Academy of Protectors (The Protector Guild Book 1) Read online

  Academy of Protectors

  The Protector Guild, Book 1

  Gray Holborn

  Copyright © 2021 Gray Holborn

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For permission contact:

  [email protected]

  Visit the author’s website at https://www.grayholborn.com/

  Cover by Damoro Design https://damorodesign.com/

  Edited by https://www.copybykath.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Thank You For Reading

  About Gray

  Loved the Book?

  Chapter One

  Max

  Ro’s fist flew straight towards my face. I ducked behind an old tree. My fingers dug into the coarse bark as the sound of his fist pounding into wood brought a smirk to my face.

  He swore like a drunk sailor and unrestrained laughter spilled from my lips.

  From the snap that echoed around us, I knew that at least one bone was broken. I didn’t feel too bad about it though—he’d have a fully functional hand by nightfall. Ro was an extraordinarily fast healer. It made sparring with him dangerous since he was always willing to go to risky extremes.

  I, on the other hand, couldn’t shake off the injuries quite as quickly. It was frustrating, but at least it kept our bouts interesting and unpredictable.

  “Jesus, Max. That fucking hurt.” His voice was a low growl, the sound at odds with his boyish features. Beads of sweat trailed down his forehead as his brows narrowed together.

  I’d pissed him off. Excellent.

  I grinned at him and winked. This would be easier now. Ro sucked at fighting once he was flustered.

  “Yeah, well imagine if it’d been my face. Then I’d be the one whining. Guess you’ll have to move faster next time,” I taunted, swinging around the tree like I was straight out of Singing in the Rain. “Besides, serves you right for stealing the last piece of pizza. I was saving that.” I danced around him, my fists raised, ready for the next round.

  He tilted his head from side to side until his neck let out a satisfying crack.

  Rocking on the balls of my feet, I smirked up at him. Ro was huge, both in terms of height and bulk. Which meant that my five-foot-four frame definitely gave him the advantage when we trained. I was significantly faster than him though. Not that he’d ever admit it. Brothers were stubborn that way.

  “You good to go another round or do you want to head back to the cabin for ice and a diaper?” I swept a few stray strands of hair from my face, relishing the cool breeze against my neck.

  He bared his teeth in a grotesque caricature of a smile and pounced. He kept his right hand tucked close to his chest, but he was still a force to be reckoned with, even with only one functional arm.

  I dipped low when his left fist moved towards my shoulder, but it was nothing more than a distraction. His leg swung out, sweeping my feet from under me. I landed unceremoniously on my butt, a loud thud that ricocheted through my body. There was nothing more annoying than getting your ass handed to you after a healthy dose of gloating. My pride would need some massaging later.

  Before he could make his next move, I swept my leg, smiling when his mirrored thud landed next to me.

  We’d been sparring for hours and both of us welcomed the short reprieve as golden leaves fell softly around us, like we were in our own personal autumnal snow globe. My head and ears were filled with the heavy thump of my heartbeat. I loved this feeling—the gentle soothing sensation of absolute exhaustion. Muscle fatigue coasted through my body like an unexpected balm.

  “You going out with Jason tonight?” I asked. My eyes covertly slid to the side, satisfied with the uncharacteristic blush that colored his usually pale cheeks.

  He cleared his throat nervously, subtly shifting his body away from me. “Er, who?”

  My laugh bubbled over, shaking with the leftover adrenaline from the fight. “I saw you two gazing at each other adoringly last weekend at the diner, Casanova. Judging by the fact that you laid out your best plaid shirt this morning, I’d say you’re trying to impress someone. Twenty bucks says it isn’t me or Cyrus.”

  It was Saturday, the one day each week that Cyrus let us go down into town for provisions and to socialize, though he only sanctioned the former. The rest of the week was left for training and studying. And in our free time, we consumed all of the old movies and shows I’d stockpiled over the years. Just saying, my collection of eighties and nineties romantic comedies was pretty damn impressive.

  But even when we went into town, there wasn’t a whole lot of socializing to be done around here. Ro, Cyrus, and I lived high in the mountains. We were literally in a cabin in the woods, only no horrific or interesting stuff happened like the movies would lead you to believe. We were in complete isolation. It took a good half hour to drive to the closest town.

  And even if we were near a big city, Cy didn’t like us spending too much time around humans. Although, he didn’t exactly allow us to spend any time around our own kind either. The man was stubborn and protective as hell. It was infuriating.

  A soft thud and Ro’s grunt drew my attention to my left. Cyrus stood over us as Ro wrapped his hand around the bag of ice draped across his chest.

  “You knuckleheads going into town or what? I left a list on the counter.” Cyrus glanced around the woods, his long black hair, peppered with gray, blowing softly in the wind. He was always hyper vigilant and checking the perimeter, even though we’d never been visited by uninvited guests in the eighteen years that I’d lived here. Incidentally, we’d never had any invited guests either. Cyrus worked his mojo to make sure no humans ever accidentally stumbled upon our super humble abode.

  We were protectors—an ancient race suspected to have evolved from angels. It was speculation though, since no one had seen a true angel in centuries. Maybe even ever. Long enough that they were considered a myth at best, extinct at worst.

  For the most part, we were human, just with added strength, speed, and healing powers. We also had a tendency to live longer, if left alone. But when we followed our true nature, the hunt, we died long before our human counterparts. Kind of like superheroes, only way less interesting. And without the badass costumes.

  Outside of Ro and Cyrus, I’d never met another protector. Cyrus adopted me eighteen years ago, when I showed up at his doorstep in a cradle. He found Ro ten years later, in an orphanage. From what Ro could remember, his family was dead. He was left behind in a foster system that was completely unaware that the eleven-year-old it had taken in was something not quite human. The town’s locals were shocked to learn that Cyrus had adopted two children. Kids were a handful at the best of times. Ro and I? We made regular kids look like saints.

  And Cyrus wasn’t exactly parental material. He was, to the average eye, a middle-aged recluse who did everything he could to avoid talking to people. Half of his responses were nothing more than grunts. Hence the small cabin in the middle of a mountain.

  Still, here we were, at eighteen and nineteen, living with a man whose idea of affection was teaching us a new fighting style. He was our grumpy version of Mr. Miyagi. Lucky for us, his particular flavor of grump had grown on me over the years.

  “Aw, you’re not coming with, old man?” Ro teased. Ever since Ro turned sixteen and

  learned to drive, Cyrus had allowed us to go into town alone. Apparently something about earning a license satisfied him that we could handle the trip and any threats along the way. Not that there were ever any real threats, outside of overly curious townspeople. That left Cyrus free to spend his time in the cabin, in the woods, and occasionally disappear for a day or two. The man enjoyed his privacy, even from us.

  Cyrus shoved Ro in the hip with his battered boot, and turned back towards the house grumbling something about teenagers.

  Ro smiled at me before pulling me up with his good hand. Cyrus liked to pretend we were a burden, but we both knew he loved us. Since we were technically of age, he could have kicked us to the curb if he didn’t want us around. And well, just saying, we were still here.

  Half an hour later, I was freshly showered and dressed, singing along to some pop song at the top of my lungs, while Ro drove down the winding dirt road towards town. The air was crisp and my limbs were sore from a long training session. It was going to be a good day.

  I ran my hand playfully through
Ro’s dark blond hair, smiling at the way his blue flannel top brought out the light blue color of his eyes. “You look good, Ro. James will be impressed.”

  “Jason,” he mumbled, his face coloring slightly when he realized I’d tricked him into acknowledging his crush, “not that I’m trying to impress anyone though.”

  “Right, right, of course you aren’t, lover boy.” I added a dramatic wink, enjoying the opportunity to be playful after a long morning.

  “You need to stop watching old movies, nobody actually says ‘lover boy’ these days, sis.”

  He was mocking but I grinned anyway. He didn’t refer to me as his sister often, but it always made me feel warm and gooey when he did. Unlike me, he knew his family before they died and he joined our ragtag group in the woods. He remembered what his mother looked like, the kinds of things she loved to do, her favorite perfume. But me? He was the closest thing I had to family, other than Cyrus.

  We even kind of looked like brother and sister.

  If you squinted really, really hard. Or, you know, didn't look at us at all.

  Everything about Rowan was fair: his eyes were pale like the afternoon sky and his skin only had color when the sun darkened it. Despite my ability to spark his frustration, he was generally calm, rational, level-headed. It always made me laugh because while my black hair and brown complexion resembled Cy’s more than his, they were two peas in a pod. I looked like the bio-daughter, but Ro acted like the bio-son. It was a weird thread that connected the three of us together, like an unusually-constructed puzzle.

  Ro also had an ‘awareness’ about him. That’s what Cy always said anyway, and usually only as a way to highlight my lack thereof. I just wasn’t as serious and paranoid about the world.

  “Yeah, well, whatever. You just let me know if you want me to disappear and give you and Jason some alone time.” I opened my window slightly, soaking in the fresh, crisp smell of fall. Pretty soon, we’d be dealing with snow and ice, so it was important to appreciate the season while we had it. Training in the dead of winter was absolute agony.

  “Yes, because clearly you’d be doing me the favor by hanging around town alone.” He eyed my black dress and leggings as I pulled the hem down, uncomfortable in the unusually dressy outfit. Cyrus thought fancy clothes were pointless. And I mean, since we didn’t really go anywhere, they kind of were. I was typically lounging around in leggings or sweatpants, always paired with a raggedy tank or t-shirt for sparring. My favorites were the ones Ro tossed out—they had holes and faded print, but were soft with wear and fell to my knees.

  While it was amusing to poke fun at Ro, since he got embarrassed so easily, he wasn’t the only one to notice the new family in town. Jason had a younger brother, Michael, who was the best-looking boy I’d seen in real life. At least I thought so, anyway. He looked just like the nice-boy jocks in all those CW shows. And, well, when you spent most of your time living virtually alone on a mountain, you took notice when fresh meat moved to town.

  Our first stop was always the post office, to check if Cyrus had any mail. He almost never did, unless bills and advertisements counted, but today there was a crinkled letter with no return address. Ro and I tried holding it up to the light, to see if we could read it without opening. The technique seemed to work frequently enough in spy flicks, but we had no such luck. I shoved the letter to the bottom of my bag, hoping that Cyrus would share it with us when he opened it.

  We played guessing games all the way to the diner, creating elaborate stories about who could be writing to him. I was secretly counting on it being a long-lost love interest, with some tragic backstory. In all the time I’d lived with him, Cyrus had never gone on a date. I’d caught him checking out a few of the women in town a couple of times, but nothing ever came of it.

  And it wasn’t like he was terrible looking for an old dude. He somehow managed to make long hair look badass instead of homely, and he was strong and lean from all the sparring and training. He had a slight limp from an old injury, but it kind of added to his mysterious persona.

  Ro opened the door for me, and I sank into that burning feeling against my skin as my body transitioned from the crisp air outside, into the overly heated diner atmosphere. The diner itself wasn’t anything to write home about, but we loved it all the same. Truthfully, it was probably my favorite place in the world, and felt just as much like home as our cabin did.

  The countertops were clean, but slick with years of grease buildup and stained an odd yellow color—the kind of yellow you just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt wasn’t the original color. The padding on each of the booths had a few holes and burn spots from the days customers could smoke inside. I usually found myself distractedly picking at the pieces of tape meant to keep the stuffing from falling out. Darlene, our favorite server, was working as usual and she had two steaming cups of coffee ready for us as soon as we made it to our favorite table. Ro and I both ordered our usual—steak with a side of fries—and discreetly searched the diner for the two newish faces we hoped to find.

  Jason spotted Ro almost immediately, and made a beeline for our table as soon as their eyes connected.

  “Hi. Rowan, right?” he asked, fiddling with the hem of his dark wool sweater. He was

  nervous, and I just about melted into a puddle from the cuteness. Jason looked a lot like his brother, with tousled blond hair and bright green eyes. His angles were a bit more defined, and something about the way he held himself just made him seem older than he was, like he’d experienced so much in his short life. “I’m Jason. I think we met last weekend.” He glanced around, rubbing the back of his neck, like he was checking to see if we were being watched. “I haven’t really seen you around since then.”

  “Oh, that’s because we live outside of town and only come in on the wee—” I cut myself off when I caught sight of Ro’s glare. Right, Jason wasn’t talking to me. In fact, he hadn’t even so much as glanced in my direction.

  “You can call me Ro. This is Max.” He nodded towards me. “Would you like to eat with us?” Ro scooted over to make room on his side of the booth, his expression open, hopeful.

  I wiggled my eyebrows at Ro before his quick glare told me to cool it.

  “Yeah sure.” He sat down, letting out a long relieved breath. His eyes brightened considerably, taking his cues from Ro. “Would it be okay if my brother joined us in a bit? He’s finishing some things up at work, but he’s supposed to meet me here soon for some food. He’ll be stoked to meet some new people in town.”

  “Totally!” Ro and I echoed each other, giant smiles on our faces. Clearly neither of us was very good at playing it cool. But tonight was shaping up to be better than we’d hoped, the puzzle pieces falling together perfectly, just like a romance novel.

  I absentmindedly scratched at the scar on my wrist, forcing myself to sit back and let Jason and Ro get to know each other without my butting in. My fingers curved over the smooth, familiar lines that almost resembled a star. Protectors didn’t really scar, but I’d had this one since the day I showed up at Cy’s.

  I choked on my water when Michael walked over, embarrassing myself as a few droplets dribbled down my chin before I could catch them. While Jason was a lot more hesitant in his approach, Michael exuded confidence and excitement. He sat down next to me after officially introducing himself, and I twisted my brain into knots trying to come up with things to say. Jason and Ro seemed to have no problem finding conversational topics, but Michael and I mostly sat in an awkward silence while I scarfed down my steak. Which was unusual for me. Generally, I never shut up. According to Cy, it was my most annoying quality. I took a deep breath and decided to be myself, trying to mimic Ro’s relaxed pose.

  “So um, how do you like it here?” I cleared my throat and stared at the smooth skin between Michael’s eyes, too nervous to look him in the eyes but wanting to fake confidence by looking in their general direction. “Where are you guys from? Are you going to college?” I glanced at Ro, noticing the way his eyes were slightly bugging at me. Right. I was rambling. Bad habit of mine. “Sorry, that was too many questions in a row, wasn’t it?” I cleared my throat. “I should’ve paused a bit in between,” I added, mostly to myself.