Love Beyond Oceans
Blurb
Marina awakes with no memories of her life to discover she's a prisoner of the Outsiders. Her captors think she's one of them and she should be helping them with an eternal war, waged over lifetimes and dimensions. She wants her freedom, yet she also needs to know why Drew gazes at her with such heat in his eyes.
Drew runs from his destiny and Marina for as long as he can. She won't believe him, but he does it to protect her from the evil inside of him, a connection to a demon who wants to destroy the Outsiders. Now, he has no choice but to embrace his destiny with Marina. War has come to their doorstep. The signs have signaled. And battle waits for no one.
Fireborn Publishing Copyright Statement
Love Beyond Oceans
Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Royce
eBook ISBN: 978-1-941984-46-8
First eBook Publication: October 2015
Cover Artist: Syneca Featherstone
Editor: Monti Shalosky
Logo copyright © 2014 by Fireborn Publishing and Allison Cassatta
Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.
This book is written in US English.
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Chapter One
Water dripped in the cursed rooms of the caves her captors called home. Over and over again. Marina Moore knew because the incessant rhythm was present in her every waking moment. Her captors, who called themselves the Outsiders, were trying to make the old, converted rooms inside the hellish, dark hole homier.
How could they?
A cave was a cave was a cave.
She reclined on the horribly uncomfortable ottoman and stared at the walls, her only activity since there was nothing else for her to do.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
No life. No memory. No real existence. A magical blast had erased her memory. The freaks holding her said the attack was the cause. How would she know any different? In the hours alone, she tried to fill in the blank spots—maybe they'd kidnapped her. Maybe she'd been born in the cave. Maybe. Was anyone searching for her? Waiting? Hoping? Or had their "magical assault" erased her from their nebulous lives, too?
A knock on the door interrupted her nothingness and she groaned. Why did they bother with the knocking when they came in regardless of whether she said yes or no? "What?"
The wooden panel door swung open with a bang, admitting the man who called himself Leonardo. He was tall, with glasses, and dark brown hair. As far as she'd gathered, he was in charge. There were lots of couples in the group but Leonardo wasn't in one of them. Yet when he spoke, everyone jumped.
He stared at her for a second without speaking. "You didn't come to dinner."
"Come to drag me?"
He stepped farther into her private hell. "It's over now."
She shrugged. The food in the caves was so disgusting it seemed a safer idea not to eat. The Outsiders might be magical beings, but they couldn't prepare a meal to save their lives. Of course, Marina had no idea if she possessed cooking skills either. Not only had she lost her memories, she had no clue what skills she had or the opportunity to discover them in the gloomy, walled pit where she existed.
"I'm not hungry and I'd rather not get food poisoning." She swung her feet down to the floor, then rose. For whatever reason, she wanted to face her nemesis on solid ground. She harbored no illusions about the man before her, he was not friendly. She suppressed a shiver when she looked at him. Fear made her want to throw something.
Leonardo shook his head. "For six months I've been waiting for you to come back. You can't possibly know how much we all miss you and yet it seems to be getting worse, doesn't it? Less and less of the Marina I grew up with shows in you."
"You're not making any God damned sense." And she'd had enough of his cryptic remarks. "You have to let me go. I won't tell anyone you had me or where I am. I couldn't even if I wanted to since I'm not entirely sure, and what I do remember couldn't possibly have happened."
Floating through the air, being in one place and then suddenly another…
"Marina…"
A smack on the wall by a fist and Drew Dubowski, tall, broad shouldered, and brown-haired with blue-like-the-ocean eyes, stormed into the room. Unlike Leonardo he didn't knock and hadn't the entire time she'd been held captive.
He stalked to Leonardo and poked him in the shoulder with his pointer finger. "I thought I told you to leave her alone."
"I don't now nor have I ever taken orders from you." Leonardo snarled.
They were like animals and she didn't want to be in the cage with them when they erupted. She took a step back, only where was she going to go? If violence erupted, she'd definitely be caught in the cross fire.
Drew shoved at Leonardo's shoulder. "Where she is concerned, consider me the last word on the subject."
Leonardo pushed Drew backwards; he faltered a step before he pushed back. "We have been doing this your way for six months. She isn't getting better and everything is about to fall apart."
Marina's mouth went dry as she watched the men posture and snarl. Leonardo stood impressive, tall and sturdy, yet it was Drew who made her mouth go dry. Every time she saw him she had the same thought, he really was the most beautiful man. She blinked. Fixating on one of her kidnappers? Was that normal?
"I am aware what the stakes are, you pompous piece of shit." Drew narrowed his eyes. "No one knows better than me what we lost."
Leonardo laughed, a hard cold sound. "I've lost my best friend because you didn't want her. Again and again you threw her away and I had to watch because we're stuck in this system where we have no choice but to take the cards drawn for us. You never deserved her, and in a fairer world she'd have done loads better than you."
Marina's body went cold. What did they mean? And why did she care? None of what they said could possibly be real. They were full of shit; every word they spoke had to be a lie. Still, Leonardo's words made her…sad. She pushed down the emotion. Weakness and sadness couldn't have a place in her life.
"I couldn't agree with you more." Some of the tension left Drew's shoulders. "I've never been worth the ground she walked on, which is why I stayed away. And would have continued doing so if you had adequately protected her."
"Boys." Charma, a blonde-haired woman, walked into the room with her hands on her hips.
She was followed, as she always was, by an equally platinum blond Jason. Charma—pronounced Karma, Marina had been informed, but spelled with a
Ch
, as if Marina cared either way—and Jason were together in some weird, fixated soul mates sort of a way.
Jason laughed. "You two are a sight. Chomping at the bit to get into it in here when the enemy is out there. Pounding on our wards, which are not going to hold. We're royally fucked. We have nowhere left to flee. And I can tell you've raised the poor girl's blood pressure. Leonardo, get out."
"Why am I in trouble here? I came in to talk to her."
"You know why." Charma was a small woman, at least four inches tinier than Marina's middle-sized frame. Yet, she didn't back down from getting in between Drew and Leonardo. "Marina doesn't belong to you, any more than I do. You're our leader, we count on you. So go figure out how to make our wards stronger when the one person who can strengthen them is unavailable, and leave her with the person whose soul she was made for. Whether you like him or not."
Leonardo clenched his fists and slammed his way out of the room, banging the door closed as he left. For a minute, no one moved and then, seemingly out of nowhere, Jason laughed. A loud, hearty sound started low and grew until he'd doubled over from his hysteria.
"Jase?" Charma rushed to his side. "You okay?"
"No." He shook his head, gasping for breath. "I can't stop."
Drew jolted to Marina's side. "Shit. We're under attack. I can see it. Can you?" He looked at her so expectantly she wished she could actually do what he wanted.
"I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."
Drew nodded, his eyes hooding over. "Of course not. Charma, pull Jason out of this room. It should relieve things. The assault isn't person specific but location. They're searching, likely for her. I don't know why it hit Jason but we're not losing our healer to this crap today."
Charma pushed on the gasping Jason until she made it in the hall as Drew grabbed Marina's hand. His fingers were callused, his grip strong. She stared down at their joined hands and the room spun as a feeling of déjà vu assaulted her.
"You okay?" Drew pulled her from her makeshift bedroom into the hallway.
"I—" She never got to answer.
