Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

ARI

“How difficult is it to find one specific human female?”

Distance distorted the voice over the comm, but Ari’s wings bristled at the tone. The Nakkoni did not state his location, and Ari did not ask. Reazus Prime had its social conventions, much like any other place.

“Very, in my experience,” Ari replied dryly. “Was there a particular reason for your call, or was general harassment your motivation?”

A mountain of priceless treasure was great in theory. The trouble was turning the priceless treasure into something more practical.

Spendable would be ideal, but at this point, Ari would be willing to settle for disposable.

The human female Miriam tricked him. When it came time for the crew to divvy up the spoils, she sold him a pretty story about being a hero and convinced him to accept her portion of Mer’len’s legendary, priceless collection in exchange for a promise to find a friend and free her. While he liked the idea of shaping himself into a hero, he had not been naive when it came to the difficulties in finding one human female. Humans were a valuable commodity, and people noticed. He’d put out feelers and gathered the necessary information. Simple.

Except he underestimated the burden of having a ship filled with treasure. Filled. Not a few pieces tastefully decorating the place, or even a prized collection on display, but every surface held an artifact of cultural significance or made from precious material. Crates were stacked floor to ceiling in the cargo hold, making it impossible to actually use the hold for those pesky materials required to prevent starvation or death by suffocation.

Terribly inconsiderate, all things considered.

Frankly, the amount of wealth Ari found himself holding was rude.

And he couldn’t spend one single credit.

Static buzzed over the comm channel again. “I do not like your tone, Khargal,” Perrigaul said.

“If you want an apology, you’ll have to come here and get it for yourself.”

Ari knew Perrigaul would not. While the two had a working relationship, it could not in any way be considered cordial. Perrigaul would tear the wings from Ari’s back as quickly as Ari would shove the red lizard off a cliff. Plus, Perrigaul would desire to keep Ari as far away from his mate as possible. With good reason: Ari was better-looking and far more pleasant company. The Nakkoni was rough around the edges, lacked any sort of civility, and communicated through grunts.

Too bad Ari genuinely liked the male’s mate, Miriam. Of course, he had to question his judgment as Miriam was the one who tricked him into this situation.

The trouble with having an obscenely large fortune was that as the numbers grew larger, they became theoretical. Impractical to hold and impossible to turn into anything useful.

Selling individual pieces to collectors was a slow process, having to select buyers one by one. Not just anyone with credit would do. He required someone with discretion, just greedy enough to want the shiny treasure but not so greedy as to murder Ari and take the treasure for themselves; a rare combination indeed.

The pace at which he sold pieces mattered as much as the buyer. Nothing drove down the value of a priceless artifact like a glut of priceless artifacts. Leaving the planet for a fresh market was not an option. Ari’s confinement to Reazus Prime was as real now as it had been when the planet still operated as a prison. He was here for life.

Soon, it became apparent that zipping around the planet from buyer to buyer like a frantic colibas gathering honey before the winter was a waste of his time and resources. He instead needed to be the spider, waiting in his web for his targets to come to him. Docking his ship long-term in the Hub’s harbor meant Ari could enjoy his wealth and attend lavish parties. The guest lists were carefully curated, and he made sure he was always on the list.

It was a solid enough plan but required patience, a virtue he lacked. It had been months, and he had not freed a single human. Two entire seasons had passed.

The failure frustrated him, but not as much as the circular nature of the problem. He needed credits to buy the humans’ freedom. He had an abundance of assets but a distinct lack of credits. Converting those assets into credit was a tedious process that could not be rushed, lest he draw attention to himself or drive down the value of the assets.

“How is your delightful mate?” Ari asked, stirring up trouble. “Does she miss me?”

Growling came through the call, crackling and popping with static.

“She does,” Ari said, delighted. “Is she there now? Miriam, my sweet human friend, I miss your voice.”

“Stop teasing Perrigaul,” Miriam replied.

“I cannot believe that you only contacted me to harass me about not finding your friend. Tell me there is another reason.”

“Actually, there is a reason,” she said, then hesitated. “Well, tell him. Stop dragging it out.”

“It’s called leverage. You do not freely give information away, especially to one such as him,” Perrigaul said. This sounded like an old argument. While Ari would normally be pleased to be a source of strife for the Nakkoni, he had guests arriving.

“I’m needed elsewhere. What do you wish me to know?”

The static sounded very much like grumbling. This pleased Ari.

“There is a rumor that the death mask of a certain Khargal emperor is on Reazus Prime,” Perrigaul said.

“A Khargal death mask?” Ari knew the piece. Well, he knew of the Khargal death mask in his collection and recognized the petrified stone mask instantly as being an artifact of his people. Did it belong to Emperor Crai, a legendary ruler of Duras, his homeworld? Likely, considering Mer’len only collected the most rarefied of treasure, and the emperor’s death mask qualified as a lost treasure.

Still, the Nakkoni did not need to know this. Leverage was important, after all.

“Crai? On this planet?” Ari asked, keeping his tone flat to sound bored.

“That is the rumor.” Perrigaul was not amused, which amused Ari greatly.

“Do I have it?”

There was another burst of static and some expletives. “My mate insists I inform you that the mask was known to be part of Mer’len’s hoard, and certain entities are on their way from Duras to retrieve it.”

Representatives of the royal family or possibly Patrol agents. Either option was concerning.

Ari himself was only a minor noble, a title and estate with so little wealth that no one gave him much consideration.

The outstanding warrants, however…

“Thank you for sharing this information,” Ari said. “What do you desire in exchange?”

“Just find that human, Darla, so my mate no longer has a reason to speak to you,” Perrigaul snapped.

The call disconnected. The static-filled hum of the equipment slowly diminished, leaving silence. Ari’s wings shifted, his old injury aching. His tail thumped against the chair.

Yes, this was very concerning.

Ari tugged on the cuffs of his finely tailored suit and calmly made his way to the treasure hoard. He kept the collection under lock and key until he could figure out what to do with it.

Mer’len’s treasure came in three flavors: credits, art, and artifacts. The credits and hard currency were a nonissue. Artworks included paintings, statues, jewelry, and even some books. The value of these items did not fluctuate. Artifacts ranged from famous swords to dented cups and bowls—basically, anything that had an interesting story attached to it. The value of those items fluctuated dramatically, depending on the audience. An old blaster was common. The blaster used to assassinate Charlee Trokur would fetch a charming amount of credits from the right buyers.

Ari stopped in front of the mask hanging on an illuminated wall panel. Light glowed softly through the eye sockets and around the edges. As an anonymous mask, it had little value. If this were truly Crai’s death mask, it was valuable beyond imagination and the royal family would want it back.

His own family had a horrifying collection of the faces of deceased ancestors. Actual faces. That was the nature of the Khargal death mask. Khargal skin had the ability to turn to stone. After death, the facial skin was removed, and with the correct preparation and chemical treatment, the skin could be petrified into a mask.

The process was as terrible as it sounded. Most families kept death masks at an altar or family shrine, brought out for special occasions. In his family’s aerie, however, the masks lined the central corridor. Passing them several times a day was unavoidable. Shadows contorted the masks into a fearsome shape. Young Ari could feel the empty eyes watching him as he hurried past.

The family estate was now his to do with as he pleased. He could have the death masks removed and placed in storage or pulverized into gravel. That idea held appeal and knowing his sire would be livid if he knew only made it more so. Alas, Ari could not return thanks to a pesky legal situation.

Duras had a particular punishment for criminals: the Stone Sleep. When injured, a Khargal could assume their stone form and sleep until the damage healed. It was a slow process but natural. In many families, the eldest members assumed their stone forms and slept, waking rarely. Ari’s grandsire several times removed chose that fate for himself, waking once a decade to make demands and then fall asleep again. The stone forms were not impervious to wind or water. They had to be cared for, tended to, and that responsibility fell on the younger generations.

The Stone Sleep twisted a natural part of a Khargal life cycle, confining a person to their stone form for a century, but not asleep. No. Awake. Conscious and frozen for a hundred years.

Faced with such a fate, Ari fled Duras for Reazus Prime. He was fooling himself if he ever believed he could be a hero. He was selfish through and through, and it was better to be a fugitive than a living statue. After a century, perhaps he could return to his home world and complete renovations on the family estate. Modernize it. Scrub it clean of his sire’s presence.

He stretched his wings, muscles aching and stiff from an injury that failed to heal properly.

Ari pulled the mask off the wall and said, “You are causing a great deal of trouble.”

He should dump it into the ocean and wash his hands of it, historic relic be damned, but no. That would not stop the royal family’s agents. If the mask was rumored to be in Mer’len’s possession, it was only a matter of time before those agents would swoop into his nest.

He needed to dispose of the mask and do so in a manner that led away from him.

This required thought. At the moment, he had a prospective client to interview.

CARLA

As it turns out, the aliens did Carla a favor when they abducted her from her crummy life.

Should she have been concerned about the reason the aliens abducted her? Sure. Absolutely. Alien abduction was never good, right? Lenore read one book where a woman was taken for her brains—the alien needed a human specialist—but that was it. In all the other books and movies, humans were destined for breeding, food, to be pets, or to fight gladiator -style. Nothing good.

Well, the joke was on them. The abductor’s ship exploded in orbit, or so she was told after the fact. Carla was very much unconscious at the time. Her pod, or whatever the alien stuffed her in, crashed into a salvage ship, so that was two explosions she missed while in storage. When she woke up, she was stranded on a planet called Reazus Prime, which apparently was the kind of place where high-class aliens locked their proverbial car doors when they flew past.

Honestly, it felt like home.

Poppy held out the pair of dice, her tail lazily swaying from side to side. “For luck,” she said.

Carla smiled, pressed her fingertips to her lips, and blew a kiss. The act was over the top, but that was the point. Poppy worked her hustle at the gaming table while Carla distracted the marks with her human wiles.

“Human tradition,” Poppy explained to their companions at the table. They nodded and murmured about quaint humans.

Humans were fairly unusual on Reazus Prime. While the ship that abducted her had a cargo hold full of humans, how many survived was impossible to know. Exploding ships tended to do that to inventory manifests. The rate of discovering survivors had slowed to a trickle after three years.

She was so fortunate that Poppy had been the one to find her. She was a good one, pulling her from the wreckage and never asking for anything in return. Most importantly, she was her friend. Her only friend in the universe, considering her lack of social skills on Earth.

Poppy—Popilyn if you were being formal—was a Nakkoni, an alien with reptilian features including dark red scales, a tail, spikes along her jawline, a ruff on her neck, and feathery quills on the top of her head. Some people might describe her as lizard-like but she was a dragon in her eyes. Big. Red. Spiky. Carla might have screamed the first time she saw her, but they moved past it and were besties now.

“She’s very tame,” a fellow Nakkoni with a coppery-red complexion said. His gaze lingered on her, and Carla honestly needed a bath because it felt so disgusting. “Do you intend to breed her?”

Yeah, disgusting. Sometimes, she wished she could turn off the translator chip in her head.

The thing that made humans so popular as property wasn’t because of their rarity—although that was part of it—but the universal breeder thing. Humans could knock up or get knocked up by almost any alien species. No idea why. Call it an evolutionary quirk.

“No,” Poppy answered.

“Would you sell her?”

“No.”

“Not even for a night? Jealous? Do not fear. I’ll let you join.”

“As deeply flattering as your offer is, I must decline. We are not for sale,” Poppy said.

Carla pressed herself against Poppy’s side, burying her face against the fabric of Poppy’s shirt as if she were shy. She wasn’t. She was pissed. Scowling or yelling at the creep would ruin all their hard work. And yes, swindling was hard work. You couldn’t just walk up to a mark and politely ask them to give you all their money. You had to cajole them, flatter them, and make them think it was their idea. Then you took the money and ran.

“You know who I am,” the creep said.

“Should I?” Poppy asked in return.

The creep’s quills went down, unamused.

They didn’t need to know who the man was. Not the specifics, anyway. They had a name—Tavat—and knew his hobbies included spending obscene amounts of cash, frequenting the gambling halls, and splashing out money. He was currently surrounded by an entourage of sycophants and security, making him impossible to miss. Everything suggested he loved the attention.

What more was there to know?

One of the sycophants, a finely dressed gargoyle—Khargal—with a deep gray complexion that held a purple sheen, stared at Carla.

His gaze was intense, like he saw right through her act.

Carla looked away, casting her eyes toward the floor.

“Then you know I am accustomed to getting what I desire,” Tavat said.

“She is not for sale,” Poppy said, her tone indicating the conversation was closed.

The creep didn’t get the message. He leaned one arm on the table and licked his lips, the tip of his tongue split.

That wasn’t a standard Nakkoni feature. At least Poppy did not have a split tongue.

Tavat caught her looking and grinned. “Do you like, pretty human? My tongue is especially pleasurable for certain features of your anatomy.”

Oh, barf.

Carla tucked her face against Poppy again, not having to fake the shiver of disgust.

“Enough,” Poppy said, wrapping a protective arm around her. “Do not speak to my friend again. You distress her.”

Yeah, that wasn’t going to do anything. Tavat made a thoughtful noise, like he was deciding if it would be better to throw money at Poppy or just shoot Poppy and take her.

Carla curled her fingers against Poppy and tapped, sending a message in their code. This guy was giving off bad vibes. She didn’t like it. They needed to find a new target.

Poppy ignored her message. She said, “I came here to play. Stop wasting my time.”

Not perfect, but Carla would deal with it for now. She relaxed once the creep’s attention returned to the game.

The trouble with Poppy was that she was fundamentally a decent person. Carla’s pod slammed into her ship, causing it to crash. Poppy could have left her in the flaming wreckage, but she dug Carla out. Did she hold that against her? Nope. Did she even once mention Carla paying her back for all the money she spent patching her up and installing a translator chip so they could talk? No, and the bills had been nothing to sneeze at.

Carla had no idea why she did any of that. She had been a stranger, unconscious and nearly roasted alive in a pod that crashed into her ship. She wouldn’t have pulled a stranger out of the wreckage, much less spent all her money to save that stranger’s life. Basically, Poppy was a better person than her. Huge shocker.

What about resentment for wrecking her ship? Well, Carla had opinions about the condition of a ship that couldn’t withstand a little fender bender. Space was full of dust, debris, and junk, right? Ergo, spaceships should have shields or deflectors to deal with that shit. Regardless, Poppy never blamed her for ruining her piece of junk spaceship or grumbled about having to sell it for scrap.

Carla would have grumbled. She was still salty about her struggles to find a toaster that lasted more than a year. You’d think the expensive models would perform better than the ten-dollar ones, but no. All garbage.

Focus. You’re a good little pet.

Carla chanced another peek at the gargoyle. He stared at her, not even trying to hide it. She had no idea why that bothered her so much.

The gargoyle winked.

Carla plastered a blank smile on her face, even as she felt the heat of a blush rise in her cheeks. She wouldn’t panic. So what if the gargoyle was wise to them? They’d done nothing but behave exactly as you’d expect a gambler and her pet to act.

Gamblers were their bread and butter, and to run a good hustle, they needed to maintain a certain image. That meant she played the passive little human, Poppy pretended to be so affluent she could afford a human pet, and it worked for the most part. Blushing and getting flustered because a good-looking gargoyle winked at her was out of the question.

Back on Earth, being a decent person felt like being punished for someone else’s mistake. Some days, Carla swore that everyone else got an instruction manual on how to get ahead in life, and all she got was that one -page instruction sheet on how to assemble her budget Swedish bookcase. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t make any headway. The bills never stopped. Prices kept going up. The system was designed to keep people like her hungry and exhausted, and she hated how hopeless it made her feel.

This place, though? She understood the rules. The strong survived. The clever excelled. Decent people had no business being here.

Fine by her. Being decent hadn’t exactly worked in her favor, and now she could stop pretending.

Long story short, Carla wasn’t just surviving. She was thriving.

Seeing as how most people on this rock were criminals, outlaws, fugitives, or, the worst in her opinion, visitors come to indulge their vices, she had no problem stealing their money. Especially the tourists. She considered it a service, delivering a genuine Reazus Prime experience. As long as she and Poppy kept their heads down, stayed out of trouble, and didn’t give all their money away to big-eyed orphans, they did all right for themselves.

She distracted the mark while liberating credits and jewelry with nimble fingers. Poppy provided muscle when things got sticky, which happened a lot in the early days. She didn’t worry too much about the ethics of being a thief—they weren’t stealing food out of the mouths of orphans. They had a good system. Reliable. Expanding into gaming dens and targeting gamblers flush with cash was new.

The gargoyle continued to stare at her, not even trying to be subtle about it. Tavat noticed. His head swung from the gargoyle’s hungry gaze to Carla, and he licked his lips, that split tongue flicking in a way that made Carla’s stomach churn.

This guy was trouble.

Carla lightly touched Poppy’s arm, snagging her attention.

The gambling hall had plenty of good pickings: lots of people drinking and looking to have a good time with cash burning a hole in their pockets. They didn’t need to stay at this table.

Sure, being chased away by an alien creep didn’t exactly scream thriving, but she was working with what she had. Better to run away and live to fight another day and all that.

Poppy’s tail brushed against her leg, signaling that she understood. They’d move on as soon as possible. Good.

The gargoyle made his way around the table to stand next to Carla.

“What is your name?” he asked in a toe-curling voice that had no right being that seductive.

Her posture stiffened, and she turned to Poppy, ignoring the gargoyle. “Poppy, this guy is asking questions.”

Poppy immediately turned and growled, her quills standing up and going full-on dragon. “Do not get ideas, Khargal.”

The gargoyle chuckled as if amused, taking a step back but remaining close.

Tavat watched the entire exchange. She didn’t like the calculating look in his eye. It was spidery, if that made sense, like he sat in the center of a web, patiently waiting for hapless little morsels to wander in.

And that was exactly what happened. Poppy and Carla saw a high roller, thought, “Why not?” and fell into the trap.

They needed to skedaddle. Now. While they could still escape the web.

“Not yet,” Poppy said in a quiet tone, as if sensing her thoughts but disregarding them.

Why was she ignoring her? That wasn’t like her.

Poppy waited two more rounds of dice throwing before gathering up her modest winnings and announcing, “I believe I’ve lost enough for one night.”

Tavat placed a hand on Poppy’s shoulder. “Not yet. You haven’t given me a chance to win your pet.”

Poppy shrugged off the lizard’s hand. “Not interested.”

A slow, lazy grin spread across the man’s lizard face. It was rancid and very, very spidery. “You misunderstand me, friend. I don’t appreciate being told no, especially by a cheat.”

The crowd gasped. Maybe that was only her. No one paid the least bit of attention to the showdown between Poppy and Tavat.

Poppy stood at her full height. Built pretty much like a linebacker, she towered over most people. She didn’t have to do much to be intimidating, just scowl and swing her tail around a bit.

Tavat’s quills went back against his head.

“Apologize,” Poppy said.

The creep snorted.

Poppy’s hand darted forward, wrapping around the man’s throat.

He clawed at Poppy’s fingers but couldn’t pry them off. “I apologize,” he croaked.

This was good. A bit brutal but a nice display of strength, exactly the kind of unsophisticated display people responded to. She’d make her point, and they’d get the hell out there.

“Not to me. To Carla.”

Then she had to go and ruin it by being sentimental.

“It’s fine,” she said, her voice quiet. She was still pretending to be a timid pet, after all.

What did she need an apology for? She wanted to pick up something deep -fried and delicious from one of the street carts on the way back to their rented apartment.

Tavat made a series of squeaks that might generously be interpreted as an apology. Poppy relaxed her grip enough, and coherent words finally escaped the man. “My apologies. I was mistaken about the cheating.”

“Thank you,” Carla said, accepting the apology, even though Poppy absolutely was a cheat. That’s how they made their living, after all. Some things—like money—were too important to leave to chance.

Poppy stepped back to the table, slapping down a stack of credits. “I’m in the mood for another round. What do you think, Carla?”

What was she doing? They needed to leave, not double down. This wasn’t like her at all. She was being reckless. Vengeful, even.

“I think we should call it a night.”

“That does not appeal to me,” Poppy said.

Really? Why ask Carla’s opinion if she was just going to ignore it?

Instinct told Carla to run away, but she trusted Poppy’s judgment. If she wanted to push it with Tavat, she’d back her. Plus, she’d like to wipe that smug, spidery look off Tavat’s face.

“Fine. Taking all his money is an acceptable apology,” she said.

She never claimed she made good decisions.

The night was young. There was profit to be made.

Life was tough on Reazus Prime. Nice people didn’t thrive here, and she was going to thrive, dammit.