Present Day

Day 447, Eighth Month, Year 2257

Kalasharv Castle, House Stargazer, Tigrantine Empire, Altai

If I could make it to the next balcony and jump, the cliff would break my fall.

Free-climbing across a weathered stone wall a couple of hundred clicks in the air, while wearing an itchy wedding bodice required intense focus. Specifically, not looking down.

I made the mistake of glancing below. The maw of the canyon gaped, unending in its darkness. The world started to spin while terror grabbed at my stomach.

I squeezed my eyes shut and willed my breathing to slow.

When I finally opened my eyes again, I could see a group of dactyls, each the size of a man’s head, their leathery wings fluttering. Brutal but effective security against exactly what I was doing. With a makeshift blow gun while my captors weren’t watching, I had been slowly depopulating the swarm that nested just below my balcony. I’d never get rid of them all, I had killed enough of the toothy things to give me a chance of escape. There were sensors undoubtedly embedded in the wall and some silent alarm was probably going off somewhere. But if I could get to the next balcony quickly, it wouldn’t matter. The flight suit I had snuck into my rooms, and now wore over the stupid bodice, would complete its charging by then, enough for a short flight out of the castle boundaries.

If it actually worked.

I didn’t have much experience with flight suits, any to be exact, and the wedding bodice I wore underneath it made it itch.

My handhold disintegrated and I fumbled at the marble head of a snarling dragon.

It seemed like forever, but eventually, I got to the balcony railing. In relative safety, I leaned against one of the door-flanking columns while sweat poured from my skin.

I had captured space pirates, escaped from the Alpha of Nightclaw and journeyed my way across the universe to see the Kai. But the prospect of truly coming face to face with the Tigerlord-who-never-told-me-who-he-really-was brought a bitter realization to me—if I stayed, I would be instrumental in his downfall and I couldn’t let that happen. Escape was the only option.

The lights in the room adjoining the balcony flickered on and my pulse jumped to a million beats a second. I melted into the wall.

Calm down. The chances that whoever it was would come out to the balcony were small.

The inner doors opened. Kai’s voice filtered through.

No. It couldn’t be.

He had shattered my life and haunted my dreams, and now he stood between me and freedom. Inappropriate laughter bubbled up in my chest, the lasting mark of what the counselors had deemed the result of atypical childhood socialization. Of all the rooms in this castle, of all the balconies that had the clearest flight path, of all the people it could have been—he wasn’t even supposed to arrive until tomorrow. And now he was steps away.

I squeezed myself against the column on the outer balcony, trying to make myself as small as possible.

The suite went dark.

I waited what seemed like another mark, before walking across the ledge. I crouched down, searching for the faint line of the cliff below.

“You don’t want to do that,” Kai said. “The dactyls down there aren’t so picky about what falls towards their nests. It’s all meat for their chicks.”

The temperature of the wind dropped, chilling my neck, though the speed remained oddly constant. After all this time, after the way we parted, after what he had done to me, he was so…nonchalant. And then I realized, I was downwind from him. He didn’t know it was me.

I still had a chance before the wind changed.

“Now then, why don’t you come peacefully in and tell me what this is all about. If you beg, I can arrange for a more comfortable cell.”

The sound of his cold voice cut through my common sense, freeing the fear I had tried to keep under control. I still had a chance so long as he didn’t recognize me.

A burst of wind ripped the jeweled bridal mesh from my hair. It sprang forth into a dark cloud of curls.

Oh stars, he would know who I was.

“Wait –“

Forget all my careful plans, I had to go now.

I jumped into the abyss and for a moment, I flew free.

Then something closed around my ankle and yanked. I flew backward, rolling, and landed in front of his tarnished silver boots. Pain slammed into my head, and above me, Kai's astonished face wavered. The world swam around me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, willing this to be a horrible dream.

“You’re bleeding, Seria,” he said, as if he wasn’t quite sure of what he was seeing.

I tensed and opened my eyes as he scooped me up in his arms. The metal plates of his armor were icy cold. Trying to steady myself, I took a deep breath and inhaled his scent. He smelled like he was mine, although he wasn’t—not truly, and the thought almost brought me to tears.

He gently set me down on the sofa, then brought over a cold pack and medcloth.

I snatched them from his hands. “I don’t need your help.”

His mouth pressed into a thin line. He didn’t like my response. Too bad. For a moment, I didn’t know if he would listen. Then he held up his forearm. I could see my dark reflection in the shine of his white vambrace. Freed from the jeweled mesh, my hair had puffed out in a cloud framing around my face.

A light flashed from it, scanning me. His eyes glanced to the display in his vambrace. “You have no serious injury,” he said.

He sat down across from me, then I had the full measure of him. I had never seen him in formal full dress military armor. It was ceremonial, too gleaming gold, too pristine white to have ever seen action in battle. The armor emphasized the muscularity of his chest and shoulders, making him seem even larger than I remembered. He had cut his dark hair in favor of a shorter military style that made him seem more severe, more dangerous.

Why did he have to look like a heroic knight from a fairy saga?

He said nothing. Instead, he sat there, watching me as if I had materialized out of my own wyrmportal.

From what I had discerned of his sister’s plans, she had intended me to be a surprise. From the look on his face, it seemed she’d succeeded. But I would not let her use me to overthrow Kai's position as Head of his House. I was tired of being a pawn.

Kai cocked his head. “How did you breach the gates?”

He was so calm. It made my head heat with pent up fury. After all that had happened, after all that he had promised and failed to do, his primary concern was with security? There was no pretense of caring, feeling or even regret. Just suspicion.

A tiny voice in my mind said that Kai should be suspicious. I was part werewolf after all, and the tigershifters had little love for them after so many years of war. But if I showed my anger, it would show that I cared, and it was better not to care. Because caring was weakness and I would never be that weak with him again. I made my voice mirror his, and pretended I was speaking about the weather. “You should have a conversation with your sister about that.”

His eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

I took a deep breath. He would face his sister and her schemes soon enough and I wasn’t dumb enough to get him to get in the middle of that conversation. I swallowed. My escape attempt hadn’t worked and now I had to deflect. “I need your help. You once said you would help me.” My voice was on the verge of breaking. I stopped speaking, but I could not stop the thoughts that erupted forth. You once promised me everything.

And it was all lies.

I reached into my pocket, withdrew a small blue stone pendant strung on a common steel necklace. “I have access to the greatest archive in the universe. There are billions of DNA records of lineage from across all the known strains of humanity dating back to before the Ealen era. And yet, impossibly, there is nothing in the data anywhere of my parentage.”

His face was unreadable. "And yet, your father is Alpha wolf of House Nightclaw."

In those words was a layer of suspicion. The injustice of his unspoken accusation made me squeeze the small stone pendant in anger. I tried to make my words even and reasonable, reminding him of who was responsible. "A discovery made because of the blood I gave to you."

He turned that tiger gaze on me. It was unflinchingly hard and cold, as if he were some machine that that could scan and discern the probability of the truth from me. I had imagined this scene a thousand times in my head, thinking of how I would fling his accusations back at him, refocusing the discussion of his lies back to me.

And yet, I kept pressing on the stone, as if it were a button that would make him believe me. "I didn't know."

"So you say," he said again. "And now you search for your mother. Are you sure the Library is not hiding it from you as it did your father’s identity?”

“The Library isn't hiding anything. The shifter DNA registries are damaged and outdated because the royal Houses of Alzar-4 and the Tigrantine Empire refuse to have anything to do with the Library."

He dragged his hand across his face. "For good reason."

I opened my mouth to counter his statement, but it was an argument we had already had before.

I offered the stone pendant necklace to him. “This is the only thing I have of my mother's. My father refuses to tell me anything of her. It’s my only chance to find out who she was.”

He barely glanced at the stone. “I find you trying to leap off my balcony at the height of the night in a Coalition flight suit and your only explanation is that you’re here to ask me for help. You must admit this is not quite logical.” He leaned forward. “It’s not the only reason you are here.”

I parried again. “I have no other reason to be here.”

“Is that so? You are wearing something angel-made.”

I forced a dry swallow. Angel-made fabrics were so expensive they were generally reserved for the rarest of occasions. Stupid shifters and their stupidly sensitive sense of smell. I stood up, as if I needed to go, even though, I wasn’t quite sure where I would be going.

I couldn’t let him see me in the wedding finery I’d hidden under my illicit flight suit.

In an instant, he was before me, at kiss distance. His hand was on the stripe at my shoulder, unlocking the suit at his touch, responsive to his DNA.

A flash of red escaped.

His eyes narrowed.

I grabbed the flight suit, held it closed, as if that would stop the scent from leaking out.

He took hold of the flight suit and ripped.

The wedding bodice gleamed within, sparkling in the dim light.

He stood still, mouth open as his eyes scanned me from head to toe, his eyes lingering on my bare brown legs. He seemed to be having trouble finding the words. “Why are you dressed like a bride?” His eyes narrowed in a split second as he finally realized what I had been hinting at all along. “My sister! I always knew she wanted to rule, but this…you…”

Rage rolled into beastlike snarls.

I trembled, the primal human reaction one has when confronted by a top-level predator.

Kai was a Tigerlord and Head of his House. It was something he had never told me. But that wasn’t the whole story, and not even the act. No, not only was he a Tigerlord, but a betrothed Tigerlord at that, a political arrangement that would mean the loss of his position if he were to marry someone else.

I was not so stupid as to believe that he would break his betrothal for me, even if Kanona thought otherwise. No, I had been just an affair. And he had known, and even knowing, had led me into believing his lies, believing that he actually cared.

Kai’s green glaring eyes were ringed with gold.

And that was what snapped me out of my paralysis. It was Kai acting as if he was the victim, which he was, but that was logical thinking and when it came to him, logic ran from my mind like a mouse from a cat.

“Your sister was the most expedient way to find you. I promise you, you are the last man I would ever marry. I made a mistake.” That was perhaps, the understatement of the century.”

His eyes narrowed. “A mistake,” he repeated. “You decided to sneak into my quarters in the middle of the night. For most, that would certainly be a mistake.”

His armor gave a mechanized whine and dropped off him. A black undersuit clung to his skin, outlining every bit of a muscular form I remembered all too well.

He stripped off his shirt, closing the distance between us. I stared. If anything, he was even more defined now, his shoulders were wider, biceps larger, and pecs more pronounced. The intense focused alpha gaze of his green eyes, ringed with gold, and the determination in his movements brought goosebumps to my skin.

I didn’t even realize how far I had retreated until my back hit the wall.

Retreating and allowing someone else to invade your personal space was one of the worst things to do around shifters. It was considered a sign of weakness, and once you did that, you might as well bare your neck to them.

Another reason why I made a terrible werewolf princess.

His hands pressed against the wall around my head, trapping me between two massive arms.

He shook his head. “You can try to change things. But you can never escape.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes at him. “You overestimate yourself.”

“No,” he said. “You are my destiny,” he said, with a finality.

Destiny. My eyes widened. One of the few things Kai had told me, when we had first met, was that he was a seer.

There were no coincidences with a seer.

Kai gave me a slow smile. “Do you remember what I said to you about skirts?”

Wear a skirt in my presence and I will fuck you every time.

The memory sent an irritatingly delicious shiver through me. My cheeks warmed as I remembered what had come after. My voice trembled. “I’m not wearing a skirt. Just the bodice.”

The touch of his hot hand on the bare skin of my thigh jolted me. Too late I realized only a thin pair of panties lay between us

And it was turning me on.

His nostrils flared. Oh stars, he could smell me. That hot delicious smile deepened in self-satisfaction.

“Lucky me.”

I felt as if a bizarre fever had settled into my skin. My heart beat so fast I swear I could hear it pumping. My voice came out, more breathy than I intended. “Kai —“

He put a finger to my lips. The touch electrified me into silence.

This was such a bad idea.

I stared at those perfect lips. His breath was warm on my face.

And this was precisely why I had thought leaping off a balcony in the middle of the night was a good idea.

I tried to say something, but instead, I ended up licking the tip of his finger. His pupils darkened instantly, expanding until I could see golden flecks, like tiny stars in his eyes.

The door suddenly slid open.

Kanona.

Kai turned and let out an inhuman roar, glaring at his sister, Kanona with all the weight of thousands of years of genetic manipulation designed to terrify recipients into submission.

“Explain. NOW.”

* * *

5 Months Earlier…

House Nightclaw, Alzar-4

To Tigerlord Kai, House Stargazer:

I will not burden you with any attempt to hold you to the promises you made.

I will not burden you with pointless inquiries about the truth.

But I am here in my father’s House because of you.

Get me out of here and I will never trouble you again.

Seria