Betrayed: The Chronicles of Thamon, #2

By Beca Lewis

When betrayal is the name of the game, can anyone win?
 

As the tyrannical, man-made religion of Aaron-Lem spreads across the world like wildfire, banished shapeshifter Meg Portia struggles to come to terms with the weakening of her own powers. Her shapeshifting powers were what made her unique and special. Without them…who is she?
 

When the power-hungry leaders of the Aaron-Lem cult turn on each other, Meg's new home is caught in the crossfire. With her own powers fading, she must rely on her friends and allies to help her defend her home.
 

What Meg doesn't know is that unseen forces are at work, and her vanishing abilities have brought her closer to fulfilling a prophesy written thousands of years before.
 

Read Betrayed, the second book in The Chronicles of Thamon, and fall in love with these characters that choose friendship, goodness, and faith in each other in order to defeat evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Perception Publishing
• Release date: Jun 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393364542

Beca Lewis

BECA LEWIS always wanted to be a writer, but there were a few pit stops along the way. She has been a dancer, teacher, stockbroker, financial planner, club dancer (read this any way you wish), waitress, web designer, headhunter (the civilized kind), and a diamond broker to just name a few. All this while trying to be a decent mother to three kids, a step-mother to five more, and a grandmother to the five, almost grown, best-looking grandchildren in the world. All these experiences are the perfect fodder for book writing! Beca’s non-fiction Shift Series covers the system she developed and has coached for over twenty-five years. At this point, she is going to claim there is no time, so she doesn’t have to think about age. She’ll show you why you don’t have to either in this practical and inspirational series. Beca’s fiction explores stories around the concepts of other dimensions, love that transcends time and space, and where good always triumphs over evil. The best part of writing? Being an introvert on purpose, living in imagination, and then sharing it all with readers and friends.

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Copyright © 2020 Beca Lewis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Published by:

Perception Publishing

This book is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictional. However, as a writer, I have, of course, made some of the book’s characters composites of people I have met or known.

All rights reserved.

Prologue

Oblivious to the crashing of the waves that crested onto the shore only a few feet from the edge of his black robe, Ibris Elton, known as the Preacher, knelt in the wet sand on the island of Hetale. He shivered. Etar’s blue light held no warmth, but bathed the sea, sand, and the white cliffs that rose behind him in an eerie blue glow.

Even when Trin, Thamon’s second sun rose, there would be no warmth. The cold season had arrived, and both suns would never rise far above the horizon for many months. Ibris wrapped his robe around himself and raised the hood against the cold wind that flung the spray from the waves onto his back. It didn’t help.

Ibris shivered not only because of the cold but because he knew that no matter what he chose, his people would suffer. Horribly. He moaned. He couldn’t call them his people. They weren’t his people. They belonged to Aaron now, and it was his fault.

The knowledge that he would suffer didn’t matter to Ibris. For him, life was suffering. But that didn’t mean he wanted others to suffer as he did. He had dedicated his life to alleviating the suffering of others.

But the way he had chosen had been the wrong way. He knew that now, but what could he do?

Aaron had granted him the warm season to convert the Islands peacefully. And now the cold season was here, and the full conversion that Aaron thought had taken place on the Islands was an illusion.

Ibris wasn’t sure how long it would be before Aaron discovered the truth, and his wrath would rain down on the Islands as it had on the rest of Thamon.

If he was the only one paying the price of his failure, he could bear it. But it wouldn’t be him alone who suffered. No matter what he did now, he could never make up for the decision he had made so many years before.

It didn’t matter that he had believed that he was doing the right thing. It didn’t matter that he had only been a child. It didn’t matter that his best friend and cousin, Dax, had chosen with him.

It didn’t matter that he was an orphan, and the only adults he knew were the ones who told him he was doing the right thing.

It didn’t matter because there had been times since then when he could have turned back, but he hadn’t. He had continued down the same path because it was the only one he thought would work.

And if he was telling the truth to himself, he had been a coward. Afraid to change his mind.

But things had gotten worse. Stryker had found the top third of the pendant that was supposed to be hidden forever because of its deadly power. What if he found the other two pieces?

And then there was his cousin, Dax. They had once had the same mission. But Dax had changed. Dax had never learned the skill of mental manipulation, and as a result, had chosen the path of physical violence. Now they were both on the Islands together. He was trying to save the people, and Dax was trying to please the man that bound them.

But, Ibris could no longer hide from the fact that his choice to serve Aaron had failed. It was time to do what he should have done years before. He could only pray that he was doing the right thing now and that it wasn’t too late.

Ibris buried his face in his hands and prayed. Prayed not to the God that he preached about, but to the God of his people. Prayed that his God, Ophy, the one he had known as a child, did not abandon him now. Prayed that Ophy, the goddess of light, would understand that he had not betrayed Her, but had tried to serve Her in his own way. Prayed for his family and friends who had been destroyed by Aaron and Stryker that they would forgive him. Prayed that he would find the strength to do what he had to do. Prayed that his new choice was the right one.

Above the roar of the waves, Ibris heard the bell of the Temple. It was time to return for the first service of the day. Once again, he would stand in front of the seven Kai-Via and preach the gospel of Aaron-Lem, trying to save the people from the wrath of Aaron and Stryker and know that he was failing the people. But not for long.

However, the people he was now choosing to betray were the most dangerous men on the planet Thamon. He would need help. Ibris prayed that he would find it.

One

Across the land bridge that tied the Islands of Hetale and Lopel together, Meg and Tarek stood on the edge of one of Lopel’s cliffs watching the waves crash against the beach.

Meg’s long dark hair and gray cloak flared behind her in the wind. She shivered, and Tarek pulled her close, wrapping his cloak around her.

Like Ibris, Meg shivered not only from the cold but because she knew what they had to do. They had to stop the destruction of magic. They had to stop Aaron and Stryker from taking over the Islands the same way they had taken over the rest of Thamon.

Sometimes Meg thought that what she and her friends were trying to do was hopeless. What gave her courage was what they had done so far and how much had changed.

Tarek was the biggest surprise. Meg leaned into Tarek, the top of her head reaching only to his shoulder. When Tarek looked down at her, she raised her green eyes to his blue ones and smiled.

Everything about Tarek felt like a miracle to Meg. Only a few months had passed since she had first seen him standing in the meadow. She hadn’t trusted him. Well, she hadn’t trusted anyone then.

Trying to escape what she had thought of as her parents’ overbearing watchfulness, she had talked a portal maker in the dimension of Erda on the planet Gaia into sending her away to someplace beautiful and safe. Somewhere she could do whatever she wanted to do, whenever she wanted to. No more rules. No more laws.

Instead, he had tricked her. Meg knew it was her fault. She had tried to scare him into thinking she held a secret over him and would tell if he didn’t help her.

What she had done proved to her now how stupid she had been. Threatening to tell the portal maker’s secret meant he would make sure she could never return. The fact that she didn’t know anything about him didn’t help. Along with being stupid, she had been cruel and reckless.

Instead of getting what she wanted, the portal maker banished her. Yes, he sent her to a beautiful place, but it wasn’t safe for her or any other Mage, shapeshifter, or wizard. She had arrived entirely unprepared for Thamon.

Unaware, and still stupid and reckless, she would have been captured and killed if it hadn’t been for the unearned kindness of three other shapeshifters.

Ruth, Roar, and Wren found her and warned Meg of the danger to people like them. Then they taught her how to survive.

But they did more than that.

The three shapeshifters had taught Meg how to rebel in the right way and against the right people. They showed her what it meant to have friends, something Meg had never cared about before. Now, she had no idea what she would do without them.

*******

Back at the cabin by the lake, those friends waited for Meg and Tarek to return.

All of them were restless. The decision to not do anything for the past month had been trying, even though they all knew it was a wise one.

They had all agreed to let Dax think he had succeeded in killing all of them in the earthquake and the flood that followed it. They needed him to relax his guard. And they needed to wait for Roar and the Mages they rescued to heal.

But for Wren, the waiting was becoming intolerable. She sat in the corner of the cabin, her cloak wrapped around her, staring at the fire, trying to calm herself down.

After they rescued the Mages from the prison camp, Wren had been as exhausted as everyone else and welcomed the time to rest.

But that exhaustion had passed weeks before. Now Wren wanted to be doing something, anything other than hanging out in the cabin, or the cave with the Mages.

While they waited, the cold season had arrived. That meant that the Preacher’s agreement with Stryker for a peaceful conversion had come to an end. If Stryker discovered that the Mages and shapeshifters were still alive, he would do everything in his power to destroy them.

And now that Stryker had found the top third of the pendant, he was closer to having more power than any of them could overcome.

Wren started to pace the cabin, ignoring the looks from the others to sit down and be still. She knew they were as restless as she was, and understood how she felt. If Leon and his men were in the cabin, Leon would probably have succeeded in getting her to stop. But they weren’t there. They were in the cave with the Mages, making sure they were warm enough.

Wren sighed to herself. She hoped that Meg and Tarek would return soon, and Tarek would tell them that the time had come to continue the rebellion. Otherwise, she thought she might explode. At the very least, shapeshift into a wild bird and fly like a crazy person through the air, even though they had all been forbidden to shift or use magic during this time, afraid Ibris, Dax, or Stryker would notice.

Before Tarek, Wren had been in charge. Although she appeared to be the youngest of the shapeshifters, she had a wisdom that made her new friends wonder if she was hiding her actual age. Only Ruth and Roar knew the whole story, and they wouldn’t tell.

Turning over her authority to Tarek had been easy. From the moment she had seen him walking through the meadow outside the town of Woald, Wren believed that he was the one they had been waiting for, and so far he had proved her to be right.

But if he didn’t do something soon, she might have to start something on her own.

Two

Outside the cabin, Suzanne and her new friend Silke Featherpuff sat on a tree stump watching Trin peek over the western horizon. Trin, along with the first sun Etar, wouldn’t rise much further during the day. That meant that the Islands would not only be cold but would remain in perpetual twilight for the next few months.

Suzanne didn’t like it. At all.

If she hadn’t come to Thamon to rescue her wild-child sister, Meg, she could be back in Erda bathed in the warm sun, flying the skies with her dragon friends.

Instead, she was on this cold and dangerous planet waiting for the newly reformed Meg to return with that wizard, Tarek.

Suzanne knew that being irritable wasn’t honestly how she felt. Well, maybe she did. Meg’s new friendliness and the cold were not what Suzanne had expected. She thought Meg would be cold and the Islands warm. Both of which she was used to, and could handle. This reversal was unsettling.

The portal maker had warned her. Not about the weather, which she would have liked to have known. But he did tell her about the banning of magic. She decided to come anyway.

She didn’t blame the portal maker for what he had done. There had been many times in her life with her sister when she had secretly wished she could banish Meg. Send her away so she would not have to deal with her and all the trouble she caused.

But when that secret wish came true, Suzanne had discovered that she didn’t want that after all. So, she had said goodbye to her parents and all her friends to come to Thamon. Her parents had been grateful. Her friends tried to talk her out of it.

Is Meg worth it? they had asked. When her friends realized that she wasn’t going to change her mind, they wished her well, tears running down their faces.

It had been especially hard on the people she knew from both the Earth and Erda dimensions. Her friend from both, Kara Beth, had cried so hard that Suzanne had broken down and cried with her. But it didn’t change her mind. The people of Erda were in good hands, and they didn’t need her as much as her sister did.

Suzanne had arrived just in time to rescue Roar and Meg from the flood. It still amazed her that her sister had been willing to sacrifice her life to try and save Roar. Who had her sister become? Was that potential always there, or did she have to come to Thamon to find it?

If Thamon was Meg’s destiny, did it mean that she too had a mission in Thamon? Not just to save her sister, and to help rescue the people of Thamon from the rule of Aaron and his religion Aaron-Lem, but maybe there was something for her here, too.

Suzanne softly snorted to herself. That would be different.

Beside Suzanne, Silke stirred, and Suzanne looked over at her in wonder. Silke Featherpuff was the perfect name for her. Silke had explained that all the Okan looked like her, except the male Okans didn’t have her beautiful long hair that looked like feathers. Male Okans usually wore a cap. Maybe to keep their head warm, Silke had said. But other than that, they looked much the same. They had human-like faces, but their bodies looked like tiny birds that blinked on and off.

Having lived in the Earth dimension, Suzanne knew what fireflies looked like, and when she explained to Silke that they also blinked on and off, Silke huffed and said it was nothing like that.

Okan blinking was not because they were looking for mates. That was not interesting to them at all. They blinked as a way to release the tremendous energy that ran through their bodies. We are channels of light, Silke had said with a huff.

Whatever they were, Suzanne thought Silke was astonishing, and it amazed her that she and Silke had become friends.

In some ways she and Silke were complete opposites. When she shifted into a dragon, Silke could fit under the tip of one of her massive wings. In her human form, she could house Silke in her pocket.

Silke could shapeshift, too, but it was not something she liked to do and rarely did. But when she did, it was to something small, like a spider.

However, they had discovered that it was the fact that they were both tied in one form or another to someone else, that brought them together. Suzanne was tied to her sister, Meg. Silke was bound to Tarek.

Silke’s tie had begun with Tarek’s grandfather, and then his father, Udore, both wizards. Okans stayed through generations of wizards, but since Tarek had shown no desire to mate—let alone have children—Silke had decided he would be the last of her charges. However, now that Meg had arrived and Tarek, for the first time in his life, found himself interested in a woman, things were changing.

Suzanne and Silke sat impatiently waiting for the two people that ruled their lives because of their ties and loyalty to return and let them all know what they were doing next.

Suzanne longed to shift into a dragon, and perhaps find other dragons like her, but she couldn’t. They had all agreed not to shift or do magic until they had a plan in place and were ready for the next phase of their resistance against Aaron-Lem’s takeover of the Islands.

Silke, on the other hand, had to fly. She couldn’t walk. Her legs were pretty but not useful for much other than balance when flying and standing on something. For now, to keep her magical footprint as small as possible, she rode on other people, usually Suzanne, when Tarek wasn’t around.

Suzanne longed for a day when she could take off as a dragon, with Silke riding with her, skimming through the clouds, free as all beings are meant to be, not afraid of being shot out of the sky.

But first, they had to rid Thamon of Aaron and Stryker’s rule, and restore the practice of magic to Thamon.

Across the lake, the sky darkened. Another storm, Suzanne thought, with a combination of fear and disdain.

The summer storms had been terrifying, but winter storms were far worse. The cabin and the cave were the safest places for them to be. They chose the cabin. At the end of the warm season, Leon and his men had strengthened the structure. Now the cabin stayed warm and dry during the worst of the storms. They had also added an entry room so that the winds didn’t blow into the main room when the front door was opened.

As Suzanne and Silke came in through the first door, a flurry of sleet followed them in, along with a shout, Hold the door! Suzanne looked behind her to see Meg and Tarek running full speed, followed by a swirl of dark air filled with frozen crystals.

There is something very odd about these storms, Suzanne thought, as she hustled the two of them inside.

Was someone else on the island they didn’t know about working dark magic? Or was it someone they already knew with powers more significant than they thought? Or perhaps the Islands trying to get rid of them? Either way, it was time to do something before it got worse.

Tarek turned to Suzanne and nodded. It was his way of telling her that he knew what had to happen, and he was ready.

Three

He couldn’t stop thinking about it. Rationally, Stryker knew that it was a bad idea to be in love with something so much that he had to keep checking to make sure it was still there. But his passion for it was not rational. Even he knew that. But Stryker didn’t care. He loved it. It loved him, too. He was sure of it.

Sometimes he would find himself standing in front of a mirror, shirt off, staring at the pendant hanging around his neck. Other times he would lose track of what people were saying to him as he thought about the necklace hidden beneath his robe.

There was nothing spectacular about the way it looked, especially since most of it was missing. A tiny voice inside of Stryker sometimes whispered that he should return it to the cave where he had found it. It would tell him that there had to be a reason why someone had hidden it in the first place.

But Stryker barely listened to that voice. He believed that it was testing him. Instead, he would remind himself that there was a reason why he