Spiteful Stars (Disenchanted Mates #1)

Prologue

In Tygeria, at the king’s palace

Prince Rakkur

“I’m never going to make up with Tariq, Omak, so don’t even start,” I said. “You’d be wasting your breath. I’ve decided I never want to see him again.”

“But, Rakkur, don’t you think…”

“No. Just stop. I’ve made up my mind, and it-it’s over.”

I was sure it was anyway. Pretty sure…almost definitely.

“I understand perfectly, sweetheart,” Blake said. “And I believe you. If it’s over, then it’s over. And if that’s what you truly want, I’ll make sure you never have to see Tariq or be with him ever again.”

A shudder shook me suddenly at the idea of never seeing Tariq again—fucking unthinkable, my brain screamed at me. Are you crazy? But I quickly steadied myself and squared my shoulders. It was surely for the best. I glanced back over at Blake.

Blake was one of my two fathers, my “omak,” the Tygerian name for a male bearer.

He was also Tygeria’s Royal Consort, King Davos’s beloved mate.

And he was originally from Earth. Their romance was celebrated and damn near legendary in this part of the galaxy.

They had married at the height of the long, terrible war between the Axis and the Alliance years ago, when the galaxy was in utter turmoil and men and women were dying by the thousands every day.

It was a war which Tygeria subsequently won, but it was hard fought, and Earth’s Alliance had given them a run for their money, as Blake would say.

The odds had been firmly against my fathers and were astronomically high from the beginning of their relationship.

Blake had been a captured Alliance soldier, a lowly lieutenant, with very little battle experience and actually not long out of training when the Axis forces had attacked his ship.

Davos was at that time the Dyson or the Battle Commander of the entire Tygerian and Axis forces, a position of great power and influence.

Their widely divergent paths never should have crossed.

It was a total fluke—a giant twist of fate.

The fact they even had occasion to meet only happened because the Dyson had been called to the docks for some half-forgotten reason and had happened to witness one of their battle cruisers unloading prisoners.

Among them was a handsome young lieutenant with blond hair and unusually blue eyes, fighting desperately with his much larger captors as he and the other prisoners were roughly removed from the ship and put into cages to be transported to the Games.

There in the arena, the captives would fight each other and their captors, and because the Tygerians prized courage, a few might fight hard enough and well enough that their lives would be spared.

If they managed to survive the selection, they would then become slaves in the households of their enemies.

If they were young enough and good looking enough, they might become what the Tygerians called their love slaves.

This would give them an easier life than being worked to death in the fields and labor camps, but they would be subject to any treatment of a sexual nature that their owners decided on, and they’d be available to be sold or traded away to anyone who made an offer.

The average Tygerian was about six feet five inches tall, using Alliance measurements, while the average height for humans was about five feet, nine inches. Blake was considered fairly tall for a human by those standards, standing at just under six feet tall. He was twenty-three years old.

Despite the difference in bulk and height, Lt.

Blake Cameron had been fighting being taken off the ship with everything he had, knowing he didn’t have a lot of skill in weaponry and though he was brave, he wasn’t a warrior.

He would probably be killed soon anyway, or he might survive only to be taken as some kind of sex slave—a fate even worse than death to the Alliance soldiers.

It had been at the height of the fighting, and untold numbers were dying in the war every day.

Blake had received very little training, and he’d only been a soldier for about a year.

Davos, who happened to witness his struggle with the Tygerian soldiers, had been struck by Blake’s courage in the face of almost insurmountable odds.

Not to mention the young man’s undeniable beauty.

Tygerians favored same sex partners as their lovers, and it had been that way for centuries.

And Davos favored this small human particularly.

So much so that he had decided to witness the Arena Games that would be happening a day or so later, in which these Alliance soldiers would face their Tygerian challengers.

He had decided not to intervene even then, despite his admiration for the young human, but when he saw the Alliance soldier about to be humiliated and possibly killed by his opponent, he had quickly changed his mind and stopped the event.

He had taken the Alliance soldier home with him instead, and the rest was family history and lore.

“Look, I didn’t exactly mean I never want to see Tariq again,” I clarified, though that was exactly what I’d said only moments earlier.

“But I won’t go back to him this time. In fact, I’ve decided that we need to separate, and I won’t see him or talk to him ever again, under any circumstances. Not unless he begs me on his knees.”

“I understand. The difficulty in that is if you refuse to ever see him or talk to him again, under any circumstances, then it would be impossible for him to beg you, no matter if he were standing up or on his knees.”

“Oh, Omak, you know what I mean!”

“No need for the shouting, dear. Let’s make this easier for both of you and simply start divorce proceedings this very minute.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, so I frowned. A divorce meant I would be done with Tariq forever. It would be a disgrace for us both, but it also meant that… I would truly be done with Tariq forever. And that made me feel desperately ill to even think about it.

“Perhaps,” I said, “I don’t need to rush into anything.”

“Oh, but why wait? I think it’s better to have your father grant you a quick divorce and get it over and done.”

“D-divorce? You think I should…” I swallowed hard. “Divorce him then? So soon?”

“Yes, of course, I do. The way you say he never listens to you and bosses you around? It’s shocking.

You don’t have to ever see him again, sweetheart, so don’t worry.

I’ll tell your father to handle the whole thing, and it will all be done in no time, and you never have to worry about him bothering you again. Your father may even kill him for you.”

“What? Omak, no! Don’t even joke about that! Kill him? No!”

“In the old days, it wouldn’t have been a joke. Your brother Mikos is called the Bloody Prince—guess what your father’s nickname was?”

“What?”

“Davos Hardrada, or Hard Ruler. Because of his fierceness and unwillingness to back down in a fight. You know how young the Tygerians are when they start their training? Well, your father was only twelve years old, and he was a hardened battle veteran at fourteen. By the time he was seventeen, he’d lost count of the number of men he had killed, and he’d been wounded twice—once quite seriously.

By the time I met him he was twenty years old, and the king had named him his Dyson.

An extraordinary honor, no matter how much he tried to downplay it to me when we met.

He was huge and muscular and the most beautiful specimen of manhood I ever saw. ”

Blake put a hand on my shoulder. “So, you see, honey, killing a son-in-law wouldn’t really be a problem for him, though I think he actually likes Tariq. If he thought he was mean to you, however…”

“No! Tariq isn’t mean to me. He-he frustrates me, and he irritates me sometimes because he tries to boss me around. That’s all.”

Blake’s eyes brightened. “We can ship him off to the farthest reaches of the galaxy then—so far it will take ten years and traversing a few wormholes on our fastest ship just to get to where he’ll be.”

“Ten years? That sounds extreme, don’t you think? I don’t want the children to not be able to see their father for so long.”

Blake waved my response away. “Oh, the children will be fine. At their age, it won’t take them long to forget all about him.”

That made me feel uneasy. “Well, I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. Or even a good thing. I don’t want them to forget him. No, Omak, I-I’m pretty sure that won’t work.”

“It’s for the best, dear. Didn’t you say he struck you? That, by itself, is a treasonous offense, To strike one of the princes? Big mistake.”

“I-I may have exaggerated slightly. He’s never hit me. He never has, and he just wouldn’t. The only thing he did was push me around a little.”

“Push you around?”

“Up against the wall, actually…”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

“You know…so he could lean me against it while he pulled down my…”

“Okay, too much information,” Blake interrupted, his face turning pink.

I had no idea why he should seem embarrassed.

Blake shared plenty of intimate things about him and my father with me all the time that I never wanted to know about, and I’d seen my father do similar things through the years.

In fact, pushing him against a wall was almost a daily occurrence.

But being wrong had never stopped either of them before.

“Tell me the truth. Did he do this against your will?”

“Huh? Well, no. Not so much. Not exactly. No.”

“I see. Sounds like you may have liked it. Or maybe even encouraged it. And like perhaps you were doing plenty back to him.”

“Maybe.”

“I see. Well, after the divorce, you’ll never have to see him again, so you won’t be tempted. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To never see him again?”

“N-no, not really. I never said all that…he is the father of my children, after all.”