The Warrior - Initiation Driven Subversive Redemption Justice

  “Don’t do that.” I twisted and even I, queen of doing and thinking the wrong thing, knew my attempts to get away from him were pointless.

  “Sorry, it comes with my monster-ish nature. When something smells good, I have to keep sniffing it until I’ve memorized its scent.”

  “Well, stop memorizing me. There’s no need for it and it smells like decay in here. Even I can smell the rotting body.”

  He nodded. “That it does. If you promise to stop squirming, I will take you outside where the aroma is much nicer.”

  “I’m not going to promise that.” Damn, why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut? Promise him to behave and then don’t, Rachel. Don’t tell him that you won’t. I could have stomped my foot at my own stupidity.

  “At least you’re honest.” He swung me over his shoulder like I was duffel bag and, even as I kicked and screamed, carried me out of the house.

  I hit the ground hard when he dumped me, landing square on my well-padded rear end. I whirled around and decided to try to make a run for it. If he didn’t shift into his wolf form, I had a fighting chance of getting away.

  Before I could even get up, I saw two more sets of sneakered feet in my way. That’s right. There had been three wolves.

  I gasped, as I had to cover my eyes with my hand to try to see. Pain assaulted my eyes and I had to shut them even as I knew it was the worst possible thing to do in the circumstances.

  The sun had come up. I’d never seen direct sunlight before and my eyes couldn’t handle it. It felt like a million pinpricks of heat assaulted my corneas. Colors flashed and formed horrible shapes even under my closed lids. I cried out, unable to stop myself in the onslaught of pain.

  Oh no. I did not want to die like this. I’d heard of Warriors going blind. It was why so few went out in daytime. They had to build up a tolerance after being underground for so long.

  “What’s wrong with her?” The voice belonged to a female, not the guy who had dragged me out into the hell known as daytime.

  The wolf-person to the left of me knelt down. “They live like moles down there, never seeing the sun. It’s probably more than she can take out here.” Whoever this one was, she sounded kinder than the other female who had spoken. Her voice reminded me a little of Tia’s, and maybe that was why I was having delusions of kindness.

  “Oh, man.” Now that was the voice of the guy who taken me. “What are we going to do? I can’t bring her back in there with the dead body and we’re miles away from being able to get her indoors.”

  “Simple solution.”

  I didn’t know what that meant but I guessed it wasn’t a good thing. Whatever it was, I didn’t want it. They could leave me here. That’s what they should do. I didn’t want to…

  “Luna, don’t…” I head the guy sound frantic just before a hard object collided with the back of my head making even my teeth rattle. I saw stars beneath my closed lids as throbbing pain followed by blackness overtook my world.

  ***

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  Whoever was speaking was way too loud, and I wanted to beg them to stop but I couldn’t quite open my eyes or make my mouth work.

  “They’re fragile. You know that.”

  I knew that sound. It was him. The wolf that had grabbed me in the Outpost and dragged me outside into the wicked sun. The event rushed back into my throbbing head, and I wished I could fall back into blissful unconsciousness. I was trapped with Werewolves, and I had no idea what they wanted with me.

  I really, really wanted to go home. Even my life with Dad seemed preferable to this.

  “You know she’s awake.”

  I opened my eyes, blinking to clear the double vision as three faces stared down at me. The first I recognized easily: Wolf-boy. His eyebrows curled downward, giving his face a look of deep concern, his blond hair a mess of curls and his frightening blue eyes that didn’t change when he sank canine teeth into Undead skin stared down at me.

  “Hi there.” He knelt down beside me. I looked around. I was on a bed, in a room I didn’t recognize. There were no outward signs to give me a clue as to where I was. Escape would have to wait until I could gauge some idea of my location.

  “You hit me on the head.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “My sister Luna did.”

  I followed his gaze to one of the two women who stood to the left and right of me. I looked again. Was I still seeing double? They appeared exactly the same. The same messy blonde curly hair as their brother, only theirs was long, falling all the way down their backs. They had green eyes where his were blue.

  The one to the right of me spoke. “No, you’re not crazy. We’re identical twins.”

  How had she known what I was thinking? Could Werewolves read minds and we didn’t know? “Did you read my mind?”

  “No.” The one on the right shook her head. “We get that look a lot. I’m Autumn Angela Kenwood.” She extended her hand to me.

  I shook it before I realized what I was doing and retracted my hand. Autumn Angela—did they all have two names?—frowned at my action and stepped back.

  I looked at her double, Luna, who had struck me on the head. “That must make you Luna, like the Moon, kind of appropriate.”

  “Luna Ella Kenwood.” She didn’t offer to shake my hand, and I appreciated that. If she didn’t offer, I didn’t have to turn her down. “No Moon remarks. I hear them enough. One woman in my family gets the name every generation. It was just my bad luck to be born minutes before Autumn, so I got stuck with it.”

  “You struck me with something.”

  “The back of your machete.” She smiled like she was proud of her accomplishment. “It seemed kind of appropriate considering you would have killed us with that thing if you could have.”

  Anger poured into my veins at the thought of being struck with my own weapon. “I fight monsters. That’s what I do.”

  Wolf-boy rolled his eyes. “Again with the monster comments. Do we look like monsters to you? I’m Jason Ulises. Same last name as the two monsters who happen to be my older sisters.”

  I got the feeling he was laughing at me even though his face stayed stoic. They waited in silence like they expected some kind of response. What exactly did they want me to say? “How did the Vampire taste?”

  Jason laughed, his face lighting up in delight. “You rock!”

  Luna rolled her eyes and turned her back on me. Autumn shook her head.

  “I don’t know that expression. Is it a good thing to ‘rock’?”

  He nodded, offering me his hand to help me stand. I took it and let him pull me to my feet. The room spun, and I swayed. As I gripped my forehead, I realized how hard Luna must have whacked me.

  “Sit.” The lightness disappeared from Jason’s voice as he forcibly placed me on the bed. “Luna, go get Dad. I think she needs medical attention. Now.”

  Luna gasped. “I really didn’t think it would hurt her.”

  “You’ve spent zero time around humans in the last ten years. I don’t think you’re exactly in a position to judge. Go. Get. Dad.”

  “I’m sure I’m going to be fine. I probably just got up too fast.” I looked into Jason’s scary blue eyes and the fear I expected to feel didn’t arrive. Instead, he seemed kind of calming. After a moment, the room righted itself and I temporarily forgot where I was.

  My cheeks got hot under his gaze, and I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. How hard had I hit my head? This was a Werewolf holding me, and I was blushing like he was Micah Lyons.

  “What is your name?” His voice was low and commanding. All of a sudden, I wanted to tell him anything he wanted to know so I bit down on my tongue to make sure I didn’t. That was weird. It was like he tried to control my free will.

  After a moment, he grinned, showing a dimple in his left cheek I hadn’t noticed earlier. If he’d been human, I would have called him adorable. As it was, I had to say he was terrifyingly cute for a monster.

  “You resist my instru
ctions well. You really are one of those humans who can fight us, aren’t you? You look like a pixie but you have the heart of a wolf.”

  He spoke like a poet, very different from the guys I knew.

  “Is that a compliment?”

  No one had ever called me a pixie before, and where I came from ‘wolf’ was not a term of endearment. Still, my crazy heart skipped a beat at his words.

  “A big one.” He touched my nose with his thumb. “You have freckles, whatever your name is.”

  I nodded. Now, I knew that wasn’t a compliment. I pulled back so he couldn’t so easily touch my skin that way. It was too…possessive, and he was a monster.

  “Do you not like your spots?”

  I shrugged. “That’s none of your business.” There, that was a much more ‘in control’ statement to make. “Why did you bring me here and what do you want from me?” And where on earth was my machete? Had they left it at the Outpost?

  Jason took a deep breath and grinned again like he’d just gained some sort of insight from my scent alone.

  “Stop doing that. I don’t want you sniffing at me like you’re some kind of dog who has found its favorite toy.”

  “But, no-name girl, I am a dog and you might be my new favorite toy. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Jason.” A deep male voice grabbed my attention. It belonged to a tall, broad shouldered, blond man who leaned against the doorframe. “Stop tormenting the human.” Jason grinned at me as he stood.

  “Dad, this is, well I don’t know her name because she won’t tell me. Whoever you are, this is my father, Andon Vincent Kenwood, the Alpha of our pack.”

  I couldn’t come with a word to describe how pissed I felt that I couldn’t sense the Werewolves with my so-called Warrior senses considering they moved so noiselessly. He walked on silent feet until he stood directly in front of me. I would never know if they were coming or going if I couldn’t get the signal.

  Immediately, because I would have had to have been blind not to notice, I could tell how much he looked like Jason, and for that matter Luna and Autumn. They were practically an exact match in the sheer degree of their platinum blond hair.

  “Dad, I’m afraid Luna really hurt her.” Autumn spoke from next to me, and I realized I’d forgotten she was there. Wow.

  I was losing all my training all at once. Clearly, I’d never paid enough attention in class. Not that Keith had ever gone over this exact scenario. He could have called it, “How to conduct yourself when you are held prisoner by Werewolves who are acting disturbingly not like monsters even though you know they are.”

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” Andon held up his index and middle fingers in front of my eyes.

  “Thirty-three,” I answered. I wasn’t sure what game they were playing, but I had no intention of making this easy on them.

  He grabbed my head by jerking it upwards, which made me wince, and stared at my eyes. “Her pupils look good.” His left hand rubbed the back of my head, and he hissed through his teeth. “That’s quite a bump you have back there. My daughter forgot the cardinal rule of dealing with humans. ‘Remember they are weaker than you are.’”

  “Autumn, Jason, could you leave us for a moment?”

  Autumn nodded as she scampered out the door. Jason didn’t budge.

  “Son?”

  Jason shrugged. “I’m good here.”

  “Are you defying me?”

  “Are you asking me to go or telling me to go?”

  His father sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose in a gesture I’d seen Tia’s dad do a hundred times. I wondered if it was a universal father move. Of course, my dad never did it, but then again he wasn’t exactly up for ‘father of the year’. Tears pooled in my eyes and I blinked them away. He’d shown up. At the last moment he’d come and I hadn’t even gotten to talk to him. Now, he’d think I was dead.

  Both the men turned to regard me. Andon spoke. “Are you in pain?”

  “Not much, why?”

  He nodded in my direction. “You have tears forming in your eyes.”

  I thought I’d done a pretty good job of containing them. “How did you know?”

  Jason spoke before his father could. “We can smell them.”

  “Not a lot of secret emotions around here, huh?”

  “No.” They answered in unison, which seemed to startle them as much as it did me, because they both stared at each other wide-eyed before grinning.

  I’d seen this kind of familial love before in the Lyons household. I just hadn’t expected to witness it here with Werewolves. My stomach growled and all thoughts of questioning the Werewolf familial system were pushed away by the very real fact that I hadn’t eaten in a very long time. The small meal I had ingested was now all over the woods, where the Kenwood family had left the Vampire.

  “We need to feed her. Jason, go get her some food.”

  “But, Dad…”

  His father interrupted. “Just do it.”

  Jason grumbled as he turned the corner out of the room. Left alone with his very large father, I felt very small and vulnerable.

  My hands trembled, and I clasped them in my lap to hide them, even as I suspected that he could probably smell my fear.

  “When I sent my children out to bring me back a Warrior, I didn’t expect you.”

  “Me?”

  “A child. I kind of thought they would find a lone Warrior who was an adult, a more appropriate person for me to discuss this with.” Andon sat down on the bed next to me. “What were you doing out there on your own, young lady?”

  My head ached. I was hungry. I was disturbingly attracted to his Werewolf son. The leaders of my own people wanted me dead.

  The tears I hadn’t wanted to shed spilled from my eyes as I spoke through sobs. “It’s such a long story.”

  Chapter Seven

  I’d been talking faster than I ever had before, probably making absolutely no sense whatsoever when a growl sounded in the hall, making me raise my head to look. Jason strode into the room, his voice more animalistic than human. It sent shivers up my back.

  “I leave for two minutes to get her some food and you make her cry?”

  His father, seemingly unconcerned with his son’s growling, sat back on the bed, leaning against the wall with his feet up. “I didn’t make her cry. She was just telling me about some of her troubles.”

  And I had been, which was the strangest part. I had completely unloaded on this man—this wolf—who was a complete stranger to me. He had listened to my whole sordid tale, starting from the moment I had woken up the day before until now, making very few comments.

  “Did you get her name?”

  Jason’s dad looked at me. “No, she hasn’t told me that yet.”

  I’d already told him everything else. Why was I so reluctant to go that last step? It was just a name. Everybody had one. Well except for the wolves, it sounded like they all had two.

  I turned to Jason and stared for a moment into his eyes. The first time I’d seen him, he’d been tearing a Vampire to pieces. Of course, it was very likely that he’d saved my life doing so. I needed answers from these wolves—who they were, why they had saved me, why they’d brought me here. I was going to need to tell them who I was. There was no if ands or buts about it.

  When I spoke, I looked at Jason. “My name is Rachel Clancy.”

  Jason smiled, showing his dimple again. “Hello, Rachel Clancy.” He paused for a second. “What’s your middle name?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  His mouth hung open. “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t give me one. No one I know has one. We all have two names.”

  Jason turned to his father. “Did you know this?”

  “Jason Ulises, in terms of the small information I have managed to garner from the humans about their lives down there, the fact that they only use two names and not three, is not something I learned. People used to do it either way. Our pack always
did three.”

  Andon hadn’t rolled his eyes at Jason, but he might as well have. The sarcasm was all there, and I had to suppress my laugh through willpower alone. Jason scowled at his dad.

  “So, can we keep her?”

  “Keep me?” I darted to my feet and almost fell over, but the dizziness passed. I waved both of them away; I needed to get through this on my own. “I’m not a pet, and I have to go home.”

  Jason’s face fell. “You want to leave us?”

  “Of course. Why would I want to stay here?”

  “Because we’re good people and we’ll take care of you.”

  His father raised his hand. “Forgive my son, Ms. Clancy, he’s not used to meeting new people. We tend to be a rather…insular group. He’s excited about your presence.”

  “She smells incredible to me, Dad.” Jason’s voice took on a low tonal quality that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand.

  “I told you, I don’t like the smell stuff. Stop sniffing at me and stop discussing it. The talking about it is almost worse than the doing it.” Almost.

  “Humans aren’t used to using their noses like we are. They tend to ignore scent unless they are hungry or something is burning.”

  Speaking of food. I looked down at the plate that Jason held, but still hadn’t given to me. Was he going to let me eat it?

  His eyes grew huge as he followed my gaze to the plate. “Oh, sorry.”

  I took the plate from him with a shaky hand. I sat down and placed it on my lap, very, very aware that they stared at me while I ate. It was a quick meal. A sandwich with some kind of unidentifiable meat. I washed it down with a glass of milk. I couldn’t remember ever being so uncomfortable eating before. If they could smell my tears, know when I was awake, and try to force me to tell them things using some kind of power, what was my chewing and digesting sounding like to them?

  Without warning, the image of that Warrior who had been torn to bits in the Outpost filled my mind. My stomach turned and I covered my mouth afraid I was about to lose the first meal I had ingested in over a day.

  Jason sat down next to me. “What’s wrong? You don’t like turkey?”