Tracked: A Valkyrie Saga Book 2

Chapter 1 - Kaiden's Society

I still can't believe that Uncle Hernan dragged me out of bed on a Saturday morning to some puny little clan house in Oakland. I am a Royal for God's sake. Uncle needs to stop playing to the whims of this stupid girl and start acting like the prince that he is. He should have just ordered that Delia return to our properties after the fiasco last night and locked her up for her own damn good. Clearly she isn't very smart if she was willing to sacrifice herself for some normal clan Val that no one cares about. But that's okay because the only thing females are good for are to be used as bargaining chips and having babies. 

Uncle needs to stop making this street rat think she has any say or power in this matter and tell her that she now belongs to me. Damon already has his female, so clearly it is my turn. Not that Delia is anywhere near as beautiful or dignified as Noemie, not to mention that she doesn't come with a kingdom. But she is better than nothing. With a female at my side I will have a place within world politics. That combined with my Truth means people will finally give me the respect that I deserve. Because, despite what my family may think, my Gift is far superior to their precious Energy. It is the reason why the all powerful Hernan Collins had to ask for my help. This Delia might be able to somehow block the mind readers and the empaths, but my ability to detect lies is infallible and I am the only Valkyrie in America's West Kingdom that possesses it. Making me more fucking important than even my female sister.

--Prince Kaiden Collins

I turned over in my sleep and my entire body protested the move. I let out a low groan and tried to remember why I am so sore and where I am, because this bed is much too comfortable to be my sleeping mat on my bus. Despite getting a few solid hours of sleep, I feel like I have been hit by a mack truck and after a few moments, flashes of last night finally start to break through my sleep riddled mind.

The guys and I had been at a bonfire at the beach when Jonas got word that the twins' father had gone missing with two other Hunters that belonged to the Blade Clan. I had felt partially responsible because I had personally asked Edison Greer, the leader of the Blade Clan, to use their Tracker to find a local shapeshifter that had gone missing. The Hunters were on that mission when they had just stopped communicating and hours later they had missed their check in time.

So even though I was angry with the twins and feeling hurt, not to mention humiliated, by my almost kiss with Blake on the beach, I volunteered to help find their father.

I was able to use my newly discovered Gift of Tracking to find where the three Valkyries and the werewolf were being held. We used the void to take down what we thought were all of the bad guys. But there was a woman with an automatic weapon that we didn't find until it was too late. She had opened fire on us and Connor, who was the only one of us without Shield, was shot in the chest.

Max had tried to help him with his Healing Gift, but he was too weak. It was obvious that Connor was going to die. So I had had the brilliant idea of funneling my apparently over-the-top strong power into Max by touching his shield. It had worked and Max was strong enough to fully heal Connor from the brink of death, but it had come at a cost. My hands had been severely burned where I had maintained contact with Max's shield and I had forced myself to endure the harrowing pain until I had passed out from the pain.

A healer was able to help with my hands and they are now a mess of white scar tissue, but I had been passed out long enough for a dozen important Valkyries in the America's West Kingdom to witness my Cloaking Gift. Apparently, Cloaking was such a rare Gift that people now believed it to be something straight out of folklore. This made me a target for people that wanted to use me to gain more power and influence.

There was also the small fact that I was a girl. I didn't think that being a woman was a big deal, but apparently female Valkyries were also rare and could only be conceived if both parents were Valkyries. Nowadays only the royal lines still had females. This meant that even though I called a broken down bus home and have been in the California foster care system for the last four years, the Valkyrie clans I had ran into over the last two weeks believed that I was some long lost princess.