Page 1 of Her Lawless Prince

1

Var Territory,Planet of Qurilixen

Princess Payton of the Var had spent a lifetime escaping her cage. The wild inside her would build until it exploded if she hadn't.

Princess. The title represented so many contradictions.

Authority behind gilded cages.

Freedom on a schedule.

Power that must be tempered and controlled.

None of those restraints came naturally to a cat-shifter.

Since the moment she’d been born, Payton felt the wild inside her growling to get out. How could she not? Her mother was a space pirate. Well, her mother saidcaptain,but sinceCaptainSam had kidnapped Payton’s father in his white tiger form and tried to sell him on the Torgan Black Market, she could read between those big bold lines.

Her father, Prince Falke, was the Var commander.The. As in, the commander of all commanders. The top-ranking officer in the cat-shifter military who had control over soldiers and palace guards. He’d held the position for centuries. Perhaps it was his ridged control that caused her to rebel. She inherited his white tiger and understood how difficult that self-restraint had to be for him.

Payton had never met her grandfather, the late King Attor, but by all accounts, the man had been a hard disciplinarian who left more than a few scars on his five sons. Her grandmother had been one of Attor’s many wives.

Payton’s need to run free was why she now sprinted through the thick trees to escape the palace guards tracking her. Her parents wanted her in the safety of the palace when the Federation ships arrived. No one knew when they’d come, only that they would. After the shifters forced their soldiers off the planet in what amounted to a rebellion, the Federation would be forced to react.

Blast the Federation. She hoped their ships flew into the deepest, darkest, nastiest black hole in all the universes.

Payton wanted all thoughts and worries to blow from her mind. Her heart pounded violent and strong. She let her body half shift with the form of a white tiger, so she stayed upright as the power of the cat entered her legs. White fur covered her skin, and claws extended from her nail beds. If she fully shifted, she would have to lose her clothing, and she didn’t want to arrive naked at the settlement.

She heard the guards losing ground behind her, and a smile crossed her features. They could never catch her. She once hid alone in the forest for months with twenty men searching for her because she’d wanted to avoid visiting dignitaries.

Payton vaulted over obstacles in the thick underbrush and leaped to swing from branches. Her lungs burned, and her muscles strained. She had run the distance between the palace and the alien settlement of Shelter City so many times that she could travel the route with her eyes closed.

The euphoria that came from these fleeting moments of pure freedom was like a drug, and she was an addict. She wanted more. She wanted to keep running wild.

All too soon, the distant sound of metal clanging on metal drew her back to reality. The sad beacon rang out over Shelter City as constant as canvas flapping in the breeze. Many shifters hated the settlement. Payton hated what it represented—the oppression of the Cysgodian people by the Federation and the Federation’s attempt to establish permanence on her homeworld.

A virus had overrun the planet of Cysgod, and the Cysgodians had been desperate for a place to go. When the Federation brought their plight to the shifter royals on Qurilixen, how could they refuse them sanctuary? Qurilixen had three suns, two yellow and one blue. The blue’s radiation had healing properties that could help the alien visitors. And it worked. In time they had healed.

Unfortunately, saving the Cysgodians came at a cost. The Federation used it as an excuse to set up a temporary base on Payton’s homeworld as they claimed domain over the settlement. The Cysgodians lived but, in return, had been subjected to thirty years of the dysfunction that was the Federation’s dictatorship over them.

The shifters were changing that. They’d chased the Federation away and were helping the Cysgodians build an independent life for themselves.

Payton grabbed a branch and launched herself between two trees to land in a clearing. She automatically pulled the tiger back inside, alighted on the ground, and crouched in her human form.

“Oh!”

The soft word took her by surprise. She spun toward the sound, arms lifted and ready to fight. She’d been so focused on listening to the chase and enjoying the run that she hadn’t paid attention to what might be in her path.

A man raised his arms to the side and took a step back. Dark brown eyes met hers, framed by strands of long black hair that escaped the tie at the nape of his neck. “Not a threat.”

He wore what looked to be Cysgodian clothing, but they were a little too neat as if the holes had been sanded into newer material rather than by natural deterioration. She tilted her head to look at his temple. The slight discoloration of his black marking indicated he was indeed Cysgodian. All Cysgodians had the genetic trait, although in various colors, and it made it easy to pick them out of a crowd.

Payton lowered her hands and relaxed her stance. Though there was something familiar about the man, she was sure she’d remember seeing him in the alien settlement. She’d been sneaking into Shelter City since its inception, and it could be assumed she had come across everyone more than once.

But not him.

His stoic expression and brooding face would have stood out. And those haunted eyes. His gaze didn’t hold the usual blend of anger and resignation. It seemed troubled, searching. He didn’t glance away from her in deference, knowing she was a shifter.

Cysgodians tended to fear shifters. For thirty years, both sides had watched each other from afar. Trust took time to build.

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