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Justice Unhatched (The Exceptional S. Beaufont Book 5)

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by Sarah Noffke




  Justice Unhatched

  Exceptional S. Beaufont™ Book 5

  Sarah Noffke

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2020 Sarah Noffke & Michael Anderle

  Cover by Mihaela Voicu http://www.mihaelavoicu.com/

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact support@lmbpn.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US Edition, April 2020

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-873-7

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-874-4

  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

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Sarah’s Author Notes

  Michael’s Author Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Books By Sarah Noffke

  Check out Sarah Noffke’s YA Sci-fi Fantasy Series

  Books By Michael Anderle

  Connect with The Authors

  The Justice Unhatched Team

  Thanks to the JIT Readers

  Angel LaVey

  Dave Hicks

  Deb Mader

  Debi Sateren

  Diane L. Smith

  Dorothy Lloyd

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  Jeff Eaton

  Jeff Goode

  Larry Omans

  Micky Cocker

  Nicole Emens

  Paul Westman

  Peter Manis

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  For Crystal, for being my constant comic relief.

  — Sarah

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  — Michael

  Chapter One

  “Are you ready for it?” the scientist asked Trin Currante, as her men worked around them in the makeshift laboratory at the back of the airplane hangar.

  She bit down on the mouthpiece and nodded, willing the specs cascading across her visual cortex to stop. The green words that usually streaked over her vision and told her everything from distance to destinations, temperature, wind, or a dozen other things about her environment disappeared.

  Alexander Drake turned the knob on the control panel, a tentative look in his cold eyes. Electricity coursed through the cables attached to Trin’s chest, making her instantly convulse. Her brown eyes rolled back and she trembled continuously, her head knocking back into the padded chair.

  The others in the warehouse looked up from their jobs, no concern on their faces for the woman being electrocuted.

  After a full minute, Drake turned the knob back and stopped the electric voltage. Trin shook less, and her head lolled to the side as the electricity subsided. Unconcerned, Drake watched the woman strapped into the padded chair.

  “Well?” he asked in an impatient voice, tapping a button to release her restraints. The locks around her arms and legs opened simultaneously.

  Slowly, she lifted her chin and blinked,
trying to clear the tears from her eyes. She assessed her internal program, pulling up the diagnostics on her main screen. The green words began scrolling on her visual cortex.

  Cyborg functionality…seventy-nine percent.

  Human functionality…twenty-one percent.

  She spat out the mouthpiece and shook her head of mostly wire hair. “It didn’t work.”

  Drake typed on the computer next to the voltage box and concluded with a nod. “Yes, no changes in your functionality. Guess you are glad you have those dragon eggs as an option.”

  Trin Currante unhooked the wires connected to the open panel in her chest. She threw a nasty look at the scientist she was forcing to help her become human once more and wondered if she might kill him if he didn’t improve his bedside manner.

  She shook off the anger. Trin needed Drake. He was on the team of scientists at Saverus Corporation who had made her and the other men what they were presently, which was less than human. He had done it against his will he’d declared when she held the gun to his head months ago, after she’d taken over the facility and released all the prisoners and killed most of the staff.

  Trin wasn’t sure she believed the old German man, but she knew she needed him to reverse what had been done to her. Once she, like all the men in the warehouse, had been a normal magician with all human parts. Then one man with a corrupt vision and too much money took out most of what made her real and replaced it with metal, wires, and magitech.

  Thad Reinhart was dead now, thanks to Hiker Wallace.

  His corporation, Saverus, was destroyed, thanks to Trin and her men.

  What had been done to her and the men would live on forever, unless she found a way to reverse things. Everything she’d tried so far didn’t work. According to Drake, she couldn’t remove the magitech inside of her and survive.

  That was where the dragon eggs might help. It was a gamble. According to Trin’s research, the blood of a newborn dragon could be used to fix her. One dragon egg was hard enough to come by. She’d nearly lost it all trying to get into the Gullington the first time. When she learned she needed at least two dragon eggs, she’d gone on a rampage and nearly destroyed the place she called home, Ash Research.

  She looked around the airplane hangar, realizing her men were pretending to work. They were not. They were studying her, and wondering if she’d flip again, knocking over shelves, and damaging the planes and equipment.

  She wouldn’t.

  The company was all Trin had left. She just had to learn to control her temper, not easy to do when her emotional control center was mostly wires, much like her hair.

  Slapping the metal door shut on her chest, Trin buttoned up her blouse and began retying the corset around her midsection. Some might think she was dressed for a strange renaissance fair. The truth was that much like her men, she was covered in a corset and had leather straps around her legs, chest, and arms to hold in hardware that never should have been there in the first place.

  “Any changes to the eggs?” Trin asked the scientist. Drake had worked with Thad Reinhart, so she figured he might also be a resource on the dragons, although he was proving to volunteer very little information.

  “No dragons have hatched yet if that’s what you mean,” he told her, looking around the hangar and watching the cyborg men as they loaded a plane for a contract job.

  Trin sighed. “How can we speed up the process?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think you can. And even if you could, there’s no way to tell if the thirteen eggs you got are going to be right. They might all be angels.”

  Angels versus demons.

  According to what she’d learned, dragons were born two specific ways, always. Some were born “angels” like the ones who formed the Dragon Elite. The others were born “demons.”

  Good and bad. That’s how the world was made up. It was no different for dragons.

  It was still strange a dragon was predisposed to a certain affiliation. It wasn’t a nature versus nurture situation, but there had been a reason. When Michael the archangel’s blood infiltrated the Earth, soaking into the dragon eggs, according to the legend, other blood was spilled at the same time by the demon Nergal. Half the eggs absorbed the angel’s blood and the other half, the blood of the demon.

  Those who had read the Incomplete History of Dragonriders knew about the angel blood. It wasn’t until Trin had gotten access to a different text she learned the full history. Everything in the world was about balance. While the Dragon Elite was created to protect the Earth and rule over the affairs of mortals, they couldn’t exist without an evil counterpart.

  It was only after Trin had stolen the single dragon egg that she’d learned she’d need at least two, the blood of an angel and a demon. She now had thirteen eggs. One of them had to be an angel and the other a demon, she reasoned. She wouldn’t know for certain until they hatched, and that apparently took an indeterminable amount of time.

  “There’s something I’ve heard of that you can try to speed up the hatching time,” Drake offered, combing his hands through his long white beard. “I don’t know if it will work.”

  Trin narrowed her eyes at him. “What is it?”

  “You aren’t going to like it,” he said, a bit of amusement in his voice.

  She nodded. “That’s the status quo at this point.”

  Drake pointed to one of the planes getting ready for a mission. “The good news is you’ve got what you need to make it happen.”

  She made a silent promise to herself. Drake would die. By her hands.

  But not until she didn’t need him anymore.

  She opened her hand, the metal joints making a mechanical sound as she combed her fingers forward at the man. “Tell me what I have to do.”

  Chapter Two

  Sophia Beaufont knew it was still dark before she opened her eyes. She pressed her lids together more firmly and tried to will herself back to sleep.

  It was no use, and from recent experience, she knew it.

  She cracked open her eyes in the large bedroom in the Castle to find she was in fact correct. It was still dark outside the Gullington.

  She knew what time it was.

  A cold laugh fell out of her mouth when she looked at the clock.

  3:33 a.m.

  Every single morning recently, Sophia had awoken at the same time.

  She had no idea what the significance was, but Sophia thought it had to be of importance somehow.

  Swinging her covers off, she rolled out of bed and stretched to an upright position. The flames of the candles in the torches and fireplace sprang to life.

  “Thanks, Quiet,” Sophia said, stumbling around to find her clothes.

  It was still incredible to her that the Castle, Expanse, and Gullington were managed by the tiny unassuming gnome. She wasn’t sure how it worked, but it was the most impressive source of magic she’d ever witnessed. It made sense it had come from Mother Nature

  Sophia pulled on her boots and her eyes drifted to the note beside her bed she found the other morning upon waking up at the ungodly hour.

  It read:

  “The morning breeze has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. – Rumi.”

  Sophia knew the note with the great poet’s wisdom was from Quiet, or rather the Castle. They were one and the same. Quiet was telling her she needed to get out of bed when she awoke so early in the morning at the same time. She quit tossing and turning and getting frustrated about not getting enough rest.

  Sophia slipped out of her room silently and strode through the Castle. Each morning she’d gotten up, she found it impossible to stay confined inside her room. Something always seemed to be calling her to the Expanse, although she hadn’t found what it was yet.

  She knew Quiet had a way of orchestrating things around her, like when he’d been preparing the Nest for the new dragon eggs. She trusted him and was willing to be led to a certain point. It was also frustrating. Sophia didn’t know why the sage sou
rces in her life like Quiet, Mama Jamba, Papa Creola, Subner, and Mae Ling didn’t just tell her what they were up to.

 

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