Heart of the Warrior Read online

  All the King's Men

  Book 2

  Heart of the Warrior

  AKM Heart of the Warrior

  Published by Phoenix Press

  Copyright 2012 by Donya Lynne

  For sales information please contact Donya Lynne

  on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/AuthorDonyaLynne

  or by email: [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or author. Requests for permission to copy part of this work for use in an educational environment may be directed to the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. References to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or persons or locales, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Art: Reese Dante http://www.reesedante.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About the Author

  Books by Donya Lynne

  Connect with Donya Lynne

  Dedication

  To the two of you. May you have no more secrets and find happiness forever.

  Your story touched me.

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost, thank you to my readers. You are the reason why I write. You are why I strive to create an experience with my stories. I don't write for me. I write for you. If I'm not giving you an experience, I'm not doing my job. Please keep your feedback coming.

  Thanks again to Reese Dante, cover artist extraordinaire, for another great cover. I hope we make many more beautiful covers together.

  To Donya's Dames, my new Street Team helping to spread the word about my novels: Thank you for your efforts and continued support. A special thank you to Kelly and my assistant, Carla, for keeping everything organized and managing the behind-the-scenes action.

  Once again, thank you to my editor, Laura, and to my wonderful beta readers, Em, Toni, Laura, and Vicky. These stories wouldn't be what they are without your awesome, honest feedback. You make me better than I can be by myself.

  To all you bloggers and book reviewers: Thank you for taking your valuable time to host me, promote me, and review my books. You all amaze me with your undying passion for all things books, as well as with your incredible blogs and websites.

  A special thank you to Jowanna. What a wonderful addition to my life you have been. You're such a joy, and I love your drive for knowledge and blunt honesty. RT next year. You. Me. A car. And lots of books. LOL.

  To all of you I've met since my first book came out: I'm so pleased I've met you all and can't wait to learn more about you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Crack!

  The beam of wood splintered as it slammed into Severin’s side and flung him against the dirty brick wall before he could catch himself. His shoulder protested and pain shot down his arm and across his upper back. Wincing, he pushed away from the wall and met the dreck head-on as the fucker came at him again.

  But before the blue-toned shifter could repeat his Babe Ruth imitation and hit a home run on Sev's face, he leveled the dreck with a flying roundhouse worthy of the Ultimate Fight Club.

  "Fucker!" With his fists up, Sev stalked after the dreck like he was Mr. T in Rocky, going in for the knockout punch as the guy stumbled backward and dropped his pansy-assed piece of useless wood.

  A volley of fists flew back and forth between them, but the dreck was no match for Sev. With several lifetimes' worth of hand-to-hand combat training, few opponents could rival him in a fight, and he landed more hits than he took.

  But Sev had one other benefit going for him, and when the dreck pulled out a gun and fired off two quick rounds, Sev sucked in his breath. The bullets pierced his jacket then bounced off his skin.

  As in, pinball-off-the-bumper bounced!

  Sev jolted backward from the impact and cursed as he poked his finger through the hole in his jacket. Fucker! This was his favorite jacket.

  His angry glare shot to the dreck, and he almost laughed, instantly forgetting about his wardrobe malfunction. The look on the dreck's face was priceless, all wide eyes and open-mouthed shock.

  "Didn’t know I could do that, did you?" Sev grabbed the asshole’s long, blue-black hair and jerked back his head.

  "But you…you’re a…you’re not—"

  "A pregnant, female dreck? Yeah, I get that." Sev sneered, showing fang. "But my mom was."

  The dreck's blue-toned fist flew at Severin and he caught it mid-air then flipped the dreck with a violent flick of his wrist.

  "Ah, that looked painful. Did it hurt?" Sev looked down at the drug dealing dreck lying on the damp pavement. "Here, let me help." He cocked back his arm, lunged down, and decked the guy into unconsciousness.

  "As I was saying earlier, asshole, stop or I’ll fuck you up."

  He quickly glanced over his shoulder to make sure Malek hadn’t been around to see his force field impersonation then dove into the dreck’s thoughts and pulled out anything related to his Iron Man routine. Sev didn’t need the asshole shifter blowing his iron skin secret to Malek or the others back at AKM. That would lead to complicated questions. And sure as shit, the dreck would have loved to spill Sev's secret to his teammates about exactly what kind of mixed blood coursed through his veins.

  Yeah, I ain't no human mix. Sev clapped his hands together in dust-off fashion and stood up.

  Good ol' Dad had been a full-on, full-blood, virile vampire. Extremely powerful. And a jackass. Sev had only met his father once, but the meeting had left an impression when the two had nearly beaten each other to death.

  Centuries ago, Daddy-o had raped Sev's mother, a full-blood dreck named Felice, creating Severin in a harsh moment of suffering. Given how much love wasn't shared between the two races, female drecks usually killed themselves after a vampire raped them and conception resulted, but Sev’s mother had refused. She had tried for centuries to have a baby, and all attempts with one of her own kind had resulted in failure. So, even though Sev's conception had been violent and at the hands of a vampire, Felice protected Severin and loved him as her cherished young right from the start.

  As for what was referred to as iron skin, nature had granted female drecks, who struggled to conceive in the first place, a protective mechanism for when they did: Impenetrable skin. After birth, the mother maintained her iron skin for a few years, as did the offspring. This ensured the young could develop until it was able to take care of itself.

  In full-blood drecks, this trait eventually faded away, but Sev’s mixed blood had misfired as he'd matured past the usual age when iron skin began to diminish. Instead, hi
s mixed genes had mutated as all half-breeds' genes did, and rather than fade away, his iron skin became a trait he could turn on and off at will. It was the gift of his mixed blood.

  But it was also a curse. If anyone found out he was half dreck, it could destroy his life, so he kept his special ability a tightly-guarded secret. The war between the drecks and vampires had been over for a long time, but that didn't mean the two races got along. Huh-uh, no way. It just meant they barely tolerated each other on a good day.

  But lucky vampires, they got the task of enforcing the peace between the two races, both because they were genetically superior and because of King Bain's contribution to the truce: All the King's Men Security. AKM was an enforcement agency that had evolved from policing drecks to working alongside humans in military ops, security details, and everything in between.

  Where did that leave Sev? Was he supposed to police his own self? Was his vampire side supposed to kick his dreck side's ass every once in a while for good measure? And if his dreck lineage was discovered, would that be considered a conflict of interest that would require his removal as an enforcer from AKM? The dilemma was enough of a reason to keep his shit hush-hush.

  Sev sighed and stepped back from the dreck at his feet and leaned against the alley wall. This was what he both loved and hated about patrolling Chicago’s South Side. Drecks congregated here like flies on shit. Sev hated it because South Side patrols weren’t usually so exciting and mostly ended with a lot of tense staring and posturing that felt like foreplay with no score. But when he scored on the South Side, he scored big, and that's what he loved. In two months at AKM, this was Sev's third South Side brawl, and his first cobalt bust. You hardly got shit like this on the North Side, where even the drecks acted more civilized.

  He looked at the unconscious dreck who had shifted back to his human form: Brown hair, pale skin, and pink lips. Just like any number of humans Sev came in contact with every day. In their real form, drecks were blue. Blue skin, blue lips, blue-black hair, blue blood. Damn, they even smelled blue if blue had a smell.

  Funny, you would think they would remain in their natural state when unconscious, but since a dreck's natural tendency was to remain hidden within a disguise, falling unconscious rendered them back to that disguised form rather than their natural form. Remaining in their blue state, as some called it, required a conscious effort.

  When was the last time his mother had shifted to blue? He couldn't remember, but then she didn't like to advertise what she was. She was different from the majority of drecks and kept her identity on the down-low. The fact that his mother was a dreck made his line of work all the more ironic. Policing that which he was in his blood had the trappings of a moral dilemma, but Sev didn't think of it like that. Like a human policeman, Sev thought of his job as putting the bad guys away to save the innocent. It didn't matter what race they were. Being dreck had nothing to do with it. If you broke the law, you got punished. Dreck, human, vampire, or otherwise.

  Exhilaration flowed through his muscles from the unexpected fight he and Malek had lucked into tonight. Sev lived for action like this. It made his insides all sizzly and warm, even if his exterior was a disheveled mess.

  Case in point, strands of his long, blond hair fell over his eyes, loose from his ponytail, so he took a second to pull the elastic tie off then re-tie it.

  "Nice work, Sev."

  Severin turned to see Malek leading a cuffed dreck back into the alley.

  "Thanks." He finished pulling back his hair.

  "I thought I heard gunshots. You okay?"

  Sev hid the hole in his jacket. "Yep. Fucker’s aim was worse than his judgment."

  He and Malek had stumbled on these two selling cobalt to a couple of vampires. The vamps – two females – got away, but not the drecks.

  Sev leaned over and grabbed the unconscious dreck by the collar and yanked him up then slapped him back to the land of the lucid.

  "Who were you selling to?" he said.

  The dreck sneered, but in its human form, the gesture didn’t look as sinister as it would have in his blue-toned shifted form. "Fuck you, vampire."

  "Wrong answer." Sev punched him in the gut and the dreck doubled over.

  "Sev!" Malek grabbed his arm. "Forget it. Let’s just take them in."

  With a scowl, Sev looked between the two drecks then back at Malek, whose long, jet-black hair hung loose to his his shoulders and blew over his face. He had a bit of a shiner around his left eye. Looked like Malek had scuffled with his catch, too.

  "I’m going after those two vampires," he said.

  "They’re long gone. Don’t bother."

  "No, I want to know who they are."

  Cobalt consumption was growing out of hand in the vampire community, jeopardizing the truce between the drecks and vampires even further. Drecks had originally manufactured cobalt in the mid-80s as a designer drug for humans, which was bad enough, but unlike most human recreational drugs, cobalt actually affected vampires. It was a powerful drug and highly addictive. It hadn't taken long for vampires in need of recreational intoxication to figure out cobalt would succeed in giving them a higher high where cocaine, heroin, and meth had failed, and now it was becoming an epidemic.

  After slapping cuffs on the dreck, he shoved him toward Malek.

  "You can wait here or go back. It’s up to you, but I won’t be gone long. I just want to see if I can track them and find out who they are."

  "Sev—"

  But Sev was already dematerializing into ether. Some mixed-blood day walkers couldn’t make like a mist, but he could. He was thankful for that. Going ethereal had its advantages. At least his asshole father had given him something useful.

  He tracked the trail of the two vampires through the back alleys and out to the street. A few blocks later, the trail weakened where they had gotten into a car and driven off. In a flash, he zipped after the faint, lingering trail until it led him to a flying-by-the-seat-of-its-pants Jaguar XKR-S convertible with the top down.

  Yes, those girls were flying high. One of the effects of cobalt was heat, and on a cold mid-March night in Chicago, no one put the top down and went for a spin unless they were seriously tripping.

  As he landed in the car behind the two girls and rested his hands on the headrests of their seats, he got the sense these weren’t regular females. These were the daughters of vampires with privilege.

  "Nice car," he said.

  The one who was driving screamed and swerved, and Sev nearly careened over the side.

  "Whoa! Eyes on the road, sweets. Better yet, pull over."

  She was already slamming on the brakes and Sev flew forward between them, throwing out his right hand just in time to stop himself from smashing into the dash and windshield.

  "Fuck!" He pushed back and sat up as the car finally stopped on the side of the road. "Damn it, female! Where did you learn how to drive?"

  The two girls were drenched in sweat, hands trembling, eyes wide like they were seeing rainbows and unicorns prancing in the street in front of them. Then the driver turned and looked at him.

  "Who the fuck are you? What do you want? My father will have you killed if you hurt me." Her threat rattled and slurred out of her, but she held her head high. Sev got the sense she was a strong vampire, highly intelligent and feisty, as well as rich as sin.

  Gold hoops hung from her ears – the real shit, not the gold-plated stuff – and a diamond and ruby brooch adorned the left breast of her short-sleeved, pink angora sweater, which she filled out nicely with ample breasts. If Sev had been a straight male, he would have been impressed to distraction. Luckily for him, he didn't have to worry about that. He was one hundred percent into guys. Well, one guy in particular, but this wasn't the time to think about Arion.

  A mink coat lay strewn over the back seat. The driver's blonde friend wore even more high-dollar bling, and the suede coat at her feet looked like it had set her back a good three thousand dollars. Good thing money didn’t inti
midate Sev. At least, not usually. These females were pushing the limits of his intimidometer, though.

  "And just who might your father be?" Sev tapped the driver's seat headrest as he eyed her. "And I wonder how he would feel if he knew you were buying cobalt from a dreck on the South Side. Because it’s obvious you’re a North Sider with this swank-ass car and all the fancy rocks."

  The female’s lip quivered and Sev wasn’t sure if she was angry or just tripping off the cobalt, but he got the feeling it was a little of both and that she didn’t want to reveal who her father was. He could see her mental processes sorting through the drugged haze in her brain as if she was trying to assimilate what was real and what was drug-enhanced so she didn't say anything incriminating.

  "Forget it," she said. "Just tell me what you want. You want money? I can pay you. Or…I can…I can give you a blow job." Her voice wavered nervously. "Will that make you forget you saw us? I can do that."

  Sev got the distinct impression that she had never given a blow job in her life, so offering one to him showed just how desperate she was. Her friend nodded in agreement, and Sev got the same impression about her. These girls were young and untouched sexually. Yeah, daughters of privilege – progeny of members of the king's council, no doubt. That would explain their apparently intact virtue. Members of the king's council tended to live by the old ways, which included keeping their daughters chaste and marrying them off to approved suitors.

  Still, both females reached for his belt.

  Sev grabbed their wrists and batted them away. "Stop! Hell no. I’m not into bribes, Barbie. You’re not my type, anyway." Hell, they weren’t even his gender.

  Sev's mind shot unwittingly to Arion again. Ari was another member of Sev's enforcement team, and just the thought of him made Sev's heart skip a beat.

  No, better not go there, Sev ol’ boy. Not now. Head in the game, head on your job. You can think about Ari and that heartache later.

  The busty brunette behind the wheel huffed and sat back in her seat, dejected. Her blonde friend did likewise, avoiding his gaze.