them, but reading it from a woman’s viewpoint is different. My grandmother’s description has deeper undertones of unrest among the women than what I read from Nalista, a female Warrior who altered form. As I think back to what her history told me, she wrote from a warring Warrior’s perspective. My grandmother’s journal is nothing like hers, and I’m impatient to understand who my grandmother was.
I do my best to translate and read an hour each night. Veda’s day-to-day life makes her more real to me, and maybe I’ll finally get the answers I need. If only the island Warriors and disgruntled human women would leave me alone for a few days, I might get those answers.
The rooms below the citadel are filled with storerooms, the infirmary, the armory, and small guest quarters if needed. It also holds the aquatic area. Different rooms have small pools, some made into tropical rainforests and some with more of a reflecting quality. The pool I head for is the one King took me to the first day I met him. It’s an Olympic-sized lap pool. On the first day King and I met, I became overheated through no fault of my own and was unconscious. King placed me in this pool to cool my body down.
I rest Callie next to the edge and rub between her shoulder blades because I know it’s her favorite spot. King and Beck have no idea, and I’ll never divulge her secret. I don’t even care that I’m acting like a three-year-old. I need a break from the adult world without an audience so I can be a whiny baby if I want to.
Callie holds still for all of sixty seconds. With a sudden leap, she decides to explore the room as far from the pool’s edge as possible. She moves to the wall, looking for prey or whatever it is that goes on in her small furry head when she doesn’t want affection.
I remove my Doc Martens followed by my socks and roll up the bottom of
my BDUs to stick my feet in the cool water. I lift the journal and open it to the last section I transcribed.
The women knew what was happening. They saw the complete annihilation coming. The men saw it too and still they continued their wars, revenge, and murder. This was the beginning of our end.
I lift my eyes and stare across the calm water. Violence follows the Shadow Warriors. After their ships landed on Earth, the women left the men which catapulted the men to finally make the changes needed to keep them alive. They became farmers and fed humans instead of warring with them. The Warrior aliens had the physical characteristics to pull it off—blond hair, blue eyes, and enormous bodies that made them appear to be good corn-fed farm boys. The Warriors then married human women and began procreating much like their female counterparts. Males produced male offspring and females produced females. The males somehow raised their sons to be nonviolent pacifists, also like their female counterparts. In most cases, they succeeded. Greystone, King’s uncle, understood the old ways and secretly taught an emerging group of young men to fight their pacifist ways, King among them.
When the hellhounds began destroying the human world, Greystone and his trained Warriors came to the rescue. Hellhounds are our name for these undead creatures that look like hounds from hell. Scientists genetically modified formaldehyde, or more precisely modified a protein within the formaldehyde, and started the chemical reaction that took our dead, melded their bodies into four-legged, hunched creatures with poisonous claws that tunnel through mountains of dirt and razor-sharp teeth with a toxic saliva that kills humans.
Queen (A Genetically Modified Novel Book 4) Page 2
