9 Zinnar

I don’t wait for my guards when we dock at the spaceport. They shouldn’t be here anyway, though I’m glad to have had a Ripstar to get me to the spaceport so fast.

“Your highness—” Rorlin calls after me.

I growl, hating the title and the way he demands I wait like he controls me. “You should have stayed with my father. The Empire closes in on us every week.”

Losing Rosalynn has shortened my fuse.

He retorts, but I don’t listen. I find the nearest spaceport staff and ask about their recent departures. There haven’t been any for forty-five minutes, and the next isn’t scheduled for another thirty. I have some time but not much to find Rosalynn.

I check the waiting areas for the terminals but don’t see her. My guards try to keep up but they’re not soldiers in the sense that I am. They’re not used to running long distances, just patrolling the castle.

As I walk toward the restaurants and hotels of the spaceport, I catch a light musky sweet scent in the air.

I slow and follow it toward a bar. Rosalynn isn’t in any of the booths or seated at the counter. But as I turn to leave, a woman gets up.

“Hey, you’re that guy from the race, aren’t you? What are you doing here?”

“I chose wrong. Well, I didn’t really choose.” I look back at her, but she’s not Rosalynn.

“How does that work?”

“She sort of threw herself at me. But she’s with another dignitary now.” The woman isn’t my target. I keep searching.

“Where’s your uniform?” she asks, walking toward me.

“The cloak was pissing me off. It just gets snagged on everything. Ceremonial shit gets in the way of work.”

“If you wore it more, it would feel normal,” Rorlin remarks.

“Not helping,” I growl as I storm away from the bar to continue my hunt.

“Someone took her!” the woman calls after me.

I stop and look back. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t see them. They tried to take her stuff, but all she has are a few clothes, some sentimental things. Nothing of value except the money.” The redhead steps closer. “I’m her best friend—only friend I’m afraid. What do you want with her?”

“She is the one.”

She laughs nervously. “Well, I’m pretty sure you broke her heart.”

I was afraid of that. “Is anyone else looking?”

“Spaceport security, but it’s not easy to find a person in a ghostcloak.”

“Come with us. You may be able to help.”

She takes one look at the three guards with me and lugs Rosalynn’s bag over her shoulder. “I’m Aryssa.”

“Zinnar.”

“You royalty?”

Rorlin tells her what I am and where we’re from. I return my attention to following Rosalynn’s scent.

It’s tough to admit that I’ve given up on all the others because there’s no way to know if Rosalynn will take me after I rejected her. But I don’t want the others. I want the woman who was given a million credits and unhappy about it. I want a female who values other things.

“You really want her?” she asks.

“Would you wish me to set down the woman I carried and grab another? How would that make the first feel?”

“Yeah, probably like shit.”

I nod. “But I couldn’t let your friend lie there as if unnoticed and forgotten. I was just torn. But I saw her leave. She did not want to win. I did not want to be with the female that crashed into me.”

Aryssa agrees that Rosalynn wanted a mate not the credits. She fills me in on Rosalynn’s family history. “No father figure. But her sister looks a bit like a Nytheralian. So I wouldn’t be surprised if that deep bronze skin of hers isn’t from a different alien daddy. Her mother got around while she was still alive.

“Rosa doesn’t care, though. She treats everyone equally.

“She looks human,” Rorlin remarks.

Azir, one of my two royal guards, grumbles a note of distaste. “I think she’s got Obsidius in her. It’s the hair.”

I cringe at the name of our one enemy other than the Nebulous Empire. But deep down, it doesn’t matter. “I don’t care what she is. I care about who she is and what she values. But more importantly, that she is safe. So put away your judgments.”

“The people may reject you if you bring home a mate from the enemy,” Azir remarks, getting in my way.

“Then so be it. I cannot change how—”

“The king will expect restraint,” Odran, the other guard, interrupts.

I feel the spots of cold consume me as my chromataphor cells darken. My jaw heats with the desire to rip into something.

“Zinnar,” Rorlin warns.

I snort a breath and look away from Azir and Odran. They do not know what I am, what I do when I am just a soldier. They know me only as a prince. I think they think I am spoiled.

“I want you to go back and guard the king,” I tell them.”

“We cannot leave.” Azir is firm.

“You are not wanted here,” I say bitterly. “You are hindering my search for my mate. And I don’t give one blasted fuck about your opinions.”

Odran scowls at me. “You forget where you are.”

“I have been here before.”

This surprises him. “Then you haven’t seen the corners of the ship.”

“I grew up in the dark.” It is why I change so easily and command ferrous elements like they are extensions of my body.

Only Rorlin knows the truth.

To my surprise, it is Rosa’s friend who speaks my truth. “The Obsidius raids on your people, I remember Rosa telling me about them. You must’ve been hidden as a child underground with the others.”

“It was before their time,” I tell her, with the secret out. “So no, I did not grow up a spoiled brat in a castle on a hill.”

Odran and Azir quiet and shift inside their black and gold cloaks. We have never fought together. They don’t really know me. They were simply assigned .

“Obsidius have not been our concern since the Nebs invaded our system. We have even worked together to stop the empire. So get it in your heads,” I bark at them. “I have lived through our war with them, but we have a greater threat.

“And when that is gone?”

“I don’t care about that right now. But hopefully, we can see what we accomplished together and go on peacefully sharing the solar system.”

“And if you’re mated to one but the war resumes?” Azir asks.

“She is not the enemy.” I state.

“How do you know?”

“Because of her scent. Obsidius smell like burnt moss. She has a light, sweet musk that I can’t get out of my mind.”

“That could be Sol de Gaia.” Her friend says. “It’s a perfume with that exact scent.”

“She was not wearing perfume,” I say. “It was too subtle, too natural.”

I’m getting hard just thinking about Rosa’s skin. “And if you don’t move aside, Azir, I am going to shoot you.”

He hesitates, glances at Rorlin and Odran, then moves out of my way.

I do not care if they follow, but they do.

“It is unwise to get between a royal and their desires,” Rorlin remarks. “You may have the teeth and the ink, but you do not have the same animal inside.”

“What do you think they wanted with her?” I interrupt him as Aryssa and I continue the search. “Was she in any kind of trouble?”

Rorlin grits his teeth and sighs with flares nostrils.

“Is he always this angry with the one he serves?” she asks.

I smirk and glance back at him. “He often fumes over nonsense. That has been his resting face since I was a child. Now, Rosalynn.”

Aryssa tells me about their life in retail, their tiny dirty apartments, and the stray cats Rosalynn made her promise to feed. “But this guy came out of nowhere. It wasn’t a voice I recognized. Not an ex or a former stalker. Security said they’d had some trouble with things disappearing on the spaceport and that they’ve been going through supplies for more people than have been coming through, like there are more people here than we can see.”

She suddenly stops by a hallway as my scent trail fades out. “I know that smell. I’m not a super sniffer, but I could recognize a perfume like that anywhere.”

Aryssa turns and walks down another hallway, nose in the air. “Crisp Air was one of the few you can really taste once you’ve smelled it.” She wanders on. “It lingers like that.”

A peep behind me tells me Rorlin’s warmed up his gun.

I glance back and follow his eyes to a shimmering object on the floor. Rorlin kicks it but it doesn’t move. He rummages around with his hand and opens the cloak, effectively switching it off and exposing a human in a strange mishmash of new clothing and accessories, but most importantly the goggles to see others in cloaks. Rorlin removes them and hands them to me. “I’ll call this in.”

I continue on after Rosalynn, hoping we aren’t too late. Odran and Azir stay close.

“They’ve been stealing from the spaceport,” Aryssa remarks. “Bet they want her credits.”

“Is a million a lot here?” I ask.

She gives me a wild look. “Is is not where you’re from?”

“I have much more. I will give her the credits if she must relinquish them to be safe under my protection.”

“What is your deal anyway? You came after her, but why? There had to be a chance to find someone else there.”

“Just want her.” I catch Rosalynn’s scent again where the man’s has faded out. He groans on the floor far behind us.

I put the goggles on and check the path ahead. Three shadows run just ahead of me, in the same direction we’re going. I put a hand out and stop Aryssa. “They’re here. Stay with my guards.”

Rorlin charges after me, but he’s too far behind. I’m not waiting.

I sprint down the hallway after them around a curve in the path and glimpse the female I want tucked behind a metal beam, straining to hang onto it as people tug at her clothes and her backpack.

Rage simmers my blood that anyone would hurt such a beautiful creature. The three ghosters I approach turn to confront me. But I am twice the density of a human, and plow through the first two with ease. The third pulls a gun. I magnetically transfer a panel of my armor to a forearm and block the warping blue blast, sending it zinging down the hall. One knee to his stomach takes him to the floor.

Ten more people in cloaks converge on my chosen female.

They cannot harm her. I cannot lose her again.

I have to get to her if I am to shield her from this onslaught. But as they turn on me, I’m forced to switch my focus to them.

One comes at me with a bar from a clothing rack. I angrily shove him aside. He hits the wall and slumps. Three more charge at me with guns raised.

I summon the remaining plates from my shoulder with a morphing string of thoughts and a sweeping movement of my hand. They form a shield that deflects the shots until I am right in front of the ghosters. I plant my shoulder into my shield and knock the three back into several more.

With a gap in the crowd, I leap over the bodies that writhe on the floor and charge the last few who hold Rosalynn hostage.

A blast goes off behind me, a blue one—human. Then yellow, the color of our weapons. The hallway lights up with the growing exchange.

Metal panels warp. Screens blow out and fragment into shards that glitter as they’re slung through the air.

I shield my head as I bolt toward her. A man holds her up by the throat, crushing her against the wall.

“She’s mine!” I growl as I tackle him to the floor.

He drops Rosa, so I scoop her and her backpack up with one arm, throw her over my shoulder and run for the nearest exit as more gunfire cuts through our location. There’s one transport dock that’s open. Whatever is inside I can fly. But when I step into the main cabin, I stop and promptly move my shield to the front. The pilot, a green-skinned Lazariot, fires at me.

The shot razes past my shield and knocks someone back into the hallway. I know only by the thud their body makes. When I look back the goggles confirm it.

The door rushes shut.

“Hold on!” The Lazariot launches us away from the port.

I set Rosalynn in a seat, brace myself, and help her belt in.

The pilot takes us into orbit and runs every scan that he can. He taps his com and calls back. “Private Transport Six Bravo, check that one for unlawful docking. Two passengers on board. Will orbit until spaceport is determined safe.”

He gets a reply I can’t understand except for that the situation is under control and the cloaked assailants are being taken into custody.

Rosalynn stares at me as I look her over, searching for critical injuries. I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I fear what has happened to her has changed everything.