2nd Epilogue - Daaynal

He'd killed his first assassin two weeks before his tenth birthday. Barely more than a child when his eyes had been opened to what his life as emperor would be like.

Daaynal K'Saan, Emperor of the Lathar stood in the middle of the corridor, tipped his head back, and closed his eyes as he sighed. Not only did he have to check his draanthing shower every morning for some assassin out to kill him, but he also had to protect the entire empire against various threats, like the male waiting in the room in front of him. He was even missing his own cousin's wedding reception for this.

Opening his eyes, he studied the ceiling of the corridor. It was the same curved, brushed metal as every other ship and station in the fleet. That grounded him, reminded him of the vastness of the empire, and gave him the strength to face what lay ahead.

He looked at the door in front of him, his fists clenched at his side. It was the only outward sign of his rage and fury.

The male was a purist who had sabotaged a fighter belonging to one of the human pilots aboard. He had tried to kill not only one of the precious, fertile females that humanity had seen fit to extend to the Latharian empire, but also the lives of every soul aboard Devan Station and, by extension, Earth itself. If the bomb he'd planted had gone off, it would have ripped the huge facility out of orbit, sending it raining down in fiery death onto the planet below.

Countless lives would have been lost, the devastation immense. Apocalyptic for humanity. And all because some among his people couldn't play nice with others. Purists didn't believe that the Lathar should "sully" their DNA by procreating with any other race.

In that, he still couldn't figure out their logic. Humanity was actually descended from the Lathar, so of all the possibilities in the galaxy, they were the ones that most closely matched the purists' ideals and ethics.

But, as was common with the frankly insane group, even that wasn't good enough. According to them, though humanity was descended from a long-lost expedition, genetically enhanced for a planet they had never reached, they had enough non-Latharian DNA that the purists considered them inferior. Sub-Lathar. Unworthy. Little more than animals, and to be treated as such.

He snorted under his breath. Humans inferior? That was the biggest bunch of trall he'd ever heard. Yes, their technology was centuries… millenia behind the Lathar, but for that he was grateful. He'd been around them long enough to realize that if they'd spread across the galaxy first, the situation between the empire and them… would be very different indeed. Because they were far too like his own people for them to have cohabited peacefully.

So he was glad they hadn't. He was glad that a lack of technology had kept them on their own planet and then near it. Because, simply put, the universe wouldn't have been big enough for the both of them.

And then there was the fact that humanity was the Empire's best hope for survival. He knew that. The human president, Murphy, knew that. Thankfully, the guy wasn't a dick—another Earth phrase he loved—to hold that over him.

Thanks to the plague wrought by their ancestors playing god and messing with their genetic code, the Lathar had no females of their own. Somehow, though, this one little oasis in the back end of beyond had yielded something that no other planet had—hope.

His expression hardened as he dropped his head and looked at the door ahead of him.

Beyond that door lay the lowest of the low, a male who who didn't care how many people he killed… who would stop at nothing to take away that hope, and all to satisfy his twisted ideals.

The purists wanted nothing more than to bring the Empire—his empire—down and remake it into a corrupted and bastardized image of what it should be, of what he and countless others who had worn the iron crown had fought to protect. His jaw tightened, and he nodded to the guards at either side of the door. They swept open, and the male inside looked up.

Daaynal stepped through the door and looked down at him. In his next breath, he would condemn this male to death. He could have sent someone else, but that didn't sit right with him.

Being emperor was not about power.

Being emperor was not about rank.

Being emperor was about doing what needed to be done, no matter how hard.

And it was lonely…

Thank you so much for reading