Destiny Be Damned
Last Hope, Book 3
Rebecca Royce
After Glows Publishing
Destiny be Damned
Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Royce
Published by After Glows Publishing
PO Box 224
Middleburg, FL 32050
AfterGlowsPublishing.com
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Cover by Lyn Forester
Formatting by AG Formatting
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Introduction
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
Also by Rebecca Royce
About the Author
More From After Glows Publishing
Note from the Publisher
Destiny be Damned
It is the end of days…
With no memory of how she left one existence for another, Mika spends her days serving those who need her without the benefit of guards. Unlike her fellow Sisters she was never in love with any of those who ever worked with her. Until five contractors show up to fix the Sisterhood.
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They are not battle ready…
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Neil, Wayne, Gordon, Ren, and Lennon are not trained guards. They have no idea that their destiny is to be with Mika, far away from the island paradise where they were raised. But when she needs them, they will discover what they were born to do and awaken a destiny in Mika that will change the world forever.
1
The sky was purple with a swirl of color, mostly of an ember hue, moving through it. The clouds danced through the air, threatening in their beauty. I steeled my shoulders. It was going to rain sometime in the next two days. Between the color of the sky, the gust of the wind, and that weird ember cloud cover, I could read the signs divinity gave us about the incoming weather. I ran a hand through my hair—I really needed to cut it—and pretended that I wasn’t completely intimidated by thoughts of storms.
Even as a little girl I’d hated them, and then I’d only been dealing with the weak weather patterns of the Sisterhood in the South. Now, in the Northern Badlands, I’d learned that what had once been intimidating was actually only the not quite developed, less terrifying version of what real rain could be. In the Badlands, rain was no joke.
This time, however, I was bound and determined to have hot water inside the house when the pour started. The house needed work. Three of my fellow Sisters—Anne, Daniella, and Teagan—had Guards who had become their husbands and who I was always waiting on to make repairs. Those fifteen men were fantastic fighters who were great at battle and loving their women, but fixing their living quarters wasn’t their priority.
Since Anne had proclaimed that neither Krystal nor I could fight demons without Guards—and we had none—we’d decided to take on the fixing of our new compound as our primary calling.
For the time being, anyway.
Teagan would be back soon, I hoped, and might have a few new Sisters with her. The house needed to be readied. Cleaning, I could handle. Renovation was above my level of expertise.
Fortunately, that was a problem I’d solved. The five men waiting for me to greet them at the gate—recommended by the nice woman in town who sold baked goods and whose son Anne had cleared of a demon months before—were apparently able to fix anything and everything under the sun. Upon my request, Anne had left word about what she would pay for renovations before she’d gone to handle her mission.
Now, all I had to do was talk to these new people and convince them they wanted to work here despite the demon problem. It was the talking part I was the most concerned about. Lately, it felt like somehow the universe had allotted me a certain amount of words per day that I could manage to say, and I blew through my allotment by mid-morning most of the time. Since they’d arrived after lunch, getting these people hired was going to be harder for me than it would have been three hours earlier, when they were supposed to have shown up.
With Teagan, Daniella, and Anne all away from home on missions, it had fallen on Krystal or me to handle this. Krystal had suddenly come down with a migraine. Personally, I wondered if my fellow Sister just didn’t want to be responsible for these renovations any more than I did and was simply better at getting out of it.
But there was nothing to be done about it, so I would manage. I walked the short distance to the gate with as much dignity as I could muster. I hoped these men, whoever they were, didn’t see my hands shaking. Why couldn’t I manage simple things anymore? Well, I knew why. It was because Sister Katrina, evil human being that she was, had cursed me in some way and I’d been trapped in my own mind for a long time. Every second of every day, I had been trapped on a dark path and couldn’t find my way anywhere.
I was left feeling like I was perpetually lost.
Except I wasn’t. I simply had to keep reminding myself of that. All I had to do was walk the small distance from the main house to the gate. It would not get dark in the time it would take me to get there, and I was not going to disappear into nothingness.
By the time I got to where the men waited, right inside the gate, I had managed to convince myself all would be well. That was until I saw them. I didn’t know why I’d thought they would be middle-aged and worn down from a hard life, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
In front of me were five men who seemed not much older than me. In fact, some of them might be even be slightly younger than my thirty years. And each one of them was striking, so much so that I made myself look at the ground for a second.
I couldn’t be struck stupid by a bunch of men simply because they were each so handsome I could hardly breathe.
Finally, when I had control of my rapidly beating heart, I raised my gaze to meet theirs. “Greetings. Thank you for coming.”
The one who stood in the center of their five-person lineup nodded to me. He had blond hair that fell to his shoulders. “Sorry. We’re late. I’m sorry, miss. I was told we’d be speaking to a Sister.”
He spoke clearly but with the accent of the North that I wasn’t used to hearing. The Guards at the Sisterhood to the South—as I now thought of it—had been retrained to speak like they were gentry. Very rarely in my life had I heard anyone speak in a way that sounded Northern. They rolled their r’s. I thought I could listen to this man say anything. Hi
s accent was so… different sounding.
I was going to have to say something. “You are.”
The five men made eye contact with each other for a second without speaking. I watched their silent exchange. Blond man, who’d spoken first, looked at the guy directly to his left who had short brown hair and high cheekbones. He in turn shot the guy on the other side of the line, at the end, a questioning stare. Like the blond man, the third one had long hair, though his was dark, and his skin olive toned. Not as dark as my own, which was a light brown, but darker than the two paler men. Next to him, and the person to whom he raised his eyebrows, was the tallest of the group. He was even darker than me, and he had shaved his hair down on his head. He cleared his throat and elbowed the last man whose pale skin contrasted against his dark, bushy, brown hair.
The whole bit of silent communication took maybe thirty seconds. I was glad for the break from having to think of the right thing to say.
Blond man spoke again. “Beggin’ your pardon, Sister. We assumed a Sister wouldn’t look like you.”
“I see.” I ran a hand through the mess that was my hair. “What did you think a Sister would look like?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. If the answer was that they thought a Sister would be beautiful and that I was some kind of toad, I was going to be rather put out. As a Sister, I’d been raised to believe the least interesting part of me was what I looked like. I supposed I was fine in terms of appearance. I had long, wavy black hair, slightly darker than olive skin, very round eyes and a nose that was a little too long on my face. My lips were puffy. And I was thin—no matter what I ate I didn’t develop curves. I’d longed for rounder breasts and hips for a while, wanting to look like the other Sisters. No matter my ache for more, they’d remained small and pert.
“Old,” the longer haired man at the end answered. “Haggard. Maybe with a horn or two.”
I cleared my suddenly dry throat. “Do we have a reputation for horns? Never mind. I don’t want to talk about that.” Maybe hours ago I might have engaged with him on the subject just to learn more about our reputation in other places. Not now. At this hour, we had to get right to business. I just wasn’t made for conversing anymore. Once upon a time, I’d loved to talk. Another thing I could thank Katrina for.
I had to stay on track. “I’m told you can fix things.”
Blond man shot long-haired guy on the end a dark look. “We sure can. And we’d be glad to help you, what with you ladies helping everyone out here all the time. The townsfolk say no one came up this far north to help with the demons, and then you all opened this place. Things got better.”
Next to him, the dark haired man with the short hair finally spoke. “Not to mention if the price we heard you were offering is correct, then you can count on our help.”
I nodded. I had no idea what Anne had offered in payment. I hadn’t set this deal up. So, instead, I continued. “There is something you’ll want to know before you get started. If you want to leave after I tell you, no one will blame you. If you’d like to stay, you’d be welcome to live in the guesthouse—one of the places needing repair—until you’re done. All your food will be taken care of, too.” I took a deep breath. The sooner I got this all out, the sooner they’d leave or get started. Then I could lose myself in a task that didn’t include interaction.
“What would that be?” the tallest of them asked me. I thought blond man might be in charge, but I had a hard time imagining any of them not being the leader.
I sighed. “There is a demon that lives under the main house. Some of your work—particularly on the piping—will require you to mess around down there.”
Finally, the one who had yet to speak, answered quickly. “There’s a demon under that house?” He pointed at it, and I nodded. “Don’t you women get rid of demons? Isn’t that the thing?”
“He’s a very unusual demon.” Though I’d never had any encounters with him, I thought of him as Bob. Bob the demon. He wanted to be left alone. The idea was that he didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother him. Bob. The demon under our house.
They didn’t move. That meant I had to say more. My body was cold. All I wanted in the world was hot water. “He’s an original demon. They are very strong. You haven’t studied demonology, I would guess, and that is wonderful for you. Don’t ever learn more than you have to. But they are the strongest. It would be quite a battle. It isn’t that we are unwilling to fight. We’d be more than willing. Three of the Sisters who live here have taken down Originals. He would likely destroy the house. So we wait and see.”
I backed up. This conversation had to end. “Take tonight to think on it. You’ll be safe enough in the guesthouse. He’s not under it. Tomorrow, let me know if you want to work.”
“Hold up,” blond man called out again. “I’m sorry, Sister. We don’t know your name.”
“Mika,” I called out. That was true. We’d not done introductions. They weren’t Guards. I couldn’t simply number them One-Two-Three-Four-Five. “What do I call each of you?”
Blond pointed to himself. “I’m Neil.” He indicated the short-haired man next to him. “Wayne.” The long-haired one who said I should have horns. “Ren.” He pointed to the tallest of them. “Gordon.” And the last one with the bushy hair. “Lennon.”
I went through their names once more in my head. “Come to the house later. Our cook can give you dinner around five. If you need anything, any of the people here will know where to find me.”
I didn’t want to think of my actions as fleeing. I needed time in my own company. I only owed the world my services as a Sister and not even that at present. Without Guards, I was useless. A broken woman, barely able to hire contractors to fix her home without running for her life, needed to hide for a while.
Above my head, a raven circled the Sisterhood. I sighed then shouted up to it. “They’re not here. Go away.”
The raven was a symbol for the Guards. Some people even referred to the Guards as ravens. But I didn’t have any. There weren’t five guys waiting to save me, help me, or walk through this world together. It was just me on a dark path to nowhere, trying to figure out how to get the hot water fixed without disturbing the original demon who lived under the house. So those ravens could go away and leave me alone.
Dinner was quiet. Krystal chatted about the roses she was hoping to grow in the backyard. How could she care about plants when the walls threatened to fall down in a good storm? As if on cue, the sound of large drops of water hitting the roof assaulted my ears. I took a deep breath and stared at Krystal. She ate her food and didn’t seem to notice I’d frozen up inside.
While she and I were Sisters, we’d never been friends. I’d barely known her before we’d been cursed together and woken up here, finally freed from the hellish internal prisons Katrina banished us to for daring to see the world differently than she did.
The truth was, I’d never really had confidants. Plenty of people knew me, and I could claim acquaintance with them but that was as far as it went. I was utterly alone.
A knock caught my attention and I turned to see Neil by the door to the kitchen. “Sister Mika?”
I rose from the table as Krystal looked down at her food. I wasn’t the only one versed in the art of avoidance. Krystal could take the cake in it.
“Neil,” I acknowledged him. It was so bizarre to have these conversations outside of my hood and Sister uniform. For years, I’d faced the world from the inside of a costume. No one could see me. Now, I was trying to figure out clothes. What did I feel good in? I really had no idea.
He nodded. His shoulders were wet and his hair damp but not the rest of him. He must have gotten caught in the rain. I walked to the cabinets and pulled out a towel, handing it to him. “We can’t have you catching your death. Why are you out in this mess?”
His eyes widened when he took the towel from me. “Beggin’ your pardon, Sister, but we saw that there was a big hole in your roof, and we needed to make sure you were okay
over here. With the rain.”
A big giant hole? Oh, that was right. I remembered, a smile coming over my face. “Sweet of you to think of it. We know about the hole. We have sectioned off that part of the house. It caved in last week.”
Neil’s whole face scrunched up. “Sister, I am somewhat concerned that this entire structure isn’t sound.”
He was right. “We’re concerned about it, too. Nothing to do about it right now.”
He ran the towel through his hair. “I don’t want this whole house coming down on you tonight.”
“It won’t,” Krystal finally spoke. “At least I don’t think it will. The spirits guided Anne and her Guards here. Told them to make it a Sisterhood.”
Neil looked between us. “Spirits?”
“Krystal, this Neil. Neil, this is Krystal. She’s one of the Sisters here.”
She groaned loudly. “Mika and I are not really working as Sisters right now. The three who are currently active aren’t here, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with us.”
I stared at her. What did she mean by that? I didn’t have Guards so I couldn’t take on demons, but I wasn’t by any means inactive. My powers worked just fine; I still had all my abilities. I cleared my throat. “Have you decided to stay, then?”
“We don’t have all that much experience with demons. We know we’re different in that regard. But the way all five of us see it is that if you feel okay living here above it, then we’re okay with it, too. Who better to help us than you anyway?” He rocked back on his feet. “Well, if you’re safe, then I’ll head back into the guesthouse and leave you for the night. Are you two all alone here? No men around to protect you?”