The Forlorn

Other Titles

By

Calle J. Brookes

Paranormal

Dardanos, Co.

The Blood King

Awakening the Demon’s Queen

The Healer’s Heart

Once Wolf Bitten

Live or Die

The Seer’s Strength

The Warrior’s Woman

The Wolf’s Redemption

A Warrior’s Quest

The Wolf God & His Mate

Out of the Darkness

A Warrior Blind (Dardanos)

Dardanos, Co: The Adrastos

The Outcast

The Forlorn

Romantic Suspense

Watching

Wanting

Second Chances

Hunting

Running

Redeeming

Revealing

Coming Soon

Stalking (PAVAD)

The Witch (Dardanos, Co.)

Calle J. Brookes
is first and foremost a fiction writer. She enjoys crafting paranormal romance and romantic suspense. She reads almost every genre except horror. She spends most of her time juggling family life and writing, while reminding herself that she can’t spend
all
of her time in the worlds found within books. Calle J. loves to be contacted by her readers
via email and at
www.CalleJBrookes.com
.

To my daughter, always.

The Forlorn

Calle J. Brookes

Springs Valley, Indiana

The Lost River Literary name and imprint are the sole properties of independent publishers Calle J. Brookes and B.G. Lashbrooks. They cannot be reproduced or used in any manner; nor can any of their publications or designs be used without expressed written permission.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, or locations, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Copyright © 2014 Calle J. Brookes

Cover by B.G. Lashbrooks

All rights reserved.

The Forlorn

A 

DARDANOS, CO: THE ADRASTOS NOVEL

Book Two

Chapter One

She’d been raised human.

In Relaklonos
human
didn’t exist. Mara Garnier knew she had no real identity in this new demon world, and neither did her younger brothers.

She wasn’t about to let Skylar and Shiloh go through the same sense of rootlessness. Her brothers were just about to become teenagers; their identities were still being shaped and molded. They didn’t deserve the treatment they were getting at the hands of some of the other children relocated to this strange place.

They got better treatment out of the demons than they did the Dardaptoans or Lupoiux. They were
neither,
though. She thought they were supposed to be Lupoiux and she was supposed to be Dardaptoan—that was what she had heard before, that the males took after the father’s Kind in mixed Kind matches, while the females took after the mother’s.

But it was so hard to tell. They had been treated like humans for their entire lives, how were they supposed to change that now?

Mara spent most of her days wondering around the demon city of Thrun, studying the architecture, the carvings on the strange rock walls. The tapestries and the old library—which had been trashed months ago by a race of demons known as Racshas, was in such disrepair that the ruling couple of the city had banned the relocated Dardaptoans from entering.

She hadn’t meant to disobey; she wasn’t sure what kind of jail system the city had, nor was she anxious to find out. But she had been pulled inside. She walked by the old library every afternoon, dragging buckets of water from the central well located five blocks away from the small building Mara’s family had been given to make their new lives in. In her own world, that she now knew was called Gaia by the
other
Kinds, she had running water, high-speed internet, cars, and a future.

In Thrun she had a crudely plumbed toilet and a cistern that had to be refilled twice a day. And the boys had been forced into attending a block school where they were routinely bullied by a gang of boys who called themselves the
Full Bloods.
Twelve year olds; filled with hatred and prejudice because her brothers were half werewolves.

Mara didn’t know how to help them. This world was not a hospitable place to the Garnier family at all. And her mother could not do everything; could not make the world they found around them now perfect.

She just needed an hour to escape from it all. That’s what Mara told herself as she climbed the stone steps carved into the back of the building. Thrun was built on the side of a hill between two geological fault lines. It was more precarious than anyone wanted to think about—especially Mara. They’d had a couple of earthquakes since the great relocation, but Thrun was built for those very shifts.

Unless there was a dark sorcerer involved. Mara had heard the rumors—sometime in the last year a dark sorcerer had set some sort of spell against the city, and there had been some quake damage when that spell had been fought.

Damage, and it wasn’t even the real sorcerer they faced.

Mara would not think of what was to come. But she knew the truth—the reason the vampire and werewolf peoples, of whatever names they called themselves it didn’t matter to her, didn’t change what they were—had been forced into this place was because a horrific war was coming.

And as a humanities student with a major in world histories, Mara understood exactly what that would mean.

War meant a loss of hope. If an epic war was coming, and it came soon, what sort of danger would Thrun face?

It had already been attacked once. Mara would never forget how she had felt when her mother had run in from outside, yelling for the twins. She had shoved one of the boys into Mara’s arms and grabbed the other. She’d pushed them all toward the cellar. The only
‘safe’ place in the four room stone hut that they shared. The entire city had shaken around them from the battle; Mara would never forget the fear of that night, as the warriors fought the attacking demons.

Mara would give everything she possessed—which now wasn’t much—to leave this horrible world, and return to the only one she’d ever
truly
known. She’d give anything.

But she couldn’t.

Life went on. The attack—now known as the Battle of Thrun—was still fresh in everyone’s mind. They were erecting a statue near the great well of some fallen warriors to symbolize what was lost.

Warriors. Far more than fighting monsters had been lost that day.

So had Mara’s hope.

She’d changed that day, and she knew it. Her heart had gotten darker, her dreams of returning to her real world had melted. She’d decided in that moment to learn all she could of the new city, the new world, so that she could better protect the family she loved. Old habits drew her to her first love, her first source of information. Books. It would always be books for her.

She didn’t know what it was she was looking for exactly. But she needed to know
something
about this place. Something to make it seem like less of a prison and more like a home. There had to be something she could do to help her family adapt.

The boys and her mother needed that.
Mara
needed that.

She needed things to change,
somehow.

Chapter Two

Rion watched the girl from his suite window, intrigued by her though the distance separating them made distinguishing her features impossible. He was on the top floor of the Thrun Ruling Hall, where he lived near several of his siblings. He often watched the city out his window.

He was an Adrastos and his sight was exceptional, compared with other Dardaptoans. That it had been several miles between his room and the abandoned library mattered little.

Something about
her
drew his attention. He’d seen her, the sun shining on her long dark hair and her human world clothes and he’d felt the first stirring of interest.

Rion was compelled to see what it was about her that had drawn him so.

For the first time in over four hundred years he actually felt something
almost
like anticipation.

Why?

She wasn’t an exceptional beauty, from what he could see. That might not be true—he was anxious to find out up close and personal. Her hair had been either black or dark brown and it had hung halfway down her back in waves. He couldn’t figure out her age, but that wasn’t unusual. Dardaptoan females rarely looked over the age of thirty. And were always beautiful and alluring.

It was part of the way they were created. As blood drinkers they needed ways to lure their prey to them without much notice.

And that need had evolved over the last four thousand years, with the wolf god’s curses.

Rion walked through the city of Thrun, trying to appear unhurried. He wanted to run, though he knew that was ridiculous.

He was Adrastos, after all. The best family of warriors the Dardaptoan people had ever known. With the turquoise
hasha
scarf tied around his waist in an intricate knot so that the ends did not present a danger during a battle, with the white
vestis
and
pardus
he wore to denote that he was of the ruling family of his House—with the sword of an ancestor Amdreas strapped to his waist—they knew
who
and
what
he was.

Adrastos. Fighter. Warrior. Dhar of the Adrastos House—
one
of the Adrastos Houses. His father’s sons had scattered to the far reaches of the Gaian globe after they’d aged enough. None could stay in range of their sire for too long.

Rion despised his parents for the way they’d treated their offspring—especially their two daughters.

He’d personally taken his band of followers to Australia over two hundred years ago. They’d grown from a number of five hundred to almost five thousand. And Rion led them all.

Still. But there were starting to be questions of whether the Australian Adrastos should join up with the European, or the Coloradoan, or the Canadian, or any of the other Houses led by his brothers.

There were eighteen of them total. And two females. Two extraordinary females.

He did not know the elder well—she was about ninety years younger than he was, and had been dropped off on his older brother Aodhan when she had been but sixteen. Four hundred years ago.

Much like Nora, the youngest sister, had been dropped off on Rion sixteen years ago.

The sister he had raised from the age of fourteen was now just short of her thirtieth year.

She’d recently dyed her hair purple and turquoise, and pierced her nose. Or attempted to—piercings wouldn’t stay on non-scarring Dardaptoans.

He’d gotten a secret laugh out of that. Arenora was as stubborn as any other Adrastos he’d met. Nora hadn’t been happy with their forced relocation five months ago.

And he’d understood it—his sister had been computer obsessed and had been damned good at hacking in and out of human databases. And Dardaptoan ones.

Computers didn’t exist in this world. Though Nora was certainly trying…

Rion pushed aside the natural worry that only a brother could feel. Nora would adjust, and eventually stop demanding to return to the Gaian world.

Dardaptoans—especially Adrastos—learned early on how to adapt. It was their way. He just hurt for her, seeing the pain and confusion in her eyes that the rapid changes had brought.

Nora had been coddled and pampered—mostly by him—for the last sixteen years. He’d had no way to predict they’d come to this strange world.

She’d brought three totes full of computer parts and accessories, and he knew she was trying to figure out some way to make them work here. In a world with no electricity to power them.

He could barely turn a computer on, and wasn’t really interested in learning how.

He far preferred books.

That was one of the reasons his eyes had first been drawn toward what had been Thrun’s most magnificent building—other than the ruling estate and the town hall.

The library was easily six stories tall, when most of the building surrounding it were no more than two. The doors were blocked—mostly—by two large stone slabs that had broken off during a long-ago earthquake.

He’d first seen the girl sitting on the library steps, her very pose broken and dejected.

The defeat on her face had hurt him.

He chalked it up to being similar to Nora’s.

And he wanted to help.

And then she’d mustered enough courage to slip behind the first stone slab. Rion had known immediately that she would need him. That had driven him from his room and to the street. He was a male warrior, it was his duty to protect, especially a female.

Premonition of trouble filled him; Rion picked up his pace.

Chapter Three

Mara forced herself to breathe.

Was anyone watching? Had anyone seen her? She’d been visiting the library steps for days, and while she’d yet to go inside before today, she had also not seen anyone else around the building.

People tended to avoid the old place. The broken doors were frightening, the gargoyles carved into the columns supporting the roof were even more so.

Combined with the decree to not enter—the decree that was written in both Dardaptoan—which she was beginning to recognize—and English and posted to the stone, and it was no wonder.

But some
force
she could not identify was pushing her to enter.

Telling her that the answers she sought were just waiting inside.

For her.

Mara stepped behind the first stone.

The first thing she saw was a big cavern with half the ceiling missing. Vines had grown in the holes in the stone.

There weren’t many books, and the ones she saw were completely destroyed. Torn, molded, ripped, and dirtied.

But at least there
were
books, and the kind she recognized. She’d been afraid all books had been destroyed. The Racshas demons, from what she had learned of them since the relocation, weren’t the most educated or scholarly of demons.

Demons. She shivered just thinking of them. She’d actually had a few run ins with demon warriors since the relocation.

Incubi, to be exact.

They’d wanted her to go with them somewhere. But Mara hadn’t been raised to be stupid—she’d known what Incubi wanted. And she wasn’t about to let some demons feed from her sexually.

That was the last complication she needed right now. No matter how alluring the offers might have been.

She took a few moments to study the carvings on the walls. They didn’t look like Racshas demons—they were probably of the demon kind that had actually built Thrun before the Racshas demons had conquered and invaded the city.

Mara understood how cities changed over time. Human history—which wasn’t
hers
as she’d always thought—was full of similar happenings. She was drawn to one particular relief that dominated the rear wall.