Heart of the Warrior
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
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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
Dedication
To the two of you. May you have no more secrets and find
happiness forever.
Your story touched me.
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.
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, his 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.
