Tangled Fates (3 page)

Annis was around, he never said anything. The other Warriors would lock him away if he started

talking to his dead mate, who might or might not be real. Maybe he was finally losing his shit

and his brain had blown a gasket, because no one else seemed to acknowledge she was there,

even Rayner, who could see spirits caught between life and death. Maybe the guilt he felt for his

infidelity incarnated her, and every time he felt his desires for Annis surface, Mia showed up to

keep him in check. A deep, gut-wrenching sadness had swept through him, and his eyes stung as

he watched the red-rose smoke swirl.

Tearing his gaze away, he had taken a deep breath. He channeled his energy and put it

into Annis’s body, once again surprised by what he found there. He had healed her once before,

and the savagery her body had been through was heart wrenching.

She had been raped repeatedly, the scars in her pelvic area substantial, and Cohen could

only guess the government doctor, who had gotten his hands on her after her craft had crashed to

Earth, was the culprit. It was simple guessing and speculation. He couldn’t imagine one of his

own doing something so awful to a female, as SR44 males tended to love and cherish females.

Human men, not so much. On any night he could turn on the news and hear about some jack-off

arrested for hurting a female. Human men were a step above cockroaches, as far as Cohen was

concerned, and a cockroach was more likeable that most human men he had met.

Annis’s eyes also held long, slim scars consistent with a needle penetrating the delicate

flesh.

He’d tried to feel pity for her, but he didn’t. Only more hate, and that brought more guilt

that he couldn’t feel compassion for another.

Quickly, he’d mended her shoulder, stood, and headed back to his quarters without

another word.

“Cohen?” Noah said, bringing him back to the present. “Are you hearing me, my man?”

Cohen looked around the table, all eyes on him. He nodded.

Look at him going all Pinocchio on Noah.

Annis looked at him. He wanted to tear his gaze away, but he couldn’t. Her golden eyes

held his stare, and she didn’t back down. This only angered him more and made him want to

break something or hit someone. Finally, she looked away when Blake said something to her.

She laughed and gently touched his arm.

Mia appeared behind her.

He hated Annis with every fiber of his being. He despised her beauty and her pleasant

disposition. He loathed the sound of her deep, throaty laugh. There were so many things he

disliked about her, and he didn’t know which he hated more. She had put through hell; her body

had been defiled, used, and possibly studied if he was right about the doctor being the

perpetrator, yet she sat across the table from him able to laugh.

And there was the fact that he simply wanted her.

He knew he didn’t really hate Annis, but he hated everything that she was, which in turn,

was everything that he wasn’t.

The hate writhed and twisted within like an angry serpent, threatening to lash out. He

couldn’t direct it inward or he would be likely to slit his own throat, so his target was Annis.

He inhaled deeply, trying to contain it. If she had been through so much and continued to

live, why the fuck couldn’t he move on? Why was he devastated over losing his
lovren
who he

hadn’t seen in over two hundred years? What made the very pretty Annis so strong? What was

she spiking her orange juice with every morning that gave her the edge over him? Why was she

living and he wasn’t? Was it because he was an SR44 male without his mate, or was he was just

a pussy?

“What do you think about that plan, Cohen?” Noah said.

Cohen tore his gaze from Annis and Mia and focused on Noah. He hadn’t heard a word

of what had been said. “Great.”

There was silence as Noah glared at him.

“I need a little more input, Cohen. We’re all in this together.”

“Solid. Fucking fantastic. My boxers are in a bunch just thinking about it.”

Cohen clamped his jaw shut before he said more. He hated the person he had become. He

was a miserable son of a bitch who had broken his mating vows. He was physically attracted to a

female he could not have, a female he didn’t want to desire. A female who brought out the very

worst in him, because she reminded him of when honor, integrity, and strength flowed through

him, not guilt, sadness, and hate.

But the fact of the matter was that he didn’t care about the plan. He would do what he

was told to do. He would heal who needed to be healed, and he hoped that it kept him far, far

away from Annis, no matter how close he wanted to be.

Chapter 3

Annis turned toward what she thought were the windows. She had seen airplanes before

and noted that they had windows on both sides of the tube, but she had no idea if this particular

plane had any. She was completely blind in the daylight hours due to the defective body she had

been given when leaving SR44. How a member of the military received a defective body, she

didn’t understand. Honestly, as a Warrior, she should have been given a human body of

perfection that was usable at all times, but it was what it was. There was nothing that could be

done about it.

She wondered what the sky looked like during the day. She had been told it was blue, but

she wondered what shade of blue. She had looked at pictures, but she also knew that pictures

sometimes didn’t do the real thing justice. How she would love to look up at the large, blue mass

laced with white, puffy clouds and soaring birds spreading their wings, riding the winds.

A few hours ago, she had boarded this small plane headed for New York with Blake. He

sat across the aisle from her and said he would be watching a movie with someone named James

Bond in it. She couldn’t hear the dialogue in the movie, so she guessed he had plugged in some

earphones.

“High action, sexy women. Shaken, not stirred,” was the way he described it. She loved a

good action flick as much as the next Warrior, but today she was glad to be alone with her

thoughts.

Besides, it was daytime and she couldn’t see a blessed thing.

But,
whatever,
as many of the Warriors said. Or
nut-up and deal with it
. Or many other

colorful phrases they tossed around.

She had been living in the silo for ten months with the Six Saviors and their mates. She

had experienced Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, and it was almost time for those

holidays again. Smiling, she remembered the season fondly. The huge feasts had engorged her

belly, the laughter of what seemed like a potential family had bathed her soul in the warmth that

only a true family could.

Yet, she still felt so alone.

As a Warrior, she really had nothing in common with the females of the house, but she

found herself bonding with them despite this. They were all kind, funny, and embraced her even

though they really didn’t know the first thing about hand-to-hand fighting, knives, or guns. Faith

knew a little, and she was very proficient with a gun, but it wasn’t a passion of hers as it was to

Annis. She would much rather be down in the gym with the other Warriors grappling, working

with knives, or lifting weights. She also enjoyed the shooting range they visited out in the desert

with flashlights in the dead of the night.

However, her daytime activities were fairly limited because of her non-functioning eyes.

It had been Blake who suggested that she try a little hand-to-hand during the day, and after she

got over the initial awkwardness of it and applied herself, she had found the exercise improved

the use of the rest of her senses. Her hearing became more acute, and she developed what Blake

had referred to as a sixth sense. It was almost as if she established some type of radar and was

aware when another Warrior was in striking distance.

Not that they had always been comfortable working with her, and they really weren’t

now. They said they were okay with going one-on-one with her, but she sensed otherwise. No,

the SR44 Warriors were a little hesitant and shy, yet Blake jumped right in. She understood the

Warriors’ hesitancy, as they were from the era where a female Warrior was unheard of.

Yes, all had been a little wary of her, especially Cohen. She often caught him glaring at

her, his eyes shining with stark hate. She had spent hours going over their few interactions to see

what she could have done to produce such disdain from him, and she always came up with

absolutely nothing. She was always polite to him, offered him a smile, and she’d even tried a

little small talk every now and then. But she was only met with short answers and, recently, that

hateful glare. After a while she just accepted that those were his feelings for her.

It was a shame she found his human form so attractive. His dark hair hung on his

forehead, and he stood about five inches taller than her, which would put him at about six foot

five. His body was large and brawny, and the violet purple of his eyes, which was also the same

color of his SR44 form, was the most beautiful shade of purple she had ever seen. Yes, physically, he was the by far the most appealing male she had ever laid eyes on. Just thinking of

him made her cheeks burn.

Eventually, most of the Warriors got past her breasts and long hair and realized she was

formidable opponent. She was reluctantly invited to join their training sessions. No, she wasn’t

as big, nor was she as strong as them, but she could hold her own, especially with a knife. It

seemed as if on some level the Warriors had accepted her, or at least respected her skills.

She had been one of the first females to be allowed into the military on SR44. Two

hundred years after the Royal Congress had proclaimed the Six Saviors gone forever, the people

of SR44 had gone into mourning. Each abode had hung the flag that consisted of each Warrior’s

SR44 form: orange, yellow, green, purple, red, and blue. The flags had hung for ten years, as was

custom. When the mourning period ended, Annis had petitioned to join the military.

She found that the structure of the military, as well as the hard training and conditioning,

was just what she needed to escape from her youth and her family.

As the youngest of five, Annis had come from what humans would describe as a severely

dysfunctional family. It was always easy to pick on the young or the weakest, and she was the

target of her four older siblings, especially with a mother who was never around. Their
moha

would disappear for days on end, leaving them to fend for themselves, and Annis was often

hungry without a lick of food in sight. She had learned that if she kept silent, if she stayed out of

the way, her siblings tended to ignore her. Once she was old enough to get around by herself, she

was on her own, and happy about it.

She would wander the streets, minding her own business. She spent most of her time

away from their humble abode in the city, exploring the streets and what her world had to offer.

It was easy for her to blend into the cityscape, as her golden, smoky form was almost the exact

hue as the high golden buildings that made up SR44 cities. She was ignored and left alone, and

that was the way she liked it.

Annis and her siblings had never received an education. They were part of the underbelly

of SR44, the dirt-poor and forgotten. Her mother had been mated for a short time, which

produced the two oldest children. Annis did not know her father. The male, who fathered the two

oldest, had run away to become a Forest Dweller and was never seen or heard from again.

One day, as she walked the streets, she witnessed a group of military getting into a craft

to go to the Colony to train. Some of the soldiers expressed their fears of going to the Colony,

which was where the Colonists were kept. She cringed when she heard stories about the Colony

being a dark, cold, gray place, devoid of any of the magnificent colors that they enjoyed on

SR44. SR44ians also enjoyed the time of twilight many hours of their day, and the temperature

was always mildly warm.

As the military males marched in their lines, their smoky forms seemed to move as one,

and she knew she wanted to be a part of that. There was a sense of belonging and purpose that

the males held, and she thought of her own situation. As a female who felt truly alone, she felt

the military offered her the opportunity of being a part of something.

Blake laughed, starling her. She reflected on her childhood, realizing that the reason she

had volunteered to go after this monster, Susan Kresper, was because she wanted to help the

children this woman was abusing. She would be diving into the underbelly of Earth, into the

sordid cesspool, which was the equivalent of where she had grown up. She remembered her

childhood with clarity, but she was strong and would stand up to the tyranny and mistreatment of

the young. In fact, she couldn’t wait to get her hands around that woman’s neck.

A small smile tugged at her mouth.

“Hot damn. That’s what I’m talking about,” Blake said from the seat next to her.

The small smile turned into a full-on grin. She had absolutely no idea what Blake was

talking about, but he was terribly funny.