Mutual Trust

by Lea Linnett

  Contents

  Copyright

  Other Books by Lea Linnett

  Title Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Epilogue

  An Excerpt from Her Cold-Blooded Protector

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 Lea Linnett

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover Design by Kasmit Covers.

  Other Books by Lea Linnett

  Levekk Invaders

  Her Cold-Blooded Protector

  Her Cold-Blooded Master

  Her Cold-Blooded Mercenary

  Bonds of the Levekk

  Mutual Trust

  Mutual Trust

  —

  Lea Linnett

  1

  “You’re still going out there?”

  Bree didn’t jump at the voice. She’d already heard the wooden door to their room in the bunkhouse creak open behind her. Instead, she continued to shove supplies into her satchel: water, meat that had been dried over the fire, a leather-backed fur blanket to protect her against the snow at night. “Yep.”

  Noelle—or Noe, as everyone in the Barracks called her—shuffled, her boots scraping against the floor. “Even though there’s a storm brewing?”

  “It’s days away,” Bree muttered.

  “Not according to Luis.”

  “He’s a soldier, not a hunter. What does he know?”

  “Uh, everything?” A hand caught Bree’s shoulder, forcing her to face her best friend and roommate. “Can’t the mine wait a few days?” Noe asked, her blond eyebrows furrowed. “You know they never come out in the cold.”

  They. The levekk. Aliens that had invaded Earth centuries ago and devoured almost every corner of the planet, according to her elders’ stories. Lizard-like beings who had razed human cities with their alien technology and built metropolises in their place, destroying humanity in the process.

  Only her people were free. They had evaded them all this time by hiding in the freezing cold north, but now the levekk sat on their doorstep, mining the earth for who knew what. If the levekk ever discovered that they were here…

  Bree didn’t want to think about that.

  “Well, excuse me for not wanting to sit here in the Barracks with my head in the snow,” she said. “Someone has to check on them.”

  Noe scoffed. “They’ve never come north of the mine before, they hate the snow, and you think now, right before a storm, is when they’re going to attack?”

  “Maybe.” Bree shrugged off her friend’s hand and moved to the wall, where her bow hung across two hooks. The wood was smooth, polished by years of use, and a comfortable weight in her palm. It had been her mother’s, before she…

  “Come on. We both know that’s not why you’re going,” Noe said, her arms crossed.

  “Who cares why I’m going?” Bree asked, tightening her grip on the bow. “What’s with all the questions, anyway?”

  “Ah, you know.” Her friend looked away, as bad a liar now as she’d always been. “I mean—”

  “What is it?”

  Noe sagged. “Your dad is here,” she said lamely. “He’s outside.”

  Bree was silent as she snatched up her quiver of arrows and slung it over her shoulder alongside her satchel, but inside, she fumed. It wasn’t safe in the Barracks for a civilian like her father. This was a place for soldiers and protectors, the final line of defense between the alien mine and her people’s village over the mountains to the north. Sure, the aliens had never actually attacked them, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous.

  She stormed past Noe and heard a soft, “Merde,” as her friend slipped into her mother tongue. Bree recognized the French curse, although not from the lessons Noe’s parents had given her as a child. But she ignored it, anyway, eager to escape the brown-toned log prison that was the bunkhouse.

  Every soldier on rotation in the Barracks had a bed within the bunkhouse, and Bree had spent so many years here that it felt more like home than her father’s house. But like everything her people made—the forward watchtowers, their homes in the village, even the towering walls that enclosed the Barracks—everything was so monotonously brown. Bree ached for the grays, greens, and blues of the wilderness, the irregularity of the trees, the soft scuffling of forest creatures foraging in the snow.

  The Barracks, by comparison, were always too loud, and that was true now as Bree exited the bunkhouse and entered a wall of sound. Soldiers moved about their business with a practiced focus, their faces stern and their weapons ready on their belts as they prepared for the storm. After training since the age of fifteen to fight an alien threat that had never actually attacked, they should have appeared antsy, but the atmosphere in the Barracks was professional. Luis, their leader, kept them busy, and the trials of living in the wilderness did the rest.

  There was never a dull moment as a Barracks soldier, but still Bree yearned to escape.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” Noe said, appearing beside her as she headed towards the gate. “I know you get enough bullshit as it is. You don’t need it from me.”

  Bree sighed and caught her eye. “It’s fine, I get it.”

  It was reckless to head out with a storm brewing so close. The darkening clouds were already visible above the Barracks’ walls, and the air had that charged feeling that always preceded the snap and crackle of lightning. As they moved through the Barracks, younger soldiers looked at her with confusion, no doubt wondering why she would be leaving at this time.

  The older ones watched her with pity. Whispering about Bree the Hunter was a popular pastime in the Barracks, and an even more popular one back home in their village. Many of the people she passed knew her story, although none would dare speak with her about it. They preferred to sit back and judge her for daring to have hope.

  Hope that her mother was still alive out there, somewhere.

  Bree gritted her teeth and plowed on through the snow, the southern gate of the Barracks finally coming into view.

  Noe grasped her shoulder. “Good luck. And be safe out there.”

  “I’ll be back in a week.”

  “Just in time to watch me kick Torrin’s ass in the scraps tournament?”

  “Sure,” Bree said, chuckling.

  Noe sloped off toward her post for the day, while Bree faced the gate. For being one of only two entrances to the Barracks, it was small, only wide enough to fit four soldiers side-by-side. It was often kept shut, but right now, someone had opened it to allow a load of trees to be dragged inside for fuel before the storm, and Bree’s heart leaped at the sight of the forest beyond.

  But before she could crawl into the comforting embrace of the trees, she had to get past the walls. As tall as the tallest trees and thick enough to allow three patrolling gu
ards to stand abreast atop them, the walls loomed over the Barracks, enclosing it completely. They had been designed as the ultimate defense, with barricades for archers to shoot over, and small rooms built in each corner within which soldiers could rest and tend to the blue-violet firestones that protected them. They were impenetrable, built to keep the Invaders out.

  However, Bree often felt that they were keeping her in.

  She shivered, moving towards the gate and the promise of freedom beyond. But as she neared it, she noticed two figures standing in the shadow of the wall, and her heart sank.

  The smaller one was her father, Jacob. He wasn’t a short man, but next to the soldiers with their tanned leather armor and confident bearing, he looked small. A floppy, brimmed hat sat upon his mousy brown hair, and his hands flew about as he spoke to the man beside him.

  That man was Luis, their people’s leader in all things related to their defenses, and for all intents and purposes, Bree’s second father. When she’d walked from the village to the Barracks at the age of twelve, her mother’s bow in hand, he’d been the one to give her a chance to show that she could use it. He’d been the first to let her go south of the walls by herself.

  He was one of the few people she trusted to have her back, but he was also her leader. And from the way he scowled at her as she approached, she knew which one she was getting.

  “Bree!” Jacob cried when he noticed her, galumphing through a snowbank to pull her into a hug.

  She hugged him back with one arm. “Hey, Dad.”

  “You’re not going out there.”

  “I need to go check on the traps I set up,” she lied, holding back a sigh. Sighs never went down well with her father when he was like this.

  “What traps? They’ll be buried under inches of snow!” he said. “Don’t lie to me, Bree.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. I know that look. I spent years learning how to decode it whenever your mother…” He trailed off, his gaze falling to the ground. Then, he pulled his brimmed hat from his head. “Please come back to the village. Your sisters haven’t seen you in weeks.”

  Half-sisters, she wanted to correct him, but this wasn’t the time. She started to reply, but then he caught her arm.

  “Sinead would love it if you came to Ciaran’s birthday party.”

  Bree winced, looking away from her father’s mousy hair and blue eyes. They didn’t look much alike; Bree had always taken after her mother with her wavy, chestnut hair and her dark, wide-set eyes. Ciaran and the others… well. Ciaran and the others looked like Sinead.

  “I gave you my present for him last time you visited. The skipping stones?” she said, looking over at Luis for help. But the larger man said nothing, just stood there with his muscular arms crossed and the light glinting off his salt-and-pepper hair.

  “We want you there, Breezy,” Jacob said, and the pet name made her breath hitch. “We barely see you, and then I hear you’re still going out to the mine, and with the storm—”

  “I know how to look after myself.”

  “I know that!” He bit his chapped lips, not taking his round eyes off hers. “Sinead wants us all there. The whole family.”

  Bree flinched, wrenching her arm from his grip, before saying hotly, “Well, tell Sinead that it’ll have to wait until I find the rest of the family.”

  “Bree—”

  “I have hunting to do,” she said, turning away. Snow crunched underfoot as her father tried to keep up, but she refused to slow, and soon his footsteps fell away.

  “You have to let her go!” he called. “She’s dead, Bree. Putting yourself in danger won’t fix that.”

  Bree’s stomach roiled with acid, and it colored her words as she snapped, “And sitting safe at home with your new family won’t fix it, either.”

  “It’s been twenty years!” he cried. Then, he addressed Luis. “Would you talk to her?”

  Heavy boots fell into step with hers as she passed through the gate, and Bree sighed. “You gonna try and stop me, too?”

  “No,” Luis said mildly, as was his way. “You sure you wanna leave things like that?”

  “I’ll be back in a week.”

  “Storm’ll be here sooner than a week,” he chided. “You know it’s dangerous.”

  “You’ve trained me since I was twelve,” said Bree. “That’s half my life, more or less. When have I ever had an issue out there?”

  “First time for everything. Got your talisman?”

  “Yes,” she said, digging into her pocket for the small firestone—named so for its innate warmth and the vein of violet running through its blue depths. A hand on her wrist brought her up short.

  “And you promise you’ll stay in one of the watchtowers tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Be careful,” he said, catching her eye, and Bree sighed.

  “I will.” But then she paused. “Tell him I’m sorry? We always fight when he comes here.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “Luis.”

  “I’ll tell him.” He didn’t say anything else, didn’t try to convince her to stay. Bree got the feeling that Luis had once been very close with her parents—her mom, especially—and he was the only one who didn’t scoff at the idea that she might still be out there.

  Maybe he had hope, too.

  Releasing her wrist, he headed back inside, and Bree turned to face the forest. There was a flat, snow-covered plain outside the gate, but beyond it was an impenetrable wall of green, and Bree’s feet took her towards it without prompting. She was drawn to it, as if it were where she belonged, and her tense bearing didn’t relax until she sank into the shadows beneath the trees, leaving the watchful eyes of the Barracks far behind.

  ---

  Despite her promise to Luis, Bree didn’t head for any of the watchtowers.

  It was a full day’s trek through the snow, from sunrise to sunset, to reach the nearest of the watchtowers that sat between the mine and the Barracks. They were vitally important, not only as a safe haven for hunters and soldiers caught in the often-treacherous wilderness, but also as a first line of defense.

  Each watchtower overlooked a mine shaft—an entrance to the levekk mine—and although it had never been necessary, their occupants were prepared to risk their lives warning the Barracks if any alien army ever advanced from the shafts’ depths.

  But Bree’s destination wasn’t a quiet mine shaft. She knew this terrain, had hunted in it for the past ten years or so, and she knew a shortcut that could get her straight to where she really wanted to go in just over a day.

  So, instead of heading south-west to the nearest watchtower, she cut dead south, falling into a well-worn path she’d taken so often she could feel her way in the dark. Which she would have to do, eventually.

  Others hated coming south. Most hunted north of the Barracks, away from the alien threat, but Bree had been drawn to the tangled forests that separated them from the Invaders her entire life. Her feet found invisible paths through the snow-covered undergrowth with ease, and she knew when to push aside every low-hanging branch before they could slap her in the face.

  Bree felt alive out here. Where the constant noise of the Barracks drained her, the warble of birds and the snuffling of winter animals relaxed her. While others felt claustrophobic and small amongst the tightly-packed trunks of the trees, Bree felt safe, protected.

  But not complacent.

  There were dangers in these woods. Mountain lions that ventured down from the foothills, bears shocked from their seasonal hibernation, and worse: the big cats—alien predators that had hounded her people ever since the levekk mine was first established. As large as a bear and as agile as a lion, no one wanted to face one of them in the forest without protection.

  As she walked, she squeezed the talisman in her pocket, taking solace in the warm glow of it against her palm. With the small shard of firestone on her person, no big cat should dare to come near her, but it was good to remain vigil
ant, nonetheless.

  So, she stayed aware of her surroundings as the sun passed into the west and behind the trees. She continued to trace her path, even in the darkness, and only pulled herself into a tree to rest when her legs ached.

  The first tendrils of the storm reached her while she slept, and she woke in the morning to a sharp wind buffeting her on her perch. Below, animals scurried back to their homes to wait it out, but Bree dropped to the ground, shaking flakes of snow from her thick coat-sleeves.

  By mid-morning, cold sleet had joined the wind, but she ignored it. She was close now, the distant sounds of metalwork and machinery reaching her ears as she climbed a rise in the land.

  Then, she crested the ridge, and the ground fell away, making her gasp softly at the sight of the mine opening up before her, as breathtaking now as it always was.

  Matte black metal rose from the ground in squat, square shapes, the material so dark that in the summer it appeared to eat the sun. The wide, low buildings spread across the flat plateau in the mountainside below her, the corners of the roof curling with mist as cold sleet hit the heated metal. Bree had never in her life seen snow gathered on the roof, not even in the middle of winter, the building somehow heated from within.

  Between her and the building lay the ravine, her only window into whatever the aliens were actually mining for. The ravine was a long, narrow chasm that curved around the compound much like the wall did back at the Barracks. According to the older villagers, the levekk had dug it themselves with their advanced machinery, but the edges had weathered and worn down so much that they almost looked natural.

  The tower rising out of the ravine directly below her was anything but natural, though. Reaching twice as far above ground level as the Barracks’ walls and who knew how deep, the tower was dressed with metallic walkways that linked to a spiderweb of platforms and staircases set into the sides of the ravine. Lights speckled the tower’s surface, bright against the black metal, and they illuminated the ravine with a foggy glow that somehow made the pit seem even more bottomless. It also roared like a distant waterfall, the air vibrating with the sounds of machines that Bree had long since grown used to.