Worth the Chase (19 page)

When I think of all the work that was put into this book, my head spins a little bit. With every book comes the fact that more people have been added to your team. More fans have started to reach out to you, and the pressure of producing a better book gets to be that much more. However with this book, it was the toughest to finish. Being pregnant while writing has been a hard feat and without some of the following people this book wouldn’t even be in your hands right now.

Amanda: Your support, your ambition, and feelings for this book really made it possible for me to finish. Without you telling me I could do this, I’m not sure it would’ve ever been done. <3

Brie: It’s been over a year since we started working together, and you know me and my words like that back of your hand. You push me to become a better Author, you support me, and even when I feel like I might hate you, you make sure that I can still see the love at the end of the tunnel. Thank you for never giving up on me. It shows the real meaning of friendship.

Boss Ladies: Your support and pimping has been one thing that reminds me I have fans, and people that are counting on me to give them their next addicting book. Thank you for all you do.

Donna, Clayr, Jamie, Jenn, BB. Reid, and many others: Thank you for being that listening ear when I need it most. Having your support has truly meant the most to me. Pregancy hormones can sometimes get the best of me and its nice when I have someone to talk me off that emotional cliff.

Fans: YES! You, if you’re still reading this. Thank you for picking up this book. For reading it. For supporting me. For leaving a review. For pimping, commenting, voicing your thoughts, and reaching out to me. Thank you for ever happy comment, and sad comment. Thank you for being you, and making it possible for me to do this. I love you beyond words.

Read on for an exclusive look at Project Rogue A Dark Paranormal Romance

Prologue

Maggie

Let me tell you a story. One that doesn’t end with happiness, or happy tears, this one ends in blood, revenge, and truth. I was always told the truth would set me free. That in due time, the lies would unravel revealing the truth about who I was, and what it meant to be me.

I never expected to be someone so similar to Killer. To feel the need for blood without a second thought. That was the thing about us, though; we never really knew one another for who we were. We believed that we did.

The secrets of life are always hidden, and the ones that we love the most always die. Killer was my everything, my life, and my reason for breathing. Finding out the real meaning behind the two of us would destroy us. It would destroy everything that made us who we were, but without the truth, without the secrets being told we would never know.

I took that leap of faith separating us for the rest of our lives.

Love lives on within us forever right?

If so then truthfully, I’m never alone.

Chapter One

Killer

Past

Blood surrounded me. I could feel the warmth of it against my skin. The copper smell filling the air and hitting the back of my throat as I took in a large breath. My chest heaved with the effort it took to breathe. What was wrong with me? I blinked my eyes open but saw nothing but darkness.  My fists clenched against soft fabric. Where was I? The question echoed loudly in my ears causing my head to ache.

“
Killer. Killer.” I could hear her screams, but couldn’t move. She needed me, yet I couldn’t reach her, no matter how hard I had tried.

“Maggie!” I screamed her name as loud as I could, but no words left my lips. Instead, her name and my voice bounced around inside of my head. Darkness plagued me, as I continued to hear her screams, her pleas for help, to be saved. I swam through dark layers of my mind trying to find the slightest trace of light that I could hold on to.

Sweat clung to my brow, as the memories resurfaced. Confusion hit me like a brick wall. What had happened to us? As panic rose within me, more memories filtered through my mind.

“Make it stop. Tell them to stop,” Maggie’s voice was above a beg, whimpers left her throat, and I could feel myself growing hard. Hard for her, for the pain that she was enduring for me. She was strong, so fucking strong.

“Killer can you hear me?” a voice asked. I shook my head trying to make it go away, I didn’t want to hear voices anymore; I simply wanted to know what had happened to Maggie. Unable to speak, I grunted and growled showing them just what I would do to them if I got loose, my own anger begging to be unleashed upon them.

“He’s unresponsive, Sir.” I could hear shuffling of feet over the floor, and a warm, calloused hand against my wrist, yet try as I may to move my hands and legs I couldn’t.

“Brown.” The word was said with so much authority, and suddenly I was being flung through a time portal. To a life that I had only remembered through memories, to a life I didn’t recall ever living.

Maggie stood before me, her dress billowing in the wind. She was beautiful, her hair pinned back in an elegant way. As my eyes zoned in closer I realized it was a facade, it had to be. Maggie’s image tilted, before red started forming on her hands and throat.

“No…” I screamed, running towards her. I needed to stop the bleeding to make sure that she was okay, but with every step I took toward her, I was flung further away. Blood poured from her as she grabbed her hands staring at them in understanding.

“It’s what they wanted, Killer. It’s what will happen.” Her voice was so soft, like cashmere. My eyes grew wide in fear, her voice warming me and filling me with so much self-hate. This was my fault.

“Maggie!” I screamed her name, her face tilted sideways as if she was trying to understand me.

“Revive him.” The voice said again, pulling me from the past. A course of electricity zinged through me, causing my heartbeat to jolt in my chest. I could hear the loud thuds of it in my ear, and the smell of burnt hair filtering in through my nostrils. Confusion overwhelmed me. Was I dying?

“Place him back under,” the voice said again. Squeezing my eyes closed, I tried to focus on the voice, on anything that could tell me where I was.

In the next instant, I could feel my body clinging to the side of a pool. Dark water lay at each side of me. The water was so dark and cold that my lips quivered, and my teeth chattered against one another loudly.

“Maggie!” I yelled her name but heard nothing back. It was as if I was living in my own personal hell. She wasn’t here with me. This was all inside of my head. It had to be, what else could be happening?

Without warning my grip on the side of the pool went slack, and I sunk deeply into the water. I flailed against the cold water, attempting to swim back to the top, my attempts going nowhere. 
Numbness was taking over my limbs, as my body scrapped against the bottom of the pool and an image formed above me.

I blinked, focusing in on the man. Not understanding how I could see him crystal clear as if there weren't a million gallons of water separating us.

I stared at the man for a long time he looked very familiar but at the same time didn’t. His presence alone had caused my heartbeat to start pounding in my ears again. A rush of anger zinged through me, and just as I opened my mouth to yell, to say something, anything, I could feel the warmth of light grabbing me and the darkness fading again.

“Stable, Sir.” The voice was back, the memory interrupted before I could get an answer.

“Good. Now I want you to contact them.” The man’s voice grew colder with each word that was spoken. I had never wished for my voice to work so much in my life. To ask questions, to get answers.

“I will let them know, Sir. Do you want me to let them know that we have the girl also?” Without hesitation, my eyes popped open.
There was no amount of drugs or pain that could keep me from her.
 

The girl? Who was the girl? I could feel the anger I had towards them bringing up the girl but didn’t understand the meaning behind it.

Anger surged through my veins. I took everything in as fast as I could as I tried to get my body parts to catch up with my brain. My eyes zeroed in on every single object in the room. I needed to take in as much as I could before they forced my body back under.

I was lying on a bed, the wall before me was a stark white color, clean, hospital like. I drifted my attention to the men closest to my bed, they held clipboards, and wore lab coats that mirrored that of the walls in color, their faces frozen in shock as I ripped the cords they had placed in my body out.

“Where am I?” My voice was hoarse and angry. Why had I stopped to ask questions? I should’ve been destroying anything and everyone to get to her. Yet, I felt that I needed answers, that I needed something to tell me all of this wasn’t a dream. I lifted my nose to the air to see if I could get her scent, anything that would point me in the right direction, but instead all I could smell was the disgusting scent of antiseptic and bleach.

“You’re being treated for your injuries.” One of the lab coat workers said, his voice startled. I stared at him blankly, knowing that he was lying. I could practically see the lies written on his face.

The other worker looked between me, and his partner, and I knew he was about to lie as well. I stepped off the bed, my fists clenched as I felt the urge to release the inner beast on them.

They lie! All human lie!!
I growled loudly, causing them to take a few steps back.

“Why don’t you sit back down on the bed and while help you figure everything out.” I could hear the fear, and panic in his voice.

Shaking my head in rage, I decided I would give these people one more chance to explain things to me, otherwise they were as good as dead.

“Tell. Me. Where. I. Am.” I screamed each word, making sure they understood my question. I was on the verge of crumbling my vision going black. I had one urge, and one urge only and that was the need to make them answer me.

“I…” The male to my left stumbled over his words while the other seemed to have pulled his balls out of his asshole. This caused a bubble of hysterical laughter to form inside of me. If he wasn’t shaking in his fucking boots now, he would be the second I wrapped my hands around his throat.

“Killer… If that’s even what you would like to be referred to as?” He questioned me like I was dumb, causing my muscles to ache, with built up tension. I had given them many a chance to explain themselves so why was I not dismembering their bodies?

“You won’t have enough time to say my name, let alone remember it once I rip your body apart. Of course I’ll start with your throat, I hate it when my prey screams as I pull their limbs from the body.” I sneered, trying not to lose focus on the important things here. Things like the girl and finding out where I was.

The man smirked, still seeming nonetheless un-phased by my anger, “I’ll just call you Killer since we have no paperwork on who you’re.” He stepped closer to me and I forced my fingers to move, to grip the sheets in rage. My body was still in some sort of penalization.

“You’re a Killer, right? You were made to do this correct?” His eyes narrowed. In them a hate that mirrored my own lingered. Did I not just tell him I would rip him from limb to limb? “To rip people to shreds, to kill, and not care that you’re doing so? To be relentless by nature, to rip life from those that you seek unfit of living?” He was mind-fucking me. Trying to get me to spill something, a secret, an answer, anything. My mind and body told me to lock everything up that I needed to hide inside myself, but I had never been a runner, a person to hide from the dark that lingered around every corner.

“I don’t think you know who I am at all.” My teeth ground together, and somehow I had managed to bite the inside of my cheek. The taste of blood filling my mouth, caused a haze to fall over my mind.

“Because if you did know who I was you would’ve been running for the hills already,” I whispered to him, making sure he understood the finality in my voice. I would end him and his pathetic life the second I could get my body to react. My hands wouldn’t move, but my legs, my legs had carried me a few steps. If only I could get the blood to move to other places.

“I’m not scared of you, Killer.” A smile formed on his face. “No one is.” He finished, and I could feel his voice drifting off in my head, the darkness gripping at me.

“You will be,” I snarled just as I fell into the abyss.

“Where are you?” The person asking the question repeated himself many times but I continued to shake my head, over and over again ignoring him. My stomach was on the verge of pouring its contents out.

“I told you I don’t know,” I screamed as searing pain shot through my eyes. The images before me played out like a play, colors of every spectrum showed, and I smiled as an image of Maggie filtered into the dark spots.