Table of Contents
Title Page
Blurb
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
About the Author
Titles by Rebecca Royce
Blurb
Marina awakes with no memories of her life to discover she's a prisoner of the Outsiders. Her captors think she's one of them and she should be helping them with an eternal war, waged over lifetimes and dimensions. She wants her freedom, yet she also needs to know why Drew gazes at her with such heat in his eyes.
Drew runs from his destiny and Marina for as long as he can. She won't believe him, but he does it to protect her from the evil inside of him, a connection to a demon who wants to destroy the Outsiders. Now, he has no choice but to embrace his destiny with Marina. War has come to their doorstep. The signs have signaled. And battle waits for no one.
Fireborn Publishing Copyright Statement
Love Beyond Oceans
Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Royce
eBook ISBN: 978-1-941984-46-8
First eBook Publication: October 2015
Cover Artist: Syneca Featherstone
Editor: Monti Shalosky
Logo copyright © 2014 by Fireborn Publishing and Allison Cassatta
Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
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This book is written in US English.
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Chapter One
Water dripped in the cursed rooms of the caves her captors called home. Over and over again. Marina Moore knew because the incessant rhythm was present in her every waking moment. Her captors, who called themselves the Outsiders, were trying to make the old, converted rooms inside the hellish, dark hole homier.
How could they?
A cave was a cave was a cave.
She reclined on the horribly uncomfortable ottoman and stared at the walls, her only activity since there was nothing else for her to do.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
No life. No memory. No real existence. A magical blast had erased her memory. The freaks holding her said the attack was the cause. How would she know any different? In the hours alone, she tried to fill in the blank spots—maybe they'd kidnapped her. Maybe she'd been born in the cave. Maybe. Was anyone searching for her? Waiting? Hoping? Or had their "magical assault" erased her from their nebulous lives, too?
A knock on the door interrupted her nothingness and she groaned. Why did they bother with the knocking when they came in regardless of whether she said yes or no? "What?"
The wooden panel door swung open with a bang, admitting the man who called himself Leonardo. He was tall, with glasses, and dark brown hair. As far as she'd gathered, he was in charge. There were lots of couples in the group but Leonardo wasn't in one of them. Yet when he spoke, everyone jumped.
He stared at her for a second without speaking. "You didn't come to dinner."
"Come to drag me?"
He stepped farther into her private hell. "It's over now."
She shrugged. The food in the caves was so disgusting it seemed a safer idea not to eat. The Outsiders might be magical beings, but they couldn't prepare a meal to save their lives. Of course, Marina had no idea if she possessed cooking skills either. Not only had she lost her memories, she had no clue what skills she had or the opportunity to discover them in the gloomy, walled pit where she existed.
"I'm not hungry and I'd rather not get food poisoning." She swung her feet down to the floor, then rose. For whatever reason, she wanted to face her nemesis on solid ground. She harbored no illusions about the man before her, he was not friendly. She suppressed a shiver when she looked at him. Fear made her want to throw something.
Leonardo shook his head. "For six months I've been waiting for you to come back. You can't possibly know how much we all miss you and yet it seems to be getting worse, doesn't it? Less and less of the Marina I grew up with shows in you."
"You're not making any God damned sense." And she'd had enough of his cryptic remarks. "You have to let me go. I won't tell anyone you had me or where I am. I couldn't even if I wanted to since I'm not entirely sure, and what I do remember couldn't possibly have happened."
Floating through the air, being in one place and then suddenly another…
"Marina…"
A smack on the wall by a fist and Drew Dubowski, tall, broad shouldered, and brown-haired with blue-like-the-ocean eyes, stormed into the room. Unlike Leonardo he didn't knock and hadn't the entire time she'd been held captive.
He stalked to Leonardo and poked him in the shoulder with his pointer finger. "I thought I told you to leave her alone."
"I don't now nor have I ever taken orders from you." Leonardo snarled.
They were like animals and she didn't want to be in the cage with them when they erupted. She took a step back, only where was she going to go? If violence erupted, she'd definitely be caught in the cross fire.
Drew shoved at Leonardo's shoulder. "Where she is concerned, consider me the last word on the subject."
Leonardo pushed Drew backwards; he faltered a step before he pushed back. "We have been doing this your way for six months. She isn't getting better and everything is about to fall apart."
Marina's mouth went dry as she watched the men posture and snarl. Leonardo stood impressive, tall and sturdy, yet it was Drew who made her mouth go dry. Every time she saw him she had the same thought, he really was the most beautiful man. She blinked. Fixating on one of her kidnappers? Was that normal?
"I am aware what the stakes are, you pompous piece of shit." Drew narrowed his eyes. "No one knows better than me what we lost."
Leonardo laughed, a hard cold sound. "I've lost my best friend because you didn't want her. Again and again you threw her away and I had to watch because we're stuck in this system where we have no choice but to take the cards drawn for us. You never deserved her, and in a fairer world sh
e'd have done loads better than you."
Marina's body went cold. What did they mean? And why did she care? None of what they said could possibly be real. They were full of shit; every word they spoke had to be a lie. Still, Leonardo's words made her…sad. She pushed down the emotion. Weakness and sadness couldn't have a place in her life.
"I couldn't agree with you more." Some of the tension left Drew's shoulders. "I've never been worth the ground she walked on, which is why I stayed away. And would have continued doing so if you had adequately protected her."
"Boys." Charma, a blonde-haired woman, walked into the room with her hands on her hips.
She was followed, as she always was, by an equally platinum blond Jason. Charma—pronounced Karma, Marina had been informed, but spelled with a Ch, as if Marina cared either way—and Jason were together in some weird, fixated soul mates sort of a way.
Jason laughed. "You two are a sight. Chomping at the bit to get into it in here when the enemy is out there. Pounding on our wards, which are not going to hold. We're royally fucked. We have nowhere left to flee. And I can tell you've raised the poor girl's blood pressure. Leonardo, get out."
"Why am I in trouble here? I came in to talk to her."
"You know why." Charma was a small woman, at least four inches tinier than Marina's middle-sized frame. Yet, she didn't back down from getting in between Drew and Leonardo. "Marina doesn't belong to you, any more than I do. You're our leader, we count on you. So go figure out how to make our wards stronger when the one person who can strengthen them is unavailable, and leave her with the person whose soul she was made for. Whether you like him or not."
Leonardo clenched his fists and slammed his way out of the room, banging the door closed as he left. For a minute, no one moved and then, seemingly out of nowhere, Jason laughed. A loud, hearty sound started low and grew until he'd doubled over from his hysteria.
"Jase?" Charma rushed to his side. "You okay?"
"No." He shook his head, gasping for breath. "I can't stop."
Drew jolted to Marina's side. "Shit. We're under attack. I can see it. Can you?" He looked at her so expectantly she wished she could actually do what he wanted.
"I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."
Drew nodded, his eyes hooding over. "Of course not. Charma, pull Jason out of this room. It should relieve things. The assault isn't person specific but location. They're searching, likely for her. I don't know why it hit Jason but we're not losing our healer to this crap today."
Charma pushed on the gasping Jason until she made it in the hall as Drew grabbed Marina's hand. His fingers were callused, his grip strong. She stared down at their joined hands and the room spun as a feeling of déjà vu assaulted her.
"You okay?" Drew pulled her from her makeshift bedroom into the hallway.
"I—" She never got to answer.
Chaos reigned supreme all around her. Every Outsider she knew stood together in a circle and shouted at each other. Leonardo stood in the center and every bit of anger in the room seemed directed at him.
"You're going to have to do something."
"Life has to continue with or without her on board."
"We've come too far to let him in."
"Fuck Sebastian and his fucking head."
The words scrambled into one giant mess of nonsense and she closed her eyes. This was too much. Why did they have her here? Why not just let her go?
"Marina." Drew's voice reached her amidst the echoes of the hollering in the hallway. "Look at me."
She opened her lids. Was it possible to be bone tired, to actually feel like her body couldn't support her system anymore?
"It's time to talk."
She nodded yet didn't move when he tried to tug her away from the mess all around them. "Is it possible you will release me if I listen to what you have to say?"
"Yes."
His answer surprised her as did the hard line of his face while he answered. She let him lead her away from the arguing Outsiders. Drew was a difficult man to understand. The others she had come to know from their entering and exiting her room over time. Drew came the most and yet she knew him the least.
The Outsiders had carved out rooms so the place should seem more comfortable, and yet the deeper they went the more traditionally cave-like everything became. Eventually, they entered a corridor where there were no more decorations or makeshift rooms.
Goosebumps popped up all over her skin. The temperature dropped considerably only it wasn't the cold that made her shiver. A sense of dread threatened to bring her to her knees.
Drew dropped her hand and stared at her for a moment, his eyes unreadable, his face blank while he studied her. "You're afraid."
"Well, no shit." She rubbed her arms. "You've been holding me hostage for six months. I can't remember anything about my life. You've done something to me to make my head scrambled. You're all clearly insane. And now I stupidly followed you down here where you could kill me and no one will hear me scream."
Drew shifted his stance, spreading his legs slightly further apart. Why had he moved in such a way? Was he getting ready to strike her?
"Do you really think, deep inside the part of you where things are quiet, I'm going to hurt you?"
"I…" She wanted to tell him to screw himself with his nonsensical talk about quiet insides or whatever bullshit he spouted. Yet she didn't, because his words struck a chord.
Drew didn't mean her harm. He could have caused her pain any time in the last six months and before he linked hands in the hall he never so much as touched her.
"I guess not."
He stepped away from, giving her some space. "You are scared."
Had he brought her all the way down into who knew where to discuss her fear? "I think we've covered this."
"I bring it up to tell you I'm afraid, too."
All right. "Is the sharing of our feelings portion of this evening over?"
"Marina." He laughed, but unlike 'Jase's hysteria earlier, it was a quiet sound. "I never share my feelings. Trust me. I'm telling you I'm afraid here because it's important. From the age of eight until the day after my twelfth birthday, I followed the dictates of a demon who at the time called himself Sebastian. You're going to have to take my word for things here—I'm never afraid. Of anything. Except the idea of losing you."
Marina crouched, running her hands on the cool floor. Had the world started spinning faster? "I'm sorry you seem to know me so well, but I don't know you. How hard is that to understand?"
"We have known each other a very long time. You have no memory of us in the last thirty-two years and there are millenniums between us neither of us will recall in this lifetime. But back to my point, I am afraid here, too. I wouldn't be me if I wasn't. And you would also not be you if you didn't want to rush from here as fast as you possibly could." He walked toward her and knelt down. "Feels better closer to the ground. I get it. The earth's core makes us stronger, more centered. We can't burrow through the ground. This is the best we get. What would you say if I told you there are only eighteen people on the planet who step into here and want to run like hell?"
"I'd say…" Her voice trailed off when she looked into his blue eyes. They really were endless, weren't they? "I'd say you're out of your mind. Demons? Eighteen people afraid? I don't want nonsense. I want answers."
"For the first time in six months I'm giving you them to you, sweetheart. You're an Outsider. Like it or not, you are. You can't remember it and that sucks. For all of us. Every bad occurrence that has happened to us lately has been because you can't access yourself. Enough is enough. I thought to leave you alone and let you heal. I'm a big idiot. You need to be pushed. This room is horrific because thirty-two years ago the generation of Outsiders before ours stood in this room and tried something so completely stupid I can hardly believe it. They summoned a demon on purpose, thinking they could thwart him before he ever got to earth. They were foolish and we've all been paying ever since. Like it or
not, you are one of us."
She shook her head. "No. I don't know what game you're playing…"
He cut her off. "No game playing, Marina. You'll either get with the program in trying to recover or I'll force you to. I'm not treating you with any more kid gloves."
"You said if I listened, I could leave." She hated the tears clogging her throat.
"I didn't lie—although you should know, I often do. If you get your memory and your powers back, if you do what I say, you can go. Hell, Marina, you find yourself again? No one on the planet would ever be able to stop you." He pointed the way they had come. "Find your way out. It's lesson number one."
And just like that he was gone. One second Drew stood before her, all ego and nonsense, and the next he'd popped out of existence leaving not even a breeze in his wake.
Her mouth fell open. What. The. Hell.
* * * *
Drew Dubowski popped back into living room where his fellow Outsiders waited for him, the eleven others, besides himself and Marina, they'd found. Time was no longer on their side to get the others in line.
"Well?" Leonardo stepped forward, drawing his attention. "Did it work?"
"It did. I've left her there. The plan worked. I'm going to need someone to restrain me soon from going back for her." His body buzzed. He'd left his soul mate, the woman he'd been created to protect, alone in an evil scented room to find her way back to them. There was no chance of her getting out of the caves and the worst she would do was wander around in circles until she drained herself but it didn't negate the need to get to her, and fast.
Leonardo looked at Charma. "Nice job with ordering me out of the room and Jase are you sure you went to medical school and not acting classes?"
"I felt like an idiot." Dr. Jason Randall pulled his soul mate, Charma, closer to him.
Drew envied them their ease. When they got through this and restored Marina, Drew and Marina would still not have the connection of the other soul mates' in the room. Love wasn't possible, not for him. Even if he wanted to feel Marina's soul reach for his more than anything in the universe.