The Warrior

by Rebecca Royce

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Warrior

  Copyright © 2014 by Rebecca Royce

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-732-5

  Cover art by Tibbs Designs

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

  The Warrior

  Rebecca Royce

  Boxed Set Includes:

  Initiation

  Driven

  Subversive

  Redemption

  Justice

  Also by Rebecca Royce

  Another Chance

  Initiation

  Driven

  Bar Mate

  Out of Place Mate

  Mate by the Music

  Unwanted Mate

  Behind the Scenes

  Believe in Me

  Embraced

  Eye Contact

  Rebirth

  Subversive

  Return to the Sea

  I’ll be Mated by Christmas

  One Night With a Wolf

  Paging Dr. Wolf

  Forever

  Love in One Night

  Redemption

  Table of Contents

  Initiation

  Driven

  Subversive

  Redemption

  Justice

  Initiation

  The Warrior—Book One

  Rebecca Royce

  ~DEDICATION~

  For my father, who can read this whole book without blushing! XOXO

  Prologue

  My name is Rachel Clancy.

  Thirty years before I was born, the world ended.

  Unlike my father, I’ve never lived above ground; I’ve never seen the real sun.

  I don’t miss it. How could I? You can’t miss something you’ve never known.

  And yet today, on my sixteenth birthday, I will, for the first time, go to the surface and try my hardest to fight back against the monsters that still want to get to us. It’s something I’ve always known I would have to do. My people identified me at birth as having the right genes to handle the fight. It’s not a surprise, I suppose. My parents had the genes, too.

  A week after I came screaming into the world, my mother died. The monsters killed her when they breached our defenses. I wish I could tell you a big dramatic story about her sacrificing herself to save me or something, an idea I cling to on long nights, but it didn’t happen that way.

  No.

  One second she was there, the next she wasn’t. Before they could kill me, the Warriors arrived to end the lives of the monsters.

  I have no memories of her.

  Today I might join her fate by taking on a job I’ve never had a choice to refuse. Life can really suck sometimes.

  Chapter One

  I looked at the mess on the living room floor. My gaze followed the display of broken dishes, thrown about food, and discarded clothes to the source: my father, Harold, face down on the carpet, passed out drunk.

  I moved toward him, a sigh escaping through my clenched teeth. This wasn’t the first time. During his repeated drunken apologies that started when I turned ten—for giving me his bad genes—he’d finally told me he couldn’t stand the idea of my turning sixteen. So he drank to deal with it. If it sounded like an excuse, that’s because it was one. He’d been drunk every night since my mom was killed. For the record, that meant he had been trashed nearly every night for over fifteen years.

  I sometimes wondered what life would be like if she had lived. Would we have been one of those happy families I see walking around? If he’d still become an alcoholic, would she have protected me from him? I didn’t know much, but I knew you aren’t supposed to raise children the way he raised me.

  I didn’t know why I thought today would be different. I guess in my heart-of-hearts, I hoped maybe he would look at me this morning and send me off to meet my destiny with wisdom and fortitude. No such luck.

  Couldn’t there be even one day that went the way I imagined it should in my head? Would that destroy some cosmic plan?

  I knelt down next to him and I shook his shoulders to rouse him. I knew from massive amounts of experience this wasn’t likely to do the trick. If I really needed him up, I was going to have to dump cold water over his head. Depending on the level of drunkenness, it might only awaken him for a few minutes before he slipped back into whiskey darkness. Those brief moments were usually filled with his yelling, cursing, slurring, and telling me how much he missed my mother.

  I bit my lip as I tried to decide if the effort of rousing him would be worth the benefit of actually having him awake. It had been fifteen years since Dad fought the monsters. What could he possibly have taught me that Keith and the other teachers hadn’t already?

  Tears burned my eyes. Why think so rationally if my emotions were going to get the better of me anyway? Truthfully, why think at all? It’s not like I had any control over my destiny.

  I made my decision. I jumped up, grabbed my backpack, and ran out the door as fast as possible, not bothering to lock it behind me. Someone would have to be crazy to rob a Warrior’s house, which, as of today, I had officially become one.

  I made my way onto the narrow street that formed the cul-de-sac of our particular subdivision. The houses all look the same—one piece of track housing lined up against another. They’d designed the habitats to fit as many people as possible into one space. Forty-six years later, things were starting to look a little shabby.

  The automatic lights, meant to represent the sunlight above ground, changed to their ‘early’ daytime setting. I squinted as my eyes adjusted from the darker, geothermal lamps used to light my house.

  It might have been my imagination. But I would have sworn even more people than usual stared at me. Curtains swayed as faces ducked behind them. As I walked head down, I felt their gazes on the back of my neck. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in a weird, uncomfortable way.

  That reaction was not something that happens to everyone, and it was an example of how I am different, why I am a Warrior. The teachers at school explained to us that we were born with pronounced instincts, something all human beings once possessed to survive when we dwelled in caves and had to know when to run to survive. But then we, as human beings, lost those abilities over time. When the monsters came and introduced us to true Armageddon, only the people with skills left in their DNA could fight them.

  No one called out their window to wish me a happy birthday, though they all knew today marked my sixteenth year. The upcoming event was published on the network announcement boards the previous week. They do this for all Warriors. It’s supposed to be a big deal when one of us gets to go up to the surface.

  To me, it felt like a game show I sometimes got to see on the network when they broadcast old-fashioned television shows. A sick, deranged game show. �
�Come on down, Rachel Clancy, let’s play ‘Will You Live or Will You Die’. We know it sucks, but to make it better, we’ll pretend it’s a special privilege instead of a pre-destined service you get to perform for all your so-called friends and neighbors.”

  I once asked the teachers why none of the people who lived near me were very friendly. My fellow Warrior students didn’t have this problem since they all lived in the neighborhoods assigned to Warrior families. The teacher sighed and took off her glasses. Rubbing her head in a way that made me think she had a headache, she smiled and showed more gum than most people did when they grinned.

  “When your father left the Warriors, he did something no one else has ever done.”

  I’d already known this, obviously. I really didn’t need the reminder, but I nodded like she had given me some new piece of information. Obviously, I knew what my father had done. I knew better than anyone else what his betrayal meant.

  “He had to move you away from all of us.”

  I knew this, too. “Yes, ma’am.” That’s what we called our teachers, ma’am and sir. “I know about what happened.”

  And I didn’t like to think or talk about it. If I had known asking the question would open this particular topic for discussion, I would have kept my mouth shut.

  “And that meant you live with the people we protect, which makes things complicated. The others, the people who are non-Warriors, they depend on us to keep them alive and to beat back the monsters so someday we can go back to the surface. No one likes to feel obligated to be grateful.”

  As if her explanation cleared up everything, she patted me on the hand and gone back to grading her papers.

  I’d gotten up and gone about the rest of my day. Personally, I thought it more likely the neighbors didn’t want to get attached to a person who had a one in four chance of dying on her sixteenth birthday than some great weirdness caused by what my father did.

  I crossed over the bridge and felt some of the tension in my shoulders relax. As she did every morning, Tia Lyons waited for me, extra brown-bagged lunch in hand. She grinned and walked to the edge of the street. No rule stated she couldn’t cross and enter to my side of the habitat. In fact, once she turned sixteen, she might have to if her assignment meant patrolling there.

  Even so, she never did.

  I walked up to her, smiling at her flawless beauty. How was that even possible at barely seven in the morning? I didn’t even look in the mirror before I left the house.

  Tia’s smile seemed bright and sweet. She didn’t act mean about being so attractive, not like how so many of the other girls were. In the gene pool of life, she had gotten the top ranking. Not too tall or too short at five-foot-seven inches, Tia’s athletic build made her slim everywhere she should be and stacked in the boob department—a feature I sorely lacked.

  She had blonde hair, brown eyes one of our classmates had called ‘chocolate honey’ colored, and high cheekbones to finish off her perfect look. I had red hair, which practically glowed in the dark, and freckles covering most of my body. My lips were thin, my eyelids slightly different shapes, and my nose pointy and too big for my face. I’ve already mentioned the boob problem. Let’s just say that what I lacked in boobs, I made up for in rear end.

  Tia narrowed her eyes at me. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

  “No, of course not.” She never had anything on her face. I smiled and she handed me a brown bag. “Mom made something called tuna fish sandwiches from the fish the guys brought back from the upper world last week.”

  I looked at the bag. I never cared what Carol Lyons made. If she hadn’t started feeding me eight years earlier when the authorities had come to my father and demanded he send me to Warrior school or go to jail, I might have starved to death. At the regular academy, where the other kids went, they fed us lunch. At Warrior training, the parents were expected to feed their kids. My one parent never did. Old enough now to have made my own lunch, Carol said she liked to do it, so I let her.

  And I liked it.

  “Is it any good?”

  She threw her hands in the air. “What do you think? Is it ever good?”

  I loved my lunches. I had no idea why she complained. We walked side by side down the street. Unlike where I live, this area of town seemed alive and hopping but not because everyone just awakened. No, most of the street was getting in to go to bed unless they were on their teacher rotation.

  “Did Dad wish you a happy birthday?” She said ‘Dad’ with such derision I wanted to smile even though I didn’t. Whatever else he might be, he was the only family I had.

  “No.”

  “Did he get up at all?”

  I smiled because she knew the answer. She’d practically lived through my childhood with me. Like me, Tia always hoped it would get better. I guess we’re both really dumb. “What do you think?”

  She laughed as I stole her phrase. We rounded the corner towards the school, and the lights above us increased a little bit in brightness.

  “Well, even if he said nothing, I’m proud of you. My whole family is. Micah and Chad say they’re going to personally pick out your tattoo tomorrow morning.”

  I stopped breathing for a second. Micah wanted to pick out my tattoo? Tia’s older brothers, Micah and Chad, were rapidly becoming legends. Micah was seventeen. They said he didn’t even get scared anymore when he faced them. Chad, silent, deadly, had only been fighting for two years.

  “You’re so quiet today.” She pulled me up close to her like the sister she was in all but blood. “I’m trying to distract you. I just told you Micah wants to pick out your tattoo, and you didn’t say a word.”

  Heat flushed my cheeks. The day Tia discovered my infatuation with Micah had been amongst the most humiliating of my life. That’s saying a lot, considering I got my butt handed to me on a regular basis in training.

  “I haven’t thought about the tattoo yet. I have to not get killed first.”

  Tia waved her hand dismissively. “Micah and Chad are never going to let you get anywhere near any danger. You’ll be lucky if you even see one of them. Between my brothers and Keith, you won’t see any action. You may never see any.”

  I loved Tia. I couldn’t have gotten through the day without her friendship. But her complete lack of understanding about my situation irked me a great deal. Her family—all six of them—were the best trainees and young Warriors in the world.

  No one in any habitat could match their abilities. Dying didn’t concern Tia. Why should it? Her parents were legends. Her brothers were legends. She ranked at the top of our class, and she had six more months before she even had to face the possibility of going Upwards to fight.

  Not to mention Tia couldn’t possibly understand the damage my father had done to the Warriors when he betrayed everyone fifteen years ago. There was every possibility they were going to make me pay. Tonight. Someone was going to have to own up to what he did, that had always been clear. Why I was to be held accountable for his sins was beyond me. If it’s true you have to walk in someone’s shoes to really understand them, then it seemed everyone was deliberately avoiding spending time in mine.

  We hurried up the three steps of the school, and I turned to look at the elevators I would be entering that night for the first time. Swallowing, I ignored the shivers travelling up my spine.

  The metal doors dinged as they opened, and I stopped walking. Like avenging angels, the Year One and Two Warriors walked through the now open doors. No surprise, Chad and Micah were out in front of the group. Dirty, clothes slightly torn, with a bloody scratch mark marring the skin on his lower arm, Micah looked fierce.

  I swallowed.

  I would not look fierce with a mark on me. I would look dead. They’d be hauling my still, cold body down the elevator as I became one of the statistics. I decided there might be something wrong with me, something maybe a psychiatrist needed to fix. I could think about my own death more remotely than anyone I knew. It was like it was already a given
.

  Chad nodded in our direction as he turned the corner without looking back. He was Year Two. When he reached Year Three, on his nineteenth birthday, he would move past designations. He would be considered a full-fledged Warrior: one of the few who lived through his or her first years. Forget the fact that one in four died their first night. It only got worse from there. Three out of four wouldn’t make it three years. However, if he lived through that time, his statistics changed. If he made it to twenty, he had a ninety percent chance of living to be thirty, even forty years old. The Warriors that made it were just that good.

  Chad had gotten colder, more removed from life down here, as they all do. We knew them, or at least we knew of them, the older kids who graduated and went Upwards. Then over time, it was like they didn’t know us at all. It wasn’t just their bodies changing, becoming stronger, leaner, more filled with muscles; it was like their souls trimmed down, too. They could only care about things they had to care about.

  Micah walked over to us. Every step he took in our direction made my pulse quicken. At the rate it was increasing, I’d die of a heart attack before I ever made my trip Upwards.

  He mock saluted Tia, who rolled her eyes at him. I tried to match her stance. Micah thought of me as a little sister, as if there was no difference between Tia and me. I’d been at his dinner table almost every night since I was eight years old. My feelings for him were never brotherly.

  Not at all.

  He narrowed his eyes at me in the same way Tia could. The eye narrowing was a family trait. Other than that, they didn’t look much alike at all. Standing at six-four, he towered over my five-foot-ten inches. We were both unusual. Humanity as a whole was shrinking in height, the longer we stayed in the habitats. But Micah and I were both tall.