by Natalie Grey
Reign With Axe And Shield
Metamorphosis Online™ Book Three
Natalie Grey
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 © 2019 Natalie Grey and Michael Anderle
Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
http://jcalebdesign.com / [email protected]
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 [email protected]. 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, May 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-260-5
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
Author Notes - Natalie Grey
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Other Books You Might Enjoy
Books by Natalie Grey
Books by Michael Anderle
Connect with the authors
Reign With Axe And Shield Team
Thanks to our JIT Readers
Mary Morris
Jeff Eaton
Nicole Emens
Jeff Goode
Dorothy Lloyd
Larry Omans
Misty Roa
John Ashmore
Kelly O’Donnell
If We’ve missed anyone, please let us know!
Editor
The Skyhunter Editing Team
From Natalie
For M and T
From Michael
To Family, Friends and
Those Who Love
To Read.
May We All Enjoy Grace
To Live The Life We Are
Called.
Chapter One
The computer rang and rang, and Gracie jiggled her leg impatiently. Maybe she should hang up. After all, if she didn’t hang up—
The call connected with a bloop that sent her stomach flip-flopping out of her torso and into some interdimensional abyss. Somewhat unfairly, since her stomach seemed to be entirely gone from this plane of existence, she was also completely sure that she was going to throw up.
That wasn’t going to be a great way to start this conversation.
Jay appeared, smiling. “There’s the champion,” he said.
Gracie had forgotten literally every word she knew.
“Gracie?” Jay leaned forward, frowning at his screen. “I think you froze.” She could see a beer in his hand. “I was toasting you. I figured I should have champagne, but beer’s what I’ve got. Aaaaand I don’t know if you’re even hearing this—”
Gracie finally managed to make a noise come out. Unfortunately, it was halfway between a braying donkey and a quack, and she choked and started coughing.
“Gracie?” Jay had been inspecting the connection interface, but now his eyes jerked up to the screen. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry.” Gracie leaned over, coughing, pounding herself on the chest with her fist. “Sec.”
She remembered words again. That was convenient.
She looked up, expecting to see Alex staring at her from around the door, but he was wisely staying hidden. She glared in the direction of his room anyway—this was all his fault—and then looked back at Jay.
Oh, shit. She had to say something.
“Can I, uh—” Ohshitohshit. “I need to say something.” She wasn’t entirely sure she got the syllables in the right order.
“Sure.” Jay looked a bit worried now.
Ohshitohshitohshit—
“I really like you.” Gracie felt herself go tomato red. What was this, fourth grade? She dropped her face into her hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this. I’m really sorry. I—”
“Gracie.” Jay sounded like he was trying very hard not to laugh. “Why are you apologizing?”
“I don’t know!” Gracie waved her hands. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up.”
Now a tiny snort of laughter did escape him. “So, uh…” He cleared his throat and fell silent.
Gracie hunched her shoulders. She could not look at him. She did not have that much courage. She’d never had that much courage. Right now, she was frantically sifting through every memory she had of him, trying to figure out if he had ever, by so much as a word, indicated he might be into her.
He hadn’t. She was fairly sure he hadn’t.
So what the hell was she doing? She was blowing up the guild, and—
“Gracie?”
“Yeah?” There ensued a long enough pause that she took a deep breath and looked up at him.
“You’re not… I mean, this seems real. Is it?” Jay shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like it could be real.”
“Why not?” Gracie said heatedly. Her pride was pricked, although she wasn’t exactly sure why. “Why wouldn’t—”
“Well, for one thing, the last thing I knew, you were dating casino managers.”
“Oh, for the love of God.” Gracie threw up her hands. “One casino dude. One time. I walked out on him after twenty minutes because he was a giant douche. Otherwise, I don’t.”
“Date casino managers?”
“Date anyone,” Gracie said grumpily. “If you must know.” She saw his frown and scowled. “What?”
“How is that possible?” Jay asked. “I mean, look at you. You’re amazing. You look like a model, you’re smart, you make me laugh like crazy, and you’ve got a filthy mouth, which is always hilarious. How do you not get asked out all the time?”
“See…” Gracie chewed her lip. “Now I feel like maybe there’s something wrong with me you just can’t see from that end. Because I don’t. I don’t know! I don’t really go out. I mostly hang out with Alex, honestly, and I practiced avoidance when people were at bars when I was working, because, well, casino. So, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Look, can we just forget I said anything?”
“No,” Jay said blandly.
Gracie felt her stomach twist, and she swallowed.
Then he was laughing. “Do you actually not see what’s going on here? Because I’m
pretty sure I’ve been as obvious as fuck about how I feel about you.”
Gracie stared at him. Her pulse was beginning to speed, and there was something in her chest that felt very much like a flutter of hope. Or possibly an alien egg pod. Knowing her luck, probably the latter. “Uh…”
“Gracie, I’m crazy about you.” Jay had put down the beer. He was shaking his head, laughing. “I thought you were the coolest thing on two feet the first night I met you, and—well, I still thought you were a dude at that point.”
Gracie started laughing.
“These past few weeks have been some of the best of my life,” Jay told her. “And I got fired during that time. I have no business being this happy right now, and the reason I am anyway is because of you.”
“Well, what about you?” Gracie burst out. “You’re not dating anyone?”
Jay, who had been taking a sip of beer, gave a snort and a laugh, choked, and bent away to wipe his mouth. He held up a hand. She could still hear him laughing in the background, even as he coughed.
“No,” he said finally. “I worked a night shift at a video game company, almost all of my coworkers were guys, and I look like this.” He waved his hand at himself.
“You’re crazy,” Gracie said, repeating the gesture mockingly. “You have a complex.” Another hand wave. “You’re a perfectly good-looking guy.”
“All this mockery from the woman who apologized three times for telling me she liked me and then tried to hang up the call?” Jay asked pointedly.
Gracie scowled at him.
Jay cleared his throat. “I think we’re getting off-track.”
“Right.” Gracie sandwiched her hands between her knees and wrinkled her nose. “What were we talking about?”
“The fact that we like each other, woman.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Despite herself, she felt a grin spreading across her face. “Really?”
Jay was laughing hysterically at this point. “Yes,” he managed. “Really. Good Lord! How you could think for a second that I wasn’t into you is beyond me.”
“Yeah, well, it’s never obvious to the people involved. How could you not think I was into you?” Gracie crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “I was pretty obvious.”
“I couldn’t tell!” Jay waved his hands, got beer all over the wall, and stared at it for a moment before putting his bottle down. “I’m going to leave this here. Look, you were nice to everyone.”
“Oh, for—” Gracie groaned. Then, despite herself, she yawned. “Oh, God, now that I’m not nervous as fuck, I’m so tired.”
“Well, it’s been a long night,” Jay pointed out. “What with beating the quest and all. And we were on a hair trigger, ready to drop in and just go as soon as we got the okay.” He yawned as well. “Now you’ve got me yawning, too. Dammit.”
“Sorry. And that was tonight, wasn’t it? Huh.” Gracie tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and yawned again. She couldn’t keep her eyes open all of a sudden. “This is embarrassing; I’m so sorry. I drop this on you and then—”
“Gracie, get some sleep. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow, okay? I’ll be here. Whenever.” When she looked up, his eyes were tracing her face as if he’d never seen her before, he had a half-smile playing around his lips, and his brown eyes were very warm.
“Okay.” Gracie grinned at him. “You get some sleep, too.”
“You think I could sleep after that?” He gave a little laugh. “I want to go yell from the rooftops.”
“Yell what?”
“I haven’t decided. Just yell, mainly.”
“Hope it’s happy yelling.” Gracie smiled. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I, uh—I don’t know what to say. I was so sure I was going to torpedo everything, but I couldn’t keep from saying it anymore.”
“I’m glad you said it,” Jay admitted. “I…was too much of a coward, apparently. Not great for my ego.”
“I think everyone is,” Gracie said after thinking about it for a moment, “and the people who ‘play it cool’ are just better at making it look like a play instead of being scared shitless.”
Jay snorted. “That makes me feel a little better, thank you. Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up. Promise.”
Gracie smiled. She reached out to touch the screen, realized that was ridiculous, and blushed a fiery red. She waved awkwardly. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”
“Bye.” He took another sip of his beer.
There was silence. Gracie stared at the call interface, wondering why everything in the room looked the same when everything was quite clearly completely different now. She pressed her hands between her knees and blew out a long breath.
Now that she’d hung up, it didn’t seem real. Had she actually admitted her feelings to him? Had he actually seemed into her?
What if he was lying?
“Oh, for God’s sake, Gracie,” she muttered to herself. She’d never had time for relationship nonsense, even her own. Jay was a reasonable, straight-talking kind of guy. It would have been clear if he’d been unpleasantly surprised by the revelation.
A small noise caught her attention, and her head whipped around to glare at the hallway. No more noises, and yet—
Gracie slid off the couch as silently as she could and crawled toward the hallway. She had her eyes focused on Alex’s door. Was it just her, or was it cracked open? As she watched, she saw it open a bit more.
She had one chance to pull this off. Gracie scrambled to get over next to the door as quietly as she could, and when Alex finally stuck his head around the door…she was right there, staring at him.
“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” He jumped and then ducked while Gracie doubled over with a hand over her stomach, laughing hysterically. “Jesus. Holy shit. You demon.”
“I-I…” Now that Gracie had started laughing, she couldn’t stop. All the adrenaline that had built up in her system was pouring out of her in the form of laughter. “I— Oh, God, it hurts.”
“Good! You deserve that!”
“Oh, c’mon. Oh, God…ow.” She slumped against the wall. “You were…spying on me.”
“I was checking on you.” Alex had picked himself up, and now he brushed off his sleeves with a glare. “To make sure you were all right.”
“Youuuuu were snooping.” Gracie mock-glared, then grinned. “That was fun.”
There was a long pause.
“What?” Gracie asked finally.
“WELL?” Alex waved his hands wordlessly.
“Ohhhh. Right.” Gracie remembered Jay with a jolt. She thought seriously about letting Alex wonder, but as soon as she thought of Jay, her face split into an involuntary grin. It was obvious how everything had gone.
“Ha! I knew it.” Alex pulled her close for a hug. “I knew he was into you.”
“You knew?” Gracie pushed him away. “You knew, and you let me walk into it blind? You bastard!”
“You gotta do it for yourself!” Alex replied, holding up his arms to fend off blows. “Don’t…don’t go all Callista on me.”
Gracie snickered. “You’re lucky I don’t have a giant sword. But seriously, man, come on. You couldn’t have paved the way a bit?”
“Nope.” Alex was surprisingly adamant. He looped an arm around her shoulders and drew her out into the main room. “It’s like this, you see: when you gave Sydney my number, she and I didn’t have anything going on, right? You were trying to get me out of my shell, so it made sense to shove a bit. But with you and Jay…you knew each other. What was happening was about the two of you, specifically. I couldn’t be the one to do the legwork.”
“Did that actually make sense, or am I sleep-deprived as fuck?” Gracie asked philosophically.
“Por que no los dos?” Alex returned with a grin. He reached over to shut her laptop. “Seriously, I’m glad I was right about how he feels.” He reached out to steady her as she swayed. “Whoa, hey! Maybe you should get some sleep?” He yawned hugely. “I know I should.”
“I�
�ll be along soon.” But Gracie was looking at the VR suit.
“Gracie…”
“I’m a grown-ass adult.” Gracie gave him a grin. “You go get some sleep. I promise I’ll sleep soon. I just want to see it all again. The starting zone.”
Alex must have understood, because he gave a small nod and disappeared, still smiling.
Gracie pulled on her VR suit. Exhaustion was dragging at her, but the weeks of fury and fear were suddenly gone, and she felt so light that she wondered if she might float away. She’d spoken to Jay. She’d led her team through the quest, and she hadn’t fallen to Harry’s last, insane challenge.
Of course, he would claim she should fight him alone—as if a single player versus a boss was any sort of fair fight.
But Harry was the sort of person who thought the world owed it to him to bow down.
Gracie settled the headset over her eyes and took a moment to bask in the blue ether of the log-in screen before hitting the button that would send her into the world. The walls of the inn had barely materialized around her before she had her character striding out into the near-deserted streets.
It was midnight in the game world, and so the various shops, which were there for color alone—farmers’ carts, street food vendors—were all shuttered and silent. Very few people were around, and most of them, Gracie guessed, were idle.