Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
I had no idea that the very next day I would pay for my use of the sigil—pay in ways I had never expected.
TWO
VIK’TOR
“There you are—thought you weren’t coming. Why are you so fucking late?” I looked up as my second-in-command, Azz’lx, walked into the sitting room of my living quarters which were located at the top of my building—the biggest in the city.
“Ah, Baron Vik’tor—please forgive my tardiness. I had a most unusual thing happen on my way through the Central Hub,” he excused himself.
“Unusual? What are you talking about?” I asked, frowning. He did look kind of unsettled—his usually slicked back hair was in black strings around his narrow white face and his expensive maroon robe was rumpled and pulled all askew.
Azz’lx always dresses to impress. Myself, I don’t bother—mainly because there’s nothing I can do to make other Naggians see me as anything but a hsh’frux half-blood, so why even try?
There’s no denying or hiding my half-blood heritage—not that I would want to. My father was Braxian, one of the Twelve Peoples whom the Ancient Ones had created when they seeded our galaxy with life. They’re a ruthless race—prone to going into berserker furies in battle or if they think their chosen female is being threatened. They also have blue skin, white-on-black eyes and horns that grow from their temples.
Well, I didn’t have the Braxian eyes—mine were glowing blue like most other Naggians—and my hide was white instead of blue, but the two curling horns that sprouted from either side of my forehead proclaimed my heritage well enough. In addition, I had gotten some Braxian tribal tattoos along my arms and up the side of my neck in the same distinctive shade of blue my father’s skin had been.
He and my mother were dead now—killed in a shuttle accident when I was in my early twenties—but I paid tribute to them and their love in every way I could. And if the Naggians I lived around didn’t like it—well, fuck them. I knew well enough they all looked down on me and loathed me—it was one reason I’d been so damn determined to become the wealthiest male on O’nagga Nine. Once you have that kind of “fuck you” money, nobody can turn up their nose at you, no matter how “dirty” your blood is.
All this flashed through my mind as I looked at my normally sleek and buttoned-down right-hand man. Azz’lx wasn’t exactly what I’d call a friend, but I trusted him—well, about as much as I trusted anyone—and I was genuinely interested to know what had him so rattled.
“What happened?” I asked him. “What was this ‘unusual’ incident that has you looking like a fucking ghost crawled up your ass?”
He had been pacing at the far end of the room, far back from the fireplace. Though he has never complained, I know he doesn’t like how warm I keep my living quarters. Now he ran a long, white-fingered hand through his hair and turned to me.
“Do you know that a common Blood Whore is using your sigil?” he demanded.
“What?” I sat forward on the edge of my seat, frowning. The sigil is something I give out only to esteemed guests and colleagues—it’s a physical symbol of my personal protection so I don’t take someone using it lightly.
Especially when I didn’t fucking give it to them in the first place.
“You heard me!” Azz’lx was still pacing and running a hand through his hair. “I stopped on the way here to get a quick bite and this…this common little Blood Whore accosted me!”
“Accosted you?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Did she try to rob you?”
“No, no—nothing like that.” Azz’lx frowned and shook his head. “I was negotiating with her for the price of a bite and she suddenly went crazy and pulled out your sigil and shoved it in my face!”
I frowned.
“Does Dru’silla know you’re drinking from common Blood Whores now?”
Dru’silla was his wife—a grim, unsmiling female who was possibly the most proper person I had ever met. Even by Naggian standards, she was strict. Maybe she loosened up when she and Azz’lx were alone, but I doubted it. She most definitely would not approve of her husband drinking from a Blood Whore—though she might pretend not to notice if he took a sip from one of the higher class prostitutes—the Blood Brides who service the upper echelons of Naggian society. If he was discrete she might look the other way, but visiting a Blood Whore in the middle of the Central Hub was not very fucking discrete.
Azz’lx scowled at my pointed question.
“What Dru’silla doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he said stiffly. “Besides, I had a taste for off-worlder blood and none of the Blood Brides I normally go to are off-worlders.”
I noticed he was careful to say “off-worlder” instead of the derogatory hsh’frux—doubtless to avoid offending me, since I was half hsh’frux myself. Azz’lx was always carefully servile around me, though I had told him many times the term didn’t really bother me. Hell, for the first five years of my life, I’d thought hsh’frux was my damn name, or at least a nickname, because I heard it so often from so many people.