The Fallen One (Sons of the Dark Mother, Book One) Read Online Free PDF Page A

witnessed many times, first-hand. They chalked his
impatience up to his need to protect them, and the constant
danger.
    When he was a boy, he’d had immense
patience.
    But the years had taken their toll
on him. He was constantly being pursued. Half the time they had no
idea who their enemy was—the other half they did. He had taken his
sisters outside the city, to the Alliance, after their parents had
disappeared. And he knew the gangbangers had not been the ones who
hunted them. He knew the main group who hunted him—who was, in
fact, still after him.
    They had never stopped—and Justice
knew why. Too much was at stake. His destruction would ensure an
easy victory for the people. A people who had been slowly, ever so
slowly, taking small steps, putting small chess pieces into
place—all in the effort to take the power. It was a power that
would give them control over the world—with no one to stop
them.
    Well, no one was in place to stop
them… until now.
    Now, he had returned
home.
    He looked around at his three
sisters. He would have been lucky enough to have one sister: he was
even more so to have three. The Jaguar People were not an immortal
race: they just lived so long that they appeared immortal to
shorter-lived humans. However, because of the hardships this placed
upon their bodies, the people didn’t have a lot of children.
Families were usually lucky to have one child. But somehow his
parents had been blessed enough to have four.
    And yet, this had been
foretold.
    The sisters didn’t live together,
but they had a good reason for this separation: they each had
several men living with them. Each of them had guards, and they
couldn’t exactly keep so many people in the one house. People would
talk. So, they lived in three different houses on the same street.
For their safety, they couldn’t live any farther apart than
that.
    Justice was closest to Jasmine, and
he’d missed her the most when he was away. But they all had their
places—they all had their training.
    And he had his hunting.
    Until now, that is.
    Now it was time: time for them to
return home. They had set everything into motion. They had put
everything carefully into place. It was a little sooner than any of
them had expected, but Jes had set that into motion by seeking him
out.
    She had, unwittingly, accelerated
their plan’s launch when she started digging around and searching
for him. But that was okay. Nothing was lost by them coming home
sooner. They had all waited a long time for this. If anything, they
were all relieved to finally be doing something—instead of just
training for it.
    All but Justice; he hadn’t been
sitting idle, even to train. He’d been busy—and so had all the men
whom he had trained.
    None of them had been sitting—or
waiting—either.
    They had all been very busy waging
their own brand of war. And they had gained the respect of an
entire nation for it.
    It was his sisters who were itching
to start going forward. They had trained long and hard and hadn’t
had the privilege of doing anything that actually moved things
forward. So they were ready. They had been waiting a long time—and
they were ready.
    The four of them looked at each
other. Anticipation heightened their senses. They were excited—but
not afraid. They had waited for this moment for far too long too be
afraid. It was likely that if anyone one else had to face what they
were about to face, that other person would have wanted to
run—would have been feeling more than just a little fear. But these
siblings had been trained for this practically from the time they
were born. They had been planning for this since the day someone
had tried to steal it all away from them that horrible day—fifteen
years before.
    They were—the four of them—like
well-honed steel, born of fire and ash. They had planned for every
aspect of what was about to take place, and followed every plan
down its path—allowing for anything that could possibly go wrong in
order