by Alex Lidell
Copyright © 2020 by Alex Lidell
Danger Bearing Press
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Credits:
Edited by Mollie Traver and Linda Ingmanson
Cover Design by Deranged Doctor Design
Last Chance Reform
Immortals of Talonswood 2
Alex Lidell
Also by Alex Lidell
New Adult Fantasy Romance
POWER OF FIVE (Reverse Harem Fantasy)
POWER OF FIVE (Audiobook available)
MISTAKE OF MAGIC (Audiobook available)
TRIAL OF THREE (Audiobook available)
LERA OF LUNOS (Audiobook available)
GREAT FALLS CADET (Audiobook available)
GREAT FALLS ROGUE
GREAT FALLS PROTECTOR
IMMORTALS OF TALONSWOOD (Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance)
LAST CHANCE ACADEMY
LAST CHANCE REFORM
LAST CHANCE WITCH
Young Adult Fantasy Novels
TIDES
FIRST COMMAND (Audiobook available)
AIR AND ASH (Audiobook available)
WAR AND WIND (Audiobook available)
SEA AND SAND (Audiobook available)
SCOUT
TRACING SHADOWS (Audiobook available)
UNRAVELING DARKNESS (Audiobook available)
TILDOR
THE CADET OF TILDOR
SIGN UP FOR NEW RELEASE NOTIFICATIONS at https://links.alexlidell.com/News
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Preview of Power of Five
1. Leralynn
2. Leralynn
3. Tye
4. Coal
Also by Alex Lidell
About the Author
1
Reese
Reese pulled off the second set of bloodied latex gloves and disposed of them before pulling on new ones. Once, the smell of so much fae blood would have made his stomach growl in hunger. Now it just made it churn. Or maybe it was this particular scent.
Standing over Ellis, whose whipped back resembled something out of a meat grinder, Reese contemplated his treatment plan. Asher had gone as light as he dared in laying the lashes and stayed clear of the kidneys, but that concentrated the punishment over Ellis’s shoulders. A hundred lashes did damage no matter how little enthusiasm with which they were laid.
Which Count Victor had known full well when he’d ordered it. Quinn might have been a sadistic bastard, but he was also Victor’s coddled protégé, so his death could not have gone unpunished.
“Admiring the view?” Ellis turning his head toward Reese. The male’s face was pale for a warmblood, his hand curled in a white-knuckle grip around the edge of the table. But his voice was steady. Conversational. Ellis was too well trained and too thoroughly damaged to allow pain to leak into his words if he wanted to keep it under wraps.
“The whip was iron tipped. It’s not going to let your magic heal it quickly, and there is only so much I can do to flush out the iron.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Doc.”
Reese let the title go. Over the last few centuries, he’d been anything the special forces had a need for. Demolitions. Recon. Black ops. Medic. Ellis was still searching for whatever title would get under Reese’s skin the most, and doc was the current favorite. It was an especially effective jab because placing Reese in the infirmary had been one of Count Victor’s changes since he took over running Talonswood a week ago.
The other amusing novelties had included installing a high-tech lock system that kept the cadets to their rooms, stripping Asher of most of his power as the Academy’s commander, and, of course, demonstrating his new no-one-is-above-the-rules-especially-fae routine by having Ellis flogged before the whole school.
Ten cadets had passed out by the end of that little demonstration, and another dozen lost their breakfast.
Appearances aside, Victor was Asher’s opposite when it came to running things. Not altogether surprising since Victor enjoyed presiding over a court while Asher came into his own through commanding armies. Thus, spitting in the face of Asher’s strict military discipline, Victor promptly canceled morning exercises, allowed students off campus during liberty days, played favorites to whoever bowed the lowest, and generally turned a selective blind eye to speciesism between the different creatures. Under Victor’s new regime, the cadets were regressing to impulsivity alarmingly fast.
“Didn’t the witch pull out some iron from the manacles when you were in the cage?” Reese asked, trying to fit the injured flesh together. It was like a bloody mosaic.
“Do not even start.” Ellis’s voice hardened, the note of murderous steel in it undiminished by the fact that he was lying on Reese’s medical table, utterly vulnerable to anything the vamp might do. In truth, Reese didn’t know how the warmblood could stand it. “Samantha stays out of this.”
“You’d heal faster with her help,” Reese pointed out, though it was an effort to keep his voice even. He himself would never accept a witch’s aid, but professionalism pushed him to offer his patient the option. Ellis was badly off, no matter how much the warrior pretended otherwise.
“The witch is my mate,” Ellis snapped, now swinging himself into a sitting position, yellow eyes flashing. His pale blond hair hung in sweaty strands around his blanched face. “And you are not telling her that something that will cause her agony is a good idea.”
Oh, they were onto that.
“Then how about I tell you to get the hell out of Talonswood?” Reese snapped. “It would do all of us a favor. What the hell is keeping you here now? Fear of Daddy?”
“You know exactly what’s keeping me,” Ellis snarled, his rolling Highlands accent thick with fury. “And if you haven’t worked it out already, Samantha Devinee is very likely not just my mate, but yours too. And Asher’s and Cassis’s. It’s been near four hundred years since the four of us were in the same place. Do you think all this is an accident?”
“I don’t take mates,” Reese said, his hands opening and closing at his sides. He didn’t take mates. He didn’t so much as take women for more than a night, and usually only if he paid for their services. He’d learned the hard way what giving a piece of your soul to a woman could do. Cassis’s lover, a powerful witch named Sienna, had hurt them all during those ten years she’d kept them captive—but the worst had come when she’d discovered just how much physical abuse Reese could endure and changed tactics. When she’d dragged his wife into the lair and butchered her before Reese’s eyes while he beat himself against the magic restraini
ng him, something inside him had slammed shut. No woman—no one—was worth that risk. That pain. Asher, who’d also lost a lover to Sienna’s machinations might understand, but Reese doubted Ellis ever could.
Reese shook his head, snapping himself back to the present. Four hundred years ago, the screams of Reese’s wife had destroyed him. But that was the past. He was stronger now, the scar tissue over his soul keeping out all the things that could hurt him. That was what made him deadly. And efficient. And it was the reason he was not going to play Ellis’s game.
“Does Sam even know any of your brilliant theory?” Reese asked. “Does she think she’s mated to you?”
“Of course not.” Ellis’s eyes narrowed. “I’m certain the connection is due to Sienna’s work, and Sam deserves better than that. Her own life. Her own choices.”
“Hades, have you spoken to her at all since the deed? You bedded the witch, Ellis. In my experience, females require some conversation after the fact.”
“No. And I don’t plan to. Bedding Devinee was a mistake I don’t intend to repeat. She’s better off without me. Which you very well know.”
“So now you’re just going to… What? Lurk in the shadows and protect her from threats unknown?” There was nothing kind in Reese’s voice. He meant the words to hurt. Putting his hands on the edge of the treatment table where the male sat, Reese loomed over him. “For the record, this sounds exactly like the kind of self-flagellation you’re fond of, Ellis. You’ll forgive me if I don’t applaud your damn masochism. And I am certainly not jumping into your sinking boat.”
“Why are you here, Reese?” Ellis asked, turning the tables with one lifted eyebrow and keeping a better grip on his temper than Reese would have given the male credit for. “At Talonswood.”
Reese chuckled without humor. “Because I’m dead.” He needed to lie low for a few years while the humans forgot about his latest identity, this time an American SEAL killed in Afghanistan—the hazard of being an immortal in the mortal world. Faking your own death and starting anew every few years. Sometimes in the same country, but most often not. But maybe Ellis had a point. Three years was long enough. It was time to leave. Reese picked up a clear vial. “Lie the hell back down so I can be done unfucking this mess—though you are going to be useless for a week or two no matter what I do. With iron in your blood, I can’t even make analgesics work. It’s down to salves and antibiotics.”
“I don’t need antibiotics to fight off this world’s germs. I’m hardly a cub.” The glower Ellis gave to the syringe Reese started filling made him snort. For someone who could face a terrifying flogging without any outward fear, Ellis’s dislike of needles was an absurdity Reese could not begin to unravel.
“Then stop acting like one. Settle down and look the fuck away.” Reese held up the syringe right in front of Ellis’s face, letting the bead of medicine squirt from the needle. “Or better yet, watch me closely. I enjoy seeing you blanch.”
2
Sam
Quinn shoves me over the edge of the bed, his hands cruel. Powerful. His hand clamps over my neck, his rough tongue licking my terror-filled sweat. I fight. I try to fight. But I can’t. Not against a vampire twice my size. The helplessness rakes through me, ripping my soul until I scream.
My scream merges with another’s. Cassis lies strapped to a worktable, roaring in pain as a witch named Sienna carves into his flesh. I struggle to move, to get to him. But I can’t. Helplessness cuts through me again. I try to bite back my hollers of pain, as if silence can end this.
My silence stays as the scene changes again. The crack of an iron-tipped whip against flesh the only sound to be heard in the Academy training yard, Ellis’s blood soaking his pants and dripping onto the cold earth. No, don’t!—I open my mouth to shout to Asher, but no sound comes out. Ellis sags silently against the whipping post. Asher brings back his arm. I can’t stop it.
I sit bolt upright, hitting my knees against the bottom of my writing desk, the snippets of nightmare lingering in the quiet dorm room. My open notebook, where I was writing an essay on the history of the fae-vampire wars, is blotched with sweat stains.
Damn.
I’m getting no sleep at night, so I’m not surprised that the fae-vampire wars knocked me right out. I rub my stinging knees and head to the suite’s bathroom to shower, examining the liquid soap before daring to touch it. Two days ago, my neighbors—a pair of waifish demivamps who coincidentally grew up on the same posh street in London and purr about it at least once a day—found peroxide somewhere and poured it into my shampoo. The day before that, they managed to rub nettle extract on the toilet paper.
Bracing my head against the cool tile, I let the steamy water wash away the cold sweat and dregs of memory. Quinn is dead. So is Sienna. Ellis is alive and healing. At least I hope he is. Besides yesterday’s punishment, I haven’t seen him since he killed Quinn to save me. Killed Quinn so that I didn’t have to—and didn’t have to be the one with Asher’s whip permanently marking my mortal skin. I can see the green again now, the blood sprouting from Ellis’s skin with each blow.
Every day that passes without seeing him, the cage seems more and more like a dream—connecting our scars, drawing away his pain, feeling him move inside me. But I can’t find a way to be allowed into the same room as him even for a few minutes, and it’s not for lack of trying.
My lungs tighten painfully, struggling against the hot, steamy air. The morning after Quinn’s attack, I went to Asher’s office, begging the commander to let me into the guards’ holding cell. He kicked me out. I went the next day and the next, and finally—probably worried he’d kill me himself out of sheer annoyance—Asher went to ask if Ellis could receive a visitor.
Asher’s words still ring in my head, making my chest ache. He doesn’t want to see you.
With a towel wrapped around me, I return to the room and glance at the clock. Only twenty minutes until lunch. Pulling my sketch journal from my desk, I give my pencil free rein to stroke the nightmares onto paper, as if that can help leave them here in the room. It’s time to pull myself together. A clean blue uniform skirt. A pressed white shirt. The appearance of cold calm.
I might be able to do nothing about what Sienna did all those centuries ago, but I’m done being helpless. Done being a victim where others have to come save me and pay the price. The morbidly amusing thing is that, until Ellis, there had never been anyone to come help. And for one stupid moment, I thought the change was good.
Right up until I watched the male’s blood color the grass on the green, his own brother wielding the whip that did it.
If that’s the cost of protecting me, I’ll do my own protecting, thank you very much. Like I always have—for both myself and my foster sister, Janie. I may be a million years from my old life, but Janie is still there, and she needs me to survive and get out of here. I just need to get with the new program. With the new rules.
Standing before the mirror, I pull my hair back into a ponytail and then change my mind and shake it loose, letting the rebellious red-dyed brown streaks catch the streams of sunlight. I am Samantha Devinee, and I survived the New Jersey foster system. I ran a damn good burglary gig. I am a witch capable of summoning a storm—by sheer accidental instinct, but still.
Taking a deep breath, I let my spine straighten and my shoulders roll back until the girl looking back from the mirror matches what I need her to be. Fake it until you make it. And I will make it.
I will be strong. An army of one, without all the uniforms and orders. I will be a witch who bends a knee to no one. Who needs no one’s help.
Giving my reflection a nod, I head for the door. The light above the newly installed lock blinks green—one of several changes that Victor’s made as the new dean. As much as I hate being locked in at night like a juvie detainee, I can’t say I miss nightly fire watch and morning physical training. The count, in his own words, takes a more modern approach to education, believing Asher’s military strictures “uncivilized
for the current day.”
Not that modern and Count Victor are words that anyone with half a brain would ever think of using together, but I’m not going to complain. If it lets me leave this claustrophobic place on the weekends, I’m all for it.
Unfortunately, afternoon combat training is still alive and well, so I’ll just need to find a way not to get my ass handed to me this afternoon.
Outside, the green is disgusting, the vast grass lawn and dirt training yard, soup soft after a morning of rain. A cold wind carrying the remaining light drizzle cuts into my skin.
Stepping tenderly on the squishy earth, I pick my way slowly across the green toward the dining hall. At least the attention to my footing gives me a good reminder to avoid making eye contact with anyone. Fae and vamps, even demis, are strange about that. I’m pretty sure that if given a chance, they’d be going around pissing on trees to mark their territory and baring their teeth at imagined challenges.
“Move along, butcher bitch.” The shove comes from behind, but I’m familiar enough with Christian’s tactics by now to hold my balance. His girlfriend, Leanne, laughs lightly, as if watching a show put on just for her.
Stepping aside, I let the perfectly coiffed demivamps pass in a cloud of cologne, saving the fight for another day. One where I don’t end up wet, cold, and muddy for the satisfaction of getting my nose broken. Even with my face lowered, I can see the smug smile on Christian’s beautiful olive-skinned face.