The Crownless King (The South USA #1)

Prologue

Who would we be without them?

Fog surrounded her, the moist air clinging to her skin and slowly dampening the thin robe she wore.

It didn’t faze her or move her from her post. The gateway opened only once a century and she would not miss it.

Many women in her family had stood in this exact spot and others like it for years before her, waiting on their chance.

Even now, countless women were lined along the rivers that bisected the south, all hoping for the smallest window of time and magic. Bria was determined to be the last.

It was a risky gamble on soil not native to them, but according to all the elders before her, this spot along this river would work. She prayed they got the timing right.

She fingered the dagger on her belt and rolled her neck.

From every story passed down to her, this opening gateway was the only way into the temple.

A solitary entrance point, a single solitary moment in time to rush through its gates and demand help defeating her father.

It could mean the end to her family line, but the risk was worth it.

If Bria squinted her eyes just right, it was if she could almost make out the ghostly form of the temple.

Bria cocked her head as a sound intruded on the still morning.

Her eyes never strayed from her prize, but her body tensed as her other senses reached out to find the source.

She inhaled slowly, pulling in the damp air and a smell she would recognize for as long as she lived…

and because of the gifts given to their people from the Akachi, that could be centuries yet.

“You’ll not sway me from my course, Caden.” Her soft voice carried on the dawning morning.

He stepped from the fog, an apparition that could disappear at a moment’s notice.

His black pants clung to his muscular thighs, a woolen jacket opened to reveal the loose black shirt underneath.

Caden had his dreads braided down in two rows, leaving nothing to detract from the face God himself had chiseled.

If she closed her eyes, she could still feel their texture beneath her hands as she did days ago when she’d braided them.

He watched her, his hazel eyes stark against the dark brown of his skin.

Bria shivered as those eyes traced her body, the possessive look one she knew all too well.

His full lips turned up into a smile, his teeth straight and white except the two canines, sharp and growing longer as he stared at her.

She scoffed and turned back to her watch, but her body warmed all the same.

He knew what he was doing, the memories the sight of his teeth would provoke.

She could almost feel the phantom rake of them down her back.

Her body arched and tingles traveled the length of her skin.

Damn him.

“Maybe I just came to keep you company while you wait.” His voice was molasses sliding against her skin, warm and sticky.

Another trick of his.

She swallowed a sigh. “Go away, Caden.”

“Have you thought this through, Bria?” He made no moves to close the distance between them.

“What is there to think about? If I can stop my father, how can that be anything but good?”

“At the risk of losing your life?” he hissed.

“To save millions of others?” She gave him an incredulous look. “Absolutely.”

Caden growled and stomped closer. “I won’t let you do this.”

“Unless you plan on killing me, there is no way for you to stop me.”

“Bria.”

“Caden,” she mocked.

“Ending your family’s line—”

“Means that there won’t be another like my father and his brothers. It means the one they prophesied will never exist. How do you have a problem with that?”

“You don’t know the consequences.” Caden gripped her shoulder and turned her to him. “We can defeat your father without you sacrificing your life, love.”

“Don’t do this. Don’t make this harder than it is, Caden. You promised,” she whispered, avoiding his eyes.

Caden nuzzled into her neck, his warm breath sending goosebumps down her arms. He scraped his teeth against her skin. Bria shuddered, her body coming alive under his touch.

“There has to be another way,” he murmured.

Bria stepped back and hugged her arms around herself. Not that it did anything to still the heat igniting in her body. She cursed the thin temple garb she wore.

“In the years we have searched, this is the only way we’ve found. The Celestials are the only way to end this.”

“They’ll dead your whole line.” His voice was tight with anger.

She shrugged. What could she say to that?

Her only alternative was to allow her father to overrun the rest of the world, leaving swaths of death and destruction behind him.

Nothing in the years since he’d come into power had been able to stop Jeremiah and Bria was weary of fighting.

Hell, every woman in her family was tired.

They fought the vampires from the north alongside the Bayi while still battling the last dissenters of the South.

Had Jeremiah only set his eyes on conquering their oppressors here in the South, they likely would not have interfered, but that was not enough for her father.

He wanted all of the newly formed country, and had already vowed to set his eyes back on their homeland.

His goal had started nobly, but his execution smashed all beneath his boot, even those the Celestials had gifted.

He wielded his control over the Bayi vampires like a cudgel, killing any and all in his path.

“They created us. Only they can end him,” she whispered.

He cupped her chin. “We always fight together. Why should this be any different?”

Her eyes traced the face of her mate, the man tied to her soul. “Only a direct descendant of the original shaman is allowed through the gateway, you know that.”

“According to smuggled-in records so old they’re nearly indecipherable. Who’s to say it can only be you, or that it would even work? This is not our land. Who’s to say the Celestials will even answer the call here?” He growled and turned his back to her.

“They answered our call, sent the Akachi stones hidden in the Leonid. We wouldn’t be who we are without them.”

“Yes,” he conceded. “They gave the South its powers, but that’s not a guarantee that they would answer again.”

“Our connection to them wasn’t severed just because we were forced away from the land we knew,” she snapped. “I won’t risk you.”

She’d left their house before dawn to avoid rehashing their argument yet, here he was. Bria scrubbed at her shorn hair in frustration. It was cut years ago by her former owner’s vengeful wife. She refused to allow the length to grow back, reclaiming the haircut as her own.

Light shimmered between the naked branches of the tree she stood under. Bria whipped her attention back to the lake, gasping as a temple appeared, becoming clearer with every passing second. The haze surrounding it lifted slowly. Her throat closed with unshed tears.

She was here!

The gate was actually opening!

She would be the one to take down her father and save the world…at least from this. Humans would have to figure out the next apocalyptic event on their own.

“Bria, please,” Caden begged.

The surface of the river rippled, solidifying and darkening as a bridge rose from the bubbling water. Bria pulled the staff from her back, pushing a button in the middle. The metallic ring of the blades sliding out rang out and she smiled. She would be victorious.

Caden stepped next to her, pulling a sword from his back.

“What are you doing?” Bria’s gaze barely flickered to him. She would not lose sight of the gateway.

He turned, facing the dead forest behind her. “Having your back.”

“Fuck.” Her breath left her mouth in an angry puff as the air around them slowly dropped in temperature.

She was foolish to think her father wouldn’t send someone to stop her.

Of all the women sent out tonight, he had a direct blood tie to her.

Of course, he found her. Why did she imagine different?

The air shimmered around them, battling with the magic from her father’s minions, crystallizing the fog surrounding them.

Shards of ice formed around the gateway slowly opening, falling in brittle pieces at her bare feet.

She glanced back and saw shadows slithering through the trees.

Her conscience pricked at her, her mind spinning.

Caden was a formidable warrior, but to go alone against her father’s horde?

“Go, Bri.”

Duty and honor warred within her as she waited on the gateway to finish opening. “You shouldn’t have come, Caden.”

A whooshing sound preceded the horde’s attacks. A rain of arrows thudded into the ground around them. Bria threw up a shield, cursing as one came through, slicing across her shoulder. Wind whipped around them as the gateway finally opened and the bridge to the temple settled into place.

“This is the only chance you’ll have, Bria!” Caden shouted over the noise.

Their eyes met and decades of history, words never spoken, danced between them.

She glanced at the bridge, one that only her family could travel as they were direct descendants of the Celestials.

The horde would never make it past the entrance to the gateway.

The taint on their souls would bar them from the gods, their deaths instant and most important… permanent.

Would her love for Caden protect him from that same fate?

The horde struck again, their magic beating against the shield Bria had built around them.

There was a possibility that Caden would die if she took him with her, but if she left him, death was certain.

Her father had sent out the big guns to stop her.

Did she trust herself to keep him safe?

Bria looked out into the amassing horde, then back at the gate. What choice did she have?

She held out her hand.