Page 1 of Hunting the Warlord's Daughter

PROLOGUE

Ten yearsago

“The warlord has summoned his child!”

A guard clad in black appeared in the entryway to the reception chamber of the Imperial Palace. Inked patterns covered most of his exposed skin. His dark braids swung like ropes over armored shoulders as his narrowed eyes searched the room.

Awrenkka Rakkuu shrank back from the tattooed giant. Down, down, down his gaze had to fall to find her. She pushed on her eyeglasses and stared back. She’d never seen such a large male—or many males at all—at her all-female school on the planet Barokk.

Wren’s guardians, Sabra and Ilkka, swooped in and inspected her appearance one last time. They swiped and tweaked, cinched and tugged.

Her new shoes hurt—her head, too. Ilkka had braided her hair so tightly her scalp pulsed with each terrified beat of her heart.

“It’s about time he let us inside.” Sabra showed no fear of the ferocious palace guards. “It’s one thing making his minions wait, but his daughter?”

“Hush, woman,” Ilkka whispered. “Show some respect for the Supreme Warlord of the Drakken Empire.”

“Absentee father is a more fitting title,” Sabra muttered back. “Thirteen years and not once has he found time to see the child. As if it’s her fault her mother produced a daughter first.”

“Glasses on or off, do you think?”

“What? Ilkka, she needs to see.”

“She can see.”

“Only an arm’s length in front of her. No more.”

Ilkka harrumphed. “What more is needed?”

Wren sighed at their bickering. Always there was a certain tension between her guardians, a competitiveness she didn’t quite understand. It was their duty to prepare her to wed, and hers to obey. “I can hear you, you know.” Wren had listened to her fill of arguments at home when they thought she couldn’t hear their voices. Yet their whispered words revealed nothing she didn’t already know: the warlord had never wanted her.

Until now, when suddenly, it seemed she had value. After a lifetime of acting as if she didn’t exist, the warlord had summoned her to the palace to marry her off.

Only to whom? When? What would be required of the man who would become her husband? Knowing her father’s fearsome reputation, she was sure the cost of her hand in marriage would be steep.

Wren pushed her glasses up her nose as her guardians fussed. Her mother was rarely bought up outside of the “sin” of birthing Wren when her husband expected a son and died when Wren was a tot. But she’d picked up enough to know Lady Valla had been a great beauty. Statuesque, golden-haired, she’d captivated all who’d seen her, whereas Wren was short and quiet, her hair the color of mud and rust. With a round face—a baby’s face—she looked much younger than thirteen. Not even the gown the warlord had ordered her to wear could help. A gift from her father, the dress was floor-length and made of blood-red silk, a fortune in red and black diamonds sewn throughout in swirls. It weighed half as much as she did. Of what use would such a ridiculous garment have after today? Useless for hiking in the woods, for tending the garden, for wading into the river to fish—for anything. However, the warlord wanted her to look alluring.She was the bait on a hook, and he—the most feared man in the galaxy—controlled the pole and the line.

The huge guard cleared his throat.

Sabra patted Wren on the arm. “Walk as we rehearsed, steady and slow, sweetling.”

“Go.” Ilkka gave Wren a not-so-gentle push forward.

Guards led their party into the grand hall, a vast, echoing chamber with massive chandeliers. A row of military officers in crisp red uniforms stood to her left. Their appearance was meticulous—not a hair or thread out of place. They were Drakken nobility—the wealthiest and most powerful men in the empire after her father.

Wren pushed her glasses up higher, sneaking peeks at them. She recognized most from the official images Ilkka had made her memorize in their pre-visit briefing—but not the teenager standing next to Karbon Mawndarr. The boy wasa replica of the battlelord—same gleaming, dark brown ponytail; same blue-black eyes; same hard jaw—but his large frame hadn’t yet filled out, and he wore the epaulets of an Imperial Navy cadet. Unlike his sire’s, his square chin sported a dimple in its center. He stood hunched over, his eyes downcast, a scowl tugging at his mouth.

He doesn’t want to be here either.

He feels trapped, like you.

As if he’d felt her stare, he looked up. Her soul leaped, and his expression intensified. His eyes looked haunted.We’ll find a way out,they seemed to say.

The elder Mawndarr twisted sideways and glared at him. The cadet shuttered his expression, his gaze frosting over, leaving her to wonder if she’d imagined the entire exchange.

“Eyes on me!” a voice boomed. “Onme!”

Wren almost tripped over her new shoes. Only her training in martial arts with Sabra allowed her to regain her balance. The guards snickered at her stumble, along with a few of the battlelords. She adjusted her glasses, hearing Ilkka curse under her breath from behind as the warlord stormed closer, a towering vision of jewel-studded leather and armor.

---