Chapter One
Morning was breaking over Everton.
Like a cracking egg, Valerie mused as she watched, spilling yellow and gold over the horizon. Her insides felt slimy and wrong as she gazed out the small, circular window.
She was standing in the Cluster. It was what they called the top floor of Madame Allegria’s infamous brothel on the Earth colony of Everton. It was where the Keriv’i—more commonly known as the Krave—rested and slept and ate…mostly.
The center of the Cluster was comprised of a common sitting area, one they all shared. The walls were made of bricks, ranging from deep reds to rusty oranges and browns. Old World sconces cast the room in a warm, flickering, darkened glow. It wouldn’t get much brighter. There was a circular window in the sitting area, a single window, that faced the back of the building opposite the brothel. But the Keriv’i, Valerie had learned, could see better in the dark than humans. They didn’t seem to mind the lack of light. Sometimes they seemed to prefer it.
The floor was lined with a plush rug that had seen better days, though Valerie knew how pricey it had been to import from the Genesis colony.
Valerie’s lips twisted. Madame Allegria had always had expensive tastes. The trader had bragged it had been brought from Old Earth itself, from a country called Morocco. The orange and green dyes were beyond faded now. It looked grey to her. Bleached of its vibrancy.
There were five doors that surrounded the sitting room. One was the washroom. The four others led to small bedrooms, though one lay permanently empty now, with Khiva’s departure.
It had been three months since then. Three endless, sleepless months since Khiva had left the brothel and the colony with Evelyn, the human woman he’d fallen in love with.
Valerie’s fists squeezed tight, feeling that sense of panic and helplessness rise within her again. These days, she was always a nervous wreck. But of course she never showed it to the clients that frequented Madame Allegria’s brothel. She was always expected to be unflappable, calm, and should always—always—wear a smile, so the clients would feel comfortable, so the clients would never suspect what evil lurked long after they departed.
A week ago, Valerie had had a vivid dream of her sewing her own lips together. Of them never opening again, never laughing or speaking or smiling again. When she’d woken in a cold sweat, gasping for air, rubbing her fingers over her lips, it had disturbed her howrelievedshe’d felt in that dream.
The door to the Cluster opened.
A little hitch in her breath came and she swung to regard the male entering the common room.
The male she’d come to see.
The Keriv’i paused on the threshold of the doorway when he saw her but his hesitation only lasted a moment before he closed the door behind him. His gaze flicked to Tavak and Ravu’s doors—both closed, which meant they’d already returned from their clients and were likely resting—before resettling on her.
Anticipation, relief, warmth, and crippling grief and guilt came over her like a wave as she watched him.
“You should not be here,” Dravka murmured, keeping his voice low, though that deep, husky voice made her shiver.
I am right where I want to be, she thought.With you.
That thought cut her like glass. Could words shred a heart? She thought it very possible.
Clearing her throat, Valerie said, “Aren’t you ever tired of saying that to me? You know how stubborn I am.”
Dravka grunted, stepping into the heart of the Cluster. His shirt was balled up in his large palm. His feet were bare, treading over the worn rug. Black pants encased his long legs, clinging to his muscled thighs.
His chest was bare, revealing his sculpted, hard flesh and his dark nipples. His skin was dusky blue with the occasional patch of black and grey, which she knew was slightly rough in texture compared to the rest of him.
The first time she’d seen him, she’d been terrified because he was massive. A little over seven feet tall with thighs like tree trunks and shoulders so broad she almost couldn’t see past them.
Yet, she’d been intrigued. Especially by his eyes. Mesmerized might’ve been a more accurate description of how she felt during their first meeting, over five years ago.
Dravka looked at Valerie now, his eyes like dark, swirling opals. Pine-tree greens and cerulean blues shimmered in his gaze as his dark pupils flicked over her.
Longing burst in her chest, quickly followed by guilt, and she swallowed hard, her hands beginning to shake at her sides.
She clenched her palms. If she lusted after him, she was no better than the women he slept with every night. She would be no better than those women who paid Madame Allegria for the chance to take an infamous Krave to bed.
Her stomach turned sour, a bitterness rising in her throat, especially when Dravka drew near enough that Valerie could smell Mrs. Pafford’s cloying perfume all over him. The silver-haired woman had floated down to the lobby of the brothel only twenty minutes before, her cheeks still pink, which told Valerie all she’d needed to know as nausea had burned up her throat.
And yet, Valerie had fuckingsmiledat her. That small, delicate little smile Madame Allegria—her aunt, her own blood, her mother’s only sister—had taught her to use with the clients.
Mrs. Pafford, one of Dravka’s regular clients, had booked another visit and then departed the brothel in the early morning light. Valerie had come straight up to the Cluster after she left.
