Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood)

Praise for

THE IMNADA BROTHERHOOD SERIES

“A compellingly dark Regency world of shifters, fey, and passion. Alexa Egan promises to be a star of the genre.”

—Kathryne Kennedy, author of The Elven Lords series

“Complex world-building and compelling characters. Egan’s creatures are sexy, soulful, and dangerous.”

—Molly Harper, author of the Nice Girls series

“Replete with dark, sensuous, and honorable characters and a fast-paced, intricate plot, this highly romantic and exciting story is a winner.”

—
RT Book Reviews
(4
¹
/
₂
stars)

“Sexy shifters, ancient blood feuds, and a heroine who won’t quit her man.”

—
USA Today
bestselling author Caridad Piñeiro

“Brilliant and inventive storytelling.”

—
VampChix

“A series to keep an eye on.”

—
All About Romance

“You will be pulled into the magical parallel reality created by Alexa Egan and not want to leave.”

—
Bitten By Romance

No matter what, they would not see him weep.

Instead Gray bit his lower lip until blood dripped hot down his chin to mix with the streaks already smearing his bruised and battered chest. He twisted against the silver fetters clamped around his wrists and ankles, his torn flesh mottled a sickly shade of green from the metal’s poisonous touch, but the struggle served only to sap him of the little strength he had left.

“Just get it over with,” he shouted, despising the weakness cracking his voice and the tremors shaking his knees.

The old man merely stared with milky pale eyes upon his only surviving grandson. An aura of disappointment carved long lines in the duke’s aged and solemn face. His heir had let him down—again.

Gray’s gaze widened to take in the Gather elders ringing the duke like hounds round a carcass. The ruddy-faced, corpulent Lord Carteret, down from his lonesome highland holding. Owen Glynjohns from
Wales, with his bold good looks and bard’s clever tongue. The Skaarsgard, who’d traveled from the ocean-sprayed Orkney cliffs, where the basking seals and the rugged fishermen considered each other kin. Each of the men looked on impassively, their duty done if not enjoyed.

The fourth elder watched the proceedings with a face pale as bone and eyes hollow with mute rage, his hands clamped against the arms of his chair like claws. No doubt Sir Desmond Flannery was imagining his own son’s sentence, due to be carried out on the morrow. Mac would never snivel or flinch in fear. He was the consummate soldier, unlike Gray, once his senior officer.

Sir Desmond leaned forward, his mouth twisted in disgust. “Enough dallying. Let’s have it done then. The sun’ll be down in another wee bit and he’ll”—he seemed to choke on his words—“he’ll shift. The chains aren’t intended to hold a bird on the wing.”

The elder was right. Already Gray felt the queasy slide of Fey blood magic stealing over him, flames burning blue and silver at the edges of his vision. The sun would set soon, and the curse would take him over, twisting his unwilling body from man to beast for the hours of night. His eyes flashed wildly toward his grandfather before darting away again, his bowels churning ominously.

“Of course.” A nondescript little gentleman with a clerk’s fastidiousness stepped forward in response. The Arch Ossine—Sir Dromon Pryor—had eyes that missed nothing and a mouth trained for truth-twisting. “Mr. Copper. Whenever you’re ready.”

Gray tried meeting Pryor’s triumphant stare but
faltered when the enforcer stepped to the scaffold, a red-hot iron brand held in one brutish fist.

The restless audience whispered, feet shuffling against the benches, but no one called out or came to his defense. They knew the laws that had governed the Imnada’s existence for a hundred generations. Understood that the weak and the sick and those no longer able to serve the bloodlines must be excised like a cancer lest the whole pack be brought low. Lowest peasant or heir to the Duke of Morieux himself, it made no difference when it came to preserving the safety of the five clans.

Gray found himself scanning the crowd for one particular face—though he knew she wouldn’t be there. The duke had sent her north months ago. Still, Gray found himself repeating her name in his head like a mantra, a way to hold himself together in these final horrific moments.

What would she have done had she been here to witness his sentence? Would she have turned her back like the rest of them? Or would she have leapt to his defense as she had so many times over the years? He’d never know, and for that he was almost glad.

The brand’s heat could be felt from three feet away. Gray clamped his jaw lest he embarrass himself with last-minute pleas for mercy. Still, two rasping words leaked from his bloody mouth as he stood bowed and shaking beneath the weight of his fear.

“Grandfather. Please.”

The duke’s chin lifted from the sagging folds of his neck while his hands fluttered for a moment. Then Sir Dromon leaned close to the aging leader of the five clans of Imnada, whispering his poison like silver into
the old man’s ear. The duke nodded. His hands relaxed into his lap. His mouth pursed and his eyes hardened once more, pale and uncaring as stones in a pool.

The enforcer laid the brand to Gray’s back, singeing through the skin to the muscles and tendons below. The charred stench of roasting flesh filled his nose. Screams ripped from his body and tore up his throat. They bounced off the stone circle of the Deepings Hall, echoing back to him in waves of anguish. His knees buckled as he arched away from the pain, every nerve aflame, every drop of blood in his veins on fire, his very soul cleaving from his body.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he escaped to the darkest corner of his mind as a hunted creature burrows away from even the hope of light, but the desolate keening sounds of his disgrace followed him as his clan mark was burned away in a stripping of all he was or would ever hope to be. He retched until his ribs cracked and piss leaked into his boots.

But not one tear fell.

They never saw him weep.

She never saw him weep.

The bells were ringing nine in the morning when Major Gray de Coursy stepped from the hackney at Tower Hill. Despite the hour, fog cloaked the streets in a thick, choking darkness. It swirled in the alleys and gathered in the parks, bringing with it the stench of dead fish, river mud, and chimney soot. Lanterns threw dim greasy pools of light over the cobbles while footsteps and voices echoed eerily in the green-gray miasma. A link boy offered Gray his services but was waved away. His keen vision cut the gloom like a knife, and he wanted no witnesses to his destination.

He passed through a narrow, dingy lane, coming out near the disused waterstairs south of the Tower and St. Katherine’s, stopping finally in front of a door set deep into a stone wall—part of an ancient chapterhouse, though the wall and yard beyond were all that remained. He knocked once, then twice more.

A key turned. A bolt slid clear and the door swung open on the hunched figure of a man. “She awaits you, my lord.”

“It’s simply Major de Coursy, Breg. Lord Halvossa was my father’s title and would have been my brother’s after. Never mine.”

“Yes, my lord . . . er . . . Major, sir. As you say.” The porter bowed him in, throwing the bolt behind him. “I offered her breakfast but she refused.”

“You did as you should.” Gray approached a low, columned outbuilding, Breg following. At the entrance, the old man paused, shuffling foot to foot.

“Out with it,” Gray said sternly.

The porter licked his lips and gave a quick breath as if steeling himself. “It’s an enforcer, my lord. Prowling the streets near Cheapside last night.”

“How could you tell it was an Ossine?”

Breg huffed. “I may be rogue and cast from my holding, same as yourself, but I can still sense a member of the five clans right enough. And I know a shaman when I cast my peepers on one. They’re different, ain’t they?”

“What was he doing?”

“Asking questions. I was afraid to get too close. Didn’t want him catching wind of me following. No clansman would sob to hear old Breg had ended as food for the grubs with a stake through his heart, that’s for sure.”

Gray’s mouth curved in a faint smile. “This clansman would. If you see him again, send word. But don’t go sniffing around on your own. I can’t afford to lose you.”

“They’re growing bolder, ain’t they, my lord . . . Major, sir? I heard tell of a rogue near Clapham disappeared and turned up dead. Another one up north off Islington Road by the Quaker workhouse. It’s not safe to be unmarked no more.”