Her Mate and Master (Zandian Masters 6)

Their planet. Vecking assholes.

He grunted as if he could care less, but a familiar sickness gripped his solar pl

exus. One part hatred, one part despair. That any species would commit such an atrocious act of genocide made him ill. And he remembered every bit of it. The screaming. The falling buildings. Bloodied bodies. His mother shoving him in a packed airship just before it lifted off. Watching her wave goodbye, fist shoved in her mouth, weeping, just before another bomb obliterated the ground she’d been standing on. Her final act had been to save his life.

He’d spent his life to date training for revenge. To make her sacrifice count, take back the planet for his ruler, Prince Zander.

But, first, Talia.

Now that the Stornigian had called attention to him, the rest of the prison airship members stared, too, curiosity glinting in their eyes. Ten were Finn. One human—probably an escaped slave. Three Stornigians.

One of the Finn spoke up. They were short, ugly creatures—round heads, sharp pointy teeth, grayish skin. “You’re Zandian? I didn’t know there were any of you left,” he jeered. “Where’ve you been hiding?”

Tomis affected a shrug. “Here and there.”

“What are you in for?” another Finn asked.

“Illegal trade.”

“How’d you live without the crystals?” the first Finn asked. “I thought they were necessary to your survival.” That had been the reason for the Finn exterminating his species. They believed Zandians wouldn’t simply vacate their planet and take refuge elsewhere. Not when their biology required the crystals for charging. When Master Seke had evacuated Prince Zander from the falling palace, he’d had the wisdom to load as many large crystals as they could carry, allowing the small community of refugees to survive these years away from Zandia.

He folded his arms across his chest, adopting a veck off posture to let them know he wouldn’t be answering any more questions.

The small prison airship bumped to a landing, and heavily armed guards came in to escort them off. He prayed finding Talia wouldn’t be too difficult.

By the one true Zandian star, if the Finn motherveckers hurt that female, he would kill every vecking last one of them.

But that aggression wouldn’t serve him now. He shoved it down, stowed it for later. For the moment, he needed to play it cool. If Fluut, King of the Finn, believed he was on official Zandian business, he’d be executed immediately, and so would Talia.

Sweet Talia.

He’d never met the female, but he’d been willing to die for her from the moment he saw her terrified hologram in the transmission from Fluut.

I’ll exchange her for your prince. You have one week to deliver.

That had been two planet rotations ago. Eight more to go then Talia would be killed.

One of the guards jabbed him in the ribs with the butt of his giant laser gun. Tomis drew the pain in, used it as fuel for his power.

Pain is merely sensation, Master Seke used to say during training. Register it. Use the information. Do not give it more weight than it deserves.

Talia was Master Seke’s daughter, missing since the Finn invasion of Zandia. Seke had believed her dead until recently, when Rok revealed he’d escaped with two female children. Tomis had been helping Seke search for them ever since.

He made himself stumble and swerve, as if weak and off-balance, when the guards shoved him off the prison ship. His clothes were dirty and tattered, boots worn. He’d done everything he could to appear like a nobody.

A guard stood at the entryway, scanning their bodies for disease, their barcodes if they had them. He had none. He’d been a free being his entire life.

“Who’s this?” the guard demanded when he took in Tomis.

“Smuggler. Trying to buy crystal. Thought King Fluut might want him for extra leverage.”

The guard’s face stretched into a greasy smile, showing a row of pointy teeth with food bits stuck between them. “Excellent. Take him to the prison for holding.”

Yes.

Step two of his hare-brained plan had worked. Now he just had to find Talia and escape.

When the scan was complete, the guards dragged him roughly forward and down two sets of metal stairs to the dungeons. Exactly where the Zandian plans had shown it to be. He carried no weapons save his fists, but his body had been trained to kill from his first planet rotation after the Zandian genocide. His two aces in the hole were the massive solar flare Seke planned to trigger to take out the Finn’s power tonight and the extensive underground tunnel system below the dungeons that the Finns didn’t seem to know existed.