by Harley James
Claimed by the Demon Hunter Book 4
Guardians of Humanity
HARLEY JAMES
Copyright © 2020 by Harley James
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is coincidental.
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
Book 1 Sneak Peek
A Gift For You
About Harley James
Chapter 1
527 BC
Sparta, Greece
A choking, clay dust hovered knee-high as the procession of seventeen-year-old boys walked silent and naked to the temple where their blood would bring glory to Artemis. The goddess of the hunt was fierce and expected the sons of Sparta to be no less feared the world over.
Last in line, Alexios lifted his gaze from his bare feet, straightening his spine. A small company of soldiers in full battle armor fanned out behind him. Four more years of warrior-training school and he’d wear his own bronze, wield sword and spear, and peer out the intimidating eye-slits in his own crested helmet.
The searing mid-afternoon sun cast wavering mirages near the altar where all twelve of the ephebes would be beaten so violently some might never rise from the dirt.
Today he’d receive his shield…or bring shame to his father’s house.
“Look, it’s the bastard! I hope he falls the fastest!” came a shout from the crowd assembled along the path that led to Artemis’s temple. A clod of dirt hit Alexios in the back of the head, but he didn’t flinch. In his peripheral vision, a soldier—one of his father’s personal guard—peeled off from the procession to deal with the heckler.
Alexios gritted his teeth. Let me fight my battles alone.
It had to be that way. Even his father—one of Sparta’s two kings—knew that.
Davos had come to him before dawn, alone, dressed in a simple, belted chiton. Shaved beard, long hair, no smile. Nothing new. But his dark eyes held emotions Alexios had only ever seen his father bestow on Kassandra.
“Walk with me to find your mother,” he’d said.
They found her at the slaves’ well, gathering water to tend to her son’s wounds after the ritual. When she saw father and son standing together, she froze, eyes widening, lips parting before she schooled her features, reclaiming the calm she was known for among laboring women.
I would take this pain from you if I could, Mother.
Kassandra was beloved by the king, yet a slave by birth. Even the mighty Davos couldn’t change their laws.
Davos caressed Kassandra’s cheek, his thumb brushing over her lower lip. Kassandra closed her eyes, holding herself aloof. “May our son bring honor to Artemis and the Eurypontid House.”
The king took her into his arms, whispered for long moments into her ear, then released her with a kiss on her temple. As always, Kassandra kept her hands to herself. To preserve her heart from something she could never have? Or to not anger the king’s wife who seemed to have eyes everywhere?
Alexios never asked, and his mother never spoke of it.
Davos looked at Kassandra as though desperate for a soft word. When she remained mute, he turned back to Alexios, his face losing most of its warmth. “Honor is priceless and glad be he who has it. You will do me as proud today as you did during the Phouxir.”
Alexios doubted the Phouxir—a rite of passage all thirteen-year-old boys of the warrior school endured—would compare to the agony of today’s ordeal. Proving you could survive without civilization for forty days during the Phouxir meant you were no longer a child, and well on your way to earning the right to undergo the contest of endurance.
The Diamastigosis. A scourging until blood flowed in abundance. By accepting the most extreme pain, he could demonstrate he was indeed worthy to wear the Spartan scarlet.
Even though he was a bastard.
We train like no others so we do not have to live in fear.
Alexios closed his ears to the humming throng around him, focusing on the priestess who stood at the altar holding a wooden statue of the goddess. As the line of boys drew nearer, Alexios saw the hollowness in the eyes of the priestess. He’d heard rumors that she and others in the temple were being abused by a member of the elite. It was scandalous, but more than that…disturbing.
If those who held the ear of the gods couldn’t protect themselves, what hope had others?
One by one, the boys gripped the bronze bar affixed to the altar, took the lash, and bled for Sparta. The sun continued its arc across the blue, Laconian sky as the crowd grew strangely silent and the crows cawed, hopping on their long, black tufted legs toward the blood that spread its stain across the cobbled tiles of the outer temple courtyard.
Five boys cried out. Three fell.
The boy who’d taken the most punishment, yet remained standing, had endured 39 lashes.
And then it was Alexios’s turn.
Every sense sharpened as his legs propelled him toward the altar—his toes gripping for purchase in the blood-slick clay, the buzzing flies, his stomach twisting with hunger and nerves, his mouth dry with dehydration from the required fast, his skin, hot from the unrelenting sun.
He wasn’t sweating anymore. A bad sign.
He glanced up toward Mount Taygetos, covered with its dense forest of pine and fir trees. Ares, god of war, I am no good with words, but I implore your strength.
His fingers curled around the bronze bar. He breathed in, but before he could exhale, the first lash came down like a lightning strike. His spine jack-knifed, forcing all the air from his lungs in a rush as his knuckles whitened on the bar. He bore down on a wave of shock, goose bumps breaking out all over his body.
He shook his head once, sucking back all sound that wanted to pour from his mouth. No.
Sounds were unacceptable.
Been here before. Survived.
He heard the whistle of the whip as it tore through the air. His chin lifted, his back bowing slightly from the force of the lash. And again.
He drew air through his nostrils evenly, through a count of ten, and stared up at a single gossamer cloud that hovered above his favorite spot to enter the Eurotas River. Four more lashes bore down as he visualized swimming through the river’s soothing waters.
“Harder!” yelled the priestess. The crowd shifted restlessly, but remained oddly silent.
The seventh lash broke his skin. The tenth sent droplets of his blood to spatter the faces of those standing in the front row, some of them watching with gleaming eyes like vultures. He groaned long and deep in his mind, imagining the low sound. Like an animal caught in a trap, ready to bite its leg off.
Be silent and survive.
He slid his left foot closer to his right, tilted his hips under, and pulled his shoulders back. Lifted his chin and locked eyes the one who
hated him the most.
Queen Theodora. His father’s wife, who’d borne the king three daughters.
And no sons.
Theodora’s tongue came out to lick at the blood spatter—his blood—on her lips as her hungry gaze dropped to his nakedness. He locked his knees, pulling his lips into a sneer, absorbing the next ten blows like iron yields in the forge. Stoking the rage. Feeding on the pain.
Twenty.
Be silent and thrive.
Show her. He’d be stronger than any child she’d ever bear.
He’d show the fucking aristocracy their superiority was a farce.
Show. Them. All. Blows punctuated every word.
Blood began to flow down his buttocks and legs. His eyes passed over his mother with her stoic face and anguished eyes. They had the power to undo him.
Don’t look at her. Show. Them.
Thirty. Flies began to bite, tiny pinpricks that distracted him from his focus. The agony wound its tentacles around every nerve ending. Cold rippled through his frame, though every bone and sinew felt aflame. His teeth began to chatter, vision to blur.
His knees wobbled once. Twice.
No!
Honor is priceless and glad be he who has it.
Please.
He opened his lips a crack to exhale some of the pressure, imagining his pain and fear of failure taking to the wind, floating up, blowing away high above the trees. When he could follow its course no longer, he blinked, shaking, lowered his gaze…
And saw her.
A filthy child with soul-stripping eyes.
He was caught in the web of them as her body straightened on impact with his gaze. He angled his hips and shoulders her direction. Her stained slave’s hood slipped from her head to reveal curly hair as dark as a night without stars. A pert nose perched between two clay-smudged cheeks. She was young. Ten? Fourteen? Hard to say.
He didn’t care.
She was no vulture, here to drink in his suffering.
Her vivid blue eyes poured out solace. Strength.
Belief.
He dove into her gaze. Felt her warmth surround him until the shivering eased. The pounding in his head dimmed. The blows came, but he kept watch on her. I am here, her wise, old eyes implored. Let me share your suffering.
So he did.
When she gasped, the torment in his body rose like a great wave. It began to pull him under. Then she mouthed, No! Her eyes like Athena on the battlefront, her small hands curling into fists.
And he could breathe again.
In.
Out.
Time and place faded. The sky merged with her eyes, and he knew.
I will show them all.
Show them today. Show them tomorrow and the days afterwards.
He would always be grateful to this nameless slave child.
“Sixty lashes for Alexios, bastard son of King Davos,” the priestess shouted, bending down to drag her fingers through the blood at the foot of the altar and smearing the statue with it. “Enough then! The goddess is satisfied.”
As a soldier pried Alexios’s locked fingers from the bronze bar, the crowd swallowed up the young girl. Alexios opened cracked lips to call out to her, but only a puff of air scraped up his throat.
She’s gone.
And suddenly, so was his strength.
Soldiers caught him as he fell.
Chapter 2
Sophia’s leg muscles went to wax the moment the priestess finally—Gods, finally!—ended Alexios’s torment. She sank to her butt on the hot tiles of the temple, tucking her legs under her so they wouldn’t get trampled by the shuffling crowd. Hot tears blended with the sticky clay she’d slathered on her cheeks to disguise herself. Lightheaded, she tried to draw in a shaky breath, but her chest felt bound by a giant serpent.
How he’d suffered. Even by Spartan standards.
All around her, helot slaves and their Spartan superiors were speaking of him as they continued to mill around, as though reluctant to get on with their day.
And how could they? Alexios had been legendary.
She would never forget this day.
She shifted around to her knees and tested the strength of her legs as she angled for a better view of her warrior.
Yes. He was now hers.
He’d made it that way when he’d stripped away all her layers and looked inside her. If she’d had walls, he’d stormed them. Effortlessly. His invasion an appalling takeover that made her guts hum with energy.
Everyone always looked right through her, seeing and immediately dismissing the gangly, clumsy child of Sparta’s other king.
Not Alexios. He had touched her down deep where no one else had ever been.
She felt the truth of it like rain on her face. Her skin prickled pleasantly, restlessly. Now deprived of his gaze, she felt a yawning gap inside where before there had been none.
She scrambled to her feet, watching soldiers bring him ladles of water and his mother hurry to his side. A hand on Sophia’s shoulder spun her around.
“Sophie! Damn your eyes! I’ve been looking all over for you. Hurry along before mother and father discover you’ve managed to sneak out of the palace unattended again.”
Her older brother, Niketas, continued scolding as he took her arm and pulled her through the crowd toward his groom and two horses.
As she melted deeper into the throng, her attention tossed about like flotsam on a heavy-flowing spring river. Snatches of conversation…
“The bastard won…”
“…not right…”
“…must have made a deal with Hades…”
“…more Spartan than the braying donkeys in the Assembly!”
How could they even debate what they’d witnessed? Alexios had bled for all of them for Artemis’s favor, and he’d done so magnificently.
She glanced back to where he was being attended and pulled against her brother’s hold. What if they didn’t know to use poultice of clover, honey, and poppy on his wounds? “Niketas, can we go back and look upon him once more? Please? Then I shall return with all haste to the palace. Mother and Father won’t even know I’ve been away.”
Niketas hesitated just long enough for her to jerk out of his grasp and run toward the open area behind the altar. She stumbled once, bumping into a high-ranking Spartan Councilman’s wife. The woman shoved her, cursing and spitting on the tiles beside her.
Doesn’t matter, Sophie.
They didn’t matter. Their constant criticisms, their continual scorn.
She shoved the hurt down deep, burying it beneath the fire of her dreams. Turning it to ash with her hope. Hope that someday they would stop judging. Be more loving.
More kind and compassionate.
Big dreams for a culture in love with war.
Someday Alexios will stand beside me and change our world.
She’d almost reached the place where Kassandra and King Davos’s personal guard were giving aid to Alexios when a towering warrior in full military regalia seemed to come from nowhere. The warrior was clothed entirely in black—even his breastplate and greaves, which were normally leather and bronze.
How utterly strange.
The King’s soldiers parted, their stony faces slackening in silent awe as they retreated to let the massive warrior advance.
Sophia held her breath, afraid to move, afraid for Alexios. Please don’t hurt him. The dry wind stopped blowing through the trees, the crows taking flight to circle high above the soldier.
Who is this man? A god, surely. Maybe Ares, god of war?
He had black hair, sharp cheekbones with slashing eyebrows over dark, shining eyes. He was broad of chest and shoulder, every muscle of his body sculpted. Violence and power flowed in his wake.
Run. Hide from this warrior who couldn’t possibly be a man. Something about him made her…made her…scared and brave and sure.
He could change my life.
No. What a ninny!
He wouldn’t even notice a g
rubby little bug like her.
And of course, there was the bleeding boy on the ground to worry about.
Seven hells, if this soldier hurt Alexios—even a little—he’d find out how hard this bug could bite.
Warrior-god leaned down to lay his hand gently on Kassandra’s shoulder. Alexios’s mother stood from where she’d crouched beside her son, showing neither fear nor surprise like the others. She clutched the warrior’s breastplate, curling her fingers against his flesh, tilting her head back to quietly plead with him.
What was she saying?
Sophia tried to edge closer to hear their conversation, but found she couldn’t move her arms or legs. Heart pounding, she looked left and right. Hundreds of people in the area, and no one was moving. Everyone—slave, Spartan, priestess—seemed turned to stone, unblinking, their faces frozen in shock at seeing the unearthly warrior.
Wake up!
A trickle of sweat ran down Sophia’s temple. She looked back at Kassandra and the warrior, trying to move her body. Trying to understand what was happening.
Kassandra was a slave, mistress to Alexios’s father, Sparta’s other king. Yet this frightening warrior ran his hands slowly up and down her arms like a lover, then turned and reached down to lift Alexios—big, strapping Alexios—effortlessly into his arms.
Sophia inhaled shakily. Why am I allowed to see this?
The warrior-god’s eyes lasered into hers. Her heart froze, then commenced pounding at such an alarming rate her vision grayed and her stomach lurched.
I’m dead. I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.
Warrior-god would smite her for her un-Spartan fearfulness and for witnessing this…this…celestial happenstance.
Her wide-eyed stare dropped to Alexios whose skin had gone unnaturally pale, his body now lax in the warrior-god’s arms.