I was still learning Alzarian, but even I knew that “stylist” was a clumsy translation for the position Klince occupied in the hierarchy of the Nightclaw Court. To the Alzarians, power, politics, and presentation were the three sides of the same triangle, and Klince was in charge of presentation, specifically, dress and makeup. Klince was one of the most perfectly manicured men I had ever seen. He was much more lithe-looking than most of the werewolves I had seen, except that being a shifter, he could probably punch a hole into a shuttle with his fist. Still I tried to argue with him about what I was going to wear to meet Ral’s family.

“What does it matter?” Klince raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow above a purple-shadowed eye and blue eyelashes that made him seem like some all-knowing wizard. “Everything. You want to show those bitches not only that you deserve Ral, but he deserves you. You are the chosen betrothed to the chancellor of a new republic which still may fail. You need to show them you are part of his strength.”

Klince swiped at the wall, turning it into a mirror. I took in the sight of the dress he had forced me to wear. The gown was the vivid color of the Alzarian sky before dawn at the hem but lightened into a crisp white that contrasted elegantly with the darkness of my skin. It was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

I clutched the shimmering fabric of the skirt. “And wearing a sparkly ball gown demonstrates that.”

“Yes. This fabric is angel-made. It’s bulletproof, laserproof, claw- and tooth-proof and costs as much as a wyrmhole-capable speeder.”

He then sprayed a mist on me. “Humans are all about sight, but werewolves are about sight and scent.”

I sniffed my floral-smelling arm. “It smells nice.”

Klince snorted. “Nice? That scent is power and sex.”

Ral laughed and I turned. My heart stopped when I saw him in his formal prince dress, some Alzarian combination of ceremonial black-and-white Smart Armor and evening wear that made him look even more impossibly perfect than he was.

Klince bowed, collected his things, and left.

Shifters were known for their beauty, but Ral’s strong masculine face was something else altogether. I wasn’t the ugliest person in the world, but I was definitely a mere mortal in comparison to his godlike perfection, enough that I had once asked him about it. His response was that shifters followed their noses as well as their eyes when it came to desire. And then he would do something ridiculously sweet, pull me close, and say something like, “You are being ridiculous. You are beautiful. From the moment I met you, you have always smelled like you were mine.”

At some point my luck would run out. I just hoped it wouldn’t be soon.

“What do you think?” I said, striking a pose, still facing the mirror, part of me still disbelieving how lucky I was. “Do I smell like power and sex?”

“You always smell like sex to me,” he said, pinching my ass.

“Very funny.”

His hand strayed downward. “Part of the reason you drove me so crazy when I first met you was because you had me sleeping in your bed. And all I could think about was fucking you.” I let out a gasp at the touch of his hands on the skin of my bare thighs, his hands somehow finding a slit in my dress I hadn’t even realized was there.

“Love at first scent,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning back into him.

“Yes,” he said, his hand finding his way between my legs. There was a delicious low rumbling when he found I was already wet for him. He kissed my neck. “Shifters say that when you find someone who smells like the most delicious dessert in the universe, you know they’re the one.”

I gasped as he slipped two fingers into me. “Who knew you were such a hopeless romantic.”

“I wasn’t. Not until I smelled you.” He cursed, then effortlessly scooped me into his arms, his fingers still inside me. The sudden motion jolted hot pleasure into me, and I cried out. He pressed me up against the mirrored wall with one hand, fumbling swipes dropping bits of his armor to the floor with resonant clangs. My panties were torn off and in moments he was inside me, all powerful thrusts and wolfish need. The scent of him, the incomparable feeling of him inside me sent me over the edge quickly.

Then he was forehead to forehead with me, as we breathed together, our hearts beating as one. “Maybe there is something to that perfume,” I said.

“No. It’s just you.” He raised his head and grinned, touching the dark curls that had sprung free. Now that I wasn’t active military anymore, I had started letting my hair grow out into its natural tight corkscrews.

“What?”

“You have the most beautiful just-been-fucked hair.”

There was a chime, and he groaned, withdrawing, and gently set me on the ground.

“Where will I find new underwear?”

“One of Klince’s assistants will be back to help you. I hate that I have to leave you now.”

I sighed. Alzarian royal protocols demanded that he made his entrance first, and that I would come later. Add that to the fact I was human, and it would definitely be seen as a sign of weakness if I were to walk in with him.

I sighed. I truly was on another planet.

“You’re enjoying torturing me like this, aren’t you?”

Alzarian royal marriages were typically a matter of politics, the nuances to be argued over by lawyers and secretaries of state.

And by bringing me here, a human and a former Coalition pilot, he had essentially said holedark to the whole system.

Ral faced the mirror. Clicks and hums ensued as the Smart Armor reassembled itself into his evening wear. In moments he looked as perfect as before.

It wasn’t fair. “Why do I get a sparkly evening gown and not armor?”

Ral laughed, a pleasant familiar sound that made me feel as if I had a star in my chest. “The only guests allowed armor at a formal state dinner are the Alpha and his children.”

“What about the people at the entrance and in the walls? They’re wearing armor.” Smart Armor was no nanite armor that could respond to my thoughts, but I could work with it.

“Those are palace guards, my dear. And you are no common soldier, at least not here.”

Right. I looked down at the folds of the sparkly gown and fingered the soft fabric.

Ral’s Smart Armor gave a final beep of completion. “I have to go now. I have to meet with the Alpha about some negotiations before the dinner.”

“Has your father said anything else to you?”

His mouth pressed together in a thin line as he looked off into a distance that wasn’t there. “My father has no relevant voice on who I choose to be my mate.”

Unlike some of the other Alzarian royal Houses, Nightclaw had no prohibition on intermingling with humans. Ral’s mother was a human. It was said that the Alpha’s love for her was why Ral was allowed an odd independence no one else had, not even his brothers, the heir and the spare.

But from what I knew, the reality was different. And it was a story that Ral had not yet chosen to share with me.

I looked back at the mirror and squared my shoulders.

“You’re right. Walking into a room full of unfamiliar werewolves alone is not something to be alarmed about at all.”

Ral kissed me on my forehead. He clearly wasn’t going to tell me now, and I had a feeling it was a story I shouldn’t push. “You will be magnificent.”

* * *

After Ral left, staff came as he said they would, fixing my hair and bringing me new underwear. I still had an hour to kill before my grand entrance. I found myself wandering through the internal staff corridors of the estate, making my way to a particular hangar wing.

My starship was there, a luminous thing that shone even in the dimming light of the setting sun. Or maybe it just seemed that way.

I walked toward it and placed my hand on the hull.

It was all shiny and new, even in the place where I had made Ral take my name off the ship. He had refused at first, but I insisted that it was bad luck for pilots to fly a ship with their name on it, and that I wasn’t about to mess with luck. Now, there wasn’t a name on it.

I saw my distorted reflection in the hull of the craft. Me, in a princess gown.

It wasn’t real.

A male voice spoke from behind me. “You clean up nicely.”

Goose bumps pricked my skin. It was a voice I hadn’t expected to hear. I turned and saw a nondescript man. Pale skin, blond-brown hair. He wore a Nightclaw uniform and tags. But I knew his face.

And he was no more Nightclaw than I was a werewolf.

I rubbed my forearm, wishing I had bothered to put on my computerized vambrace. I had gotten out of the habit of wearing one when I had my exo-armor. “Something tells me I shouldn’t be happy to see you.”

Jonaz, or whatever his name was today, pouted his lips in an unconvincing semblance of hurt. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

Last time I had seen him, we were in one of those cesspits of the greater universe. We had been undercover, and inadvertent events had led us to take possession of an illicit shipment of slaves in stasis pods. He had plans to store them and profit from them.

I had stopped him. And his career. Last I had heard, he was working for some black ops mercenary outfit.

I was acutely aware of the flimsiness of my dress, the exposure of my neck and chest, my lack of exoarmor and weaponry. “Friend is stretching it.”

He put his hand on my ship, caressed the hull. It felt unreasonably violating because, after all, it was just a ship. But it was my ship. “Come now. We’re on the same side. Or at least we were.”

“You are always on your own side.”

He placed his hands over his heart, mimicking an action that I suppose was intended to convey hurt. The thing with Jonaz was that he didn’t feel empathy, not in the normal sense. They had removed it from him, and he was a psychopath in the truest sense of the word. Without exo-armor, without weapons, I wasn’t a match for him. “You need to leave before they catch you.”

“But you haven’t heard what I’m about to tell you.”

Warning signals resounded in my head—not the exo-armored kind of course, but still alarming nonetheless. Of course he was here for me. I grimaced. The Coalition had issued me an honorable discharge after a mission that literally gave new meaning to the words royal fuckup. I had fucked up my mission with Prince Ral, and the peace between tigershifters and wolves that had lasted for two hundred years was gone.

Diplomats had so far prevented any more open outbreaks of battle, but no one was fooled. Everyone was building up their forces, and it was only a matter of time before some spark or another brought war back.

I had seen corpses more alive than the dead smile Jonaz wore. He was here to deliver bait. I steeled myself; whatever it was, I wasn’t going to take it.

“Don’t you want to know about your dear prince’s secret frozen baby?”

Secret frozen baby? It was bait, I knew, even as I swallowed the hook, the line, and the pole.

“What of it?”

“You may be just a pilot, but you’re smart enough to recognize the threat to your unborn children. Royal bastards have a habit of popping up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

We hadn’t even discussed children. That was on the list of things for “one day. As in, “one day,” I would learn how to knit a sweater. One day, I would master Alzarian and be able to speak without a translator unit.

And now someone was telling me that Ral had a secret child out there, frozen in stasis. I couldn’t let Jonaz see how much this revelation had affected me.

I hadn’t even realized it would. “I fail to see how any of this concerns you.”

“There are those within the Coalition who realized what a mistake it was to set a pilot with your record free.”

I laughed. “It’s a little late now, isn’t it?”

“What happened was a mistake, a function of the bureaucracy. Or so they asked me to tell you.”

I knew this. The Coalition Space Force, the most technologically advanced military in the universe, had a bureaucracy that seemed like it was mired in the ancient age of paper and equine-drawn carriages.

I folded my arms, forced myself to look nonchalant. “Do you have another sales line? Because your time is running out.”

Did Ral really have a baby out there in stasis somewhere?

That meant the child was taken from the mother’s womb.

Who could the mother of his child be?

I realized that Jonaz could see the thoughts on my face. “Come with me and I will tell you what you want to know.”

I shook my head. “You know this isn’t going to work.”

Jonaz brought up a floating screen. On it, Ral smiled at someone, shook their hand, gestured to a chair. A finger flick zoomed in on a tiny pin, embedded in the chair.

A pin bomb.

“I was trying to be more kind. But I can be traditional too. So how about this: come with me, or your prince will die.”

Ah.

It was aggravating how close I was to my ship and yet without exo-armor I couldn’t communicate with it or activate any alarms. I had to keep stalling, keep him talking. “Breaking the werewolf Union, having their government descend into chaos in the face of this new undead threat is worth me?”

He cocked his head at me. “You know I’m just letting you stall, right? That’s because I need to keep you distracted.”

A hissing sound from above startled me. I looked up and saw an ominous purple mist falling from a sphere.

Fathergoranidickin’holedarkknockout gas. Wonderful.