Gold: Heart of a Warrior: Gold, #1

By Eden Robins

What if loving someone could kill you?

 

It's just gonna be one of those days…

 

Empathic healer and business owner, Dora Alexander decided to celebrate her 25th birthday by exploring the stalagmites and stalactites in Kartchner Caverns. Kinda nerdy? Maybe, but you do you, right? Things take a nasty turn when an earthquake rocks the cave, leaving her alone in complete darkness. Searching for a way out, she accidently awakens an immortal warrior who's kind of cranky after his 100-year nap. Wouldn't you be?

 

Philoctetes, one of Demeter's immortal Gold warriors wakes up to the disturbing sound of a female sobbing. Thinking she's one of the Silver demons he's sworn to hunt down and destroy, he almost kills her before realizing she's human. Correction. Turns out she's not just human. She's also the woman responsible for sending his kind to hell and causing woe and misery for the entire human race.

 

Dora never asked to be Pandora reborn. And she certainly didn't ask to be paired up with an insanely hot immortal demon hunter on a mission to save the world and redeem them both. But The Fates seem to have their own quirky ideas. One of them being if she and said hot demon hunter consummate the inferno like attraction blazing between them, they'll simply cease to exist, with any memory of their time on earth erased forever.

 

Oh goody, the day just got worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Champagne Book Group
• Release date: Jul 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959036104

Book preview

Heart of a Warrior

Gold, 1

EDEN ROBINS

Logo Description automatically generated

CHAMPAGNE BOOK GROUP

Heart of a Warrior

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Published by Champagne Book Group

712 SE Winchell Avenue, Depoe Bay OR 97341 U.S.A.

First Edition 2023

eISBN: 978-1-959036-10-4

Copyright © 2023 Eden Robins All rights reserved.

Cover Art by Sevannah Storm

Champagne Book Group supports copyright which encourages creativity and diverse voices, creates a rich culture, and promotes free speech. Thank you for complying by not scanning, uploading, and distributing this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher. Your purchase of an authorized electronic edition supports the author’s rights and hard work and allows Champagne Book Group to continue to bring readers fiction at its finest.

www.champagnebooks.com

Version_1

For my mother, Joyce, who introduced me to

the magic of reading. And for my husband, Stephen,

who wholeheartedly believes in the magic of me.

Dear Reader:

I’m so grateful you bought my book. Sounds like such a cliché, but it’s an absolute truth. For a time, I stepped away from the world of writing, and therefore, stepped away from myself. Creativity lives and breathes in me with the kind of gusto and fire that’s hard to quell. Yet, I tried. I tried for more than a decade.

Though I learned so much about myself during that period, it was a time of not fully living in the joyful, wholehearted way I had when creating the stories and people I loved. The decision to once more nurture and nourish my creative fire, and therefore me, brought me back to the joyous, loving, wildly satisfying and wonder-filled life I desired. Simply put, my decision to write again saved me.

That decision is directly supported by you. Each of you who buys my book sends a message to me that you too want to fall in love with people and stories through the wonder of storytelling. Knowing that makes me smile.

So, yes, I’m damn grateful for you and the part you play in this fantastical journey I’ve once more decided to take.

Yours in love, joy, and gratitude,

Eden

Chapter One

Dora couldn’t breathe.

As the rough stone surrounding her closed in, her impending death loomed precariously close. Frantically searching her pant pockets proved fruitless. Where was her inhaler? She always had it with her. Wherever she went. Always.

It was gone, and she was a goner. The earth tremor had not only shaken the ground but also the uneasy calm controlling the tour group she was with. From the moment they had entered the dim caverns the mood of the crowd had changed. Excited chattering shifted to wide-eyed wariness.

After walking through the set of heavy steel enforced doors and being blasted by the cavern’s warm moist air, Dora had gotten her first real look at the hazily lit interior of Kartchner Caverns.

Known for its beautiful rock formations, it was one of a few points of interest she had planned during her solo trip south from Phoenix to Tucson. She had been more worried about her jaunt to the indoor sky diving center in Eloy than about her tour through the caverns, imagining the indoor flight being risky to her health while the caverns would be a fun learning experience.

She had imagined wrong.

The minute the tremor hit, the lights flickered then went out. Dora hadn’t been able to catch her breath. She was in trouble. Although closed-in places usually sent her into a panic faster than a blink, and had since she was a child, she had learned the caverns were large and spacious so hadn’t been overly worried.

But add darkness and disorientation to the mix, and she wanted nothing more than to run screaming for daylight and open skies. Technically, she didn’t have full-blown asthma. Instead, it was more of an acute sensitivity to pollutants in the air. Unfortunately, that condition also flared up during instances of extreme stress.

Instances just like this one.

Breathe. Just breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Slowly. Don’t hyperventilate.

Dora tried to talk herself down, to climb out of full panic mode, but the black nothingness around her was suffocating. She struggled to focus on her only point of orientation—Kathy, the tour guide’s steady voice as she repeated the same thing.

Stay calm and stay right where you are. The backup lights should come on momentarily.

At first everyone had listened, but as the minutes passed and the tour guide’s voice started to waver, a nervous murmuring hummed through the crowd. The barely held calm splintered into a million pieces as the second tremor shook the ground beneath their feet. A woman’s high-pitched scream echoed through the cavern sending fear skittering up Dora’s spine and her already racing heart speeding into overdrive.

The crowd’s murmuring grew louder and more agitated.

The guide clicked on her flashlight, piercing the dense darkness with a narrow swath of light. Dora could just make out the guide’s face.

Please try to stay calm, folks, and follow me. We’re going to slowly make our way back to the entrance now. Kathy’s voice didn’t waver.

Relief coursed through Dora.

We’ve done lots of practice drills for this kind of thing. Don’t worry, we’ll be out of the cavern before you know it. Because of how dark it is, stay close to the person in front of you. Pay close attention, keep up with the group, and you’ll be fine.

A twinge of apprehension filled Dora from Kathy’s cautions, but since the guide’s voice remained calm, Dora did her best to quell her worries.

She was careful to stay with the person just ahead of her as they slowly made their way, turning first into one tunnel, then another. Her anxiety returned as the second tunnel descended deeper into the cavern. Shouldn’t they be going up to get out, not down? She had absolutely no idea where they were, or where they were going.

A deep rumbling vibrated through the cavern. Not a full quake, but enough for Dora’s pulse to speed out of control.

Remember, stick together, the guide reminded them. We’ll be out of here soon.

This time, Kathy’s steady voice didn’t ease Dora. Her breathing grew more labored. She couldn’t catch her breath. She tried to think happy, calming thoughts, but they sifted out of her mind faster than she could hold on to them, replaced with images of dying in these caves.

Her inhaler was the only thing that would help.

Coming up empty handed after searching the left pocket of her hoodie, she switched to the right. The zipper got stuck about halfway across. Her pace slowed as she focused on getting it open just enough to grab her inhaler.

She was desperate for air.

With one last final tug, the zip sprang loose with so much force her inhaler slipped out. It bounced off her shoe but couldn’t have landed far. She bent to grab it, lost her balance, and fell sideways. Once she got hold of the damn thing, she’d join the group walking ahead.

Sliding her hands along the dirt floor, she found the round smooth handle that would save her breath, but instead of grabbing it, she knocked it to the right.

Frantic now, she scurried along on her hands and knees, her wheezing becoming more pronounced and her ever-tightening lungs constricting airflow into her body.

Nothing but dirt and rocks filled her hands.

She had an extra inhaler in the car. Didn’t she? She tried to stow a backup there, but it had been a while since she’d checked on it. Had she moved it last time she cleaned her car? Or maybe it was expired and wouldn’t do any good.

Stop!

Her mind-spin abruptly halted to where she was and what was happening. Jumping to her feet, she looked around her, but was met by more impenetrable darkness. She squinted, trying to see through the blanket of black. The group shouldn’t be far ahead. She had just started looking for her inhaler.

Where were they?

Hello? Her voice sounded breathless and soft. They’d never hear it. Hey! I’m here. Don’t leave without me!

She’d meant to yell, but her tight lungs didn’t allow for much more than a hoarse whisper.

Hands stretched out in front of her, she blindly made her way forward, hoping to rejoin the tour group. How far ahead could they be? She hadn’t been searching for her inhaler that long.

Had she?

Catching her toe on a rock, she fell forward. Unable to break her momentum, she tumbled into a sold wall of rock. Luckily, she caught herself before her head hit the hard surface, leveraging her palms against the wall as her face came within inches of it. Leaning against the rock’s uneven surface, she tried to catch her breath.

Another tremor hit, this one stronger than the last. Panic overcame reason, and Dora squeaked.

Veering to the right, she found an opening and shot through it. Not seeing the ropes bordering the path until too late, she tripped and slid down a slope, landing in a heap at the bottom. Ignoring the dizziness threatening to overwhelm her, she sat up, peering into the darkness, but found nothing to focus on but complete and utter blackness.

Hello? she called out in a trembling voice. Is anyone there?

Dora waited, but no one answered. Squelching hysterical laughter, she sucked as much oxygen as possible into her lungs and tried again.

Hello! she shouted, barely holding back the scream clawing its way up her throat. Is anyone there?

Other than her gasps, complete silence was her reply.

That silence was her undoing.

Fear overran any remaining rational thought.

Help me! Please! Someone. Anyone. I’m here! Help me!

Dora screamed until her voice grew hoarse and she couldn’t catch her breath. Only then did some semblance of reason return. She needed to stay where she was. Someone would find her. The lights would eventually come back on.

But what if they didn’t?

What if another earthquake hit and the whole place fell apart, burying her forever in boulders and darkness?

Since the moment Dora had found herself lost and alone, she had been trying to find her way out using some of her senses, but not all. Steadying her breathing, she centered herself and opened up to the world around her.

Using her gift, or what her dad called her curse, she sent out an empathic antenna, hoping the feelings she picked up would help her track their location. Her back bowed from shock, and her legs turned to wet noodles as wave after wave of emotions crashed into her. Fear. Excitement. Anger. Boredom. Sadness.

Snapping herself back, she cut off the blare of emotional noise hammering at her. Instead of guiding her to a way out, her empathic abilities left her with a massive headache and more disoriented than before.

Cradling her head in her hands, scared and in pain, Dora waited for the roiling unrest in her stomach to pass while her sobs filled the dark silence.

Until the growling started.

Growling?

Her heart rate sped up, and her mouth went dry. What would be growling in these caverns? According to the guide, the only things living in the caverns were bats, insects, bacteria, and fungi, right?

Did bats growl?

H-hello? she managed to squeak.

The continued growling was her answer.

Wh-who’s th-there?

Your worst nightmare. The answer was immediate as was the breath forced out of her from the impact of being tackled to the ground.

Lying atop her, her attacker cut off what little bit of oxygen Dora had managed to get into her lungs. She sucked in her next breath, which wasn’t easy considering the weight crushing her.

Terrified, she bucked her hips to dislodge him. He just lay still and heavy as a stone against her futile efforts until she exhausted herself and stopped struggling.

Pinning her hands above her head, he shifted so most of his weight was on the ground, not her. She frantically gulped air into her lungs.

L-let me go, she gasped between desperate pants. I-I can’t breathe. My lungs-p-please.

His hold on her loosened, and his body jerked as if she had struck him. Jumping up, he pulled Dora to her feet and yanked her against him.

Who was he?

Sucking in gulps of air, she opened her senses, but the searching tendrils she sent out came back blank.

Nothing.

Nothing?

It was as if her empathic abilities had suddenly been turned off. That wasn’t possible. Was it? Maybe it was him. Maybe he was able to block her senses somehow.

Who are you? she asked.

You know, he growled. Just as you know what I must now do.

Releasing her, he took a few steps back, the gravel crunching beneath his feet.

Hell no. This wasn’t happening.

Dora wasn’t about to go back to being all alone in total blackness. She needed human contact. For better or worse, he was the closest human. Stretching her arms in front of her, she searched for him.

Another earthquake, stronger than the others, shook the cavern. This one wasn’t messing around. She teetered back and forth, barely keeping her footing.

The guy dodged first right, then left, as stones fell from the collapsing roof of the cave.

Damn it! He glared at her. I don’t have time to kill you. Stay here and die, evil one.

Turning from her, he stalked away.

Kill her?

His words sent fear spearing through Dora, freezing her in place.

Fear and the instinct to survive warred inside her.

Survival won out.

She wouldn’t be left to die in this cold, dark place. She’d deal with him trying to kill her later. Rushing after him, she grabbed his arm. The next thing she knew she was above ground, balled up in a fetal position, bone-deep pain spiking through her as she dry-heaved. Not the most pleasant or attractive state, to be sure, but hell, she was alive. That had to count for something, right?

Her breathing calmed as her airways relaxed. Most likely because she was outside in the fresh air, or maybe because she was no longer held down by the hulk of a guy looming large in front of her. Either way, she could now suck oxygen into her lungs. Always a good thing if a girl wanted to live.

Taking a good hard look around, she couldn’t help but stare at her savior slash would-be killer. He was naked as the day he was born. Naked! Weirdly, he didn’t seem to care, or maybe he hadn’t noticed. She had.

He was built. Ripped, sculpted, and hard in all the right places. Dora had a tough time focusing on the very real possibility he could be insane, and in that case, dangerous. He oozed testosterone and menace. The guy was trouble. Even without her empathic skills, which for some reason still weren’t working with him, it was obvious.

The scars marking his body enhanced the impression. It was as if someone had taken a knife and had a party cutting him up. One large one ran over the right side of his body, from his collar bone to his bellybutton, while the remaining nicks and puckered marks were scattered all over his arms, legs, chest, and stomach.

This guy had been in a lot of fights and managed to stay alive. Impressive? Yes. Scary? Hell to the yes on that too. The urge to run overtook her, but as her gaze skimmed up his long, muscular legs, passing his narrow hips, over his bulging chest and wide athletic shoulders, she doubted the success of that plan.

Didn’t he get that he was naked?

Dora wanted to mention it, she really did, but the urge to take a peek was too much for her. She shouldn’t. He had just said something about killing her. Strangely, he acted like he wasn’t in a big hurry to get on with it. He just stood there, legs squarely apart, arms folded at his chest, studying her as if he wasn’t sure what to make of her.

The feeling was mutual.

Unable to resist, she let her gaze once again skim over him. While his body was covered in scars, his face wasn’t. The marks stopped at his neck. The stunning contrast made it difficult to bring her focus back to his face.

Of course, there was also the fact that his whole body, every part of him was in perfect proportion to his very large size. One part in particular stood out as a prime example. Like his face, said part remained miraculously unharmed or scarred in any way.

Dragging her stare away from his impressive manhood, she noticed a small odd, shaped tattoo on his pelvis. It sat to the right of his downward trail of dark hair, just below his rock-hard abs and above the well-endowed part of him drawing her attention. Her face grew warm, and she tore her gaze away from that striking point of his anatomy and concentrated on his face.

His expression remained neutral. Weird. He wasn’t the least bit concerned by either his nakedness or her attention. Did he really not care or hadn’t he noticed? Did insanity do that to a person? Make them oblivious to obvious conventions like wearing clothes?

That last thought brought her back to her senses.

This man was dangerous. He had already talked about hurting her. What more did she need to know, other than finding a way out of this predicament?

Fast.

She sat up, ignoring the dizziness assailing her.

Her heart rate sped up to a staccato rhythm, and she once more struggled to get enough oxygen into her lungs. The intensity in his eyes left her panicked.

She looked over her shoulder and did a quick scan of the area. She hoped to spy something familiar to guide her back to the park entrance, but she couldn’t identify a thing. All the bushes, cactus, and rocky mounds looked identical. She had absolutely no idea where she was, or how to get back to the main cavern offices.

Regardless, she had to try.

~ * ~

Philoctetes reveled in the hot, rich, ancient power running through his body. Warm pinpoints of heat rolled through him as he transformed into mist and ascended out of the caverns. He had missed that feeling. He had forgotten how good it felt until its familiarity wrapped around him, warm and comforting.

He’d woken at times from his self-imposed, century-long, subterranean sleep, hunger beating at him, weakness creeping in.

Was this how mortals felt?

If so, no thanks to that. He’d rather bear the brunt of both sides of magic, the dark and the light, that immortality brought, rather than deal with a mortal’s fragility.

He was surprised to see the Silver female had dematerialized above ground with him. Her kind didn’t like to be outside, especially during the day. The fact she had made that choice rather than scurrying deeper into the caverns with her own kind perplexed him.

His confusion died as his demon woke. The gnawing, grueling, and endlessly sharp knives of pain stabbed him, stealing his breath as he struggled for control. His head splintered into aching pain that permeated everything from his scalp to his eyeballs, all washed in agony.

It was all Philoctetes could feel, all he had been cursed to feel for so long it would have been strange if it wasn’t there, deep in his heart, running through him like a thousand cuts and scrapes nicking and bruising him from the inside out.

His choice to seek oblivion in the caverns hadn’t been the best solution, but at least it had dulled the sharp, never-ending agony he couldn’t escape. It clawed at him, threatening to tear him up. The female’s sobs had grated against his mind, bringing him from the depths of his hibernation.

Her energy was both familiar and different. Sick, twisted evil was there too, but he wasn’t sure if it was coming from her or elsewhere. Unable to discern what she was, he fell back to his mission training and protocol. She wasn’t one of his kind, and she wasn’t just a human mortal. That meant she could be one of them.

Silver.

Disgust curled his lips, and intense hatred filled his heart. The fury shooting through him energized him despite his long-imprisoned sleep and lack of nourishment. Ignoring the ache of protest from muscles unaccustomed to movement for so long, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

Furious to be awoken by one of her kind, he hadn’t paid close attention to the female until now. A man could lose himself in her fathomless green eyes, the same rich emerald green as the forests near his home. They were fringed with lush, thick golden lashes that almost exactly matched the color of the long, reddish blonde hair fanning in curly waves over the ground around her head. Her pink flushed cheeks stood out against her creamy pale skin, and a little nose sprinkled with freckles and slightly tilted up at the end sat above the fullest, berry-red lips he had ever seen.

Something about her flushed skin nagged at his pain-muddled mind.

She was familiar yet she wasn’t. What was it?

She had a face that would have competed against even that witch, Aphrodite. His gaze lowered, taking in her form, including her round, voluptuous curves. He enjoyed a woman built like a woman, soft and round in all the right places. Yet she hid her body beneath loose-fitting clothing. This confused him. Most of the females he had known would have been proud to show off such a fine, womanly figure. Why would she hide it?

Her gasp yanked his gaze back to hers.

Eyes wide with shock, her expression revealed her fear.

She would try to escape him.

She had noticed his scars.

His many, many scars.

His heart hardened, and his ardor cooled as he recalled the reason for the multitude of scars covering his body. Yet, if she peered into his soul, she’d understand where the real scars were. Not visible, yet brutally marking him forever. It was useless to consider. She would never understand. It was time to get back to the matter at hand.

Her death.

At his hands.

Though Philoctetes needed to kill her, something made him hesitate. Why did she seem familiar to him? What was that nagging voice at the back of his mind, holding him back? Questions clawed at his thoughts until he had to discover more about her.

"What year is it? What’s your name, female of