Warrior Blind

Warrior Blind

Book Twelve in the Dardanos, Co. Series

Calle J. Brookes

Other Titles

By

Calle J. Brookes

Paranormal

Dardanos, Co.

The Blood King

Awakening the Demon’s Queen

The Healer’s Heart

Once Wolf Bitten

Live or Die

The Seer’s Strength

The Warrior’s Woman

The Wolf’s Redemption

A Warrior’s Quest

The Wolf God & His Mate

Out of the Darkness

Warrior Blind

Dardanos, Co: The Adrastos

The Outcast

Romantic Suspense

Watching

Second Chances

Hunting

Running

Redeeming

Coming Soon

Revealing (PAVAD)

Calle Jaye Brookes
 is first and foremost a fiction writer. She enjoys crafting paranormal romance and romantic suspense. She reads almost every genre except horror. In her day job she is a fiction content editor for an epublisher that opened in 2011. She spends most of her time juggling family life and writing, while reminding herself that she can’t spend all of her time in the worlds found within books. Calle Jaye loves to be contacted by her readers via email and at 
www.CalleJBrookes.com

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please return to Smashwords and purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your chosen retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, or locations, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. 

Copyright © 2014  Calle J. Brookes

All rights reserved.

Warrior Blind

A 

DARDANOS, CO. NOVEL

Book Twelve

WOULD
she always have the nightmares? She dreamed of the warrior every night. Remembered the look on his face, the total apathy, when he’d shoved her at Ramorakin, the keeper of his slaves.

That expression on his face was one of the last clear images she had, and would ever have. How was she to deal with that? Her own mate, the one destined for her by her goddess, had thought so little of her that he’d thrown her to a monster.

And then he had just walked away.

It was by the grace of the goddess that Bronwen Sebastos still lived.

She pulled the thick blankets around her body in a useless attempt to ward off the night’s chill. The demon realm was colder at night than her home in Colorado, but it wasn’t the night temperature that froze her soul.

She didn’t know how many hours she sat in her bed, unable to see even if she had flicked on a lamp, but she sensed when true morning came. She could feel the heat of the sun filtering through the window. Bronwen contemplated just staying in her bed, remaining there at least for the day—if not the rest of her life.

Why not? It wasn’t as if she had much use now, stumbling around pitifully, using the walls to guide her through this place that was more her prison than her home. She missed her home so much.

But returning to Colorado was not an option now. Not with the wars of these realms inching ever so closer to Gaia, to Colorado, to Relaklonos where she now sat. War was coming, one that was predicted to be the worst one in any realm’s history, and she was a healer.

A useless one. A burden to those who loved her.

Those who loved her were probably waiting on her for breakfast.

A forceful knock sounded and Bron knew who it most likely was. He came by her room every morning to plague her; she never answered. What was she to say to Koios?

Thank you for making me into something to be pitied, dependent on those around me for care?
 

He was supposed to protect her, to love and cherish her from the moment they met.

Instead, he’d nearly killed her.

Had she not possessed the soul of a healer, she would have died already. Dardaptoan healers were unique. There were a limited number of them, and each had a tiny piece of the original healer’s soul lodged within their hearts. That healer—now immortalized, though unnamed—would never truly die. Which meant that it took far longer for healers to die when injured.

Whatever the slave keeper had done to her, she had yet to die from it. And she probably wouldn’t. No matter how much she wished it.

She wasn’t like her foster mother Aureliana. The older woman had cared for her frequently as an infant and child when her brothers Thadd and Theo hadn’t been able to. Aureliana had chosen to deny herself her
 
Rajni
 
for nearly ten months after meeting him. She’d thought she was protecting the big warrior Ren from her inevitable death at the hands of a Beansidhe.

But Auri and Ren had figured things out between them almost three months ago, and now they were happy together. The way
 
Rajnis
 
were supposed to be.

Auri had chosen to avoid her mate. Bronwen had had that choice made for her through his actions. His disdain.

But now he wanted something from her, and was proving relentless. He’d been trying for weeks to get to her, for whatever it was that he wanted.

She was starting to face the fact—she could not avoid the confrontation with him forever.

***

Koios waited. He knew the girl healer would have to come out of her chamber eventually. And he was prepared. He could wait no longer to make things right between them. His time had run out, and he had to return to his own kingdom. Lothicano could ill afford his absence
 
and
 
his brother’s. Sinrik had a mate and child to think of. Until his twin convinced that mate to return with him, Sinrik’s need to remain in this damned place was far more pressing.

Sinrik had a family; Koios wasn’t sure what the healer girl was to him. Or even why he persisted with her so strongly.

He’d abandoned the idea of making her a slave, a
 
servila.
 
But he owed her his protection and some sort of restitution for what had happened to her while technically in his keeping. That he had not been present for most of those two weeks mattered little. He had taken her from the ones who protected her and she had been damaged. That made him responsible.

But the girl was proving extremely stubborn in allowing him to care for her, in allowing him to regain his honor. He had plans to set her up in his castle, provide her with attendants and anything else that she needed. He had a vague idea of allowing her to remain as companion to his twin’s mate, with whom he knew she was particularly close. He would allow her to live a life of complete luxury, doing anything that she pleased. Her new blindness prevented her from doing much else, didn’t it?

Her door opened and he kept himself as still as his warrior training would allow. She would not realize he was there, not until he was ready to make that fact known. He would grab the girl and flash her to his castle in Lothicano. It was the only option he had left. It would be up to his brother to make Koios’ apologies to the girl’s family and caregivers.

Koios had made his decision several days ago, and nothing would deter him.

She felt her way along the wall and took tiny steps that barely moved her forward at all. He was two inches past seven feet in her world’s measurements. He estimated she was two feet smaller, or thereabouts. Warrior youths hit that size around their tenth birth year. What had he been thinking? A
 
servila
 
this female would never have made.

Her hair was brown. Nothing remarkable about it, just earth brown and worn straight and long down her back. Her eyes were covered by dark glasses, but he remembered the unusual yellow color well. She had strangely feline eyes, typical of her Kind. And she had the delicate beauty of features that could lure an unsuspecting male victim to the bloodsucking Kind’s side.

It did not work on Koios. The female was too small, too weak, too not of his Kind for his attention to stray in that direction.

It was not unheard of in his realm for oddities from other worlds to be kept and coddled. And though the high queen of this world was of
 
her
 
Kind, this little Dardaptoan female was very unusual.

Koios forced those thoughts away. Similar thoughts were what had gotten him into this predicament to begin with. He’d seen her when she’d first stumbled upon him—literally—and had wanted her.

He had yet to be able to explain it, even more than a year later. But it was the truth. He’d wanted her in his home, so he’d taken her.

He’d justified it with the fact that Healers of her Kind were immensely prized for their abilities. They were taken by just about any other Kind in any other realm. He could have sold her for three hundred times her weight in his world’s most precious currency.

Something his kingdom could have used a year ago.

She was within his arm’s reach now; she was so vulnerable, wasn’t she? She did not even know he was there.

That made what he was about to do even more despicable.

Koios reached out.

ONE
moment she was feeling her way down the hall, and the next the world around her changed. Bronwen didn’t even have a moment to scream.

Hard arms were tight around her; one hand covered her mouth, and the other was tangled in her hair. She was yanked against a hard male chest and her cheek slammed into something metallic. Like a medallion or amulet. Then it felt like her body was being pulled in a thousand different directions.

It was only a few moments before the hands holding her loosened enough for her to breathe again.

“We are here.”

Him. Again.
Of course.

“Where?” All she could do was whisper. She wanted to cling to him. He was all she knew in that moment. Damn him. What had he done? “Why did you do this?”

“We are in my home, pet. Where a king belongs. I can ill afford to remain with the High King. And with Sinrik staying at his mate’s side, I could wait to return no longer.”