by Shannon West
The Bloody Prince, the scourge of the galaxies and the man who’d imprisoned him and killed his father, was standing over him with closed fists. How much longer they’d remain that way was anybody’s guess.
“Tell me what you know about my brother’s kidnapping, damn you. And stop your lies. They’re not doing you any good, you know!”
It had been much the same question for the last hour. What do you know? When did you know it? Why did you do it? Was it for revenge? Who else was involved? Janos had answered him over and over, but obviously the answers were not to the man’s satisfaction, because he simply kept repeating the questions.
“I’ve told you all I’m willing to tell you,” Janos said, and cried out when Mikos hit him so hard with his open hand that he knocked him from his chair.
He looked up at Mikos from the floor and spat down at his feet. “Fuck you, Tygerian. No matter how many times you hit me, my answer will be the same. Yes, I knew who he was soon after he came here. And no, I didn’t tell you because why should I? What has Tygeria ever done for me except cause me and my people pain?”
Mikos snarled and drew back his hand to slap him again, but the smaller human beside him grabbed his arm and pulled it sharply down. “Stop it, Mikos. Control your temper! You have drugs that can compel him to tell the truth. I know you do, because you once used them on me.”
The prince glared down at him. “This isn’t the time for that, Ryan. I told you to go back to the ship.”
“And I refused. Stop hitting him, and take him back to his quarters. I told you it wasn’t a good idea for you to be the one to interrogate him. You have an awful temper and no objectivity at all.”
Mikos glared at him, but a harsh sound from his communicator made him jerk it from his side and bark something into it in Tygerian that Janos was too tired to translate in his head. He growled into it a few more times and then angled a scowl back down at him. The man beside him, who didn’t seem the least bit frightened of him, pulled at his arm.
“Well? What was that about?”
“Father wants us to bring him to the ship.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, but I think Larz is causing problems. He grabbed the communicator away from my father and yelled at me.” The smaller man smiled, though he tried to hide it behind his hand. Not well enough, because it earned him a fierce look. Mikos nodded toward the guard in the room, another unsmiling Tygerian. “Take him to the shuttlecraft and tie him to the seat. Use whatever force is necessary.” He stepped in close and leaned down in Janos’s face. “Don’t think we’ll allow you to manipulate my brother when you see him again. He’s confused now, but he’ll soon realize what you’ve done to him. I’ll see to it that he does!”
“Bastion? You’ve got your work cut out for you there. He doesn’t take direction very well.”
Mikos struck him across the face again and he fell back against the guard who’d been helping him to his feet. “You dare say that to me? And his name is Prince Larz, damn you! Stop calling him your slave names!” he yelled and struck him again and this time, the blow brought blood from Janos’s nose streaming down into his mouth. He spat it out, and again aimed for Prince Mikos, who jumped back away from him and would have come after him again if his companion hadn’t grabbed his arm.
“Enough, Mikos. Damn it. Keep this up and you’ll have to fight Larz too. Is that what you want?”
The guard pulled him from the room then, and Janos could hear them still arguing as they followed them out of the palace. Passing a few of his people in the hall, he could see their anger and their outrage as they saw his battered face. Taran came flying suddenly out of a side hallway and flung himself at Janos before the guards pulled him away.
“Don’t worry, Taran!” he called to him. “I’m going to find Bastion.”
They pulled Janos out into the courtyard and pushed him aboard what they were calling their shuttlecraft, but which looked far too sleek and large to be any shuttle he’d ever seen. The guard tied him to a seat in the back and sat down beside him, and the prince and the other man got on board, glancing back at him. The flight to the ship was all too short and not entirely smooth. Turbulence tossed them around a little and Janos was almost glad for the security of the restraints. They were met at the landing bay by two more Tygerians. Handsome young men who looked a lot like Bastion—obviously his brothers, from the glares they shot his way as he passed by them. They began to fire questions about him to Mikos, who stopped to speak to them, and they conducted the conversation in such rapid-fire Tygerian he couldn’t manage to follow it all.
He was taken to a lift and he felt it ascending, and then he was pushed down a passageway to a large room that seemed at first glance to be filled with people. He was shoved into a chair in front of a table, where King Davos himself sat waiting for him. Next to him was a much smaller human, blond and handsome, but staring at him with icy disdain. This must be Bastion’s omak. He looked proud and fierce, just the way Bastion had described him. Two other men sat at the table on the far left side, facing him. One was a Lycan and the other Janos wasn’t sure about. He looked a bit like a Tygerian, but his skin had no stripes. Some other men filed in and sat on Davos’s right side, and Davos began the…trial? Whatever it was, Bastion wasn’t here for it, and Janos wondered where he could be.
“King Janos, we’ve brought you here to try to get more information about my son’s kidnapping,” Davos began.
“And why you saw fit to keep his whereabouts a secret from us!” The blond man broke in, looking agitated. Davos put a hand over his and spoke softly in his ear. He flushed a little and subsided.
“I’ve given your son Mikos all the information I have on the subject.”
“It wasn’t much. Don’t you know what happens on your own planet?”
“I find it difficult to monitor every occurrence on my planet, actually. It’s not a skill I’ve acquired yet. Pray tell me how to do it and I’ll work on it.”
Mikos growled angrily at him and took a step toward him, but Davos held up a hand to stop him.
“A young Tygerian boy shows up in your palace and you don’t question it?”
“I was told he was a gift.”
“A gift? Who told you this?”
“I’d prefer not to say.”
“Your preferences don’t matter!” Mikos shouted, stepping around the guard to hit him again, despite Davos’s shouted warning.
“Leave him alone!” a voice cried out behind him and suddenly Bastion was there beside his brother, looking incensed and angry. Janos hardly recognized him, with his hair hanging down in rippling curls and dressed in long, blue robes. He shoved Mikos roughly away from Janos and a thrill shot through Janos at the sight of him. He sagged with relief. He had hardly realized how tense he was until that moment. Bastion yelled at his brother, “Touch him again, and you’ll have to fight me!”
“That can easily be arranged,” Mikos snarled back at him. Bastion squared off to him, and then the omak got to his feet.
“Stop it!” He shouted and they both froze, and glanced over at the man who was half the size of either of them. The human’s eyes were flashing as he glanced back and forth between them. “Stop all this foolishness right now! Mikos, please let your father handle this. Larz, you come over here and sit by me.”
Bastion—no, Larz—raised his chin and put a warm hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, omak, I love you, but I’d prefer to stay with my nobyo.”
“Your what!” Mikos shouted, and Larz turned to give him a look that promised more violence.
“I said my nobyo. Hard of hearing, Mikos? Have you aged that much over the last four years?” He bent down and began to untie Janos’s wrists. “Just a few more seconds, baby, and I’ll get you out of this.”
“Oh gods!” Mikos said in disgust and threw his hands up in the air. “Don’t be such a fool! Don’t you know what he’s done? What he’s confessed to? He’s known who you are since almost the first time he saw you!
He’s admitted it!”
“I said, stop it,” the omak shouted. “Mikos, if you can’t control your temper, we may need to postpone this hearing.”
“Do whatever you want to, Omak. You always do.”
The blond’s eyebrows rose dramatically, as did most of the other men’s. The Lycan covered his mouth with his hand. Larz’s omak glared at them both and appealed to his mate, the king. “A little help here, please.”
“Mikos, stop being so rude, and Larz, listen to your omak. Or better yet, listen to this man’s testimony and that of your doctors. You’ll see then why we’re so concerned.”
Larz folded his arms over his chest. “I know what Janos has admitted to. I know he said he knew who I was but didn’t do anything about it. I don’t like it, but that’s an issue between the two of us. I’ll handle it.”
“It’s not only between the two of you, Larz!” the blond cried out. “This has affected your entire family!”
“I understand that, Omak. And I’ll handle it. Is there something else?”
“Listen to the doctor’s report,” Davos said.
One of the men to King Davos’s right stood up self-importantly and consulted a tablet he held in front of him. “Sire, the prince has many contusions and scrapes all over his body, including a large bruise on his back and a recently healed scar on the back of his head from a hard blow that probably caused a concussion. It could have killed him had it been a bit harder and more centralized. These are all recent injuries, incurred over the last two weeks or so.”
“Any signs of sexual abuse?”
“None, Sire, but we have no way of testing for whether or not he’s had sex, as you requested. That is, he doesn’t have any traces of semen in his body.”
Larz snorted. “Why not just ask me? Yes, I’ve had sex. Often. Are you satisfied?”
Davos frowned at him. “How do you explain these injuries? Has this man been abusing you? Beating you?”
“Beating me?” Larz looked down incredulously at Janos. “Have you looked at him? He weighs at least thirty kilos less than I do. How is he going to beat me up?”
“I’m sitting right here,” Janos said, and Larz squeezed his shoulder.
Mikos frowned at the exchange. “Well, enlighten us then, brother. What caused all the abuse on your body then?” Mikos asked.
“A war, that’s what caused it. I’m in the king’s personal guard, or I was up until a couple of weeks ago.”
“You were in a battle?” The omak’s voice rose to a shout.
“Yes, I was. And I did all right for myself too.”
“He killed many enemy soldiers and was coming to my aid when he was caught in an explosion,” Janos spoke up proudly.
“What? You let my child fight in a war?”
“He’s not a child, in case you haven’t noticed,” Janos said. “He was given the medal of valor afterwards, my country’s highest honor, and he bravely risked his life to save me from the enemy.” Janos glanced up at him, his eyes shining. “He’s very brave.”
“Anyway,” Larz said, “that’s where I received the injuries. For three years or more before that, I was in the Army, and lived in the barracks. Janos never touched me.”
Davos and his consort looked at each other. “We were informed you were the king’s bed slave. That he sexually abused you.”
Larz snorted. “Hardly. We only made love for the first time a few days ago. And I was the…uh, aggressor, not Janos. I had to convince him, as a matter of fact.”
“He’s too old for you,” the consort said.
“How much older are you than Father? Or Ryan than Mikos? Or Renard here than Anarr? Or Stefan than…”
“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point. That doesn’t excuse the fact that he knew who you were and never notified us. That makes him an accessory to the kidnapping.”
“I never told him who I was.”
“He admitted he knew!” The blond stood up and leaned across the table. “Tell him! Tell him you knew who he was all along.”
Janos couldn’t look at Larz, so he dropped his gaze. “I knew.”
“Wait a moment,” Mikos interrupted. “Are you trying to make us believe that when my brother was ‘given to you’ as a gift, you didn’t try to make love to him? Really?”
“That’s right. I didn’t touch him.”
“Why should we believe a word of that?”
“Because I was at Beatik!” Janos shouted.
Larz’s omak caught his breath sharply.
“For four years, from the time I was not quite sixteen years old, I was raped on an almost daily basis. And I was beaten—sometimes by more than one man at a time. I was starved and worked half to death, and my only crime, the only thing I was guilty of, was being with the Alliance. After my experiences there, I was ill for a long time and celibate for the next six years.”
Larz’s omak fell back against his chair. “Oh, goddamn it,” he said, his handsome mouth turned down at the corners and his eyes troubled.
“Do you really think I’d want another young boy abused the way I was abused?” Janos continued. “Those men injured me mentally and physically to the point I thought I’d never be able to have any lover again, ever, and I hated all Tygerians for what was done to me in that place.” He glanced up at Larz. “But then I met Bastion.”
“His name is Larz,” the blond said softly.
Davos leaned forward. “I’m sorry for what you suffered on our planet. I regret it greatly. The people who were in charge of that prison, and some of its guards, have been severely punished. But that still doesn’t explain why you never told us where Larz was. Why you kept him as a slave and never contacted us to tell us you had him. Even if you weren’t involved in the initial kidnapping, you still have to answer for that.”
“Yes, he does,” Larz spoke up. “But he’ll answer to me, and to me alone. He’s mine now and the matter is between us.”
“If, as you say, he never touched you, then how can he be your nobyo, damn it?” Mikos shouted.
“I never said I didn’t touch him,” Larz yelled back at him. “I’m the one who went after him, and that’s my business, not yours. He’s already shared something with you that’s intensely personal. You need to leave it at that.”
He looked directly at Blake. “Omak, I’ve imprinted on him. I hope you can understand that I can’t and won’t leave him. Not ever. He’s made mistakes, and he’ll answer for them. But only to me. Every one of you has made mistakes too.”
For the first time, the Lycan spoke up. “I think he’s got you there, Blake.”
“Oh, shut up, Renard,” the omak said, glancing over at him. “Well, what about this syndrome thing Ryan brought up?”
“I don’t know what that is. I love Janos—it’s as simple as that. I see his faults as he probably sees mine, but we can work it out. Leave it between us.”
“No!” Mikos shouted, moving to step around Larz to appeal directly to his father. “If you just look the other way, then that puts the universe on notice that this entire family is fair game. I have a young son at home, as do you, Father. In fact, you have two of them now…”
“Wait…what?” Larz interrupted. “What’s he talking about?”
Ignoring him, Mikos continued his rant. “Vannos has a child too, and Anarr may be having one in the near future.”
The Lycan gave Larz’s brother Anarr a sharp look, and Anarr smiled at him and shook his head.
Mikos was still shouting. “You’re putting a target on all their backs if you don’t deal with this-this…”
“Be careful!” Larz broke in and got a disgusted look from Mikos.
“This kidnapper! You have to punish him and his entire planet. He’s admitted the Farlians were involved in the kidnapping, and the Athelonians tried to kill your son in their near constant raids.”
Davos glanced over at his consort, who was sitting tensely beside him, staring at Larz. The consort leaned over as he did and whispered something in his ear an
d he nodded. “I need to take this all under advisement. Take the prisoner away for now, please.”
“If he’s going, I’ll go with him.” Larz took his hand and held tightly to it.
Davos sighed and motioned to the guards, who came forward to lead Janos away. Larz pushed him aside and helped Janos to his feet. He put a tight arm around his waist and Janos leaned against him. As they got to the door, Larz turned for one last word. “Omak, Father, I’m serious. I won’t be separated from Janos. Be careful what decisions you make for me. I may not abide by them.”
****
Blake blew out an explosive breath and collapsed backward in his chair as the door closed behind Larz. Anarr and Vannos came over to stand solicitously beside him, leaning over to make sure he was all right.
“I’m fine, boys,” he said, waving a hand. “Just exhausted from all of this. Mikos, dear, please stop all that pacing back and forth.” He glanced over at Davos. “Okay, so now what? You heard your son.”
“I heard him, but he doesn’t dictate policy, Blake. Mikos is right about setting precedents. Laltana has to be dealt with. I’ve known we had a problem there since the end of the war, but I hoped the leaders would eventually sign the treaty. I let that go too long.” He glanced down the table at the other men seated there. “Suggestions?”
“The Farlians have been a pain in the ass for far too long, with their slave trafficking. The slave traders operate too freely to not be protected at the highest levels of Farlian government,” Renard said.
“I agree,” Stefan said. “No matter how it was done or what the circumstances were, Larz was taken and held against his will by those people of Laltana. What happened to King Janos in your prison was…tragic. Horrible. But it doesn’t give him the right to hurt other innocents because of it.”
