Page 8 of Shadow (Marinah and the Apocalypse #1)

King

W atching Marinah eat with such uninhibited pleasure stirred something unexpected in me.

Her wide-eyed enjoyment had been genuine, almost childlike, and for a moment, I forgot she had been sent here as a pawn in the Federation’s endless manipulations.

She had no idea her government’s narrative about food shortages was pure crap.

I had seen what their leaders ate, and it was nothing like the garbage they had fed us during the war.

Sure, they stockpiled and rationed some of their crops, but the best had always gone to the privileged few.

That had been one of the reasons I respected her father.

Farris Church had eaten the same rations as his troops, no matter how revolting.

He hadn’t had to lead men into battle, either. He could’ve stayed behind a desk, directing strategies from safety.

But he had chosen to be on the front lines, and his death had been the ultimate testament to his loyalty and humanity.

He had earned our respect, and I’d admit, his daughter showing up here had complicated things.

She was an enigma.

How loyal was she to the Federation? How much of her father’s integrity ran in her blood? There had been no easy answer.

I was American, like her.

I grew up on a farm, raised by a father who had done his best to prepare me for a future I couldn’t begin to imagine.

For ten years, I thought I was just another kid. Then, on my eleventh birthday, everything changed. I would never forget the day my father sat me down and told me the truth. I thought it was some elaborate joke, even though he hadn’t been a man prone to humor. When he stripped off his clothes and transformed into something out of a horror film, my world shattered.

Love for him hadn’t stopped me from running away in terror. I shoved my dresser in front of my bedroom door, leaned against it, and refused to come out. He waited until I had collapsed from exhaustion, then pushed the door open and carried me to bed.

The fear I felt in those first weeks had been suffocating, but the fear eventually gave way to anger. I wanted to be like the other kids at school, to have a normal life. Instead, I was some alien species, hiding who I was from the world. I resented my father for keeping the truth from me. Everything changed, and I was pulled out of school to be taught at home.

My life turned upside down.

Instead of math and English, I learned how to control a body that had seemed hellbent on tearing itself apart. I spent hours meditating to suppress sudden bursts of rage. And always, I had to practice hiding the monster within.

That was what Marinah didn’t understand. The creature she met earlier wasn’t just a part of me.

It was me.

There was no separating the man from the beast. But watching her that night, I realized she was more dangerous than I first thought. Not because she was a threat to my people, but because she reminded me of something I had lost long ago: A connection to my humanity.

The question was, could I trust her? Or would I have to kill her before she learned too much?

I had studied Shadow Warrior history with smoldering resentment.

My childhood had been ripped away, replaced with a dark cage of anger and shame. I hadn’t cared where we had come from or what had made us different.

I hated it. And I hated my father for forcing his monstrous heritage on me. It was his fault that I carried a beast inside, something I considered grotesque and unnatural.

When puberty hit, Beast started making his presence known.

My hatred turned inward. I despised my fucking self more than anything else. I hadn’t been some comic book superhero. I had been a freak, constantly suppressing the urge to let the monster out. I even had to limit eating meat to keep Beast subdued.

For a growing boy, it was a cruel punishment. I was always hungry, gnawingly, desperately hungry. That feeling haunted me every waking hour, and even now, as a man, I had a thing about food.

I never wanted to feel that relentless, empty ache again.

From the moment my father revealed our secret, I became impossible to reason with. Anger had poured out of me like venom. I couldn’t speak without a sharp edge to my words. When I couldn’t find the right ones, I let my fists or claws do the talking.

I destroyed my room in one fit of rage and obliterated the kitchen in another. I ran away twice, thinking I could escape what I was.

My life hadn’t started to change until the day my uncle arrived.

My father, worn down by months of my rebellion, turned to his brother for help. Greystone hadn’t lectured me or tried to break my anger. Instead, he taught me to embrace Beast.

He believed our time in hiding would end sooner rather than later. While my father clung to the old ways of secrecy and self-restraint, Greystone began quietly reshaping the Shadow Warrior legacy.

For years, he had worked to change the lives of young, dysfunctional Shadow Warriors like me. He had seen what the older generation refused to see. We couldn’t keep pretending to be something we weren’t.

Even when the world started to crumble, when bombs reduced cities to ash and the first hellhounds tore through humanity, my father still tried to hold on to his quiet farmer’s life.

Greystone, on the other hand, had been preparing. He had been training Shadow Warriors as young as twelve, teaching them to fight and embrace the beasts within.

He prepared me too.

I excelled under his guidance, learning to train others, to lead boys through the same transformation I once feared. When the war escalated and humankind faced annihilation, my father and the older men who suppressed their inner beasts for generations finally stepped forward.

I hadn’t agreed with sending them to the front lines. They hadn’t been ready for war. But I respected Greystone’s decisions. He believed in their strength, even after decades of denial.

They went to fight, to defend humanity, while the rest of us trained for one singular purpose: to survive. No matter the cost, no matter what happened to humankind, Greystone made sure the Shadow Warriors would endure.

We lost countless Shadow Warriors, but my uncle had been right. Our survival always depended on our ability to adapt. It was in our blood, ingrained in every cell.

I didn’t fight alongside humans until the final two years of the war. My father died not long after I joined the ranks of Shadow Warriors on the battlefield. My uncle survived the hellhounds, only to be killed in the aftermath, during humanity’s betrayal when they tried to contain us.

To say I hated them didn’t even begin to cover it. There was no human word strong enough to express the depths of my contempt.

My attention shifted to Marinah. Her expression flickered with something I couldn’t place, and before I could stop myself, the words spilled out.

“How badly do you want to live?”

Her face froze in shock, but I didn’t give her time to answer.

“I don’t trust the Federation, and I have no idea why they sent you of all people to try to smooth things over.”

She straightened in her chair, the gold flecks in her dark eyes burning brighter, but I held up a hand, cutting off her protest before it began.

“Hear me out,” I said.

She sucked in a breath, her lips pressed into a thin line, but she stayed quiet.

“When it comes to fighting hellhounds, Shadow Warriors have the upper hand. We’re stronger, faster, and better at killing them than any human could ever hope to be.”

“I won’t argue that,” she replied.

I grunted, unimpressed by her calm demeanor. She had no idea what she was really talking about.

“The Federation sent you here for a reason,” I continued. “I’m assuming they asked you to spy on us. Count our numbers, assess our weapons, and report back. I remember your father saying you were good with numbers.”

A flush of pink rose from her neck to her cheeks, confirming my suspicion. I raised my hand again to silence her before she could respond.

“Don’t bother lying,” I said flatly.

To my surprise, she shook her head. “I wasn’t going to lie. You’re right about all of it.”

Her honesty caught me off guard, but she needed to understand the gravity of her situation. I leaned forward, keeping my voice low. “It’s my job to kill you if you discover our secrets. I could lie and tell you we don’t have any, but we’d both know that’s not true.”

She stiffened slightly, her hands resting tensely in her lap, but I pressed on.

“You may not have a single fighting bone in your body,” I added, resisting the urge to tell her that if her inability to fight was real, I could change it. “But you are intelligent, and that makes you dangerous.”

I waved a hand around the room. “This facility is all you’re allowed to see for now. You won’t meet more than a few of our people, and you’ll stay far away from anything of importance.”

I threw my next words out like the threat they were. “If you discover our secrets, it’s my job to kill you, and I’ll do it without hesitation. I don’t like humans, and my Shadow Warriors feel the same.”

I placed my hand flat on the table, then slowly curled it into a fist. Her eyes tracked the motion, her expression cautious. “Don’t give me a reason to kill you. Who knows who they’ll send to replace you?”

She fidgeted slightly in her chair, her lips pressed into a thin line, and I assumed my warning hit its mark. But then she lifted her head, and the fire in her eyes caught me off guard.

Her voice lowered. “If death is all you have to threaten me with, let me assure you, I didn’t expect to survive this trip.”

The honesty in her voice was unmistakable, but she didn’t stop there.

“Is this my room?”

“No,” I replied curtly.

Her jaw tightened. “Do I have a room, or are you planning to throw me back into the one that nearly killed me?”

I resisted the urge to smile at her defiance. “I’ll show you to your room,” I said. “It’s likely more comfortable than what you’re used to back home. Guards will be posted outside your door whenever you’re inside, and they’ll escort you when you leave unless I’m with you. You have access to this floor and the one below. The pool, however, is off-limits.”

I paused for emphasis, catching her gaze before her eyes shifted away. “There are areas outside these walls I might take you to, if I have the time. But understand this. You won’t leave here without me. Not all of my warriors can be trusted with you, and the ones I’ve selected to stay within these walls are here because I trust them not to kill you without my permission. That said, you’ll never have to worry about them receiving that order.”

I stepped closer, my voice dropping. “Because if it came to that, I’d handle it myself.” I think this was the third time I’d uttered the words, but I needed her to understand it wasn’t a joke.

She shivered theatrically, wrapping her arms around herself. “You had me at killing me the first time you said it. I’m full, I’m exhausted, and I’d really love to go to my room now so you can stop with the intimidation.”

The woman had balls.