Prince: A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Romance (Raider Warlords of the Vandar Book 10) by Tana Stone

Author:Tana Stone [Stone, Tana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Broadmoor Books
Published: 2023-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Twenty

Vex

“Ill?” I scowled at my first officer, partly because of the news he’d just given me and partly from the sour stench in the air as we strode across the shipyard toward the Den of Thieves. The sky was gray and hazy, something I suspected was perpetual on this planet, and damp hung in the air.

“That is what her associate told me.” Kzan glanced up at the massive arched gate made of stone and the two thick-necked guards with blasters and tusks who flanked it. “She appeared to be in bed.”

I grunted at this, not sure if I should be angry or worried. When I’d seen her the night before, she’d been healthy enough to attempt to seduce me. Now she couldn’t rouse herself from bed at my summons?

If I was being honest, I did not need her to get the information I needed on Kurril. She’d proven to be a less than effective investigator when we’d stopped on Validia, although I did not entirely blame her. I was dragging her back to places she hadn’t seen since she was a child, and I now knew the memories weren’t always pleasant. Still, I had paid off her considerable debt so that she could be my guide through an unknown sector. If she stopped providing that function, I might have to admit that I had other reasons for taking her from the dingy club.

Once we’d passed beneath the stone arch, the city opened into a maze of streets and alleyways, colorful strings of pennants draped between some of them and faded awnings jutting above doorways. Barely visible through the murky air was a towering stone building at the top of the city’s hill. Shouts were entwined with undulating song and both the scents of festering garbage and sweet, cloying perfume assaulted my nose.

“The Vandar enjoyed this?” Kzan said under his breath so only I could hear.

I shared his disdain for the planet as we wound our way deeper into the city through narrow, twisting passageways. The old bounty hunter on Validia had told us to look for the House of Halba in the center of town, a pleasure house the Vandar had been known to frequent. He’d also said we would know it when we saw it.

Kzan eyed a green-skinned alien slumped in a doorway, the smell of sweat and alcohol oozing from him, and stepped closer to me as we passed. “That bounty hunter might have tricked us. This could be an ambush.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the two Selkee soldiers trailing us. “I see no one following us, and I doubt that drunkard has the contacts to orchestrate an ambush on us.”

Kzan emitted a dark, rumbly sound that told me he didn’t agree. Still, he didn’t hesitate to trudge forward beside me as the looming tower grew closer.

Just as I was starting to think he might be right and the bounty hunter had lied to us about the pleasure house and the Vandar, my nose twitched. The rancid odors permeating the dark alleyways were overtaken by a cloud of spicy perfume I could almost taste.

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