“Second favorite?”
Chayden flashed a grin. “Yeah. I like me best… most days.”
Hauk snorted at his old friend.
“So what’s the deal, anyway? What heinous crime did Fain commit to be blacklisted by the entire War Hauk clan? I mean, damn, you’re an outlaw to most governments, you’ve kicked in the front door of a League prison, been tossed out of League military service, and started a rebel organization, yet your family still claims you. What could be worse than all that?”
Hauk stared into the darkness of space as he considered everything Chayden was asking and how best to answer it. “Acts of political defiance are forgivable, according to Andarion tradition. But Fain… he foolishly besmirched our family’s honor and tainted our lineage.”
“How so?”
“Married a human.”
Gaping, Chayden turned his head toward him. “Seriously? That’s it?”
He passed a dark glower to the Tavali for his hypocritical contempt and outrage over their customs. “Your mother? Your father? They were both humans, and how were you and your sister treated because Mom was Qillaq and Dad Gondarion?”
While Andarions and humans were close enough genetically to procreate, they were two vastly different species. Two species that voraciously hated each other and had spent centuries at war. Human-on-human prejudice had never made sense to Hauk.
“Valid point.”
Yes, it was. Chayden’s treatment over the fact that his parents were from two different human cultures had been so foul that Chayden had run away from his homeworld at fourteen, and had grown up on the back streets of other planets, alone. It said a lot that the hell he’d known on his own was better than the one he’d left behind.
Chayden leaned back in his chair to check their headings. “So where’s Mrs. Fain now? I’ve never seen or heard of him being with any female. Or male either, for that matter.”
Hauk winced at the tragedy that had been his big brother’s life. “Sadly, he’s never been with anyone except Omira. She was everything to him. And when she left him, he never got over it. I don’t think he’s gone near a female since.”
“Left him? Why?” he asked incredulously. “What’s not to love about Fain?”
Hauk sighed as he remembered the harsh betrayal Fain had never recovered from. “Bitch didn’t care that he’d given up everything for her. His education, his military career, his future… his entire blood family. Less than two years into their marriage, she packed her things and went back to her human family.”
“Damn,” Chayden breathed. “That’s so cold. How old was he when it happened? Five?”
Hauk frowned. “When she left him?”
He nodded.
“Eighteen.”
“Damn,” Chayden repeated. “He was an infant.”
“Yeah.” He’d been way too young to have his heart carved out and handed to him. “Fain was completely wrecked by it. He tried to come home, but my parents wouldn’t have anything to do with him. My mother told him that he’d died to them the day he chose to walk out the door to be with a human harita. That the last thing she wanted was the stench of a human-lover in her house.”
“And yet you two are still close.”
Hauk glanced to the monitor, where Fain followed at a discreet distance. Just like he always had. He was the only blood family Hauk had who had proven to him, time and again, that he would always stand at his back and not judge him. That was too rare a gift to take for granted. “Like my brother, I don’t give up on my family. For any reason.”
Chayden brushed his hand against the small religious medallion his sister had given him. “I know the feeling.” He glanced over to Hauk. “And that includes all my brothers who get on my nerves.”
Snorting, Hauk playfully turned Chayden’s head back toward the instrument panel. “Don’t be cutting them eyes at me, human.” But in his heart, he knew what Chayden did.
They were family.
And every bit as screwed up and dysfunctional as one related by blood.
Still, he hated what Fain had been through because his brother had given his heart to an unworthy bitch. Omira Antaxas had been the sorriest excuse for a supposed sentient being as Hauk had ever met. Devoted love like Fain held for her was so incredibly rare. Even for Andarions. How could anyone walk away from that?
For any reason.
He glanced back to Thia and Darice. Thia had been the by-product of her mother’s curiosity about what it would be like to sleep with an Andarion. Because Driana had been young, and she and Nykyrian were different species, it’d never dawned on her that she could actually conceive a child by him.
But Darice…
His parents had loved each other in that mythical way that Fain had deluded himself into believing he’d shared with Omira. To this day, Darice’s mother elevated Keris to a godlike status that no mere mortal could touch. No one was allowed to besmirch his memory in any way, and she would die before she allowed another male to claim her.
At the time Hauk had gone on his Endurance, he’d envied the hell out of both of his brothers for the women they had in their lives. Back then, he’d naively assumed he would have it, too, one day.
Decades later, he knew what an idiot he’d been for that assumption. Both relationships had ended tragically.
And once this was done, his parents expected him to go home and marry Keris’s widow, who hated him for the part he’d played in his brother’s death.
It was something they should have done years ago, but Dariana had violently refused him at every turn. She couldn’t even look at him without baring her fangs, and she hadn’t called him by name since the day his brother had died.
Yet she was Andarion and their custom was for an unpledged male relative to marry the widow to keep her safe and provide for her.
Especially when there were kids involved.
Duty. Honor. Obligation. Loyalty. That was the lifeblood of all Andarions. It flowed thick in their veins and ruled their entire existence. Like it or not, hatred or not, Dariana would marry him and keep her family’s honor, and protect her son’s prestigious lineage.
And make his life a living hell over something that hurt him as much as it did her. Sick to his stomach, Hauk sighed at the bleak future that awaited him.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and Darice will throw me down a mountainside, too. And this time it would succeed in killing him.
One could only hope.
CHAPTER 3
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”
Darice curled his lip at Thia before he went out of his way to kick her crate. “I’m not carrying this off the ship. You can carry your own clothes, human.”
Hauk cuffed him on the back of his head. “She’s your princess, tarsen. Respect her as such.”
Rubbing his head, Darice screwed his face up. “Why did we have to bring someone along who’s so high maintenance?”
Thia tsked at him. “I’m not high maintenance, punkin’. Rather, I’m precious cargo that comes with lavish instructions for upkeep.”
Darice curled his lip. “I’m not carrying your clothes.” He kicked the crate again.
This time, the crate growled and hissed in response.
Darice jumped back three feet. “What is that?”
Thia passed an amused smirk to Hauk and Chayden. “Not my clothes.” With a grand harumph, she threw the switch on the crate and opened it.
A giant black cat leapt out, ready to attack as it skimmed them for a target. Darice squealed and jumped up on the seat behind Hauk.