Alphas Unleashed (32 page)
Authors: Mina Khan Carolyn Jewel Michele Callahan S.E. Smith
“Why?” She didn’t want to stop working with Maddy. She didn’t want to leave town. She didn’t want to leave Palla. She didn’t. And she could not promise she would kill.
“Fair question.” He cocked his head. “Straight talk, all right?”
“Please.”
“You have an ability I want on my team.”
She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and got herself settled. The tension in the room was high, but not out of control. There wasn’t anyone itching to start a fight, except maybe Palla, and that was his natural state.
“The work’s dangerous, I won’t pretend it isn’t, we’re in the middle of a fucking war with magekind who want to go back to the old days of demons should be dead or under control.”
“Believe me, I get that.”
“I don’t want Palla pissed off at me for not giving you the hard sell about joining up.” He gave a dazzling grin. “Generous salary. You won’t have to worry about that. We offer a 401-K and other investment opportunities, full health benefits, including maternity, childcare, lots of other perks. Housing subsidy, company car, transit pass, gym membership. Maddy can go over the basics with you.”
“There’s just one problem.”
The warlord looked thoughtful.
“You said there’s a war.”
“I did. There is.”
“I am not a violent person. I do not believe violence is ever the answer. I can’t hurt people. I just can’t. I will do anything but kill for you, sir.” She swallowed hard, twisted up so hard her body was rigid. “I can’t live a life where I’m asked to do that.”
“Jesus, Palla, what the hell?” Nikodemus put a hand to the center of his chest. “I’m not asking you to give her up.”
Wallace took her eyes off Nikodemus to look at Palla. Like Nikodemus, he had a hand on the center of his chest. Palla bowed his head and pressed three fingers to his forehead. “Warlord. That is not her gift. Her talent. If it comes to that, I will keep her alive in a fight. I’ll make sure she doesn’t face that choice. I swear it.”
Nikodemus put his hands on his hips and chewed on his lower lip. “Not an assassin then.”
Palla started to answer, then checked himself, and that made her heart lurch. She didn’t know how to make this work. Not if Nikodemus was going to ask her to do something that would kill her soul.
“No.” Wallace watched both of them carefully. She couldn’t read either of them. “No, sir, I could not do that.”
“Let’s get clear. Fealty to me means if I tell you I need you to kill some asshole for me, then, Ms. Jackson, you are going to feel my need to have that happen.” He touched the center of his chest. “I’m going to feel what that does to you, and I can promise you, if it’s true that does you harm, I will suffer the consequences. To the point where you may no longer be bound by your oath.” His eyes flashed silver. “I have a team of people who can do that for me if I need it.”
Her tension ebbed. “You’d never ask, is that right?”
“No.” Nikodemus spoke softly. “It means I’d never ask unless there was a damn good reason why
you
need to do the deed for me. It means the reason I’m making the request is worth losing you.” He held her gaze. “It does not mean I would never ask. I can’t promise you that.”
Nobody said anything for a long time.
“So.” Nikodemus clapped his hands. “You need a minute with Palla to talk about this?”
She looked away from Nikodemus to Palla. “Do I?”
“Stay,” he said, low and soft. He stared into her eyes. “Stay with me. So we can both bear witness.”
Wallace turned back to Nikodemus with a shrug. Her oath to the warlord took about five minutes, start to finish, and at the end she was hollow, and the warlord took a step back and instead of the quiet, she had this sense of him in her head. And then Palla was there, steadying her while that whip of Nikodemus’s power flowed through her, and through that, there was a connection to Palla and all the others in the room.
“That is just—” She went from being alone to belonging. Palla slipped his arms around her waist.
“I am whole again,” he said into her head and along with that was a rush of his relief because all this time he’d been prepared to lose her. He didn’t mean he would not miss Avitas or stop mourning her loss, but he’d no longer be alone in that sorrow. “Whole.”
She faced him. He was right. Together they would bear witness.
“Both of us.”
“Don’t you know it, Angel.”
About the Author
Carolyn Jewel
was born on a moonless night. That darkness was seared into her soul and she became an award-winning author of historical and paranormal romance. She has a very dusty car and a Master’s degree in English that proves useful at the oddest times. An avid fan of fine chocolate, finer heroines, Bollywood films, and heroism in all forms, she has three cats and two dogs. Also a son. One of the cats is his.
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Books by Carolyn
Historical Romance
Reforming the Scoundrels Series
Not Wicked Enough
, Book 1
Not Proper Enough
, Book 2
The Sinclair Sisters Series
Other Historical Romance
One Starlit Night
, Novella From the Midnight Scandals Anthology
Midnight Scandals
, Anthology
Scandal
, RITA finalist, Best Regency Historical
Indiscreet
, Winner, Bookseller’s Best, Best Short Historical
Moonlight
A short story
Paranormal Romance
My Immortals Series
My Wicked Enemy
, Book 1
My Forbidden Desire
, RITA finalist, Paranormal Romance, Book 2
My Immortal Assassin
, Book 3
My Dangerous Pleasure
, Book 4
Free Fall
, Book 4.5 (a novella)
My Darkest Passion
, Book 5
Other Paranormal Romance
A Darker Crimson
, Book 4 of the
Crimson City series
DX
(A Crimson City Novella)
Erotic Romance
Whispers Collection No 1
Erotic Short Stories
Fantasy Romance
The King’s Dragon
A short story
Chimera Born
Book 1 of the Chimera
Michele Callahan
About
Chimera Born
Aron of Itara, Forbidden Son, has been a prisoner of fate since before he was born. Captured as a child by the evil Triscani, it’s been centuries since he’s felt the sun on his face or the tenderness of a woman’s touch. Determined to help humanity break the elusive but powerful Itaran Triads’ hold on Earth, Aron escapes with one goal, to find the one man who can help him save humans from an eternal prison. After that, he’ll fight to the death, but he’ll never go back in the cage.
Zoey Williams watched her sister die at the hands of monsters, and no one believed her. She’s spent the last five years using her journalism skills to track aliens, investigate paranormal activity, and hunt for answers. But she got too close to the truth, and now it’s not just monsters hunting her, but her own people. Zoey doesn’t believe she needs a guardian, but once Aron finds her he can’t leave her to the vicious hunters that would turn her to ash or to the power-hungry humans who seek to silence her. In fact, he discovers that he doesn’t want to leave her at all….
Chapter 1
Aron stumbled over the rocky terrain, his life’s blood dripping from a multitude of small cuts and two deep ones. Had he been human, or mortal, he would have been long gone from this world. Instead he ignored the pain and willed his body to take the next step, and the next. The manacles on his wrists and ankles clinked loudly against the rocks that he scrambled over. His blood left a trail that the Hunters would follow all too easily.
A brisk mountain wind cooled the burning pain in the flesh of his bare chest and back. His leg muscles screamed at him, exhausted and shaky, weak after his time in the cage. His enemies weren’t far behind, but he refused to give up, refused to go back under their control. He’d waited centuries sealed inside that tiny metallic room, chained like a dog in a pen, beaten and sold like a slave to the highest bidder, passed from one Triscani Lord to another every couple of decades. They all kept him locked in that same room, starving and weak. They all tried to break him. They all waited like fat spiders with him trapped in their web.
He had feared that they’d be right, that he’d surrender his will to the dark power rising like a tidal wave from within. He’d feared the moment he would lose himself to the evil of his brethren.
He would not go down without a fight. Those bastard Triscani had starved him like a mythical vampire sealed in a sterile steel coffin. Surrounded by metal walls and a freezing steel floor, he’d had nothing but the remains of his black Scout uniform to keep him warm in their dark world. The torture was worse, hours upon hours as they’d stretched him on a rack and carved his flesh with their black crystalline blades, demanded information about his brother and sister. His power.
He’d given them nothing. They’d taken his freedom, but never broken his will. Perhaps that was why the Triscani ruling Lords kept him alive. He’d realized after the first few years that they didn’t want him dead…they wanted him to surrender, to become what they were. They wanted a new king and the hell on both worlds he’d give them if he succumbed to his dark side.
Gods how he’d wished for death. He had nearly lost hope. He could admit that now that he had escaped that prison cell. Hope was a precious and dangerous thing for someone like him. He’d spent so many lost years imprisoned that he’d nearly forgotten what it was to walk free. And all those long centuries, hope had fed him equal parts determination and agony. That was until two days ago, when the Timewalker had popped into his prison cell. Starving and barely conscious, he had attacked her like an animal, bitten her flesh and covered himself in her blood. That was when he realized who she was, who she must have Marked and claimed as her own.
He tasted his identical twin brother’s D.N.A. in her blood. His own D.N.A.
“Ajax, stop! Don’t you remember me? I’m here to help you! What are you doing?”
Her soft plea caused him to recoil in shock and disgust at what he’d done. His brother Ajax’s cherished female had somehow landed in the very heart of darkness and saved Aron’s life, had set him free. And he’d attacked her like an animal. He’d nearly become what the Triscani had wanted all these centuries…one of them.
Thank the gods his brother’s name had stopped him in time.
“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His apology had come out a gargled mess of words no one could’ve understood. The words held little weight when his mouth and chest were already covered in her blood.
“You’re not Ajax.”
She’d watched him like a rabbit watches a hawk, without trust and poised to flee. He thought she looked like a dark angel with her dark brown hair and pain-filled eyes. Shame filled him when she placed her hand to her wounds and flinched in pain. He’d hurt her. Gods be damned.
“No. Please. I’m sorry. I didn’t know who you were. Ajax is my brother.”
“Oh, my God! There are two of you?”
The woman had looked around once more, inspected the metal room with her gaze, and froze when she noticed the cuffs circling his ankles, wrists and neck. She had backed away from him then, her eyes round with fear.
“What is this place? This is not where I meant to go. Why are you here? Where is Ajax? I must find him!”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry I hurt you. Please? Please help me.”
Aron had held out his hand, too afraid she’d vanish to do more than beg from his knees. How many times could a man apologize for being a monster?
“I can’t. I’m sorry I have to go. I have to find Ajax.”
White as a sheet and shaking, she’d held her hand to her bleeding throat and backed away before he could recover from the shock of her refusal.
“I’ll send someone for you if I can.”
She didn’t say, “if I survive”, but he’d seen the desperation in her eyes. Her dark brown gaze had held a deep sorrow, one he recognized too well from his own black heart.
With that, she’d walked back through the time gate that had brought her to him and he’d been left alone, again. Locked away and forgotten. But she’d given him the one thing he’d desperately needed after months of complete starvation. Shocked, he’d looked down to find that no trace of her blood remained on his body. His skin had absorbed her blood the way a dry towel soaked up water. And her blood filled him up, fed him power and knowledge like he hadn’t felt in centuries.