Alphas by John Lee Schneider

Author:John Lee Schneider [Schneider, John Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2023-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Lily and her daughter Sabrina stood on-deck of the death-ship. They had gained distance – the other boat was now out of sight.

One of the Ottos hopped up on Sabrina's shoulder and squawked.

In an instant, the pack of sickle-claws lined-up along the railing fell back, hooting like pirates, disappearing to their roosts below deck.

Sabrina patted the little lizard on her shoulder like a pet.

Lily scanned the empty ocean, looking for any sign of their tail. She saw nothing, but knew the other boat was still following them.

She also knew Mark was onboard – she could feel things like that now.

Sabrina, just eighteen, was beginning to as well. Something about that other boat had gotten her attention and Lily could see she didn't know why.

As far as Sabrina knew, her father was a man who died when the Mount fell – a soldier, named Stevens, who Lily had latched onto shortly after she arrived at the Mount, and who had no idea she was already pregnant.

Ironically, Sabrina knew her real father by name. When she had been a runaway from the Mount, it was none other than Mark, himself, having no idea who she was, who stumbled upon her, lost in the forest, and escorted her over the mountain.

The first time they'd met, he saved her life.

Mark was like that. Now that Lily thought about it, that was how she met him.

Unfortunately, neither instance ended well. Like mother, like daughter.

Lily had raised Sabrina on the Mount with a Coven of dragon-worshipers as aunts and mentors.

Now that the Mount had fallen – or more accurately, after she and her Coven sisters helped destroy it – the two of them were the last of the sisterhood left alive, and Lily was belatedly having second-thoughts.

Sabrina, who had never known anything else, was having difficulty with her mother's shift in attitude.

The Otto perched on Sabrina's shoulder chittered suspiciously, as if picking up on Lily's thought. This particular little creature was half-paralyzed and gimpish, as if from a debilitating stroke – a product of Draco's mind-wipe.

Without this one little lizard, Sabrina would have died in the wilderness, after she unknowingly fled her own father. The gimpy little beast led her to the Valley where she and Lily, who was arriving with the Mount's refugees, had found each other.

But the Valley, a virtual Shamballa for almost every other human survivor, was tyrannosaur-territory, and Otto simply couldn't be anywhere near. Instead, they continued north.

Their little lizard guide led them up into the hills surrounding the Puget Sound naval shipyard. It was long-since destroyed as a workable base, but enough supplies were left behind to last two people and a two-foot lizard.

They lived there seven months, set-up in a bay-side condo, overlooking the water. It was actually kind of nice.

Then, a month ago, their gimpy Otto started talking, using phrases they hadn't heard before. The next morning, they woke to find a dozen more of the little lizards waiting on their front porch.

And a troop of sickle-claws. Lily knew her dromaeosaurs, and recognized leopard-sized Deinonychus antirrhopus.

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