Fates Divided: Halven Rising

Elena blinked her eyes open—to Reese leaning over her in a fuzzy pink bathrobe. “Gahh. What are you doing?”

Reese yawned, her golden hair plastered to one side of her head, sleep lines marking her cheek. “You were talking in your sleep. Woke me from an awesome dream. What’s going on? And why is our hot neighbor sleeping on your floor?” She wagged her eyebrows suggestively.

Elena sat up, her arm quivering from exhaustion under her own weight. She peered past Reese to where Derek sprawled like the dead in the corner of her room. He took up a good portion of it too, with his long limbs.

She didn’t remember anything after landing on her mattress last night, but she’d assumed Derek would walk the few feet across the yard back to his house.

“We worked late on a project,” she said.

If Elena was lucky, Reese wouldn’t stumble into the living room where Keen slept on the couch. His presence would be harder to explain.

“Is that why you ditched me yesterday? I thought we were going out. You could have told me you had something to do.”

Crap, she’d totally run out on Reese. She’d asked Derek to explain things, and considering he’d followed her into Emain, he’d clearly failed in his task, though it really wasn’t his job. Reese was Elena’s friend. She should have said something.

How could she keep her agreement to help the Fae from her roommate? Reese was her closest friend at Dawson, maybe her best friend. She was bound to wonder what was up with all the late nights. Then there was school. School was her world, but getting through another lab would be impossible with her powers wreaking havoc.

Elena didn’t want to lie to Reese, but the Fae’s existence wasn’t something you told someone if you didn’t need to. She’d barely wrapped her head around it. She didn’t expect Reese to understand. “I should have said something. I’m sorry. I appreciate you getting the driver’s licenses, though I don’t know how comfortable I am using mine.”

Reese twisted her hair in a knot at the nape of her neck. “We’ll work on that. For now, finish your project with Mr. Hottie Neighbor. And while you’re at it, get him to come out with us.”

Elena dropped her voice. “Really? You don’t think he’s kind of…irritable?”

Reese smoothed an errant curl on the top of Elena’s head that apparently had been sticking straight up. She shrugged. “I thought he was nice, and he’s been coming around a lot, so he’s interested. He’ll go out with us if you ask him. I don’t know why you had him sleep on the floor instead of in your bed.” She waggled her eyebrows again, and Elena shoved her shoulder.

“Keep your voice down,” Elena whispered. If only Reese knew why Derek was glued to her side. It wasn’t because he wanted to be. He’d made that clear when he’d kicked her out of his lab. Though Reese was right about one thing, Derek had followed her today… No. He wasn’t interested. He was just being nosy. He should have minded his own business, then he wouldn’t have gotten caught up in everything. “I can’t explain it, but he’s not interested. Trust me on this one.”

Reese didn’t look convinced, but before she could argue—with Derek only a few feet away—Elena asked, “What time is it?” She batted Reese’s fluffy bathrobe out of her face and glanced at the clock. “Six fifteen? I’m late.”

Elena swung her legs off the bed and staggered to her closet to grab a pair of jeans.

“Late?” Reese stared at her in groggy disbelief. “What is this project that has you working inhuman hours?” She held up a hand. “On second thought, tell me later. I’m going back to bed.”

She shuffled to the door. “See you in a few hours when I wake up with the rest of the student body.”

Elena, Derek, and Keen made it to the lifeless physics building an hour late, yet still too early for the doors to be unlocked. Thanks to Keen’s all-access keys, they entered without a problem.

“Leo mentioned something about Emain and a different realm,” Elena said as they crossed the auditorium toward the secret door. “How does that work? How do Fae classrooms exist if we can’t see them from the outside?”

Keen paused behind the lectern. “Emain is a part of our realm, but not a part.”

Derek looked at her with a What the hell is he talking about expression.

Her thoughts exactly. “Make some sense, please. We don’t understand Fae-speak.”

Keen gestured to the door and the knob Elena’s palm had slipped through like air yesterday. “The rooms beyond here are in a place we call Emain. Emain is owned by Tirnan, the Fae realm, but separated geographically, the way Alaska is separated from the rest of America. That is why Fae residing within are safe from the disease. Emain shares a timeline with the human realm, making transfer between Earth and Emain simple. This doorway is a portal to Emain. Humans don’t know it exists because they haven’t been granted access.”

“Okay, that only makes a little bit of sense. Why Dawson University? Why not plop your portal to Emain someplace remote?”

Keen’s mouth quirked. “You don’t believe your university—situated amongst agricultural fields—remote?”

“I’m talking really remote. Like the Gobi Desert or the Himalayan mountain range.”

“A natural energy field plumes below the campus, spreading wide from coast to highland. The energy field allows us to maintain portals with minimal magic. Humans are interested in energy conservation; the concept shouldn’t be foreign to you. As for the setting, we built a university because it provides an ideal monitoring station.”

A shiver slid across her ribs like invisible fingers. Fae had built Dawson? No wonder they had access to the buildings.

“What are you monitoring?”

He leaned forward as if divulging a secret, a lock of pale hair falling across his cheek. “The Halven.”

Derek inched closer—close enough to touch without touching.

Keen straightened and shrugged one shoulder. “As Portia said, millennia ago, angels mated with humans and created Fae.” He turned the knob to the Fae classroom without opening it. “Fae only mate with Fae. At times, they’ve lain with humans and created a diluted, lesser being, the Halven. It doesn’t happen often. Fae do not generally desire humans. But when it happens, we must watch the offspring for signs of abilities.”

Doesn’t happen often? Must happen enough that they’d built the university.

Derek snorted. “Sounds like some serious denial you’ve got going on there, buddy.”

Keen shot him a look and opened the door.

Before Elena could walk through, Derek pulled her aside and spoke low in her ear. “Mating with humans? Tirnan and the Fae realm?” He shook his head. “We stick together inside Fae-U, got it?”

Elena wet her chapped lips. The things Keen had said, Derek’s deep voice in her ear and the protective way he’d been acting toward her—all equally distracting. “What about when I need to use the bathroom?” she whispered. Clearly the stupidest thing that could have come out of her mouth, but she was flustered.

He shifted his jaw. “I’m not up for your jokes today. Your floor was hard as hell last night.”

“Hey, no one asked you to stay the night.”

He bent closer. So not helping the pounding in her chest. “I’m not leaving you alone with that guy.”

“He’s big, but harmless. A little flirty, maybe.”

“Exactly.” Derek stalked through the door Keen held open.

Elena’s shoulders slumped, her breathing, which had pitched in funny ways with Derek bearing down on her, calming slightly. Why was he acting like this? Reese had said he might be interested, and she’d brushed her roommate off. Was Reese right?

“You’ll begin the day with me,” Keen said as they made their way into the corridors of Emain. “Best that you train with me now while you have the energy.” His smile was sinister.

Combat training. Ugh. And he looked like he was going to take great joy in pushing her to her limits. She’d rather memorize the molecular structures of the lanthanide elements. Who was she kidding? That would be fun. Combat training, not so much.

A few minutes later, Elena emerged from a bathroom down the hall from the gym where Keen planned to torture them with fight training, wearing the same clothing Portia and Deirdre had on yesterday—thick black tunics and fitted black pants. Keen had insisted they wear the clothes, which she sort of understood. The smooth fabric had a stretchy quality, making the tunic and tight pants surprisingly comfortable. The boots were made of an all-in-one stretchy material that hugged her legs from her knees to her toes, rendering every footstep silent.

Elena was still marveling at her soundless boots while tugging at the hem of her top to cover her rear, when she nearly ran into Derek. “Sorry—” she started to say, then lost her train of thought.

Derek in Fae gear… Had she actually thought him on the slender side?

Muscles—there were muscles. Not bulging, but thick and heavily padded along his arms and broad chest. The stretchy fabric clung to intriguing angles, his torso narrowing to a black belt that looked to be made of some sort of rubber instead of leather. Black fitted cargo pants stretched over more muscles, tapering at the bottom and disappearing inside dark combat boots.

Elena tried not to stare, but her eyes wouldn’t cooperate. Her gaze trailed up from his fit chest to his handsome face. His deep blue irises and golden brown hair glowed against the dark material, making his presence that much more powerful.

Keen might be beautiful, in that perfect Fae sort of way, but Derek was something else entirely. Oh, he was hot enough to make her mind stutter, but there was also this magnetism—he pulled her.

Seemed to always be pushing and pulling her.

Her heart bounced around in her chest, and she told it to simmer the hell down.

Then she watched in horror as Derek’s gaze dipped to her own chest. His face tensed.

Elena squirmed, remembering the image in the bathroom mirror. Of course he’d noticed. That was what warm-blooded men did. Not that he hadn’t already gotten an eyeful of her boobs in the emergency shower of his lab. As if that weren’t enough, the low slit at the neckline of her tunic made the view easy. She’d had to adjust the clasp on her mother’s necklace so it wouldn’t show above the fabric.

Elena appreciated the Fae clothing hugging Derek’s body, but her own? She’d never shown this much cleavage in her life.

If Fae were going to recruit curvy Latina Halven, they needed to make wardrobe adjustments.

“Let’s go,” she said, her face warm. She swept past him toward the gymnasium, and Derek tracked her without a word. She didn’t see or hear him behind her to know he was there, but she felt him.

They entered the Emain gym, and suddenly Elena forgot all about her wardrobe issues. The gymnasium looked like your average workout room, with padded mats, exercise equipment, knotted ropes dangling from the ceiling—Keen better not expect her to climb those—along with a wall of weapons.

Weapons. Holy crap.

Knives, swords, long, narrow objects, razor-sharp star thingies, and all manner of scary-as-heck killing devices were secured in an array along one wall.

Weapons were the last things she should be handling. The shaking she’d acquired along with her Fae abilities hadn’t gone away.

Leo, the magic taskmaster, had rolled his eyes several times as she fumbled the glassware during lessons yesterday. Apparently, shaking was a side effect of new magic users and went away in time—not that Leo was the least bit understanding.

Keen followed her gaze. “Don’t worry. We won’t work with the armory. Today.”

Sweet Jesus. They actually meant for her to train with that stuff? Elena turned to Derek, eyes wide, but he didn’t seem to notice her distress. He was too busy ogling the wall of killing instruments.

He took a casual sip from his water bottle. “Why not?” he asked Keen.

Elena silently groaned. “Maybe I should sit this part out. You guys seem to have a handle on things.”

“No sitting,” Keen said. “Once you have a solid grasp of hand-to-hand combat and basic martial arts—a particularly useful fighting tactic your world created and we’ve perfected—I’ll show you a few knife maneuvers. Derek will focus on the main weapons training, but knives are easy to conceal, and Halven are particularly susceptible to guns. If there’s time, I’ll show you how to fire one.”

Considering how much work she had ahead of her with Leo, she was confident most of her time would be accounted for, and that made her feel better. “Why the focus on weapons that kill Halven?”

Keen swung one of the dangling ropes out of the way and into the rafters, thank God. At least she wouldn’t be expected to climb it. But Keen’s long pause following her question made her suspicious.

“We’ve found unusual patterns among Halven. Clusters,” he finally said. “We suspect they’re responsible for the virus.”

Wow. A Halven created the virus? And Fae were asking a Halven to cure it? That had to be some kind of conflict of interest.

“Halven have known of our existence over the years. Some resent us for not treating them as equals.” Keen scoffed. “As if that were possible.”

Fae arrogance was beyond annoying. If they were so great, they wouldn’t be relying on a Halven to protect them from other Halven. “Aren’t you worried we’ll join them?” she said. “They’d probably treat us better than you do.”

Elena had only known what she was for a couple of days, but already she felt a kinship to her half-breed brothers and sisters and their place between worlds. Not that she was in any way planning to join up with the murderer who created the virus.

“Your loved ones’ lives guarantee you will not.” Darkness edged Keen’s tone.

She’d heard threats from Portia and Leo, but never from Keen. He’d always seemed to be on her side in some weird way. “Are you threatening me now too?”

His expression softened—as much as it was possible. “Think of it as a reminder. False moves on your part will not be tolerated by my people. Additionally, if the Halven discover you work for us, they will not trust you, no matter what you are. Do not underestimate them. They used extreme cunning to weaken our people.”

Derek crushed the empty plastic water bottle in his hand. “Smarter than you thought, were they? Maybe you shouldn’t underestimate any of us.”

Keen circled Derek. “Bioterrorism is underhanded and weak. Be careful to whom you compare yourself.”

With that final thought, Keen proceeded to exhibit his superiority by kicking their asses in combat training.

Elena only trained for an hour, while Derek was stuck with Keen for several more, but her muscles still felt like Jell-O after throwing punches and breaking holds. She was a runner, but that didn’t seem to be keeping her in shape.

She bundled up the empty wrapper from the extremely bland sandwich Keen had procured for her, and tossed it in a trashcan. “I need to change and meet Leo in the lab.”

“Do not change your clothing.” Keen shoved used sweat rags to the side of the mat with his foot for whatever minions cleaned up around here. “You are required to wear Fae gear henceforth until you complete your mission.”

“You can’t expect me wear this around Dawson,” she said. “I’ll look like a freak—uh, not that you look like a freak. You know what I mean.”

Keen crossed his arms over his wide chest. “While you reside within Fae lands, you will wear Fae clothes.” He scanned her figure, the corners of his mouth curling up as his gaze passed over her cleavage. “The fabric will keep your body warm and protected from the chemicals you’ll be using. It has magical properties.”

But it can’t cover boobs.