Page 12 of Hunting the Warlord's Daughter

“You’re hurting her.”Aral swallowed. He was losing nerve with each breath but tried not to show it.

“Is that what you call it?”His father smiled.“Perhaps it is time for your first lesson in pleasuring a female.”His hand shot out so fast it blurred. Those thick, strong fingers gripped Aral’s neck and cut off his air supply. Karbon’s hand lifted him as if he weighed nothing. Sputtering, Aral clawed at the fingers around his throat, trying to pry them open.

Agony exploded. An open hand slapped across his face. Agony again. He tasted blood. His vision quickly dimmed, from red to gray to black.

Then the pressure around his neck eased.

His vision returned as his pants were yanked down to his knees. He pushed himself away, but his father punched the back of his skull, and his ears sang with pain.

“Go on. Do her. You’re a Mawndarr. Prove it. Make me proud.”

Aral’s throat hurt too much for a gulp of shame. He was fourteen. He’d not yet been with a woman.

Another blow.

“Move, boy! Do you need me to show you how?”

Horror and self-loathing sickened Aral, but he refused to show fear.

Showing fear always made it worse.

“All right, then. If you can’t make her cry out, I will.”

His father brought a knife to Nanjin’s long, slender neck and pressed the edge to her jugular—

* * *

“Fates, no!” Aral surged upright on his bunk, expecting his open, shaking hands to be glistening with blood. His pulse hammered in his skull as he willed away the nightmare.

Of all his father’s awful orchestrations, his rape and murder of Nanjin had been the most horrifying. It had been Aral’s turning point. His disobedience had brought on the brutal beating where his father nearly killed him. The moment he regained consciousness, he’d started planning the destruction of Battlelord Karbon Mawndarr.

His father was now in Triad custody. Finally. His execution couldn’t come fast enough.

Aral threw cold water on his face before gripping the edge of the sink, his adrenaline slowing down. He almost didn’t recognize himself with his hair cut so short—in Triad style. For every day of his life before the end of the war, he’d combed his hair into a neat ponytail, practically living in his Imperial Navy uniform. Only when visiting the warlord had he needed to give a thought to fashion. He’d played the game well—the palace parties, the drugs, the rich food and drink, the orgies, the tournaments.

All of which he’d like to forget.

All done for one reason.

To bring you down, Father. To avenge the innocents you harmed.To prevent you from ever doing it again.

Aral glowered at his reflection. Even with shorn hair, he still looked too much like Karbon. Cruel, hard—not the way he felt on the inside. His appearance had served him well when he needed it. Being feared had made those around him more efficient. Showing fear had been another story—he’d learned never to reveal any. Vulnerability led to an unacceptable level of risk.

Yet, with his reunion with Awrenkka imminent, he couldn’t help but wonder what she would think of him. Would she find him pleasing to the eye? He scowled at his reflection then tugged a Triad-issued black shirt over his battlelord tattoos—stylized, black-inked Drakken eagles—and the abdominal muscles hard with tension from his nightmare. Next, he donned a uniform jacket marked with the emblem of the Triad Alliance: a silver triangle with tricolor edges. Blue represented the shrine world of Earth; black, the Coalition; and red, the Drakken Empire. Red, for blood, he thought. The warlord’s legacy would not soon be forgotten, even in this new Triad. For now, the Coalition provided most of the resources and infrastructure in these early stages of reorganization. Earth was still too technologically backward, of course, and the former Drakken Empire was in disarray. Simply put, the Coalition was still in charge. They had, after all, won the war. Aral, on the other hand, had not yet won his. His battle was, and would always be, intensely personal.

A Borderlands Security Patrol badge for the fictional Xeros Gramm completed his authorized-at-the-highest-level masquerade. Only Zee and a few individuals in the Ministry of Intelligence knew that he was Aral. The rest of the galaxy thought that Battlelord Aral Mawndarr was dead.

Kaz and Aral had assumed the identities of BSP officers with all of the necessary fake identification. The Triad had even retrofitted his private cruiser, theResilience, with a transponder code that mimicked a typical government ship, allowing them passage through checkpoints. Being a valued spy and now a hunter of war criminals had its benefits. He intended to take advantage of every one of them in the days and weeks to come.

The metal floor magnified the click of his polished black leather boots as he navigated through the narrow corridor from his quarters to the bridge. On watch, Kaz was stretched out like an elegant feline on one of the seats, a data-vis in her hands. He could see a news-stream scrolling past. “How did you sleep, Aral?”

He filled a mug with stim-tea. “Could be better.” No need to elaborate; Kaz knew he suffered from nightmares. Even from a maximum-security detention facility light-years away, Karbon still had the power to find his way inside Aral’s head.

“They executed another battlelord last night,” she said. “Arkkane. His final words were ‘You are a selfish, violent race of religious zealots responsible for eons of war. You may succeed in silencing me, but the Empire will never die.’” She glanced up. “Why do they allow their condemned a voice? They don’t deserve a final say.”

“I hardly understand it myself.” Nor did he understand the Triad penchant for public executions. “Zee claims it helps give their citizens closure.”

“By giving evil a voice? Arkkane was responsible for the massacre of millions.”

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