Chapter 11

 

When I opened my eyes, I had one of those moments when I wasn’t sure about what was going on. Then again those seemed to be all the moments I had for the last day. Looking around slowly I took in the dark furniture and high ceiling and everything came back to me. It hadn’t been a dream, I was not waiting to wake up in a hospital. I was really in a place called Alterealm. What I was going to do about that, I still didn’t know.

A light knock had me bolt up and stare at the door. “Come in.”

I was expecting Quinton to look around the door, and was more than pleased to see a woman peek through the opened door. This was the first female I’d seen since coming here and part of me was very relieved to see her. Stepping into the room she smiled at me. If this was a normal place I would have said she was in her forties, but since no one I’d met so far seemed to look their age, which was a good thing considering the ages they were, I had no idea how old she was. She had strawberry blonde hair, all pulled up into a hairstyle that I was going to say as being from the nineteen fifties. Not only was she the first female, but she was also the first body that wasn’t well over six feet in height. I pegged her as being a few inches taller than my petite five foot four.

“Hello. I’m Mitz. I take care of the boys and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have a female here, finally.” Moving over, she opened up one of the doors I hadn’t looked behind. “We had no idea your size, so this will be like stepping into a fitting room I’m sure.”

I sat there, just staring at the huge closet she’d opened. It made the two foot one at my place look like a cubbyhole. Inside clothes lined the walls and shoes the floor.

She looked back out at me. “I’ve told the boys to start without you, and then you don’t have to hurry.” Holding up a pair of slacks, she shook her head. “I expect you’ll want to wear jeans or something similar for the practice session before you go over to find Wanda.”

Adjusting the robe so I could get out of the bed without being all tangled up, I slid to the edge and stood up. “Practice session?”

She peeked out from behind the clothes she was holding up. “Mmmhmm, the Kings insist on all of the family training together.” Shaking her head, she hung up the jeans and pulled another pair off the rod. “It’s been a relatively peaceful time for the last century, but they don’t want to be caught with their pants down if there’s ever an uprising again.”

I know she was speaking English, because I understood the words but once again I had no idea what she was saying. “I don’t understand.”

Giving me a sympathetic look, she came over and held a pair of jeans up against me. “These will work, I think.” She looked down at the robe pooling around my feet. “I love that our huntress is a normal sized woman, by the way. I had nightmares seeing a seven-foot-tall Amazon queen.” I smiled, not knowing what to say. “The boys, or the royal brothers all gather each day for at least one meal, sometimes two if I can wrangle them all together that long and then they go to the gym and practice hand to hand weaponry.”

Now, she had my attention. If there was one thing I was good at in my messed-up life it was fighting. “Really? I’m allowed to join in?”

She laughed softly. “You, love, are allowed to do whatever your heart desires. You are after all our Huntress Queen and that title will only ever be given to you and you alone.” She hustled off back to the closet and started going through tops. “I think you should wear something that displays your tattoo, don’t you? So there are no questions about who and what you are.”

“Sure,” I whispered even though I felt like I’d just been hit upside the head with a baseball bat. I could do whatever I wanted in this realm? Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad place after all.

Mitz left me standing in the door of the dining room, which in my eyes seemed more hall than in the room category. The walls were lined with portraits of gorgeous men and beautiful women, relatives I imagined judging by the resemblance to the seven men sitting around the table. The table looked to be the length of a basketball court to me, with the men all sitting down at one end and at least fifteen more chairs sat empty at the end closest to me. How big was this family?

Honest to Gods, seven giant muscular men sat around the table, all but two I had seen up to this point. I didn’t quite get how the day ruler and night ruler were so close; as far as I could tell they were on the opposite teams. Then again, I had no idea the rules of the game so maybe they were civil by dawn and dusk and tormented each other in between. I didn’t see Quinton, which made me even more nervous as he was the only one I felt a small measure of comfort around. Yes, that struck me as odd too.