Page 1 of Renegade Queen

Chapter 1

Alyssa

The bartender filled my glass with tequila, and I slid the money across the bar toward him. Sitting hunched over my drink, I let my long blonde hair fall forward to hide my face from the other patrons. This was one of the reasons why I chose this place. The booze was cheap, and everyone left me alone. This wasn’t somewhere you came to pick someone up for the night. It was the pit you came to drown your sorrows and forget about the world. Even if it refused to forget about you.

When someone sat on the stool next to me, I didn’t pay them any attention. Not even when the familiar scent of them registered. He ordered a beer, and the bartender put another tequila in front of me.

“I told you if I ever saw you again, I’d kill you. Buying me a drink won’t exactly change my mind,” I told him.

General Philip Holden. The biggest bastard I’d ever met in my life. He had to be pushing fifty now. He had the kind of face that made you want to punch him in the sorry excuse of a dick he had, and that was before he even spoke to you. He was a one-star General the last time I had the misfortune of speaking to him.

“I need your help,” he told me, staring straight ahead.

“The last time I helped you, you left me for dead in the middle of Siberia. I seem to recall that was the same time I told you I’d kill you if I ever saw you again,” I sneered. “You’ve got stupid in your old age if you thought I wouldn’t follow through on that, Philip.”

I knocked back the tequila. I’d had enough that it didn’t even burn as it went down anymore.

Sitting up straight, I took in my surroundings. The bar had cleared out, and even the bartender had left. Leaving just me, General Dickhead and three Army rangers pointing M4s at me.

Now that was just plain funny, and I threw my head back and laughed.

“You always were fucking stupid.” I laughed wryly, catching one of the rangers giving a slight smile. Yeah, that one knew what I meant. “I should be insulted that you only brought three.”

I snagged the tequila bottle from the other side of the bar before leaning back on one elbow to survey the scene in front of me while I drank straight from the bottle. I was stealing their booze; no point adding insult to injury by making them wash my glass as well.

The smiling ranger dropped his weapon slightly, and his gaze flicked across to the General. The other two stoically held their position. Interesting, this one was thinking for himself. He knew more about what was going on than the others.

“We have a team that’s gone missing, and I need you to retrieve them,” the General said.

“I don’t work for you,” I pointed out. “What makes you think I’m going to help?”

“They crossed realms,” he smugly said, standing from the seat and brushing down his uniform. I got the impression that he didn’t spend much time in dive bars.

“Not my problem,” I told him, standing up and going to leave. “I’m not getting involved in another one of your shit shows. It’s not my fault they were too stupid to see you’ve got shit for brains. Or let me guess, you told them it was a super-secret important mission and forgot to say you were sending them somewhere they didn’t belong, to steal something just because you’ve got a hard-on for it,” I sneered.

The smiling ranger faltered a bit. Maybe he didn’t know that much. I turned my attention back to him. “Not as in the know as you first thought?” I asked him.

He cocked his head to the side but kept his weapon trained on me.

“Do they even know what the other realm is?” I asked the general.

“They know all they need to know,” he answered stiffly.

“So, no, then,” I snarked back at him. I looked at the three Rangers around me. “You should think harder about who you trust,” I told them sadly. The reality was that General Shitstain was a greedy bastard who would get them all killed. “He brought you here because he thought you could stop me from killing him. He knows you can’t, really. He intends to hide behind you while you die, so he gets some extra time to run away. I bet he didn’t even tell you why I’m going to kill him, did he?”

“You’re wrong,” one of the rangers suddenly barked. “The General is an honourable man.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

It was difficult to see much of anything about him as he hunched behind the M4, apart from his ice-blue eyes that glared down the gun sight at me. But he had the typical ranger build that made me want to move the weapon and look a bit closer.

“You need to check your definition of honour, blue eyes. Right, time to get the party started then,” I decided, standing from my stool.

I stretched my arms across my chest and cracked my neck. But before I could make my first move, blue eyes dropped his weapon.

“Wait… please.” He glanced across at the General and then seemed to see whatever he needed. “My brother is part of the team that’s missing. The General says you’re the only one who can navigate the mission over there and get him back. Please, I need your help,” he told me.

“Well, that’s sneaky.” I laughed, turning my attention back to the General. “Bringing a relative to plead your case.”

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