Less than an hour later, Gerrit had showered and dressed in a black suit of tightly woven threads. He wrested the top button of his white shirt open and took a deep breath.

He’d been to the Vydal once before for the peace negotiations with his father, and the golden walls, vaulted ceilings, and crystal chandeliers had made him nervous even then. He’d take the Vilkan mountain any day over the glass and stone that made up the walls of the Vydal. The ocean breeze swept in from outside through the windows and doors, coating his skin in a fine salt that he licked from his lips every few moments.

He paced in the lavish suite Merick had deposited him and Jude in. From the next room, he heard Jude and her Hylan attendants finishing her preparations.

“No,” Jude said, her voice muffled through the walls. “I’m keeping that.”

“But it’s bloody, ma’am! And torn.”

Jude stepped through the door into his room, holding a tattered patch, which she tucked into the neckline of her dress. She lifted her head and stared at him, blinking. “Are you just going to stare at me?”

He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

The dirt and blood coating her skin was gone, revealing a warm bronze hue that turned her eyes a deep, gold-flecked brown. Her chocolate tresses hung in loose waves down her back. The white dress she wore was a second skin over her waist and hips, but it flared out below her knees and swished around her ankles as she came to a stop in the middle of the room. The tops of her tanned breasts spilled over from the one-shouldered neckline of her dress, which covered her injured shoulder that he’d made sure the Hylan servants had cleaned and sealed up.

She pressed a hand to her rib cage and took a shallow breath before wheezing, “You look nice. You know, with actual clothes on.”

He frowned. He’d much rather be in his Arakid silk pants than this getup. “Why are you talking like that?”

She panted. “Have you ever heard of a corset?”

His spine stiffened. “Did they torture you?”

“You heard me say ‘corset,’ right? What the hell else did you think I meant? Hey, what are you doing?” He’d closed the distance to her in two strides and rounded on her attendants with a growl. He was ready to rip them to shreds when she slapped a hand to his chest. “Leave them alone. They don’t talk much, but they’re nice enough. I was just joking.”

“You’re not hurt?” He cast suspicious glances at the small Hylas, who wore nothing to cover their bare chests, save for their long hair artfully arranged over their breasts and their multicolored scales on their petite legs.

“Do you think anyone would still be standing if they’d tried to hurt me?”

“Good point,” he admitted, recalling the way she’d whaled on the Hylas when they tried to take her from the cave.

“Thanks for the help,” she told the attendants. “And for the food. I really appreciate the snacks.”

They nodded, blushing, and hurried away toward the sound of music and voices downstairs.

Gerrit put his hands on his hips. “You got food?”

“I did.” Jude took his arm and tugged him out of the door to follow the servants. They ambled down the hall toward the party, her scent warming him from the inside out. “Maybe if you didn’t glower so much, you’d get snacks too, but I’m still hungry enough to eat a horse.”

He hadn’t used to glower. Not too long ago, he’d been the life of the party. He would have loved a celebration like this in the Vydal, which were rumored to be events of a lifetime. But now … Now, he glowered. “Did Tavorn pick out this dress for you?”

She wiggled in it again, like she was trying to find room to breathe. “Considering the sheer amount of boobage, I’m assuming he did.”

“Boobage?”

“Never mind. So, I wasn’t supposed to write vows or anything, was I?”

The sudden nerves in her voice betrayed her sarcastic tone, and Gerrit pulled her to a stop. Lowering his voice, he said, “I promise I’ll explain. We just need to make it through tonight. They’re dangerous, Jude, and they won’t hesitate to kill you if they think you’re not really my mate. Do you understand?”

“But am I really your mate? What’s happening, Gerrit?”

She was brave and strong and proud, and the sliver of fear turning her eyes watery broke his heart. He’d thought he’d found a greedy Falconer beside her crashed ship two and a half days ago, but he’d found so much more. “For now,” he said, “you are. That’s all that matters.”

“Great.” She laughed, but the sound was brittle.

“Why are you laughing?”

Jude shook her head, her pretty eyes dancing. “Because just a few days ago, I was on the other side of the galaxy, sleeping in my bed. Now I’m here. With you. In a fucking wedding dress.” She giggled again, but the sound choked off in her throat. Her shoulders shook with the empty noise.

“We just have to play the happy couple until Caj comes and I get the medicine I need from Tavorn. Once we leave, I’ll make sure you get home.”

“You sure about that?” She wiggled a finger at their grand surroundings, the arched hall overlooking the ocean waves and gilded mirrors lining the ceiling. “Tavorn doesn’t seem like the catch and release sort.”

“Swanson should be home by now. He’ll send help.”

All laughter gone, Jude wrapped her arms around her middle. For a moment, Gerrit thought she might start crying again, but instead, she tightened her jaw and said, “I hope so. I don’t trust Tavorn.”

“Good.” Gerrit nodded. “You shouldn’t. Humans aren’t regarded well on this planet. We must be careful tonight. We’re outnumbered, and we need to play along with Tavorn’s game.”

“Because you need some sort of medicine.”

“I do. I can’t risk angering him right now.”

Jude bit her lip. For a second, he couldn’t stop thinking about how that very lip had tasted, caught between his teeth. His cock twitched in his pants, his stomach tightening with desire.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” she said, “and I’ll want answers. But I appreciate you saving my life.” She scowled. “A few times now. I’ll play the blushing bride, but there better be some damn good food down there or I’ll be pissed.”

A hint of a laugh had left his mouth before he even realized. When was the last time he’d laughed? Surely with Nestan. His best friend had often had him laughing. What had happened to Nestan? Was he dead?

His smile fell away, and he nodded at Jude. “I’ll make sure you’re well fed.”

With no other excuse to continue stalling, Gerrit led Jude to the party. It wasn’t hard to find. He merely followed the heady bass of music and twinkling lights. The hall ended at a curved balustrade, a sweeping staircase descending into the midst of the party. He’d been in the Hylas’ grand ballroom once before during the peace treaty meeting, but it hadn’t been like this.

Not even close.

“Holy fucking shit.”

Jude had a dirty mouth that Gerrit could appreciate. He echoed the sentiment as they stared down at the party from the top of the staircase.

The ballroom’s walls were illuminated in gold, the ceiling sparkling glass. Lights flickered and flashed while a heavy drumbeat and bass accompanied the higher tones of stringed instruments. Revelers danced on the ballroom floor in nothing but their two-legged, scaled forms. Their bodies gyrated and ground against each other in a herd of flesh atop a glass floor that revealed the ocean below, where more Hylas with their bare chests and scaled tails swam, their tails propelling them through the water with graceful, elegant speed.

A giant mawfin with rows of razor-sharp teeth and a scarred pectoral fin circled beneath the center of the ballroom. It had a barb stuck in its tail to anchor it to a certain radius. Hylas swam close and teased it until it lashed out, snapping its teeth and thrashing against the barb’s hold. It was a drinking game, Gerrit guessed, to test each other’s bravery at the expense of a trapped animal.

“Assholes,” Jude growled, glaring at the mawfin too.

“I know. Just don’t think about it.”

“Kind of hard when there’s a giant shark swimming beneath the floor.”

“There’s your food.” Gerrit lifted his chin toward a heaping display of meats and fruta alongside platters of frosted cakes and fountains of splashing punch.

“Let’s stuff our faces then get the hell out of here.”

They made their way downstairs. Lost in their own hedonistic displays, no one noticed them until the music suddenly quieted to just a steady drumbeat and a sweeping spotlight landed squarely on Gerrit and Jude. They froze on the stairs, and Gerrit’s skin rippled in response to the threat, his instincts clamoring for him to push Jude behind him.

Tavorn’s voice filled the air. “My Hylas! Let me be the first to introduce the new Alpha of Clan Vilka, Gerrit, and his stunning human mate!”

The Hylas cheered. A bomb of confetti and glitter exploded from the center of the ballroom, raining down on the dancers like a star storm and sticking to their sweat-glistening bodies.

Gerrit sighed and forced himself to relax. This was going to be a long night.

With a nod of acknowledgment, he and Jude descended the rest of the stairs. Tavorn met them at the base. “It took you long enough to dress! I thought perhaps you’d decided to consummate the mating earlier!”

He elbowed Gerrit’s side with a sly grin, but Gerrit saw past the sleazy camaraderie, the put-on airs. A dangerous gleam lurked below the surface of Tavorn’s smile much like the mawfin swimming beneath their feet.

Tavorn swept them around the room to make introductions.

As they passed the food, Jude reached out a longing hand, a groan on her lips.

Tavorn brought them to all the new mages and introduced them. Gerrit shook hands with the Hylas as Tavorn announced Gerrit’s new role as Alpha. Jude stuck to Gerrit’s side, frowning deeper each time she was introduced as his mate.

As Tavorn spoke to a mage with a soft belly and oily skin, Jude whispered to Gerrit, “Do the Vilkas throw parties like this?”

“Hardly. We’re not much for formalities and glitter.”

“Sounds like my kind of people.”

Gerrit couldn’t help but grin. “You’d fit right in.”

She’d fit right in as his mate.

The thought had wormed its way into his head before he could stop it. She wouldn’t be at his side during a Vilkan festival or any sort of clan obligation because she wouldn’t be on the planet for much longer. He couldn’t keep her. She wasn’t a prisoner or a pet.

As they drifted behind Tavorn, Jude leaned close to Gerrit’s ear. Her breasts pressed against his arm, and his skin burned in response. She reacted as if she felt the chiming of the threat between them too, and Gerrit watched her nipples harden beneath the thin material of her gown. She didn’t blush.

“You all look so human,” she said quietly enough that only he could hear. “How can that be?”

Gerrit shrugged while she studied the shifters around them. “You’d have to ask the original shifters, but they’ve been dead for eons. As for the rest of them,” he said, nodding at the dancing partygoers around them, “you can just assume they’re shifters of some sort.”

“You’d never tell it. She looks so … normal.”

Gerrit glanced to where Jude was looking and froze. A servant girl—a slave, Gerrit corrected himself since the Hylas still used the antiquated status—stood just outside a filmy Arakid silk curtain that cordoned off an area full of cushions and flickering candlelight. She wore hardly more than thin straps across her nipples and between her unscaled legs. Her long hair was twisted into brutally tight braids down her back. As he watched, a Hylan man stumbled toward her and grabbed her waist, his face pressed against her neck. She nodded and led him through the curtain. The man pushed her down onto the cushions and covered her tiny body with his.

“Uh,” Jude said, watching the same display, “what the fuck, Gerrit?”

With Tavorn disappearing deeper into the party ahead of them, Gerrit took her hand and steered her closer to the wall, where more curtained-off areas stretched in a long row. Some were already occupied, the silhouettes of moving bodies inside them. At others, more unscaled girls waited outside with their heads bowed, their hands clasped in front of them. Gerrit took a long, slow inhale and growled.

“What is it?” she asked.

He scanned the area for Tavorn, but the Hylan mage had slipped off into the herd of guests.

“Gerrit,” Jude insisted, her voice firm with anger. Her grip on his hand was crushingly tight. She was strong. “What the hell did I just see?”

“Humans,” he hissed. “They’re human.”

Jude’s mouth fell open. “You’ve got to be kidding me. These motherfuckers are flesh traders?”

He pulled his gaze back to hers and found her eyes sparking with rage. “They shouldn’t be,” he murmured, conscious of the shifters around them. “Not after Tavorn signed my father’s peace negotiations. It was part of our stipulations that the Hylas no longer trade in humans.”

“So why aren’t you moving?” Jude snapped. “Let’s go kick some ass and get those girls on a ship home!”

She started to storm off in the direction of a young woman with rich brown skin and dark hair. Gerrit pulled Jude back, bringing her ear close to his mouth. “Calm down.” His gaze went to a Hylan server whose eyes had narrowed at Jude’s display and too-loud words. Tavorn had little ears and eyes everywhere on Kladuu; it was how he kept tabs on the clans. Gerrit knew almost every word spoken in the base would get back to the clan’s leader. “We can do nothing right now.”

“The hell we can’t!”

He spun Jude around to face him. She tried to pull away, but his fingers tightened around her arms. “We have no backup,” he hissed through his teeth. The server had moved off into the crowd, but Gerrit was still wary.

“You’re just going to let this happen, then. Those girls—”

“I know. I won’t let this stand, but there’s nothing I can do now. I need that medicine.”

Jude sneered. “So, you’re going to turn a blind eye on sex slavery because you need a favor from Tavorn. You fucking politicians, you’re all the same.”

“My clan,” Gerrit growled, “comes first. We need that medicine. Our young—” He stopped himself. Jude didn’t need to know his clan’s issues. She was human. It didn’t affect her. He bit off the words. “I will deal with this later. You need to remember how vulnerable we are right now. We have to watch our backs, Jude.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I.”

Jude couldn’t possibly know how much he didn’t like this. How much he hated it. His father had brought peace and order to Clan Vilka. He’d been a stabilizing force after generations of turmoil and warring with the other clans. He’d turned the Vilkas away from their bestial nature and shown them the way to a civilized, orderly life. With the help of his Beta, Rayner, he’d ended the flesh trade and instituted a fairer, more governed servitude. He’d negotiated a trade agreement with the Arakids—the first treaty of its kind. And most importantly, he’d brought a powerful ally to the Vilkas’ side: the Hylas.

The peace treaty with Clan Hyla had been a powerful light during a dark time. It had illuminated the truth that the clans could unite and work together against their one common enemy: the humans. Kaveh had been the first leader to set all the clans, not just the Vilkas, on a path toward a life of greater, more meaningful peace, where clans didn’t kill other members on sight or hoard their resources just so another clan went without.

It was his father’s legacy, and Gerrit refused to watch it burn.

By the time Gerrit circled Jude back around to the food—he’d taken the long way around the ballroom to ensure she didn’t have to pass by the curtained-off areas again—the party had devolved.

The music deepened into pure bass, a rhythmic beat like a pumping heart. The lights dimmed, and the dancing bodies turned to shadow. At their feet, more Hylas shifted and swam. They wound together in a tight knot, a ball of twisting flesh, their tails wrapping around each other. Some groups had more than five females and males, all together, with their heads thrown back, hands in hair and tails flipping in ecstasy.

Even in the ballroom, the air became tainted with sex and sweat. The Hylas didn’t bother hiding behind curtains now. Jude turned her back on a female Hyla with her dress pulled up around her hips and a male pumping into her from behind. Tavorn had said the party was to celebrate Gerrit’s mating, but it was just an excuse to have an orgy.

“Grab some food and let’s go,” he said into Jude’s ear. He kept a firm grip on her arm, his focus on the males around them. He scented their desire, the lust that commanded their actions and sent them stumbling about, reaching for any female or willing male they could find.

“I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Then let’s—”

“Leaving so soon?” Tavorn appeared beside them. His pointy teeth flashed beneath moist lips that smelled of sex.

“It’s been a long day, Tavorn—”

“Most certainly! And”—he leaned in close to Gerrit, grinning wider, and eyed Jude in a way that turned Gerrit’s vision red—“I’m sure you’re eager to get back to your room. I know I would be. I bet she’s—”

Gerrit surged forward, and Tavorn slunk back, his eyes sparkling brightly. A high-pitched chime like a laugh fell from his smiling lips. It sounded dangerous, like the warning calls the Hylas passed back and forth in the ocean. Supporting that thought, a few Hylas near Gerrit snapped to attention, but he ignored them. “Watch yourself, Hyla,” he growled, chest rumbling and skin rippling. “I won’t hear you say another word about my mate.”

Jude put a hand on his arm. “Come on, Gerrit,” she said. “I’m tired. Thank you for the party, Tavorn.”

“Certainly,” the Hyla said without taking his focus off Gerrit. “I’ll have someone show you to your room.”

Too furious to trust himself to speak, Gerrit gave a sharp nod. But before he could pass by Tavorn, the Hyla said with inkeel-like sliminess to his voice, “And Gerrit?”

“What?”

Jude’s fingers dug into his bicep in warning.

But Tavorn’s smile only inched wider, and Gerrit once again thought of the mawfin beneath his feet.

“I’ve posted Merick outside your door tonight. How can I put this delicately?” He paused, a finger on his chin as if he had to consider his words carefully. But Gerrit knew he’d been waiting all night to say them. “We will expect your mating rituals to be completed in full. With no doubt. Otherwise, we will consider dear Jude rightfully ours.”