Page 280 of Hunters and Prey

Warrior Prince of Hai

Emma Dean

Chapter 1

Chiara

Royal Eyrie

Planet Hai Delta

The Hai System

Chiara found herself staring out the massive windows on one side of her lab. They looked out over a landscape that was nothing like what she’d grown up with on her home planet.

This place was dark and gloomy with roiling red clouds in the sky. There was no greenery to be seen anywhere and the buildings were cut and carved into the stone of a mountain. From this angle she could see the rock bridge that connected the landing station to the eyrie castle.

Brown, barren and rocky ground…so very far down. Chiara supposed the height didn’t matter if one could fly, but she could not and she really didn’t appreciate the distance from the window to the ground.

“Chiara, did you look at those samples?” Prince Ian asked as he came into her lab.

She looked up from her work and considered the Draga prince before her. He looked so comfortable already, and he’d only spent a few days on a world she could hardly comprehend, it was so different – so foreign.

After all, they were outsiders here. The Hai System was nothing like the Draga System. Even the way they ruled was different. Royal families for each planet instead of nobles…it was strange.

She tried not to sigh at the prince’s intrusion. After all, he outranked her not only as a royal, but also as a physician. He was her superior now. But it still rankled after being one of the few in charge.

“I did your highness.” Chiara took out her shreve and pulled up the files on the unmarked patients. Whoever they were – she wasn’t supposed to know, but it was relatively easy to deduce. “What would you like to know?”

A fire raged in a massive, ornate gold fireplace with strange winged and scaled carvings. Jewels set into the stone glittered in the warm light. Chiara would never get used to all the luxury.

Her lab and the hospital were carved into the mountain just like the entire eyrie castle was. And yet a royal prince looked right at home in a place where their people hadn’t set foot in centuries.

Prince Ian – the bastard-born son of the late King Orion was one of the best scientists and physicians in the Draga System – and brother to their new queen. He’d created a working vaccine for the hypomalarya disease even if he hadn’t been able to find a cure in time to save his father.

She respected him more than most royals for the work he did.

Prince Ian crossed the lab to check her shreve over her shoulder. “What did you think of the results?” he asked. The scent of winterflowers wafted over to her, identifying him as the more dominant, if only by a little.

How one was born was reflected in their personal, natural scent. It broadcasted where they stood in society and created a safe environment where those who were dominant protected those who served.

Chiara always knew who to defer to and how to act thanks to protocol. Prince Ian was a royal – his father King Orion and his mother a courtesan. The royal genes were programed centuries before to always present as dominant as a way to protect the people.

But the Drakesthai didn’t have dominance in quite the same way they did. It had taken some getting used to, but she was figuring out how to work with them after all the tests she’d been running on them.

Then the Unchanged Humans had arrived and Chiara had felt lost in the swirl of their lack of protocol and dominance. She avoided them as much as she could.

Chiara studied the three different genetic makeups again and shrugged. What did Prince Ian want her to see?

Her gaze went to the window and Chiara stared out at the wasteland. It was almost beautiful with the red clouds that swirled above, the occasional lightning bringing sudden light before plunging them back into the perpetual gloom. Well, beautiful in the same way that a truly deadly disease was beautiful.

When Prince Ian had first sent her the genetic workups she’d simply thought it was so she could compare the three different races and their fertility. But perhaps there was more to it than that.

“Well, this one is clearly Drakesthai as they possess the extra DNA strand,” she said, eyeing the various genetic markers and biology. “Healthy, if sterile. And mated. So one of the few who have a female. This other one…is a Corinthian from Khara. It’s very similar to our Kalan DNA, but the marker they have for the splice is distinct. Based on the blood panel they are also a male. Fertile from what I can see here. Further tests would need to be done to determine exactly how fertile.”

Prince Ian leaned closer. “What else?”

Chiara shifted away from him – uncomfortable. He was one of those who lost himself in his work. Protocol went right out of his head when a good equation was set before him.

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