Within the Realm (The Gifted Realm Book 1)

  Within the Realm

  Jillian Neal

  Within the Realm

  Written by Jillian Neal

  Cover Design by Ana Cruz of Ana Cruz Arts

  Edited by Kimberly Huther

  Copyright © 2013 Jillian Neal

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

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

  Published by Realm Press

  36 South Court Square

  Suite 300

  Newnan GA 30263

  http://realmpress.net/

  ISBN 978-1-940174-02-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013908229

  First Edition

  First Printing - June 2013

  This work is dedicated to my husband.

  For his constant belief through my continued doubt.

  For his steadfast light in my darkness.

  For his unwavering guidance and his unfailing love.

  For he is so much more than I could ever deserve,

  but the one thing I could never live without.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  The Gifted Realm

  Educated Memories

  Many Paths to Becoming a Man

  The Farmhouse

  The Talk

  Uncle Stan

  Three Eggs Over Easy

  Take It Slow Around the Curves

  Can’t Fight the Feeling

  Decidedly Guilty

  Tangled Coulomb’s Web

  Twenty-One

  The End of the Beginning

  To Heal the Wounded

  The Beach House

  Thanks Dad

  The Ties that Bind

  The Life Inside the Picture

  Intrusions

  Reassurances

  Adeline

  On the Boardwalk

  Negotiations

  The Ride of Your Life

  The Ring

  Where the Past Meets Its Future

  Nightly Engagements

  Happy Birthday, Logan!

  Birthday Shopping

  The Double Clutch Dinner

  Keep Emily Safe

  Memories

  Consequences

  The Agony of the Ecstasy

  Good Friends

  Steadfast

  A New Day

  Welcome to the World, Rainer

  A Man and His Word

  Sam

  Butter-Churning Battle Plans

  The Hayloft

  What It Means

  The Arlington Angels

  Collision of Tempers

  Not a Volvo...a Classic

  Things to Come

  Rough Terrain

  The Best Laid Plans

  There is No Way to Make this Better

  A Family

  Thanks Mom

  The Truth Might Set You Free

  Not Easily Severed

  Build Your Life then Live It

  Guesthouse and Home

  Moving Day

  Past So Grim, Future So Bleak

  The Endless Chasm

  Amelia

  What are You Made Of

  The Beginning of the End

  With This Ring

  Supergirl vs. Wonder Woman

  Prologue

  ~ Crown Governor Joseph Lawson ~

  “Finally!” Logan, who’d been pacing impatiently, huffed as Joseph followed his son into the vast Haydenshire kitchen. He grinned as Rainer raced to his best friend. “Cal’s gonna help us with the fort, and Will got some fireworks for tonight.”

  “Ok,” Rainer sounded utterly thrilled. Joseph tried not to feel the sting of regret that always came when he left Rainer with Stephen and Lillian. It seemed they were raising his own son far more than he was able.

  He watched the boys race outside and be greeted by all six of Logan’s big brothers and his little sister, Emily. He smiled, though the ache in his heart robbed him of breath.

  Stephen Haydenshire, Logan’s father and one of Joseph’s best friends, pretended not to notice.

  “Have time for a glass of tea before your flight?” he gestured to the large blue pottery pitcher in which Lillian always kept ice cold, sweet tea prepared.

  “Yeah, Rainer was anxious to get over here, so we left early.”

  Lillian gave Joseph an adoring smile.

  “Here, let’s have it on the deck, and we can watch them play.”

  Joseph assumed his longing to be with his one and only son must have been evident in his rhythms. Lillian could see the pain etch his face and feel the loss in his energy.

  He followed them out onto their deck, and stared out over the vast property Stephen had purchased when they’d won their seats on the Governing board.

  “Hey, Governor Lawson,” Will, the eldest Haydenshire son, approached, carrying two large boxes of fireworks. He set them on the porch and offered Joseph his hand. Joseph smiled. How had so many years gone by? Will was almost as tall as his old man, and had just completed his first two years at Venton Academy.

  “William, how are you, son?”

  “I’m good, sir,” he flashed that Haydenshire smirk that matched his father’s to perfection.

  “You staying out of trouble?”

  Will laughed and shook his head.

  “Well, as far as Mom and Dad know.”

  Lillian rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, Dad, Dan just called. He said he and Amelia got in a fight, and she’s not speaking to him. I told him he could come hang with us tonight. We may go camping after we do the fireworks for the kids. Garrett’s coming, too,” Will threw his hand out towards the wooded area surrounding the farm.

  Stephen cocked his jaw to the side.

  “That sounds okay to me as long, as all of the beer that is currently in my refrigerator remains in my refrigerator, and as long as your packs do not include magazines with scantily-clad women on them that you know you shouldn’t have.”

  Joseph tried not to chuckle as Will grimaced. His father shot straight with everyone. It was one of the reasons he was one of Joseph’s very best friends. Stephen Haydenshire didn’t pull punches, and he was one of the greatest men Joseph had ever known.

  “Yeah, ok whatever, Dad,” Will didn’t hide his eye roll well. He scooted into the house before his father could lay out anymore demands, that Joseph was certain seemed highly unreasonable to any eighteen-year-old male.

  Stephen sighed and settled into one of the deck chairs beside his wife. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and Joseph’s heart began its familiar ache yet again.

  He closed his eyes for an extended blink and let his mind thrust him backwards in time. Maggie’s red hair and that luscious, vexing smile formed in the composing imagery. He didn’t have time to let his eyes travel down the rest of her gorgeous curves before Stephen interrupted the desperate fantasy. He forced the pain away again, by sheer strength of will. It had been four years. How could it still sever his soul every second of every day? He drew an agonized breath and focused on the present, though the past held so much more appeal.

  “Did you get that matter that came up Friday taken care of?”

  “Oh,” Joseph sighed. “I get a death threat most every day, Stephen. You know that. That one just
actually seemed legit. Iodex located the guy. He’s being detained in New Mexico, I believe. Boomslang says the Interfeci is who we’re still worried about. That’s who he’s after, and that suits me.”

  Lillian’s relief that the man was in custody was juxtaposed with Stephen’s deep concern that the death threats were increasing.

  Joseph turned his gaze to Rainer. His eight-year-old son was carrying a load of scrap lumber that appeared to significantly outweigh him. The boys’ mission that summer was to construct a fort in the back of the Haydenshires’ property. So far, they’d managed to put together something that looked as if several large trees had been infected with a rampant scrap wood rash that had been treated with a heavy dose of rope. The tarp they’d managed to hang at a very awkward angle between the trees, had given them hope, and they’d continued on with the project.

  “I want to help you build the fort,” Stephen’s only daughter, Miss Emily Anne, with all of her extreme, seven-year-old, redheaded sass, had given her command.

  “Go away, Emily!” Connor sneered. “We don’t want your help.”

  “You’re so annoying,” Logan added in an obvious effort not to be lumped in with Emily by his big brothers.

  Stephen scowled from the deck.

  “She’s fine,” Lillian soothed with a slight chuckle at her husband’s overprotective treatment of his ‘baby girl’.

  Emily narrowed those fierce, emerald-green eyes.

  “I am not annoying, and your fort is stupid-looking! You need my help.”

  Joseph and Stephen began laughing heartily.

  “Maybe she could just help us with the walls,” Rainer didn’t seem to just be playing peacekeeper. He seemed to want Emily to come along. Joseph stopped laughing, and watched Emily beam with pride.

  Just before Joseph had to leave to catch yet another flight, he followed Stephen and Lillian back out onto the deck. He wanted to hug Rainer good-bye before he left.

  Construction on the fort had run dry, and a kickball game was being organized.

  Emily was approaching Rainer and Logan again. Determination was clear in her steps.

  “Hey, Rainer,” she challenged.

  “Yeah, Emily?” he turned from Logan and Connor, and gave her a grin.

  “I betcha you won’t kiss me.”

  Joseph felt his heart seize. He was afraid to blink. Stephen gasped in shock.

  “Ugh, Rainer, gross! Don’t kiss her! That’s disgusting!” Logan was horrified. Connor made gagging noises. Cal pretended to vomit.

  Joseph saw the excitement and the nervous hope that formed on his little boy’s face. It was like staring into his son’s future. He held his breath.

  Rainer’s neck contracted as he swallowed down what Joseph assumed was fear. His jaw clenched and then relaxed as he moved closer. He leaned and brushed a tender kiss over the apple of Emily’s cheek.

  His lips lingered there as if to claim her, but it was from the ensuing, matching, delighted smiles that Joseph knew their fates were sealed.

  The Gifted Realm

  ~Rainer Lawson~

  So, it all comes down to this. Rainer sighed. He sat and stared at the Senior Exit Exam for Venton Academy. It was the only academy in Virginia for children of the Gifted Realm.

  He’d spent the last two weeks taking exams on defensive maneuvers, the use of non-lethal weapons, and combat techniques. He’d written essays on arrest procedures, and had been qualified on handgun shooting and on long-range target kills. He and Logan Haydenshire, his best friend, had worked through an extremely difficult, high-risk, close-combat, urban assault training course, and had shown off all of their hand-to-hand combat training. This was all in an effort to immediately accept his offer to become a Realm Officer in Elite Iodex after graduation.

  The exam he was currently taking, however, covered the basic information a student must possess in order to graduate from Venton Academy.

  As he glanced around the room, he took in Emily Haydenshire as she scribbled frantically on her exam papers. A broad smile lit his face. She’d done it. Much to her father’s chagrin, much to the Academy Governors’ disapproval, she’d done it. She was going to graduate a year early, to be with him. His heart swelled as he watched determination etch her beautiful face. It was an expression she wore often. She’d taken extra classes her Sub-Freshman and Pre-Freshman years, in order to graduate with Rainer.

  Emily paused and pushed her long auburn hair behind her right ear then continued to write. Rainer chuckled as he thought of the birthmark she covered automatically; a tiny, slightly misshapen heart that turned bright pink when she was embarrassed. It sat just behind her right ear. Only Rainer and her family knew of its existence. It was one of the many things he adored about Emily.

  His father had always called them kismet, and Rainer supposed that was true. She’d dared him to kiss her on the cheek when he was eight years old, and he’d done so happily. This had come a year after she’d informed him that he was her boyfriend. They’d been together ever since; it was the way his world worked.

  There had been only two weeks, in the last twenty or so years, that Rainer and Emily hadn’t been joined at the hip. For those two weeks, after Rainer had insisted they break up, he’d been lost. It was an absence so overwhelming, so consuming, the only thing Rainer had to compare it to was the loss of his father. He couldn’t bear it and, to his utter astonishment, neither could she.

  Rainer left school that day to drive to Norfolk and check on his lay-about, drunken Uncle Stan. It was something he felt he owed his father, so he made bi-weekly trips to make certain his uncle hadn’t imploded.

  Emily had begged him not to go. She was a Receiver, and her Gifted energies allowed her to feel the emotions of the world around her. It was her Predilect, where Rainer’s was to protect. Her Gifts often allowed her a sixth sense. If something bad was going to happen, she could usually feel it.

  She’d known something horrible had happened; she just didn’t know what. While Rainer was driving to Norfolk, Emily’s family had gotten the phone call. One of her older brothers, Cal, had been murdered in Berlin.

  Cal had been working with an Elite Iodex task force set to take down a sect of the Interfeci, a Gifted criminal organization that had begun in Germany and spread around the world. Cal had managed to get close to one of the lead men of the organization, and he had paid the ultimate price for his skills.

  Rainer had stupidly left his phone in his car when he went into his uncle’s apartment. Emily had tried to call repeatedly. When she couldn’t reach him, she’d run out to her car in the pouring rain, and tried desperately to find him.

  The press was an immutable, persistent, and infuriating part of Rainer’s life. Ever since his father had been assassinated, the Gifted Realm had been endlessly fascinated with Rainer. As Emily’s father was a Governor of the Realm, the press had been alerted to Cal’s death immediately. They’d followed her; she’d been trying to get to Rainer. She’d wanted him, and had been chased by the photographers and reporters who’d hoped to catch her in the act of telling him what had happened, or of him comforting her. Rainer wasn’t certain what they’d hoped to see, but it had nearly cost her life. Relentless photographers on motorcycles had run her Jeep off of a bridge.

  Rainer would never forget the call from Garrett, another of Emily’s older brothers. Rainer had flown to Georgetown hospital, and stayed with Emily day and night as Gifted Medios worked over her. She’d made a full recovery, but the wounds from that day would forever scar Rainer, Emily, and all of the Haydenshires.

  Rainer blamed himself completely for the accident, and when Emily had been released from the hospital, he’d driven her home, and then told her he was leaving.

  He’d taken the classes abroad, desperately trying to keep her safe. If he was in London, then the press would leave her alone, or at least that’s what he’d told himself.

  She’d let him sit in his own misery, half-way around the world, for almost two weeks. Then she’d shown up at
his doorstep, in tears. He’d pulled her to him, wrapped her up tightly in his arms, and clung to her. He was terrified to let her go. He had suddenly realized he could draw a full breath again. It had been like being in a pain so constant that he wasn’t truly aware of it, until it was gone. Emily had stayed with him that night, in London, and they’d returned home the following day.

  Governor Haydenshire had seen to it that Rainer was reinstated at the Academy, and withdrawn from the study abroad program.

  Rainer had apologized endlessly for leaving, and then tried to help Emily work through the sadness and desperation of losing her brother. He would sit with her, hold her tightly to his chest, and try to cradle her against all the world had taken. It was a pain he knew too well. Senseless deaths had marred his entire life, and he knew that letting her cry was the only way to let her heal.

  As he studied Emily, Rainer smiled. She always made him smile. No matter what might be going wrong, she was the reason he smiled.

  The press had backed off a little after her wreck, but not much. Currently, they were more interested in publishing stories about what Rainer and Emily might be doing after their graduation from Venton. ‘Lawson’s long-term girlfriend,’ that’s what the papers had been calling Emily for the past year.

  ‘Lawson’s long-term girlfriend, Emily Haydenshire, has been recruited to try out for the Arlington Angels,’ had been that day’s headline. Rainer lamented yet again; he wanted Emily recognized for her own extraordinary abilities. He couldn’t understand the Realm’s fascination with him. He was nothing more than his father’s son. This thought brought him back to the essay portion of the exam, and the question he was supposed to be answering:

  8. To date, who is thought to have been the finest Crown Governor in the Gifted Realm? Please name and list a few of his accomplishments in essay format.

  Rainer drew a deep breath and debated scribbling: ‘My dad, what’s it to you?’ Or ‘My father, do we have to keep going over this?’ Better yet, he thought wryly, ‘Joseph Lawson and he hated your class as much as I do.’