Oaken

by Melody Robinette

  OAKEN

  Book One

  of

  The Underground Series

  by Melody Robinette

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of my imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2015 Melody Robinette

  Cover illustration and jacket design by Nathalia Suellen

  Editing by Todd Barselow

  Formatting by Author's HQ

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author rights.

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  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgement

  Before Everything

  One Year Later

  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

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  About the Author

  Book 2 Teaser: Ash

  For my mom, who believed in me before I did. We’ve shared many firsts, so here is another one. My first book. Thanks for being the first person I call when I get a new idea, the first person to read each and every story, and the first Outsider to fall in love with The Underground.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Before you begin this story, you should know that you wouldn’t even be reading it if it hadn’t been for some very important people.

  Eva, for giving me my first journal and pushing me to start writing.

  My grandparents, for always, always rooting for me and for being some of the first readers of everything I write.

  My enthusiastic beta readers/students: Michelle, Miranda, Cristian, Dalia, Kayla, and Adriana.

  My dad, Jessica, Yvonne, Tara, Kason, Kynedy, Isabella, and Jack for being my cheer squad and humoring me when I talked about my book oh so long ago.

  Autumn, for being my first young reader and sharing her name with my favorite character.

  Janera Naron and Hettie Hicks for instilling a love of English and writing in my high school years and inspiring me to become an English teacher myself.

  Vaun, for introducing me to the world of self publishing and for being my best writing buddy.

  Catie, wherever you are, for being my very first reader and the reason I came up with this story in the first place. I hope Anna Libson is doing well.

  All the members of Writers’ Chapter for being totally awesome.

  Ben, for always supporting me and loving me and being the best friend and husband in the ever.

  Finally, to the people who literally made this book possible with their overwhelming generosity: Vaun Murphrey, Rick Ennis, Kathy and Chris, Mark Tower, Kate Diehl, Ashley Rea, Alec Campos, Deena Garland, Eva Harder, Ginger Sanders, Mark Williamson, Michelle Chavez, Liliana Vasquez, Dad and Jessica, Jacki Robinette, and Amy M. You guys have no idea how much you all mean to me and how eternally grateful I am to every single one of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Before Everything

  In retrospect, Autumn could not have chosen a worse night to get drunk for the first time.

  “So, you’re Luke’s sister, right?” asked a senior jock with half-closed eyelids, who was much drunker than Autumn. She nodded, taking another gulp of the poison her brother had mixed up for her. “Heh. Twins. But you don’t look anything like him. I mean, Luke is so tall and gangly and you are so…not,” he said with a wink. “Not saying you’re fat, just saying you’ve got curves. Good curves.” Autumn downed the rest of her drink. “I don’t usually go for redheads, but for you I think I can make an exception.”

  “Okay. Time to go, Rose,” Autumn’s brother Luke said from behind her, shooting the crestfallen jock a warning look.

  “Rose? I thought your name was Autumn,” the jock said, ignoring Luke.

  “It’s his nickname for me. My middle name.”

  “Roses are pretty,” the jock said with a hiccup.

  “Leaving. Now,” Luke said, pulling Autumn off of the couch and out to the car.

  “Are you sure you can drive right now?” Autumn asked Luke, her words slurring slightly, something she was not accustomed to. Her head swam in the alcohol and she wanted nothing more than to be in her bed. She was never drinking again. Ever.

  “I drive better drunk than sober,” Luke said, laughing as he turned the key in the ignition, his old Ford pickup roaring to life.

  “I can’t believe I drank so much,” Autumn said, putting her face in her hands. “I was supposed to be the DD.”

  “Live a little, Rose!” Luke said. “Save people tomorrow.”

  “Hey, Oaken! Y’all leavin’?” a voice called from outside. Autumn didn’t bother to look at who it was. She just cradled her head in her hands.

  “Yeah, man. Our parents are early risers. They’ll kill us if they find out we went to this party,” Luke said.

  “Lame!” the guy yelled before tripping over a beer bottle.

  With that, Luke floored the gas, kicking up a wave of gravel, and sped down the dirt road leading back into their small town. A line of pink appeared on the horizon, whispering that the sun was not far behind.

  “Hurry, Luke. I bet Mom and Dad are already up,” Autumn said.

  “Chill out. It’s the weekend. They’ll want to sleep in.”

  The tires squealed in protest as Luke turned a curve sharply, throwing Autumn against the car door.

  “Slow down! You’re gonna get us killed.”

  “You were just telling me to hurry! Make up your damn mind.”

  Finally, Autumn could see their small blue house in the distance. No lights shone through the windows. Their parents were still asleep. Luke flew into the circular driveway and quickly killed the loud engine to avoid waking their parents.

  “Don’t slam your—” Luke began as Autumn banged her door shut. “—door.”

  “Oops.”

  “Nice, Rose.”

  “Sorry!” she said in a harsh whisper.

  Luke rolled his eyes and walked around the perimeter of the house to the window they had escaped from several hours ago. It was still cracked a few inches and Luke slowly slid the glass up, trying not to make a sound. He climbed into his bedroom, Autumn right behind him, listening for a sign that their parents were awake, but the air was thick with sile
nce.

  “I can’t believe we actually got away with it,” Autumn said.

  “Yeah, with you slamming doors and everything,” Luke said, sending her another annoyed glance. “I’m gonna go make sure they’re still in bed.”

  Suddenly a cold chill washed over Autumn, like she had just been dunked into a tub of ice water. Her breath caught in her chest and her eyes temporarily clouded over.

  “Rose? Are you okay? Maybe you should go to bed. This is the first time you’ve been drunk, after all,” she heard Luke say, sounding far away.

  “Something’s wrong,” she managed to say.

  “With you?”

  “No, I mean, I don’t know. I just got a really bad feeling all of a sudden.”

  “Maybe you’re about to hurl.” Autumn shot Luke an annoyed look and he laughed. “I’m going to see if Mom and Dad are still sleeping. Here’s a trashcan…just in case.”

  “Gross.” Autumn groaned, collapsing onto Luke’s bed as he tiptoed out of the room.

  Her eyes slid shut, sleep threatening to overtake her, when she heard Luke let out a soul-shaking cry from the other room. Eyes flying open, Autumn sat upright, her heart thumping in her chest.

  “Luke?” she called out.

  Sporadic footsteps resounded in the hallway and Autumn waited, wide-eyed and terrified. Luke stumbled and clasped the doorway for support. The expression on his face petrified her.

  “Luke, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but merely choked, letting out a sob.

  “What?” Autumn cried, her voice rising. “What happened?”

  He sobbed something unintelligible. The only word Autumn could make out was “dead.”

  Autumn and Luke stood outside, watching as their entire small town’s police force—and the neighboring towns’ forces as well—marked their house off with yellow crime scene tape. The first murder in nearly thirty years. The town sheriff, a man with a bulging gut and brown, water-stained teeth approached them with a morose look on his face.

  “I’m afraid there was nothing we could do, kids,” he said. “They’re gone.”

  Autumn’s heart dropped and her body went numb. She felt like she was falling. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t.

  “Who did this?” asked Luke in a dead voice.

  “We’re still investigating that, son.”

  “Why?” Autumn said, barely audible. She wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t form. Her brain didn’t seem to be working correctly. It was as if the world was spinning in slow motion—or maybe the world was the same as ever and she was the one lagging behind.

  “I can’t say for sure, but it appears to be a random act of violence. It was simply bad luck.” Bad luck, Autumn thought. “It’s strange. There don’t seem to be any signs of forced entry,” the sheriff continued.

  Luke’s face went white and he whispered, “The window.”

  “What’s that, son?”

  “We—we snuck out through the window last night. We left it open.”

  The sheriff frowned, looking at the ground, but said nothing.

  “We have no family now,” Autumn whispered, the realization of this statement hitting her with such force that she had trouble standing upright.

  “I was told that it was written in your parents’ will that your next of kin lives in some town in Ireland. Arrangements are being made to get y’all over there soon after the funeral.”

  “Ireland?” the twins said in unison.

  ONE YEAR LATER

  ARBOR FALLS

  King Olympus Oaken sat on his wooden throne wearing a dazed expression, his mind clearly somewhere else. In a different place, a different time. A year had passed since his son Alexander had been killed, but the hurt was still the same. The hole in his heart still remained. Just as fresh. Just as jagged and unfilled.

  Amid the hurt lay bitter regret. Why hadn’t he stopped Alexander from leaving the Underground? Why had he allowed his son to abdicate the throne? To leave the Underground? To live in the Outside? Olympus’s only consolation had been that Alexander and his family were truly safe from Vyra. But that security was more than false. He should have known that she would go after them. He had been a fool.

  “Sir?” a voice said. “You asked to see me?”

  Olympus looked up to find his young guard, Avery Burke, standing before him looking apprehensive.

  “Yes, Mr. Burke. Thank you for arriving so quickly. How is your mother?”

  Avery’s face fell. “She’s…she’s been better.”

  Olympus nodded gravely. “She is the last of the Dream Communicators in the kingdom. I need her to get a message to my grandchildren in Ireland. Do you think she would be able to handle that?”

  A crease formed between Avery’s brows. “I think so.”

  Olympus nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Burke. That is all.”

  “Sir?”

  “Mm?”

  “What message do you want her to get to them?”

  Olympus’s hazel eyes met Avery’s gray ones. “That it is time for them to come home. She can send it in any way she sees fit. Just tell her to get them home.”

  The Dream

  CHAPTER ONE

  It has been said that a dream is a wish your heart makes. But, if this were true, Autumn Oaken’s dreams would have been filled with comforting visions of her parents. Alive. Happy. Instead, though, she was haunted every night by the same dream…and her parents were nowhere to be found.

  Tall trees towered over Autumn as if she was an ant surrounded by blades of grass. After countless nights of visiting this dream forest she was still hypnotized by the prismatic rainbow of flowers, rocks, and gargantuan trees.

  Autumn followed a winding dirt path through a thick gathering of trees and under a natural arch made of twisted branches and vines. The path opened up into a clearing where a magnificent shimmering waterfall spilled into a still lake. A series of stones appeared just above the surface of the lake, creating a path to the sheet of falling water. The stones were smooth on top and Autumn skipped easily from one to the other, eventually landing on the rock directly before the waterfall, which was even more extraordinary than the surrounding forest. It did not splash or sputter. There was no breaking water at its base. It was calm. Quiet. Resembling a thick sheet of glass that glistened and moved. Autumn gazed at herself in the reflection of the water.

  Someone gazed back.

  A young man. Golden hair framed his angular face and his eyes were a stormy gray. The waterfall cascaded around him, yet somehow he was completely dry. A strange feeling resonated in the pit of Autumn’s stomach, a sort of gravitational pull. She stretched out a hand trying to reach for him. Suddenly he was gone.

  Teetering on the edge of the rock, Autumn stretched further, desperately hoping that this time she would manage to touch the veil of water. Maybe even pass through it into the realm of the gray-eyed boy. It felt as if the air around the waterfall was pushing her away like two magnets repelling against one another. It took all her energy to attempt to push through the invisible wall. Her fingertips were inches away when she heard a distant sound. Someone was calling her name.

  Autumn turned to look over her shoulder, but the only thing behind her was the brightly colored forest. Darkness engulfed her as the voice calling her name grew louder…

  “Rose. Rose! Get up!” Luke said, giving her a rough nudge. “What’re you doing?”

  Autumn’s eyes opened blearily to see her hand stretched out in front of her as if she was trying to reach for something. She lay in the shadow of a willow tree near Blarney Castle, far away from her dream waterfall and the gray-eyed boy. Forcing herself back into reality, she glared up at her brother.

  Luke looked down at her with an amused expression, his shaggy red hair falling into his hazel eyes, a mirror image of her own. “Sleeping on your lunch break? You are such a bad worker.”

  “I fell asleep r—r—reading,” Autumn said through
a yawn.

  “So, you’re a bad worker and a nerd. Come on, you have an afternoon full of fat, sweaty tourists ahead of you. Get up,” he said before trudging back up the path to Blarney Castle.

  Autumn ran a hand through her tangled curls. Every time she was pulled away from her dream world she felt a little disoriented, as if she was still standing on the flat rock facing the smooth sheet of water. Somehow, she found comfort in the familiar scene of her dream, frustrating as it was. For the past year everything had been so crazy and out of her control that she found herself looking forward to the predictable nightly escape.

  After all, adjusting to a life without parents was never easy.

  Thirteen months had passed since that unspeakable day. Autumn and Luke now lived in Blarney, Ireland, with a woman their father had known in his college years named Mrs. King. With their parents gone, she was the closest thing to family they had. Mrs. King was rather strange. At first, Autumn figured it was just an Irish thing, but the longer she lived in Ireland, the more suspicious she became of the old woman. For instance, she would enter the kitchen and nothing would be ready. Then, ten minutes later, Mrs. King would call them to dinner and an elaborate feast would be on the table. Luke didn’t seem to care about this one bit. He just liked to eat and told Autumn she was paranoid every time she mentioned it.

  Glancing into a small mirror she kept in her bag, Autumn smoothed down her disarrayed curls and stuffed the mirror, along with her book, back into her bag. Reading was her way of escaping when she was not in her dreamland. Luke never hesitated to make fun of her for it by saying things like, “Why don’t you try reading more romance novels? They might teach you how to get a boyfriend.”