Marked Prince: A Qurilixen World Novel (Qurilixen Lords Book 2)

by Michelle M. Pillow

  Marked Prince

  Qurilixen Lords: A Qurilixen World Novel

  Michelle M. Pillow

  MichellePillow.com

  Marked Prince (Qurilixen Lords) © copyright 2020 by Michelle M. Pillow

  First Electronic Printing August 16, 2020

  Published by The Raven Books LLC

  ISBN-13: 978-1-62501-253-1

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence.

  Michelle M. Pillow® is a registered trademark of The Raven Books LLC

  Contents

  About Marked Prince

  Author Updates

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About Michelle M. Pillow

  About Marked Prince

  Prince Jaxx’s inner dragon-shifter is at war with his human side. He knows what is right and what is prudent, and those two impulses rarely line up. With so many people in need and the planet in chaos, how can he even think about finding a mate? But when he helps to rescue the alluring Fiora from her captors, something inside him shifts, and all he can think about is winning her love.

  Praise for Qurilixen Lords

  “Filled with intrigue and adventure, Dragon Prince: A Qurilixen World Novel is an exciting new spinoff in a rich and intricate universe. Michelle Pillow creates characters to cheer for, to hope with, while building worlds that are portals for the imagination. Truly, Ms. Pillow is a master of futuristic fantasy.”

  Yasmine Galenorn, NY Times, Publishers Weekly, & USA TODAY Bestseller (galenorn.com)

  “Michelle Pillow weaves a fantastical tale of dragon shifters, full of rich world-building, action and adventure, along with a sexy love story. This entire series is not to be missed!”

  Bianca D'Arc, USA TODAY Bestseller (biancadarc.com)

  "Sometimes you just need to gobble up the insane goodness that is dragons, and Michelle has been aiding in that addiction for fifteen years."

  Eve Langlais, NY Times & USA TODAY Bestseller (evelanglais.com)

  "A wonderfully sexy tale filled with romance and dragon-shifters that draws you in from the first page and doesn’t let go. The Qurilixen Lords series is one you don’t want to miss!"

  Mina Carter, NY Times & USA TODAY Bestseller (mina-carter.com)

  Author Updates

  Join the Reader Club Mailing List to stay informed about new books, sales, contests and preorders!

  http://michellepillow.com/author-updates/

  Readers,

  Thank you for your patience during the delayed release of this book. 2020 has been a hard year for many, including members of my team, and we all thank you from the bottoms of our hearts for your love and support.

  I hope you and yours are well and safe during these difficult times.

  Happy Reading!

  Michelle

  1

  Fiora didn’t want to eat, and not because she hated the taste of the unappealing green nutrient paste that they fed her for every meal (which she did). She stared at the injector tube set before her. At this point in her life, food was not about enjoyment, and she could choke it down if forced.

  Instead, her stomach churned because she knew they were going to march her into a roomful of strangers wholly exposed. No, not naked—worse. Dignitaries from across the universes were coming to exploit her psychic abilities. Their questions would violate her mind. There were events she’d foreseen that she could not get out of her head—graphic images of unspeakable horrors.

  Only she had to speak about it.

  What kind of heartless creator gave a person psychic powers, and then made it impossible to lie about them? No matter where she went, she always ended up like some kind of oddity forced to perform tricks. She couldn’t remember the last time someone wanted to just talk to her, get to know her without an ulterior motive.

  If they asked, Can you tell the future?

  She would have to answer, Yes, I see other people’s paths clearly but not my own. I call them timelines.

  If they asked, Where do you get your gifts?

  She’d answer, I don’t know. And they’re not a gift. They’re a curse.

  Are there others like you?

  I had two sisters. Salena was the luckiest. No one could lie to her, but she could mislead them. She was a humanoid lie detector and could make you tell all your secrets to her, whether she wanted to hear them or not. People don’t like it when you can force confessions. Piera was sweet, almost too delicate for the world. She saw people’s intentions in the present, like bursts of color and light. Piera would know with one look who she could trust.

  Where are they?

  I don’t know. I can’t find them in any timeline. I have to assume they are captured or dead. Many nights I imagine they are dead. Death is a kindness. The universes are not compassionate to people like us.

  Ironically, the only future she couldn’t see was her own. How was that for intergalactic bad luck? If she could’ve seen her future, she could’ve avoided capture. Instead, she’d walked right into a trap, yapping the entire time about her potential use as a psychic because they kept asking.

  Fiora didn’t want to talk about her sisters, but that didn’t matter. General Sten, the black hole of a base leader—yeah, she’d told him what she thought about him when he’d asked. He thought it was hilarious. General Sten pried endlessly into her childhood, into what she remembered from the night her parents were murdered by Noire townsfolk, who took her and her sisters.

  What did they look like? What was the ship like? Where did you go? What did you see? What did they do to you? Describe how you felt as the blood of your mother dripped through the floor slats onto your sister’s head.

  Sten liked making her relive in great detail the story of three terrified sixteen-year-old girls listening to their parents’ murders before trying to escape to the clay pits as the intruders set their house on fire. The sick bastard got off on it. Literally. He grew a bulge every single blasted time.

  Fiora picked up the injector filled with green paste and put it to her lips. She’d tried starving herself once. Being force fed by a Federation medical team had not been an enjoyable experience she cared to repeat. After much experimenting, they had found the nutrient paste helped her focus and made the premonitions stronger.

  Fiora didn’t want them to be stronger. She wanted to shut them off forever.

  She’d found one way to mute the psychic images, but chandoo was dangerous. The drug flipped a switch inside her, speeding up her thoughts so nothing could get in. It sounded like a great solution—energy and no premonitions—but eventually, it would rot her brain and leave her a worthless mass of nothing.

  Nothingness sounded good right about now. Then they could do whatever they wanted to her. She tilted her head
back and tried pushing the injector past her tongue so she didn’t have to taste it.

  Fiora hated performing for crowds. There were so many timelines and even more questions. Everyone wanted answers from her, and they came with their endless queries and worries from every known corner of the universes. And if they asked, she couldn’t lie when she answered. At best, she could tell a riddle and make the answer confusing.

  When will I marry? Who will it be?

  Will my son’s ship make it past the black hole?

  Will my daughter receive placement in the ESC?

  Which path will earn me space credits?

  Will I be happy?

  How many blessings will my wife bear for me? Or will I have to dismember her to avoid shame?

  Will I…?

  Will I…?

  Can I…?

  Should I…?

  Some of the answers they wouldn’t want others to know, but still, she would be compelled to say them out loud, and then they’d blame her for their embarrassment. Even when they didn’t ask the question out loud, she still saw the answer fragmenting through her mind. It was like a bad transmission wave she couldn’t shut out. She could close her eyes, but the images invaded her thoughts. She could sleep, but they came into her dreams.

  What she wouldn’t give for silence.

  The white walls were devoid of personality—unless sterile could be considered a personality. Federation holding cells were not meant to be beautiful. They were functional and easy to clean. General Sten insisted on calling her a guest, but guests weren’t held as prisoners. She couldn’t leave, and she hadn’t chosen to come.

  Fiora began to rock on the bed. She pulled the injector from her mouth and dropped her hand to her lap. There was no place to go. Eternity stretched on in the sheen of white. She’d seen enough lives to know there was nothing for her beyond this torment.

  She missed her parents—the sound of their voices, almost like a melody filling her childhood.

  She missed the color of dirt and clay, the smell of it on her hands, the way it lodged beneath her fingernails after a day of digging to create dark lines across the nail bed.

  She missed the sun, warm against her skin. Not artificial like what they pumped into her cell, but the actual sun coupled with the air against her body.

  She missed silence but for the sound of wind in the trees.

  She hated the white walls. They were too perfect, too clean. The white clothes they made her wear hinted that they wanted her to appear pure, untouchable.

  But it was only a matter of time before he touched her. General Sten, listening to the horrors of her past with his growing bulge and heated eyes, wanted her. She didn’t need to be psychic to sense the danger there.

  It never stopped. Fiora needed it to stop.

  She missed…her sisters.

  The sound of someone outside her door acted like a trigger. They were coming to escort her to the banquet hall. Her hand fisted around the food injector. Without much contemplation into she planned to do, she acted, pushing to her feet to face the door. A guard glanced in, not appearing to register any type of threat. She had dealt with Rigger before. He always stared at her a little too long but never stepped out of line.

  Fiora lifted her fist, wielding the injector like a weapon before tilting her head and plunging it into the side of her neck. She jerked it out, ignoring the pain as she then stabbed herself in the chest. Blood spewed on the sterile walls, painting them red and giving her some degree of pleasure as she weakly dropped to her knees on the white floor.

  The life drained from her. She heard shouts and the scrambling of feet. She fell to the side. Wet warmth pooled by her body. If she could have lifted her arm, she would have pulled the injector from her chest and stabbed herself again.

  Rigger leaned over her, and her mind instantly picked up scenes from his future. Fractured visions of a man and woman came with a soft undercurrent of music and panic. Rigger spoke to them in serious tones about a pleasure droid moments before the man knocked him unconscious. The images were faint, and her weakening body made it impossible to hold on to them.

  Fiora would have smiled if she had the strength to move her lips.

  “Get the medic!” Rigger shouted. His hands wrapped her neck as if to stop the blood flow. “What did you do? Blast it, Fiora. He’ll kill me if you die on my watch.”

  Fiora stared at his face, unable to bring it into focus. Hopefully, his panic would be the last sound she heard.

  2

  Politically, what they were doing was stupid.

  Jaxx didn’t care about politics. He was, what? Ninth? Tenth in line for the dragon throne? And that was if the elders didn’t decide to skip over him should the rare instance arise that he’d need to be king.

  King Jaxx. The very idea caused him to laugh. Hell, the elders wouldn’t have to pass over him. Jaxx would shift into his dragon form and fly away to abdicate the second they tried to place a crown on his head.

  King Ualan and Queen Rigan, his uncle and aunt, were fair rulers over the dragon-shifters, as were King Kirill and Queen Lyssa, the neighboring cat-shifter royals. But, for all the power those positions should have afforded them, their hands were tied when it came to the most crucial issue on the planet—the unwanted occupation of the Federation and their militant control over Shelter City.

  The Qurilixen shifters called the settlement Shelter City because initially, it was to be a temporary shelter where the Cysgod aliens could heal after a plague had besieged their planet. Cysgod meant shelter in the old Draig language.

  Qurilixen’s suns had healing properties. A deal had been made quickly to save lives, and shifters had no say over the alien settlement. Though shifters could not prove when or how it happened, the city now housed more than the original infected Cysgodians that they’d agreed to shelter. It went against the agreement that had been signed when setting up the rules for the Federation’s stay on the planet. The city was not meant to hold more.

  If the shifters could prove the Federation brought more people to the planet against the terms, they could attempt to kick them off the planet. Proving it was difficult because they never caught them in the act of transporting additional people on-world, and they weren’t supposed to be inside the city limits.

  Temporary. The thought made Jaxx snort a small ring of smoke from his dragon nose. It had been thirty years since the Federation had tricked their way onto the planet, and now they refused to leave.

  In the valley was an overcrowded marketplace and homes. The metal and stone buildings had been carelessly tossed together and were not meant to stand the test of time. Strips of canvas draped between decaying structures to give shade. This is where the Federation corralled their poor—which was any alien under their jurisdiction who wasn’t conscripted into the Federation Military.

  Across from Jaxx’s perch on the watchtower roof, above the main city was the Federation Military base, and, on the very top of a ridge, political housing overlooked it all. The base consisted of evenly spaced, maintained buildings, a sharp contrast to the poverty below.

  The large stone building which housed city officials and high-ranking military personnel was set across from his watchtower but low enough that he could see the roof. The rectangular structure stretched along the length of the city. Metal arches slashed over the top.

  Dusk had settled over the planet of Qurilixen. Three suns, two yellow and one blue, cast the skies in pale green. Since night only came once a year, this was as dark as the evening would get. Usually, that wouldn’t be a big deal. However, to a dragon-shifter sitting on top of a cliffside watchtower with his giant body outlined against the sky for the Cysgodians to see in the valley below, it was far from stealthy.

  And neither would this be…

  Jaxx opened his mouth and spouted flames into the sky to signal to his cousin, Prince Grier, on the opposite cliff across the valley that he was in position as the lookout. In truth, Jaxx wanted to change places with his cousi
n. There was no reason the crown prince should be sneaking into a Federation stronghold in disguise.

  In his shifted form, Jaxx heard the shouts of the citizens in the alien settlement below. If they had not noticed him perched on the tower’s circular roof before, they did now. Even if the Cysgodians illegally left their city limits, scaled the cliff face, and then the tower, there was nothing they could do about his presence. He was allowed to be on the watchtower since it wasn’t part of the temporarily agreed-upon Federation territory.

  Jaxx hated Shelter City. He hated the smell of uncleaned bodies, the poverty and decay, the fact that the population starved. In modern times, there was no reason for any of it.

  Decontaminators for bathing were cheap enough and could easily be distributed throughout the city. Thirty years of constant sunlight had taken its toll on the structures, but it wouldn’t take much for a work crew to replace the rusted metal walls and tattered overhangs of the homes and businesses. And food simulators didn’t produce the most delicious meals, but food was food, and one unit could feed many.

  However, the Federation refused to let the citizens have the means to materialize food because their scientists believed exposure to the minuscule radiation from the units would make them sick. Of course, no evidence of this was provided to the shifter scientists. The situation was a diplomatic nightmare. Shifters were not supposed to interfere with Shelter City, but how could they stand by and do nothing while people were starving. Lack of food would kill someone faster than a tiny amount of radiation.