Chapter 1

 

 

Leaving him was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Even now, nine Yessat-Years later, her heart ached every time he entered her thoughts. Unfortunately, that happened a lot. Far too often in her exhausted opinion.

Kari Gy’at Li took a deep breath and expelled it. Lying on the raised bed in her room aboard ship, she stared at the ceiling and wondered where Isar K’al Draji was at this very moment. What was he doing? Who was he doing it with? Did he think about her as often as she did him? Kari could barely find the energy to blink, yet she could no sooner stop the intrusive questions than she could stop time and space themselves from existing.

Despite everything, she knew she’d made the right decision all those years back. Isar was obsessed with finding the very evil she and Princess Dari now chased. Knowing him as intimately as she did, Kari also feared he would have given up his quest to stay with her—and eventually resented her for it.

She missed him. She missed everything about him. The way he worried over her, the way he looked at her, the way he fucked her…

Isar might be known as the ruthless High Lord Death to others, but to Kari he would always be the loving, doting warrior who could ignite fire inside her with his smoldering golden gaze alone.

“I did the right thing,” she murmured to the ceiling. “So why doesn’t it feel like it?”

 

* * * * *

The newly crowned King of Xaerja strode down the corridor that would lead him to Kari Gy’at Li, nee the former and newly restored Kara Summers. She would take great pleasure in knowing the Emperor had given her name back to her. Leastways, ‘twould mayhap be the only event of the eve that she took gratification in.

He shouldn’t have left her to her own devices to do naught but track down a lead on the evil one. Of all males, Isar more than anyone should have known that leaving Kara alone for a spell would not turn out for the better. Nothing turned out passing fair when the evil one was involved. It might not have been directly responsible for her fleeing from him, but then mayhap it was. ‘Twas impossible to know for a certainty.

Isar’s jaw involuntarily tensed as memories of his childhood came flooding back. What his sire chose to do to him and his mani was mayhap unthinkable to most males, yet most freemen and warriors were not haji addicts.

Haji—a thick, green slime excreted by haja-birds and refined into a hallucinatory powder by criminals—was the only thing in this life that Hagör K’al Draji had a care for. When the coffers ran out and Hagör had no means left to him with which to procure more of the drug, he not only turned his back on his family, but outright sold them into bondage. Isar could still remember the pleas for mercy made by his beloved mani. “Please, Hagör, do not do this thing to our son! Sell me if you must, but let Isar go!”

Astrida K’ala Draji’s entreaties had but fallen on deaf, unfeeling ears. Hagör slapped her with his palm, the brute force that came so easily to him due to his massive size sending her reeling. His mani’s head would have hit a jagged stone had Isar not caught her first. Leastways, he was mayhap a child, but he was nigh unto the size of a freeman—or even a warrior—already.

“If the haji does not kill you, I will,” Isar promised, looking Hagör in the eyes. “’Tis a vow.”

His sire’s golden gaze had widened. From shock or fear Isar couldn’t say. “Take them!” Hagör spat out to the slavers. “Leastways, they are your problem now.”

The slavers were hesitant, as if afraid of Isar’s gigantic frame. They approached him cautiously, whips firmly in their grasps. He had wanted to fight them with every bit of strength he could muster, yet his mani’s whimpering kept his focus on her.

In the end, Isar had gone with the slavers peacefully, his mani at his side. For a certainty he would not have done so had he been possessed of the sight and knew the hell he and his mani were about to endure at the evil one’s hands.

Isar continued walking down the gastrolight-cruiser’s main corridor, the entirety of his musculature unconsciously tensed. He had failed one woman who’d meant more to him than all the treasures in Trek Mi Q’an; he would not fail the other one.

 

* * * * *

Meanwhile, on Khan-Gor…

 

Fangs burst from his gums. Talons shot out from his fingers and toes. His eyes, once the color of molten silver, turned an ominous red. Yorin F’al Vader roared his anguish into the night as wings exploded from his shoulder blades and he took flight. Now in his kor-tar form, his senses were more acute. He but prayed to the gods he found his Bloodmate in time.

Jana had run from him whilst he’d been at market selling his yenni. Verily, he knew his vorah didn’t have a care for the creatures being near to him so he had rid himself of them to appease her—a fact she did not yet know.

He had tracked her for hours in his humanoid form so as not to frighten her, certain he’d be able to locate her by scent alone. All the while he sent her telepathic messages, urging her to return to their lair.

It had all been for naught. The trail on her scent had faded hours back and she had responded to none of his mental summons thus far.

His beloved vorah—his wife—could not be dead. It had taken so many years to find her. The knowledge that she was pregnant made his torment all the more unbearable.

I am coming for you, zya—little one. Make yourself known to me.