Dorian had to go out last night to meet up with a friend who was having some troubles. His only comment on leaving me was that I wasn’t allowed to actually write.
I was tempted, I’ll admit—how would he ever know?—but instead ended up researching masquerade balls and as much attachment to that as I could. I now have two pages of notes for D.o.t.A. ranging from mask style choices, to plot notes. I now have a little more of a plan for the later half of the book.
Last night as I was falling asleep, Rachel came to me in the opening scene. I wouldn’t call her the most patient person in the world, she wants to get started now, not tomorrow. I still have to work out a few character bits with her and Morgan.
Rachel is basically an orphan in the opening scene. The plan at the moment is to have her father, the man who raised her, be the brother of the husband of the Master of the area. Yeah, confusing way to label it, but still. She’s not his biological daughter, because she and her sister were born of rape during a time of war between the government and the Alphas. Not “full” rape, but that’s what it’s called because the government impregnated thousands of women against their wills with various Alpha and common genetic material.
The Alpha of her area has taken her mother and older sister, breeding the older sister and breaking them both. He knows there’s something different about the family. For starters, her sister keeps trying to kill him when a broken companion isn’t supposed to be capable of that. The only way to control the one is to threaten the other, but never Rachel. Any mention of Rachel and both mother and sister just shut down and shut him out.
In the nights he hears them whispering to one another, “Rachel’s special, she needs to be whole.”
Now the Alpha is curious, he needs to know what Rachel is like. If her sister and mother bring him such…pleasure, what might the special Rachel bring? He’s trying to force Rachel to bow and do the same so he gets her on stupid charges and registers her as being property, because the laws allow that.
In walks Morgan, a young Alpha with no purpose in life who has never fully served or led in the Alpha world. By his age, he should have done one or the other. He’s the last of the War Brats, a group of child soldiers the Alphas trained and then released on the government forces.
He’s been to the territory before, so it’s possible he saw Rachel and just didn’t quite register her. Or he saw her sister and when the list of names popped up he had a sudden, unexplainable urge to go see what was going on. Morgan’s not just there for giggles, but because Alphas sometimes process information differently than common people and end up doing things that appear coincidental from the outside, but really aren’t.
Morgan’s father is dead, his er… step-father is driven by a need to claim the young Alpha who looks so much like his dead husband, he owes a blood debt to Abraham, is being challenged for Gerrid.
And to top it all off the only living female Alphas in three hundred years have decided to adopt Rachel as their sister. The females used to beat him up all the time because they liked him, but if he crosses a line over someone they’ve decided they like more than him, he won’t survive.
Is it Saturday night yet? Dorian said I could start writing Saturday night.
Aya DeAniege 