Page 299 of Hunters and Prey

Chapter 6

Roman

Roman’s Office

Skye Palace

Planet Anarr

Roman sighed and tossed his shreve on his desk. The reports were disappointing. And Mikhail sounded annoyed as usual despite using every polite word that existed. Roman wasn’t going to change his current posting no matter how much whining his youngest brother did.

It was still hard to accept that Mikhail was the youngest now. Viktor’s death had been hard for all of them even though he’d died an honorable death.

And Mikhail hated the Kalans. He did not care that they were now their allies. His brother didn’t care that they were helping them find a cure to their disease. Mikhail hated them all regardless which he had made abundantly clear when the Queen of Draga had visited with their eldest brother, Kaiden.

It was why he’d sent him as far away from home as possible while still being on the same planet. Roman didn’t want Mikhail around when there were one hundred doctors and staff from Draga currently residing in the palace.

It seemed that the City of Zerua’s outpost had been taken successfully by Mikhail though. He’d dispatched two more Neprijat Snatchers, but finding the one who’d brought the battle to their doorstep was proving difficult.

Roman didn’t like knowing there was most likely an enemy somewhere nearby. There was always the chance that he’d died in the skirmish with the queen in residence, but Roman doubted it. The Neprijat were a scourge. They were destructive and difficult to kill, even in a foreign body.

At least they didn’t possess their powers of persuasion in non-Neprijat bodies.

Checking the time he realized it was nearly dinner and he still needed to get cleaned up and presentable. Roman was exhausted, but he would never admit that to anyone. Sacrificing sleep to spend a little extra time with his mate had been worth it.

Watching her and seeing how her mind worked – it was better than a full night of sleep.

Showing her the two bodies, one dead and one in stasis, had been fascinating. Despite whatever connection they’d started to build she had instantly been absorbed by the problems before her and became lost in her thoughts.

Roman had never seen anything more beautiful than the way she bit her lip as she focused. Or how her fingers flew over her shreve as she wrote out equations with a few flicks of her fingers, muttering things he couldn’t begin to comprehend as she posed and answered her own questions.

There were a few lines between her brows and watching her he’d learned it was because she tended to frown as she thought, squinting down at the shreve on occasion. If he didn’t know better, Roman would assume she had poor eyesight, but that was impossible with how advanced Draga medicine was.

He was still trying to figure out why she’d asked him that question – why she cared what he wanted when they barely knew each other. But Chiara was strangely empathetic when she focused on others.

Then he’d rested for a few hours as he’d promised her. Roman smiled as he got up from his desk and headed toward his mother’s last known location. For someone who said she had a hard time connecting with people, Chiara was a lot more caring than she gave herself credit for.

It made him want to wring the neck of every person who’d ever given her a hard time for the way she did things. So what if it was different than the norm? Chiara was gods damned brilliant. And in his opinion, they could all learn something from her.

Warriors saluted as he left the guard’s barracks and headed back to the palace. Sometimes Roman wished Kaiden would come back and take over like he was supposed to – before he’d discovered he was mated to the queen of another race and system.

None of them had really talked about it, but they all knew he would be leaving with Adelina if they managed to make it through this war.

After a few weeks though, Roman found he liked the work. Not enough to consider becoming the ruler of Anarr, but one day…he would have to now that Kaiden couldn’t.

Taking a side entrance he nodded at the servants getting ready for dinner and made sure to keep out of their way as he headed toward his mother’s study. She’d spent a lot of time there since Viktor’s death.

But she wasn’t lost to them. She simply kept to herself, doing as much as she could for the war effort.

Roman knocked twice on her door, inspecting the gold-leaf trailing in vines across the heavy wood. The battle had been kind to the east wing of the palace at least. The Neprijat and their hounds hadn’t made it this deep into the palace.

“Mother?”

“Come in, Roman.” Her deep, musical voice sounded distracted and he opened the door slowly.

She stood near the bay window, staring out at one of her gardens, shreve forgotten in her hand.

“You sent for me?” he reminded.

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