Hidden Realms

by Dean Murray

  My discarded shirt served as a barely adequate pressure bandage, and I'd packed it into her wound as I prayed that we'd be able to get her to safety.

  Brandon's wolves had streamed away in ones and twos as soon as they were able to move, and I'd ordered Isaac and James not to give pursuit when they'd finally been capable of standing and fighting.

  We had them outnumbered, but saving Adri was the first priority and there was nothing to stop Vincent from reassembling them and swinging back to kill us in detail if we split up. Even days later I remained convinced he would've pressed the attack when he regained consciousness if not for the fact that most of his fellows had already disappeared into the darkness.

  Adri's makeshift bandage had been completely soaked through by the time we made it back to the cars. Jasmin had piled into the back seat where she could keep pressure on the wound. Isaac threw me his spare key as I tore around the side of the Hummer and then we were off in a spray of gravel.

  I flogged the powerful engine the entire way back and pushed the tires to the very limit of their capabilities as I threw the massive vehicle around turns at speeds that would have made Adri shriek if she'd been aware of her surroundings.

  Donovan was waiting for us at the house, already scrubbed and ready with a blood transfusion prepped.

  Dom scrubbed and then pushed me out of the way so she could help our resident doctor stitch Adri up. I paced anxiously around the operating room until Donovan finally ordered Isaac and James to move me somewhere else.

  It was a dangerous move considering just how frayed my control was, but apparently both parts of me realized that distracting Donovan would just result in Adri bleeding to death. A half hour after I was ushered outside to the garden, Dom came out and reassured me that Adri would be okay.

  "The branch she fell on just barely nicked one of the veins near her kidney. She wasn't bleeding that fast, but in the time it took us to get back she lost a lot of blood. "

  I thanked Dom for the update, and then feigned enough composure to convince her to leave, but I didn't truly calm down until Adri was safely resting on my bed.

  Isaac, James and Jasmin started asking for permission to go out hunting the remnants of Brandon's pack almost as soon as it was confirmed that Adri was going to survive. I finally agreed provided that they took Jess and Dom with them.

  Under normal circumstances it would've been foolish to leave the house so uncovered. It would be all too easy for Vincent to circle around with a couple of wolves and kill our dependents while everyone but me was away, but faced with my newly-awakened power, nobody seemed to doubt but that I could lay out an entire pack all by myself.

  The others weren't any more sure of what it was I could do than I was, but it'd sufficed to bring Brandon and the others down, and the dominants were anxious to do something to ensure that we wouldn't continue to have to worry about attacks.

  It was a relief when they all finally left and let me turn my attention back to Adri. I was careful not to touch her, but I stayed by her bedside for nearly the entire twenty-four hours it took her to regain consciousness.

  I'd erred drastically by allowing the Ja'tell bond to deepen as much as it had. I'd given up fighting my selfish desires because I'd been so convinced I was going to die, but maybe it wasn't too late to reverse the damage. Maybe long months from now she'd make up her mind to be with me of her own free will. Maybe she wouldn't. It wouldn't be the first time that someone thought themselves in love while exposed to extreme danger, and it wasn't likely to be the last.

  The thought of her turning away from me, of her choosing another was nearly more than I could stand, but my course was fixed. Whatever she decided where I was concerned, I knew I loved her. No matter how bad things might get, the thought of sending her away would never cross my mind again.

  —The Story Continues—

  About the Author

  Dean Murray is a prolific author with dozens of titles across multiple pen names and more than half a million copies of his work currently in circulation.

  Dean started reading seriously in the second grade due to a competition and has spent most of the subsequent three decades lost in other people's worlds.

  Things worsened, or improved depending on your point of view, when he first started experimenting with writing while finishing up his accounting degree. These days Dean has a wonderful wife and three lovely children to keep him more grounded than he used to be, but the idea of bringing others along with him as he meets interesting new people in universes nobody else has ever seen drags him back to his computer on a regular basis.

  You can find a complete list of Dean's work (and sign up for his mailing list to get 6 free books) at www.DeanWrites.com.

  Running away from home was never Chloe Kowalski’s plan. Neither was ending up the target of killers, or having her body change in unusual ways. She only wanted a vacation, someplace far from her crazy parents and their irrational fear of water. She only wanted to do something normal for once, and maybe get to know her best friend’s hot stepbrother a bit better at the same time.

  But the first day she goes out on the ocean, strange things start to happen. Dangerous things that should be impossible. Things to which ‘normal’ doesn’t even begin to apply.

  Now madmen are hunting her. A mysterious guy with glowing blue eyes is following her. And her best friend’s stepbrother seems to be hiding secrets all his own.

  It was supposed to be a vacation. It’s turning out to be a whole lot more.

  Awaken

  Book One of the Awakened Fate Series

  By Skye Malone

  Copyright 2014 by Skye Malone

  Pronunciation Guide

  Dehaian (deh-HYE-an)

  Ina (EE-na)

  Kirzan (KUR-zahn)

  Neiphiandine (ney-fee-AN-deen)

  Niall (nee-AHL)

  Nyciena (ny-SEE-en-uh)

  Ociras (oh-SHE-rahs)

  Reschiata (reh-she-AH-tuh)

  Ryaira (ry-AIR-uh)

  Sieranchine (see-EHR-an-cheen)

  Sylphaen (sil-FAY-en)

  Teariad (tee-AR-ee-ad)

  Yvaria (ih-VAR-ee-uh)

  Zekerian (zeh-KEHR-ee-en)

  Prologue

  Chloe

  Before we go any farther, I want to make one thing clear: I never intended to run away. I fully intended to go home. I was only taking a vacation.

  Even if it didn’t end up like that.

  You see, I’ve always been drawn to the ocean. It makes sense, I guess. Growing up in Reidsburg, Kansas, you’re about as far from saltwater as you can get without burying yourself underground, and maybe not even then. Figures that something exotic and distant like the sea would attract me.

  We all want what we don’t have.

  But ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of visiting the ocean. Living by the ocean. I’d stare at pictures of the sea in books, memorize the name of every fish I saw, and paint smudges of blue across my preschool art projects and call it the Pacific. My teachers thought it was cute, and my school friends thought I was a bit strange, but I didn’t care.

  I just knew what I loved.

  My parents, though. Oh, they hated it. You’d think someone close to them had drown or been lost at sea or whatever for the anger they showed toward the whole thing. The house was decorated with pictures of deserts, visits to the pool were strictly forbidden – the threat of disease and kids peeing in the water were usually the reasons for that one – and for all our ‘vacations’, we’d go to Branson, or Oklahoma City or, on one truly impressive trip, a corn museum in Illinois.

  A corn museum. Seriously, who visits that?

  Well, okay, an agricultural science professor does, I suppose. Which is what my dad is, by the way. But that’s beside the point.

  They would have rather died than let me travel anywhere near the sea. And when my best friend, Baylie, asked if I could come stay with her family at their beach house for two weeks when summer started, Mom and Dad very nea
rly had a coronary. It wasn’t about the fact her gorgeous stepbrother would be there – since, of course, his dad and stepmom were there too and I’d share a room with Baylie anyhow – or even the time I’d be spending away from them. It was just about the ocean. Solely the ocean. And as inexplicably insane as anyone could see they were being, my days of arguing, begging, and even bribery got me absolutely nowhere.

  But it was the best chance I was going to have, short of hanging around for a year till I graduated – way too long to wait, mind you – and then hoping they wouldn’t keep me from going to college out west with Baylie, just on the basis it was closer to water.

  Because they would. Did I mention they were ridiculous?

  So I took matters into my own hands. What else is a girl supposed to do when her best friend offers her a chance to spend two weeks doing something she’s always dreamed of? I would had to have been crazy to pass that up.

  And I may be many things, but crazy certainly isn’t one of them.

  So that’s how, after packing a small bag, sneaking out my bedroom window, and scaling down a rather loosely bolted drainpipe, I ended up in a car with Baylie and her golden Labrador, Daisy, adamantly not running away from home, but instead taking a ‘vacation’ of my very own.

  It turned out so differently than I ever could have imagined.

  Chapter One

  Chloe

  “Well, here we are,” Baylie announced, pulling the car to a stop. “What do you think?”

  I couldn’t take my eyes from the view beyond the car window. For the past few dozen miles, ever since we passed Ventura and the highway curved to meet the sea, I’d been staring. Crystalline water shone under the late afternoon sun, and white-crested waves rolled in to meet the sand. The triangular peaks of sailboats floated across the expanse, while some distance away, a tiny form sped through the air, parasailing beneath the cloudless sky.

  It might have seemed silly, but I felt like a kid on their first trip to Disneyland.

  “Chloe?” Baylie tried.

  “Sorry,” I said, managing to pull my gaze away from the window long enough to give her a rueful grin. “It’s just…”

  I gestured helplessly at the water.

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re hopeless.” Checking her makeup and her long blonde hair in the mirror, she wiped away a bit of smudged mascara beneath her sky-blue eyes and then pushed open the driver’s side door. “Just make sure to grab your bag whenever you’re done gawking, okay?”

  My face flushed in the way it always did when I was embarrassed, splotching my face and every other bit of skin bright pink, and I reached for the door handle, determinedly ignoring her grin. She was well aware I’d always wanted to come here. She’d just known me since we were both four years old, and therefore loved to exercise the best friend’s inalienable right to tease.

  I climbed out of the red car and then opened the rear door, trying to keep my eyes from straying back to the horizon beyond the beach house. Daisy jumped out, her tail wagging furiously in gratitude for finally being released from the back seat, while Baylie popped open the trunk and retrieved her suitcase, leaving the trunk lid up for me to claim my own bag once I was done with the dog.

  On the porch, the screen door slammed. “You made it,” Mr. Delaney called, grinning as he jogged down the stairs. Well-built and tall with dark brown hair and equally dark eyes, he strode toward us with an ease that made him seem twenty years younger than his middle-aged status. Taking Baylie’s bag, he swung it onto his shoulder and then squeezed her into a lopsided hug. “Perfect timing, too. Diane’s just making some snacks.”

  Baylie made an appreciative noise. Before we’d left Reidsburg, she’d regaled me with stories of Diane’s cooking. From the sound of it, even her snacks were bound to be competition for anything the fanciest restaurants back home could’ve offered.

  “Hey, Chloe,” he added to me.

  “Hi, Mr. Delaney. Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Of course. More the merrier.”

  He smiled and motioned for us to follow him toward the house. My eyebrows rose as I registered the size of the place for the first time. Mr. Delaney was the owner of a lucrative software company, and it showed. Despite being only two stories high, his home was more mansion than anything. Mission architecture defined its appearance, though the off-white walls were interrupted by plentiful windows and skylights peppered the tile roof. Positioned on more than two acres of land with a private drive, the sprawling home backed up against bluffs overlooking the sea.

  The latter of which was instantly my favorite part, of course.

  Smells of bread and spices filled the air as we walked in the front door, adding to the promise of delicious food awaiting us. A ceiling of polished wood beams hung thirty feet high over the foyer, and a stairway to the right of the door led up to the rooms on the second floor. At the end of the hallway, broad windows made up the far wall of the house, through which bright sunlight poured.

  A cabinet door slammed, and then a woman popped her head around the corner at the end of the hall. “Hi there!” she called cheerily. Brushing her palms off on her sides, she hurried toward us and stuck her hand out to me. “I’m Diane – and please do call me Diane, okay? And he’s Peter. Like Baylie probably told you, we’re pretty informal here. I’m so glad you girls could make it!”

  Blinking, I shook her hand. I’d never met her, and only recognized her because of a picture Baylie had shown me on her cell a few days ago, but Diane was even more adorable in person than in her photo. With a brunette bob cut that bounced when she moved and a height of five foot two if she was lucky, she was like an energetic kid, excited by everything she saw.

  I could see why Baylie liked her stepbrothers’ stepmom so much.

  To me, Baylie’s family felt complicated, compared to my relatively straightforward status as a single child with one uncle somewhere in Minnesota. Baylie’s mom had died of cancer when Baylie was five and her dad had married Peter’s ex-wife, Sandra. Thus she had two stepbrothers out here in Santa Lucina, one of whom was three years older than us and the other who was our age. Diane wasn’t related to any of them, but had married Peter several years ago. Despite Peter and Sandra’s divorce, however, all the adults seemed to have ended up on good terms, which meant Baylie was welcomed like one of Peter’s kids by the Delaneys, and her own dad treated her stepbrothers likewise.

  It was just confusing for me to keep straight sometimes.

  Though, to be fair, my straightforward status wasn’t all that straightforward either. My one uncle in Minnesota? Yeah, he lived in a psychiatric hospital and last I’d heard, was convinced he was the reincarnation of Napoleon. Or maybe it was Henry the Eighth. But add that to my parents’ general insanity, and I had a pretty compelling reason to want to keep every trace of crazy from my life.

  “Would you put their bags in their room while I get these ladies settled?” Diane asked her husband.

  He nodded and then headed up to the second floor with our bags.

  “So neither of you have allergies, right?” Diane continued.

  We assured her we didn’t.

  “Great! So I’m just finishing up a few appetizers for us to have before the cookout tonight – hotdogs good with you? – and then I’m thinking stromboli for dinner tomorrow. Or maybe pizza. You girls like capicola and bresaola?”

  Trying to keep up, we assured her we did, though from the look Baylie gave me once Diane’s back was turned, I was fairly certain neither of us knew what she meant.

  “Excellent! The boys are picking up some at the market as we speak, so the meats should be very fresh. And I’ll mix up the rosemary crust from scratch – whole wheat flour too; trust me, you won’t go hungry here – so that should complement things nicely.”

  She kept talking as we walked into the spacious kitchen. A sunken living room extended off to the left, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and a fireplace, while a dinner table waited in a glass-walled dining room beyond the
kitchen island. A concrete patio with a gazebo and a fire pit took up part of the backyard, while closer to the bluffs overlooking the sea, the wood railing of a stairway led down toward the beach below.

  The sound of the front door closing interrupted Diane, and I turned to see Maddox coming down the hall with his younger brother, Noah, several steps behind.

  I swallowed. I’d only seen Noah a few times over the years, with the most recent being Christmas when he’d come to visit his mom. I think I’d managed three words. And right now, with his skin tanned golden and his deep green eyes looking amazing beneath the sandy flop of his sun-streaked hair, three words would have been hard to come by.

  “Oh hey,” Maddox said to us as he came into the room, a paper bag of groceries in his arms. Dark as his brother was light, Maddox took after their father, while Noah had his mother’s hair and eyes – though with their height and muscles, they both looked like crosses between surfers and bodybuilders. Maddox set down the bag. “When’d you all get in?”

  “Just a few minutes ago,” Baylie said, grinning as Maddox came over and gave her a hug. “You guys went shopping?”

  “Eh, well, you know. Gotta help out occasionally.” He smiled at me as Noah gave Baylie a hug as well. “Hey Chloe.”

  “Hey,” Noah added to me, twitching his chin in greeting.

  “Hi.”

  Feeling something of an idiot, I looked back to the view beyond the windows, hoping the glare hid any treasonous blushing my face might have decided to do. It was stupid. There were plenty of decent-looking guys that I saw every day back home. Of course, they were local boys and most of them knew me as that girl with the weird parents – which, obviously, wasn’t particularly appealing.