8
BLOODLINES, LORIAN
I arriveat our family estate, the Obsidian Palace, just as twilight is settling over Alba. The gates rise before me, massive slabs of carved Reima Two stone decorated with intricate patterns, but underneath their beautiful surfaces are Imperial security locks that register biometrics through seamless, hidden sensors. My parents' genius in everything when they moved to Reima Two was fusing the functionality of Imperial culture with the facade of Reima Two artistry.
The outer guards bow as my presence registers through the scanners. My security detail falls back at the gatehouse, following protocols I've maintained since childhood. This is family ground.
As I walk the path toward the house, I feel the comforting weight of my latest acquisition against my hip. A case of neural disruptors. Highly illegal, even by our loose standards, they're designed to scan for buried microtech invisible to regular sensors. Rafe will have a fit, I think, but he'll see their use in controlling the chaos at the Grand Championships. The fines from the IGC get heftier each year, and I plan to keep a tight rein on hidden trackers or any other tech that smugglers like Gael the Returner might slip into the Spire.
Once inside the grand entryway of the main house, I take a deep breath. Another homecoming I wasn't certain I'd live to see. I play dangerous games in the galaxy, and someday dangerous consequences will end my life. But not today. Today I'm still alive, breathing, and standing once again in the place I belong. Home.
My footsteps echo with the same sound as they did in childhood, when Rafe and I would race through these halls playing games. The black stone flooring reflects everything in perfect mirror images, doubling the space and creating an infinite hallway of memories.
“Lorian.” One of the household staff approaches me with a respectful bow. “Shall I prepare your neural bath chamber? The mineral composition was refreshed this morning.”
“Yes,” I tell her, already anticipating the charged ions that will ease the tension from my recent mission. “Set it for deep cellular regeneration. And have the kitchen prepare something with real protein, none of those synthesized substitutes. Where is my father?”
“In the first reception room,” she says and glides away.
As I walk down the corridor toward the reception room, I think of my mother and how she softened my father. Now only shadows remain of her, and Father fills her absence with his human pet.
“Love is a sickness one can never recover from,” he told us more than once growing up. He spoke of a love so all-consuming, that it drove him to abandon his Imperial military rank and to flee with our mother to this world, where credits can buy acceptance that breeding never could. Our parents arrived on Reima Two with enough wealth to silence questions about their exile, but the price was high; my father traded his Imperial bloodline for galactic capital. And now without my mother, he longs bitterly for the Empire.
I reach the reception room to find him sprawled in a high-backed chair, wearing a shimmering Reima Two robe woven with real gold thread. A decanter of Arcus Flare stands at his elbow, the Empire's prized liquor that sears you twice. Once going down and once in your bloodstream.
But it's not the drink that draws my eye. Kneeling beside his chair is Father's human pet, Autumn. Blonde hair spills over one shoulder, and a thin gold collar gleams at her throat. He has owned her for over thirty years.Owned. That is the reality of it, and he doesn't sugarcoat it by using the more fashionable word,companion.
I've had sex with Autumn countless times over the years. Father first offered her to me when I turned twenty-two, as part of my education in power and pleasure. She was my first taste of human compliance, the way humans respond to pain and reward with equal eagerness. I learned on her body how to make a woman beg, and how to break down resistance until only need remains. Every technique I learned with Autumn, I later used on Denise, and others.
But now, watching her kneel in perfect stillness, I feel something new.Disgust.Not at her. She's exactly what Father trained her to be. Disgust at myself for never questioning what that training cost her. For never wondering if the look in her blue eyes might be something other than arousal.
“Lorian,” Father greets me, his voice carrying the same unflinching authority as it did when I was a boy. “You are late.”
“Apologies. Business rarely cooperates with anyone's schedule.” I don't elaborate that said business involved slicing off an arms dealer's limb in the Null Sector after he tried upcharging me at the last minute. Some of these amateurs will never learn. Just because I'm rich doesn't mean I'm a fool.
Father gestures at the decanter; I dutifully fill his cup. The liquid glints with an internal glow before I pour a measure for myself.
“Where's your brother?”
“Breaking it off with Nira, I suppose,” I reply, settling into the chair opposite my father. “She was too delicate in the end.”
Father's brow lifts. “That makesthree broken engagements now. What was wrong this time?”
I sip the burning liquor, letting it scorch my throat before answering. “She found out about some of our more 'creative' business dealings and said she didn’t want to be associated with criminals. Rafe decided to explain things personally before anything spiraled.”
The truth is even simpler than that. Nira would have been a disaster for both of us. Women like her, raised in pampered luxury, sheltered from anything beyond Homeworld politics, where women solve problems through discussion, shatter at the first glimpse of real violence and the truth of how men negotiate power off-planet.
Women give us orders from their peaceful homes, but never want to hear how those orders are really carried out. They only want the end result.
And, even more problematic, I think sexually, Nira would have been the kind of woman who would have sobbed through our wedding night and spent the rest of our marriage in terror of us. Rafe and I are Imperials through-and-through, we demand a lot sexually and most Reima Two women are not up to the challenge.
“And you? What was your opinion of her?”
I study my drink. “She looked ready to cry anytime I stepped too close. And not the pleasurable kind of tears that come from proper training.” I take another sip, savoring the burn. “We need a woman who understands power, not one who crumbles under it. Someone who can handle what we both bring to a partnership.”
He laughs, hand drifting back to stroke Autumn's blonde hair absently. “I have not raised sons who can be satisfied by weak women.”
My attention drifts to Autumn. Before, she was simply part of the household fixtures, like the ornate furniture or the wall displays. But since the Spire began hiring humans, I find myself studying her with new curiosity.
