Born of Legend

  Not that one had ever really touched him kindly. Even when he paid for their services.

  Still, she was being nicer to him than anyone ever had, and it made him feel almost normal. Like he wasn't a total hybrid freak.

  Stop it. He knew better than to have these thoughts. If he couldn't contract affection as a prince or tiziran, there was no way in hell he could expect anything except utter hatred and disdain as an Outcast. Especially from a female like her. She was honorable and high-ranking.

  Beautiful and accomplished. Way out of his league.

  All wanting did was make him hurt from the steady flow of unending disappointment. That was what his parents had taught him from the cradle. Don't have desires or goals, and nothing aches. Just survive like the animal you are.

  Life was easier that way.

  Focus, Julie.

  Looking around, he refused to allow her to tempt him. Rather, he made himself learn about his new home. He'd heard a lot of rumors about Tavali stations, but he'd never been in one before. They were too secretive and cautious to let in outsiders carelessly. And he was stunned that she'd opened the doors to him.

  After all, his reputation wasn't exactly one extolled for loyalty. He had basically sold out all but three members of his family.

  He'd even sold his own soul.

  Trying not to think about that, he glanced around the station. It was a lot cleaner than he'd have thought. More modern.

  For that, he was grateful.

  Hell, he was grateful just to have some place relatively safe to sleep again. A locking door was a major bonus.

  Ushara stopped at the end of the long steel alley and waved the card over a reader. "These are really crappy quarters. I'll see about getting you moved once the others clear out."

  "It's fine. Really." Better than trash like me deserves.

  "You say that, but you haven't seen it." She turned the lights on.

  Jullien swept his gaze around the small, spartan room, which took about a second and a half. "Well, it's definitely not the palace I grew up in. But hey, it's not the sewer I bled in last night, either. If the toilet and shower work, I swear I'm in Eweyne."

  Skeptical, she handed him the card.

  Jullien froze as his fingers accidentally brushed against hers. It'd been so long since he had any physical contact with a female ...

  He could barely remember what sex with someone else felt like. And he'd never had it with someone who actually liked him. Only females out to use him or the ones he'd contracted for it--which was the only thing he really missed most about Andaria. The sociably acceptable paid companions that had been a sweet bonus for his otherwise shitty life.

  As tahrs, he'd been allowed a standard two-year contract with any agency he wanted. And while he'd craved a permanent relationship with someone, not even their paid females would stay with him. No matter how hard he tried to negotiate a longer term with a companion or what he promised them, they always left as soon as their contracts expired.

  As his cousins were so quick to point out, he was nothing more than a hideous, corpulent, mongrel dog in their world. Yes, he'd been the crowned prince and heir. But not even the coveted title of Andarion tahrs could buy him affection, or mask the fact that his blood was tainted by the weaker human genetic code of his father.

  Great gods, Julie, your own mother can't love you, or even stand to look at your repugnant form. You think anyone else can?

  His aunt Tylie had been right. No one wanted anything to do with him.

  They never had.

  And never would the gods allow him a female as beautiful or accomplished as Ushara on his arm. Someone so incredibly kind and soft. Delicate.

  She smelled like a warm summer afternoon.

  Her pale hair picked up every light, even in the dimness of the station, and beckoned him to touch it. It was so compelling ... but he'd seen enough females cringe and recoil from him that he had no desire to watch her do the same. He was through reaching for things that weren't his to have, and getting bitch-slapped for the effort.

  "Thanks," he mumbled, moving away her.

  She gently took his arm and pulled him to a stop.

  Baffled, he scowled as she reached into his pocket and pulled out his link. Then she programmed a number into it before she slid it back into his coat. "In case you need something. It's my number."

  "Really?"

  She looked as shocked as he'd sounded. "That surprises you?"

  "Little bit."

  Smiling, she reached up and brushed the hair back from his forehead.

  Jullien closed his eyes and savored the tenderness of that single action that probably meant nothing to her. Yet it meant a lot to him and sent chills all over his body. No one had ever touched him with that amount of affection before. But the worst part was the scent of her skin that made him so hard, it was painful.

  Her fingers lingered on the scar that bisected his left eyebrow and it was nothing compared to what it'd done to the mark it'd left on his soul. "Do I want to know what caused this?" she asked as she removed his glasses.

  "Probably not."'Cause the gods knew he didn't want to recall the event.

  Her gaze went to his pupils where she studied his eyes for several seconds before she spoke again. "Are you still using Popivul?"

  He laughed bitterly as he realized what she'd been doing. While most Andarions had a degree of light sensitivity and pupils that didn't dilate the same way human eyes did, his years of drug abuse had left his with a permanent enlarged pupil that was easily detectable to those educated about such things. "Looked up my personal file, did you?"

  She nodded.

  Pulling his collar back, he showed her his neck and the old, faded scars from his misspent years of severe drug addiction that had required him to keep his hair much longer to conceal it. If he were still using, the area would be severely discolored and bruised. "I've been sober for a long time now. No creds for it."

  She screwed her face up at the lingering horrendous marks that he always made sure to hide with clothing. "Why did you ever start that?"

  "Didn't. My cousin Merrell held me down while his mother injected me. He and his brothers and mother found that I was much more pliant to their schemes whenever I was high. After a few times of them forcing it in me, I didn't want to be sober anymore. It was easier to deal with my family while numb to it all."

  Ushara couldn't imagine a family like he described. It was as foreign to her as loving kindness would be to him. "How long have you been sober?"

  "Since the night my brother threw me across a table in a crowded restaurant and threatened to paint the wall behind me with my brain matter. It sobered me fast. Not to mention the way my parents looked at me ... like I was the vilest piece of shit who had ever breathed. My mother actually told me that if she lost my brother over my actions she would hand seal me in my coffin, and listen to me scream while I died in it. And my father told me that he'd never forgive me. That I was dead to him. If you saw my files, then you know he meant every word of that. We haven't spoken since, as he quickly blocked my calls and severed all access to him and his empire."

  "Because of your sister-in-law?"

  He nodded.

  "Why did you kidnap her?"

  Jullien let out a bitter laugh. "I didn't kidnap her.... Aksel Bredeh was my brother's adoptive brother. That's who I gave her to, and he'd sworn to me that he wasn't going to hurt her, only use her to get Nyk out of my life again and get my grandmother off my back before she killed me--which she'd promised to do. And it wasn't like he was a stranger to me, or her or Nyk, either, for that matter. We'd all gone to school together. He was the stepfather of Nyk's daughter. I'd known Aksel for years. And Kiara, too, and no offense, but she was always a snotty bitch to me. Every time I tried to be nice to her, she'd curl her lip and sneer like I wasn't fit to breathe her air."

  His eyes tormented, he raked a hand through his hair. "Have I told you I was extremely high that night? I wasn't thinking straight. My e
ntire world was crashing down around me faster than I could make sense of it all. My parents were blaming me for Nykyrian's death and absence like I was the one who'd orchestrated it. And I was a fucking child when it all happened. Five years old, to be precise. While I like to think I'm intelligent, I have to say, that level of evil was quite beyond my abilities at that time. Then, while all that shit was breaking loose with my parents and brother--the Andarion citizens began rioting in the streets to kill us all. If that wasn't enough, my grandmother went out of her mind, threatening to kill me and my mother if I didn't help her kill Nykyrian. Add to that, cousins Merrell, Chrisen, and Nyran who used that time to come after all of us so that they could take the throne during the riots ... Yeah, fun memories. I tried to talk to my father about it and ask for his help, and he brushed me off, saying he was disgusted with me and didn't have time for it. In fact, his entire consulate was trying to get me disinherited. My aunt Tylie was threatening to see me imprisoned. Galene Batur had threatened to gut me. I'd been poisoned by my own guards. My cousins were being systematically hunted down and executed ... and were trying to save their own asses by telling lies on me. Yeah, I made some really bad decisions. But my entire family had turned on me, I had no allies or friends, and I was trying to stay alive in the middle of an extremely violent political coup. So sue me that I panicked when I had no one at all to trust or turn to."

  The anguish in his eyes scorched her. "Here, let me give you the exact sequence of events." He counted them off on his fingers. "My cousins Chrisen, Merrell, and Nyran had decided that it was time to put me down, and were plotting to have me and my mother killed. I didn't realize what they were doing until they had set up a guy named Talyn Batur whose mother was my mother's best friend and her head bodyguard, and had me take the fall for it. Now, I fully admit I'm not innocent. I played right into their hands, like a fool. I did just what they wanted. And it cost me. Which scared me because I knew I'd screwed up with my mother to the point she'd never forgive me for it. She's always thought more of Galene than she has of me. For that matter, she loves Talyn more. It's why I let Chrisen and them manipulate me. I hated Galene and Talyn for the fact that I couldn't get near my mother for any reason, yet Talyn was allowed to visit her like a beloved son. Him, she rocked to sleep and petted. He got to do homework in her lap. Me, she wouldn't look at. Not for anything. Not without slapping me or attacking me. And then when Nyk turned up with a pregnant wife and..." He closed his eyes and flinched. "I overheard my mother and aunt talking."

  Glancing away, he ground his teeth. "The harsh things they said about me cut to the bone. It wasn't like I had any delusions where I fell in my mother's affections, but damn. It's another thing to actually hear her hatred of me spoken out loud to someone else. To hear her planning to put me back in prison when I'd just gotten out. I couldn't take it. And I lashed out in a bad way."

  He drew a ragged breath. "So to answer your question, I don't know why I did it. Jealousy. Fear. Pain. Hatred. Rage. A part of me wanted to hurt all of them as much as they'd hurt me. There are a thousand reasons that don't make sense when you step back and look at them, and I admit it. It just didn't seem right that Nyk showed up after all those years, and took what little I had from me. That he had the beautiful wife and child, after both of my fiancees had killed themselves rather than become engaged to me. That he was a paid ruthless killer, an assassin who had murdered his own adoptive father and over a thousand innocent League victims, male and female, and yet our parents respected him, were proud to call him son, and were disgusted by me when they'd never even bothered to learn the most basic thing about me. That no one could love me for any reason. In the end, I realized that fair has nothing to do with anything. Life just is pain and it hates us all equally."

  "And sometimes it surprises you."

  "Yeah," he scoffed. "But never in a good way."

  "Never?" She arched her brow.

  "Not in my experience."

  Ushara narrowed her gaze at him. "Well maybe it's time for your experiences to change."

  "How so?"

  "By your actions, it went to hell. Maybe by your actions, it'll get better."

  Jullien snorted bitterly. "Doubtful."

  "Never say never."

  "Never," he said stubbornly.

  Impishly, and to prove her point, Ushara leaned in and pulled his head down to kiss those beguiling lips.

  Jullien growled at the unexpected taste as her tongue swept against his. Heat coursed through him at the first kiss he'd ever been given freely. Unable to believe it, he was completely stunned as his head spun.

  Pulling back, she nipped his chin and smiled up at him as she pressed his glasses into his hand. "As I said, it's time for your luck to change."

  And with that, she left him hard and horny.

  Breathless and stunned, Jullien followed her to the door and watched that sexy, seductive walk until she vanished from his sight.

  He bit his lip as he imagined what it would be like to actually make love to a female like her.

  Don't even go there.

  But he couldn't help it. All he'd ever wanted was a single loving hand to touch him.

  Just once in his worthless, godforsaken life.

  It was why he kept the old photo of his parents on his link. To remind himself that while his parents had raised him with only scorn, hatred, and distaste in their eyes whenever they looked at him that he had at least been conceived in love. In the very beginning, before his birth, he'd been wanted by them both.

  "It should have been you who died! Why my Nykyrian? Why not you!"

  "Since the moment of your birth, you've been nothing but a bitter disappointment to me. How I wish you'd been stillborn or had died rather than see you grown into the disgrace you are. No wonder your mother lies in a drugged stupor. I hope she never comes out to face the reality of what she birthed."

  Wincing, Jullien rubbed at the scar on his forehead and tried to blot out the memory of his parents' hatred.

  "You're a hard bastard to kill. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why can't you die already?"

  Just like his mother screaming at him that he should have died in Nyk's place when he was a small boy, he'd never forget the look on Merrell's face when Jullien had survived his cousins' vicious attack on him as an adult.

  As the tattoo on his arm said, he was born to suffer. He knew that as sure as he was standing here.

  And the gods had no intention of allowing death to spare him a single moment of it. The best he could hope for was to endure this misery and learn from it all. There would never be peace for him.

  Sighing at a single truth he could never escape, he locked the door and turned around to inspect his new home.

  "Well, at least there's not much to clean." He shrugged his coat and scarf off, and looked for a place to put them. Opening the door on his left, he found the small bathroom with a toilet and shower. While it was the size of a closet, it wasn't the closet. The kitchen was a tiny area behind him with a small rectangular table and four plain white chairs that must have been made for a young girl's playhouse.

  He went to the kitchen where another closet seemed to be.

  Nope. Skinny pantry.

  There definitely wasn't a closet in the small living room in front of him. All it contained was a monitor on the wall and a minuscule glass table below it. A couch and desk were cut into the wall opposite it with a narrow ladder to a loft above.

  Jullien tossed his coat and scarf over his shoulder and climbed to the loft where he had to hunch over or risk a head injury. There, a very short bed awaited him with the promise of an extremely uncomfortable sleeping position. But at least it was clean and it had a pillow and blanket. The closet for the room turned out to be sliding cabinets along the side of the bed. He folded his coat and saw that there was another small stand up here with a monitor and lamp.

  "Home sweet home," he breathed as he sat on the bed, toed his boots off, then emptied his pockets.

  Not the way
he'd expected his day to end, by a longshot. He was still alive.

  Merrell had been right. He was a hard bastard to kill.

  Jullien disrobed and slid into bed, with his pants still on in case he had to run for his life later. He reached for the remote and turned off the lights before he armed the security. Out of habit, he put his blaster beneath his pillow and kept his hand on it.

  Closing his eyes, he listened to the silence.

  When he'd lived in the palace, he'd always slept to music. But the necessity of having to stay vigilant for assassins and bounty hunters had caused him to give that up years ago. He hadn't listened to music for pleasure since the day his parents had disinherited him.

  Against his will, he remembered the last time he'd tried to see his mother and brother. To apologize and try to make some kind of amends for it.

  Sickened over what Aksel had done to them and for his own part in it, Jullien had gone to the palace the day Nykyrian had been released from the hospital.

  Tylie and her girlfriend had met him in the foyer with that ever-same look of ball-shriveling hatred burning in her eyes. "What are you doing here?"

  "I need to see my matarra."

  His ever regal, beautiful Andarion aunt had stepped in front of him, cutting off his path to the family wing. With that haughty, smug sneer, she'd shaken her head. "You've done enough harm to your mother and this empire. She doesn't want to see you after what you did to your brother. I told you to go stay with your father."

  But his father hadn't wanted him. Because of the turmoil on Andaria and their fear of bringing war to their empire, the Triosans had refused him landing privileges. They wouldn't even put his calls through to his father. He still didn't know if the government had issued those orders or his father.

  All Jullien knew to this day was that his father had never once called to check on him during the coup. Not even to see if he'd lived through the bloody rioting and royal arrests and executions.

  Weary, wounded, and aching, and suffering horribly from his unsupervised detox, Jullien had only wanted to see his mother. Just one last time before he died.

  For one single minute.