Homecoming

PROLOGUE

When your lifespan lasts hundreds of years, your memory tends to get fuzzy. But there are some moments that you never forget: especially those where you meet the love of your life.

I’m lucky to have two.

The first is on Homeworld. I’m headed toward the palace’s docking bay, dread settling in the pit of my stomach at seeing my stepmother again as I join her welcoming retinue. This is one of those tasks that I despise doing, but I must put on appearances for the sake of my own survival. My two steadfast guards stand at my back, Taln and Ryker just as tense as I am when we make the final approach to the bay.

My stepmother, Lamia, steps out of her ship, her long dress trailing behind her as her black eyes regard me coldly. I cower under her gaze, trying and failing to keep my head held high as I tilt my chin in subservience instead. She does nothing more than give me a satisfied smirk before striding past me, like she didn’t care for me to come here at all.

This is when the moment crystallizes.

Because there’s someone there I didn’t expect: a tall, dark-haired man with mismatched eyes, dressed in a pilot’s uniform. He steps out of the hatch to lean against the shining silver hull of the ship, flexing cybernetic limbs experimentally, his machine pieces more numerous than those that remain organic. He doesn’t pay me any mind, but I take in everything about him: his tan skin, the subtle curve of his spine in the Merati uniform he wears so at odds with his tousled black hair and square, unshaven jaw. He takes a deep breath and stares out of the forcefield at the deep ocean all around, jellyfish glowing in the depths.

Then he looks right at me.

“Hey,” he says with a smile. “I’m Kye. What’s your name?”

My memory unspools like a waterfall…

...and there’s that second clear vision.

A splash, and then my eyes open.

I’m in my cabin on the Naiad, soaking my sore limbs after days of searching for a princess. I’m starting to think that all is lost when a human woman with fierce hazel eyes and dark hair lands practically in my lap, clearly frightened and lost. We don’t exactly get along at first, but I curl a tentacle around her ankle to calm her, and immediately feel something. Perhaps this is just hindsight, knowing what she’ll become to me--but the moment we touch, the galaxy shifts, and what came before is different than what comes after.

Fiona.

We argue. Kye soothes her. Kye, who I’ve spent so many years denying I feel something for, only to have all those carefully crafted illusions crash down around me the moment I see how tender he is with her. The jealousy I feel flares deep and violent, but I can’t tell if it’s jealousy for her or for him.

It takes me a long time to realize it can be both.

But that’s how I find myself, the forsaken prince of the Merati Kingdom, on a shuttle headed to Earth. Because I find myself in love with not one, but two humans, and they both have unfinished business on their home planet. It’s bittersweet to return with them, as I want to return to my own Homeworld...but I know that they need me, and so I’ll be strong.

For them, anything.