Her Warriors Read online

  String of Fate

  Her Warriors

  by

  Bianca D'Arc

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Books by Bianca D’Arc

  About the Author

  Love triangles are always more interesting when they come equipped with claws…and flippers?

  Beau has anger issues, but not when he’s around Jacki. The fierce tiger shifter has been following her around like a puppy, but she hasn’t taken notice of him. Until now.

  No matter how long Geir has lived in the States, he’s still the odd man out. A tiger shifter native of Iceland, he is a Master of his craft, training other warriors the skills he has perfected. When he sees Jacki for the first time, he knows she is the one for him.

  Jacki is the privileged daughter of a prominent shifter Clan. Most of her relatives are lion shifters, so she knows how to handle cats on the prowl, but she is a much rarer selkie—a seal shifter—imbued with magic and surrounded by mystery. When an opportunity arises to step into a key role in shifter society, she is uncertain, but willing to try. And when she’s told she doesn’t have to choose between the two tigers, but rather, can have them both, she is more than intrigued.

  But someone is stalking their path and they must work together to nullify the danger, all while trying to figure out a complicated relationship that has all three of them questioning fate.

  Warning: This story contains graphic language and menage a trois between two tiger shifters and one very special selkie woman. Rawr.

  Dedication

  Many, many thanks to my friend, Peggy McChesney, for taking the time to humor a crazed writer. Your help and support have been invaluable, as well as your friendship.

  I think this time, I also have to thank the characters that just wouldn’t let me end what had been planned as the String of Fate TRILOGY from the very beginning. Somehow, when I finished writing Jacob’s Ladder, these three characters just wouldn’t let me go. They wanted their story told and I didn’t get the usual downtime I take between books. No, these characters just kept doing stuff in my head to the point where I feel almost as if the two books are one giant book in my heart.

  Many thanks to Dad for putting up with canned/frozen dinners and eating out a lot, because I was hijacked by my fictional characters, and unable to interact with my family in the real world for a few weeks. The really sad part is, I’m not sure he actually noticed. LOL! Guess I’m not much of a cook anyway, so he was probably better off.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please 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 purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright © 2014 Bianca D’Arc

  Cover Art by Valerie Tibbs

  Smashwords Edition November 2014.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Prologue

  Geir Falkes, training master of those who would try to become Royal Guards for the queen of the pantera noir, was stuck. Not physically. There was little in this mortal realm that could slow down the man who was master of his own body and trained others to be the same. No, he was stuck about what he should do.

  The Nyx—the queen he had chosen to serve—had been running all her life, until just recently. Last week, they had defeated her enemy in a fierce battle on a mountain ridge in North Carolina. This week, he was on another mountain, upstate New York, checking out a house he had just bought.

  The house had a giant barn on the grounds. Few knew, that the so-called barn was really a state-of-the-art dojo and training center. It was the perfect place for him to teach new Royal Guards and work with those who were already qualified to protect the Nyx. Now that her most troublesome enemy had been dealt with, she was able to settle in one place. In fact, she had just bought the house near the top of this very same mountain, and all the land around it.

  The place had been set up by the former king of tiger shifters, Frederick, and his wife, Candis. They had been in exile here in New York for decades, but their fortunes had recently changed. A new king had fought Frederick’s brother—something Frederick could not do—and won. As it turned out, the new king was an old friend of Geir’s, a former Royal Guard named Mitch.

  Mitch had mated the tiger princess, Frederick and Candis’s only daughter, Gina. Shortly thereafter, the queen Geir served had mated a human warrior. Everybody was settling down, two by two. It felt like only Geir was still alone.

  He finally had a home of his own, and no mate to share it with.

  He had met a woman recently. She was a fascinating woman that made his tiger claw at his insides to be nearer to her. But she was already being courted by another of Geir’s kind. Another tiger shifter. A soldier with anger issues, named Beau Champlain.

  Beau was everything Geir was not. Younger. American. Handsome. Easy with his words. Geir had watched him interact with her—Jacki, was her name—and Geir had been envious for one of the few times in his life. There was no doubt Geir held higher rank among their people than Beau, but in this instance, Beau had it all over the Icelandic tiger who had spent all his life learning how to fight and teaching others to do the same.

  Geir wasn’t suave. He wasn’t sophisticated. He wasn’t very experienced with women outside of the encounters his inner tiger drove him to initiate. Geir lived the life of an ascetic for the most part. He had studied hard to become the master of fighting arts suitable to train the Royal Guard of the Nyx. And that was about all he had going for him, which didn’t seem like a whole lot when he was interested in a woman as amazing as Jacki Kinkaid.

  “The house is very large,” Geir said to Tad Miller, one of the grown Miller children who had been raised on the property Geir had just bought. Tad was overseeing the transfer of the house and grounds for his parents, who were in Iceland.

  “It had to be big with so many cubs in the family, plus all the strays my folks took in.” Tad smiled as they walked through the empty house. “This was a good home. Filled with love and learning. Discipline and care. I think that permeates the building still, and maybe one day you’ll raise your own cubs here.”

  Geir wished that were so. But if he never got off his duff and found a way to speak to a woman—one special woman in particular—he would have a hard time fulfilling that dream.

  “I’d have to find a mate first,” Geir answered noncommittally. “If the Goddess so blesses me.”

  “No reason to think She won’t.” Tad smiled jovially. “I met Mandy young. In truth, we knew each other from the time we were both children, but we didn’t recognize the fact that we were mates until we were older. When the time was right. And the Lady has already blessed us with our firs
t cub. The first of many, we hope.” Tad gazed into the distance for a moment, a smile on his face, before returning to the matter at hand. “As you can see, there’s plenty of room in the main house. We’ve used this building as home, hospital, and boarding house for some of my dad’s top students, among other things. You get the idea—it can serve many purposes. And there’s lots of room to expand.” It was clear the building had been well-used and much loved.

  “Your parents don’t ever intend to come back to the States?” Geir asked. He knew the elder Millers had moved back to Iceland and most of their grown children had become Royal Guards for the new tiger king. It was Mr. Miller who had trained all the Royal Guards for the tiger Clan—both before leaving Iceland and after he had chosen to go into exile with the true king.

  It was more or less the same role Geir played for the Nyx, and this house and grounds would work nicely for his purposes. It had been built by tiger shifters and Geir himself was a tiger shifter, even though he had devoted his life to the smaller, more mysterious pantera noir Clan.

  “They’ll only come back for visits now, I think,” Tad answered. “Their true home is in Iceland, but they raised us kids as Americans, so the younger generation might want to come back occasionally. Which is why we’ll sell you everything except the small cabin down at the lower end of the property, and my house, which is right next to it. Mandy and I are going to try splitting our time between here and Iceland for a while and figure out where we want to raise our cubs. Her parents went back to the old country too, but we were both raised here and it’s a bigger adjustment for us.”

  “I can understand that,” Geir agreed. “I was born in Iceland, but left at a young age. I’ve lived many places and though I could return to my birthplace now, it probably wouldn’t feel like home.”

  “Well, this is a good place to settle,” Tad observed. “It was good for us. We were happy here and I hope you will be too. Come on, let me show you the dojo.”

  They walked out of the main house and toward the very large barn that was set at some distance from the house. Geir liked the climate here. It was early autumn, and dusk was almost upon them. The air was cool and crisp at this elevation and Geir knew there would be plenty of snow come winter. He liked snow.

  He had left Iceland barely a man, and wandered for a time before settling down with his aunt’s adopted Clan. The pantera noir had made him welcome even though he was a golden tiger, a tigre d’or. With the tiger monarchy in chaos for the past few decades, Geir had had no alternative but to seek his fate elsewhere. He had found purpose for his life and all his training, in protecting one of the most vulnerable of the big cat monarchs.

  Until the defeat of her greatest enemy just last week, Ria—the young Nyx—had lived her life constantly on the run. Never staying in one place too long, she needed round-the-clock protection by the most skilled of elite fighters. Royal Guards.

  Geir had been training Ria’s Guards for years now and he took pride in his work. His goal was to turn out warriors that would think outside the box and use a myriad of different skills and adaptations to keep their charge safe from harm. They had done their job well and Ria had been able to confront her enemy with her Guard at her side.

  The battle had been ferocious. The mage who had been hunting Ria for years had an affinity for water and the creatures that lived in it. His strange tactics had worked for a while, but then Jacki Kinkaid had stepped in and done her magic. It was pure and good, and the tone of it sang through Geir’s heart long after her spell had done its work.

  Geir had admired Jacki’s courage and marveled at her strength, even as he was staggered by her beauty. She had the kind of beauty that stunned. It shone from within, and the light in her soulful brown eyes was that of a creature who saw the good in all of creation. If she wasn’t already, Geir had no doubt that Jacki would soon become a priestess of the Lady. Her soul was that pure. That good.

  Geir had done his part to protect her during the aftermath of her spell, when her own power reserves were too low for her to even move. He had hidden her in a circle of bushes and done his best to protect her. The other tiger shifter—Beau—had done his part too, climbing a tree above her and acting as a sniper, keeping the enemy well away from her hiding place.

  But then Beau had been shot and he had fallen hard, right out of the tree. Geir had dragged the other man into the hiding spot and tried to help him. And then Jacki had turned the tables and trapped Geir inside a dome of protection she created with the very last of her power.

  Geir had been torn from the very beginning of the battle. His heart wanted him to stay at Jacki’s side and keep her from all harm, but his duty lay with the Nyx. It was his place to protect the queen and fight alongside those he had trained—to the last man, if necessary.

  During the initial strategy session, Geir and Beau had been placed with Jacki and her brother, Tom. Jacki and Tom were both highly-magial selkies—seal shifters—and their mission was to look after the waterways on the mountain. But they needed backup to help watch their backs while they watched over the waterways. Tom had taken the lake and had been quickly overrun.

  Geir had been with Tom and was eventually able to push back the attack enough to get Tom clear. He was badly injured and Geir had brought him to where Jacki was hiding. And then she had sealed all four of them—the two wounded, herself and Geir—inside a magical circle from which he could not escape.

  He still didn’t really understand why she had done it. She had begged his forgiveness before she cast the spell that left her unconscious. That told him she knew he would have had to leave her side to fight with the Royal Guard elsewhere, but why she had kept him from his duty remained a mystery.

  Had she meant to protect him? Or had she simply run out of time to let him out of the circle before she cast it? Was he included in her spell by design—which might mean she cared for him—or was it simply an accident?

  Either way, Geir had spent the rest of the battle inside an almost impenetrable dome, tending three wounded and looking for a way to get out so he could rejoin his comrades. It wasn’t until the battle was well and truly over that someone discovered them, and helped bring down the ring of protection from the outside.

  By then, Geir was at his last shred of patience and frustration. He had simply picked Jacki up in his arms and carried her down the mountain. He hadn’t known what to say to the queen he had sworn to protect. He hadn’t been there for her, but she didn’t seem to mind. Those he had trained in her Guard had taken casualties, but to his surprise, none of them looked at him with disdain either. Somehow the fact that he had been unable to fight with them didn’t seem to matter to them.

  But it mattered to Geir.

  How could Jacki have done that to him? And had it been on purpose? Her motivation somehow mattered more than the act itself. She had recovered from the ordeal, but he hadn’t had much chance to talk with her. She had spent almost all her time at Beau’s side, caring for him as he healed, and Geir had left North Carolina before he’d had a chance to get a moment alone with her.

  But even if he had managed to corner her away from everyone else, what would he have said? Geir wasn’t the most eloquent of men. Far from it. English wasn’t even his first language and Jacki sure as hell didn’t know Icelandic. How was he to express himself when he wasn’t even sure what he wanted to ask or how he could possibly do it in a way that didn’t expose him to either ridicule or pity if she rejected him?

  What it boiled down to was that Master Geir—badass sensei of the elite pantera noir Royal Guard—was scared. Of a woman. Who could possibly wound him more deeply than any other creature on earth.

  Chapter One

  Jacki Kinkaid was mostly recovered from the huge expenditure of energy she had made during the battle. She was better physically, but emotionally, she was all at sea. She had stayed in North Carolina, wanting to help nurse the injured, but they hadn’t really needed her. The fox Pack that ruled the territory had an abundance of highly t
rained medical personnel in its ranks, and didn’t really need her amateurish attempts at nursing.

  So she had spent a lot of time at Beau Champlain’s bedside. He had been unconscious a lot of the time, but yesterday he had taken a turn for the better. He was awake and as frisky as any tiger shifter left too long idle. He wanted to go, go, go, but the doctors wouldn’t let him, and they had appealed to Jacki to sit on him if she had to, to make him stay in bed.

  Why that simple phrase had brought such a blush to her cheeks, she didn’t know, but when one of the well-meaning doctors said the same thing in front of Beau, the frisky tiger shifter had winked at her. That little, knowing wink had set her cheeks aflame and she had fled quickly, seeking a moment alone to calm herself.

  Jacki was a selkie by birth—a seal shifter about whom many legends existed from the old country of Ireland. Not much of the old stories were factually accurate. For example, she didn’t have a seal skin she put on like a coat and had to hide when she took human form on land. She was a shifter like any other. Her two forms simply came when she called them. No icky skin suits involved.

  But selkies were a little different than other shifters too. For one thing, they were way more magical than most. And Jacki herself was discovering a deeper well of magic inside herself than she had previously realized. She had trained to use her magic most of her life, but just recently her personal power had ramped up a notch…or three. She wasn’t sure why or how, but she definitely felt a need to learn more about why she was suddenly so much more powerful magically than she had ever been.