Surrender (Fated Souls Book 1)

by Elle Lincoln

  I set my phone aside and open the door to the lower level. My bare feet touch the new carpet that isn’t new, just barely walked on. Skipping steps as I go, I spring to the ceramic tile. Everything sits the same as it always has.

  A stone fireplace rises to the ceiling directly in front of me, while the entire wall is nothing but a series of windowed doors leading outside. They’re all locked with not just the normal locks, but ones that anchor into the frame above and below. A leather couch wraps around the smaller area, while a dry bar and pool table take up the other side where dust settles onto the wooden top rail. Behind that, another set of windows peek into the indoor pool that probably needs maintenance.

  Walking around the couch, I make my way to the three bedrooms down here, all set within the mountainside. To the right is a bathroom. It’s nothing special, just a plain old bathroom with normal white tile and a normal white sink. To the left are the laundry room and pool supplies. The three bedrooms sit with their doors shut in a triangle.

  My gut churns at the real reason I came down here. I turn to the door beside the bathroom. My heart thumps in my chest, picking up the beat only to skip with a pinch.

  “Dad, what’s in here?” My fingers glide over the steel door with wood paneling disguising its true nature.

  “That is where you go during the zombie apocalypse.” He ruffles my hair before guiding me to the pool supplies. But my eyes stray back there in thought.

  “Zombies aren’t real.” I roll my eyes and push past him to get my favorite teal pool noodle.

  “Bean.” The seriousness in his tone makes me pause and turn to look at him. His icy blue eyes stay stuck to the room with the lock. “Zombies may not be real, but one day you will need that room, and that’s the day you will find safety.”

  I snap back to the present, my pulse pounding and my palms sweating. I enter the same code as upstairs, only for the red light to blink and the little device to yell at me in that obnoxious tone.

  I try my birthday. Wrong.

  Annoyed, my fingers slide over the cool metal as I nibble on my lip. This lock differs from the one upstairs. Newer with a different finish. I think back to what Dad told me that day. That is the day. The day. I enter in the current date.

  Green.

  The lock snicks, allowing me to grip the door handle. I can’t decide if that was clever or not to make the code for the day. Also how? It seems unimaginable that anything would hold that much memory to change the code to the day. But Dad loved to tinker.

  I’m stalling for no good reason. I know it. Pressing open the door, I step to the frame, my hand finding the switch on the wall. I don’t move to flick it on, though, choosing instead to glare into the dark abyss of the room beyond.

  This will change everything. The feeling sweeps through me like a storm cloud. Dad was a gentle creature, choosing to fight with words rather than guns and knives. Though he was strong, he chose not to fight. Living by the words of Martin Luther King Jr. He never believed that violence was the key, instead insisting that words held the power to stick around long after death.

  Blowing out a breath, I push the door all the way open and flick on the light.

  Overhead, the fluorescent lights buzz to life, illuminating a small square room with a center island.

  The breath whooshes out of my tired lungs as my eyes dart from wall to wall. Unsteady, I lean against the doorway as dizziness swamps me and tears blur my vision.

  “This is all wrong,” I whisper into the stale air. My heart seizes in my chest as the vision of my father cracks and crumbles to the cold tiled floor, shattering into a thousand little pieces that scatter to the universe. “No, no, no.”

  I can’t even grasp what I’m really seeing. The usual banter that bounces around in my head falls silent. My mind is busy trying to understand what my eyes are seeing. What they aren’t seeing. All while my heart just can’t comprehend the room.

  Arsenal. Armory. Fuck, whatever it’s called, that’s what this little room is.

  “What did you fear?” Again, I ask the stale air that rushes out of the room and into the hall behind me, leaving nothing but the scent of a closed off room.

  Guns cover the left wall while a cabinet with a glass top lines the entire room. So many guns. Big, small, all deadly. Starting there, I step forward, my knees shaky as they hit the class cabinet. My fingers run over the smooth wooden corners, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that Dad made this, carved this cabinet with his bare hands. Each piece was chiseled and sanded with care and love in the way only a master carpenter can.

  Behind me, the door shuts with a soft click, stealing the fresh air and startling me into a scream. One that bounces around me in the small room. Eyes closed, I take several deep breaths before turning back around to the case.

  As I look down into the cabinet, my vision blurs at yet more guns lying on a velvet bed. Each with a label, the type of gun. The year it was made. The type of bullet needed and which drawer I can find that in. But what makes my heart thud in my chest and adrenaline steal my thoughts is the label that describes what that gun kills.

  1836 Colt revolver. Kills cyclops and daemons.

  1597 Georg Von Reichwein’s Revolver. Kills centaurs and minotaurs.

  My vision blurs as tears spill down my face in salty trails. Slowly, I back away, the case behind me catching my lower back. Shaking, I turn around to see a long broadsword and two other swords resting on more purple velvet.

  Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I scan the center wall where bows hang. I’m sure the case below it is filled with arrows. To the right, the wall is covered with short swords and medieval weapons, some with spikes coming out of a round ball.

  All of them have little cards labeled with how to kill every creature imaginable.

  Numbness washes over me as shock settles into my veins like water freezing during the winter. Feeling nothing, I turn around, awaiting what other hell I may catch sight of. Above the door, a scythe rests in a long case. Beside the door to the left is a trident, and to the right is what looks like a bow with a sharp blade attached to it.

  I spin once more, dizziness washing over me as I sink to the cool concrete floor. My uncovered flesh chills as the cool floor greets it, and I stare unseeing at the case before me.

  I can’t think. My mind numbs to the surrounding room. To the lies and the deception. How could I unconditionally love a man I didn’t even know? My father had been my everything because he was the only man I could ever love. Due to a curse I know now probably exists.

  He was strong for me. Gifting me words of encouragement while weaving tales of the unknown all around me. I built a foundation upon those stories, living my life in the realm of wonder. Yet I can’t discern the lies from the truth. The stories from reality. Everything blurs as the unknown seeps in and threatens to suffocate me.

  I breathe in shallow breaths that do nothing to help the dizziness and rest my head back against the cabinet. My eyes stare above me to what should be a white ceiling. Above, words in another language wrap around the lights, spiraling toward the bulb like the planets orbit the sun.

  It’s too much. It’s all too much.

  My head tilts back down, my gaze landing on the drawers to the sword cabinet. Books on lore greet my scrutiny, and with shaky fingers I graze each one. Most of them are centered on Greek mythology. But some aren’t, labeled as lore on faerie and the Tuatha de Danann. Irish folklore. Some are on lore from other countries that I can’t even imagine.

  But one drawer catches my attention. One labeled simply as “Thoughts.” Is it too much to hope that this one will hold Dad’s journal? Only one way to find out.

  Crawling up to my knees, I pull the drawer out. Long and slim, it holds one leather bound book. I grip the thick tome and bring it down to me, drawing it to my nose where I inhale the tantalizing scent of leather and tobacco.

  Flopping back against the cabinet, I prop the journal on my knees and, with shaking fingers, I open the pages t
o... nothing.

  Blank page after blank page greet me with mockery. I shake the stupid thing in anger, my hope for finding answers dashed, until one page slips free. The paper, covered in my dad’s scrawl, flutters down to me.

  I’ve gone through the emotional wringer today, and for a long moment, I just stare as the piece drifts to the floor, landing beside me. I can’t decide if I can deal with much more today, and it isn’t even lunchtime, but my resolve thickens with the possibilities that Dad held the answers to everything. I owe it to the guys to find out exactly what he knew. How much he knew.

  My fingers snatch up the paper and flip it around, my heart heavy as I scan his handwriting. It’s barely legible unless you went to catholic school and learned how to write in cursive. Even then, he mimicked that of a doctor’s scribble.

  But I know how to read it, and my eyes are drawn to the single word that starts the entirety of his message.

  Bean,

  Today is the first day that you will need this room. I know you have questions, and those I cannot answer in their entirety. Patience will reveal the knowledge you seek at the time you need it within these pages.

  By now you know that this town isn’t a town, but a lycan pack, and within it are your mates. If I’m not here to tell you this, it is because I’m gone, and for that I am sorrier than anything in this world and the next can ever express.

  For now, trust in the men who call you theirs. Know that your curse isn’t a curse but something so much more that took your mother and me a decade to uncover.

  You are the wolves’ salvation, a bargain made in blood long ago by your ancestors and the gods. For now, know that you are safe with your mates.

  Have patience that you will understand what you need to know as time progresses. Don’t fear this room, it is a last resort to everything.

  Love,

  Dad

  I toss the letter away, its words revealing nothing and everything all at once. Again, I flick through the journal, its words invisible. My bones creak as I stand and toss the damn thing back in the drawer. With a simple flick of my wrist, it closes, and I turn to head out of the sterile room. Nothing exists there right now but heartache and the need to be something other than the damsel I am.

  I’m not ready for that, and I doubt I ever will be.

  Opening the door, I flick the light off, the fluorescent bulb quieting its incessant buzzing. Beyond the room the air kicks on, chilling my skin and soul. I turn and gaze out at the wall of windows where the sun streams inside in little arcs. Spinning around, I stomp to the bedrooms down here.

  Dad knew, he knew these wolves were my mates. I flip open the first door, finding two twin beds in a sizeable room. Dressers sit at the ends, facing each other, while a lone basement window peeks out to the yard beyond. No sheets dress the beds, in fact the entire room holds a barren quality. I turn around and open the opposing door to view a room mirroring the other.

  Finally, I open the last door, finding a lone king-sized bed and another dresser probably built by my father’s hands.

  Anger infuses my veins as I slam the door and stomp up the steps to my own room and into the shower beyond. I finally strip out of my kimono and night set, my legs a sticky reminder of this morning’s activities.

  A flush spreads over my skin at just the thought of them. My body aches for them, for their touch, and the need I feel inside that burns.

  Until I remember that my father planned this entire scenario. I pause.

  There are five beds downstairs. Not four. I have four mates. Not five. Groaning, I lay my face in my hands. How will I survive this?

  I step into the shower, turning the spray on to hot. Except icy water prickles my skin, causing me to shiver as I sink to the porcelain below. Ever so slowly, the water turns scalding, burning away my desire and emotion, leaving me raw and exposed.

  Lycans exist. That much I could handle. Can handle. A part of me always believed in the stories of lore, those told around campfires, of creatures that haunted the world, and yet the world is filled with humans, and the Earth is full of spaces both charted and uncharted. Yet each country held a different belief, a slightly different story, though the characters were always the same. Similar heroes with different names.

  Could all of these creatures really survive unseen by humans? Or did we only see what we wanted to?

  If I’m being honest with myself, it isn’t the lycans that trip me up. They said the goddess Selene blessed them. My mind just glossed over that conversation in the woods with Christian. Thinking he was full of shit and that lycans were just evolution at play.

  But seeing the weapons. Their labels. Dad didn’t just tell stories, he believed in them. He believed in the fanciful fables he wove. He believed while I dismissed them as nothing more than fairy tales. I’d often volunteer at the local library not to read children’s books, but to tell Dad’s stories to the kids and encourage them to always wonder, always ask questions.

  Still, my heart breaks and splinters. I’m nothing more than a human living in a world of monsters. More than I could ever fathom existed. Lycans are but one small fraction of the world whose door lies open in wait for me. I’m not strong. I can’t fight, and the only thing I ever run after are doughnuts and pastries, and perhaps small children at the school.

  I’m a fool to think I can dive in and wrap my mind around everything. No matter how much I want to. I don’t think I can do it. Heart breaking, I turn the water off and climb out of the tub. Unwashed and still dirty, I wrap the fluffy towel around my body and pad to my room where I plop on my bed.

  The silky sheets caress my skin like a lover, the only lover I’ll ever be about to hold, because even if I leave, I won’t ever forget about the men who long to call me their own.

  The military march echoes in my room, and I answer the phone mindlessly. “Yep?”

  “Snap out of it.”

  I sigh, letting my breath crackle over the line. “Ash?”

  “Who else? Pepper? She can’t even remember where she left her shoes this morning!” The two of them share a small, two-bedroom apartment. Ash isn’t home half the time anyway, which works out well for the both of them. Though I’m not sure how they deal with each other.

  And what? I’m supposed to live with four guys? Five if I count the beds. Still, I chuckle for propriety’s sake.

  “Did Nessa tell you to call?”

  “Who else? She’s beginning to freak me out. She’s been spacing out more and more. Pepper and I are making sure one of us is with her at all times.” I hear the worry in her voice and make a mental note to listen a little closer the next time I see her.

  Silence slips between us, until I blurt out, “Did you know?” I cut through the bullshit, jumping right into the shitstorm I found myself in.

  “I left you a gun with silver bullets, you tell me.”

  “How?” No voice crack. See? I’m moderately strong.

  “My team came across some questionable things during deployment. Fucked me up for days.” She heaves a sigh, and I can almost picture her wrapping a curl around her fingers. “I came back, and long story short, I broke my silence to Uncle Allen who ended up getting me on the supernatural team. Bean, they swore me to secrecy.”

  “Yet you’re telling me now.”

  “Because you know, and I can tell by your voice it’s breaking you down.” Her soft tone gets through to me, the sense of home drifting over the line. If I close my eyes, I can smell the scent of chocolate chip cookies baking and meatballs in the pot.

  “What was the bargain made in blood?” Standing, I make my way over to the circular window, peering into the forest below. In here, I can’t hear the sounds of the forest outside, I wouldn’t even know if trouble was on its way. Dad had to have something set up for that.

  “You sure you are ready for this?”

  “Spill it, I have four mates I’ve been resisting, and Dad left a letter that I can trust them. But it isn’t just that—”

  “You n
eed them like the air you need to breathe. What was it like, Bean?” she questions softly.

  “What was what like?”

  “Fate’s call.”

  “Is that what you call it? They called it a mating call, and for the record, I called Dr. Kemp and told her I had a heart attack. It hurt like hell.”

  “Oh.” That one word holds a world of disappointment. A story she may not tell me, not yet at least.

  “I’m guessing you know about that too?” I shake my head, feeling out of the loop. “Spill it.”

  “As the story goes, as Grandma tells it.”

  “Whoa. What the hell? Grandma too?”

  “Yes, now hush and listen. Our blood line traces back centuries. No one knew of this until your parents went digging where no one looked for generations. Your mom didn’t want to lose your dad. She found ancestors with multiple husbands, which made no sense. Polygamous households weren’t common then. She dug more and found the households with multiple members died of old age, whereas those without did not. She brought this information to Grandma, who doesn’t know much, only telling us we were goddess blessed.”

  “More like goddess cursed.”

  “See, that’s just it. From what I’ve discovered, we were never meant for human men. Those ancestors lived long lives, Bean, I’m talking hundreds of years. We thought it was a glitch. You never thought it questionable that we are all girls? Despite the father determining sex of a baby?”

  “No...” I honestly didn’t. I rub my forehead as a flicker of hope flares to live inside me. “Ash, are you telling me I can have them?” Which sounds ridiculous, but at the same time not.

  “You felt the call of fate. We still don’t completely understand what it all means, but you and those wolves, you guys are the kind of forever most people only dream of.”

  I almost hang up the phone and run off to find them, but I have more questions, one very important one. “What about the gods?”

  Her sharp intake of breath tells me that the guys are right to question me and what I know. “From what I know, they haven’t walked the earth in a very, very long time.”