Page 152 of Decadence

“Later,” he’d whispered, leaving her wide-eyed and breathless as he stole another quick kiss.

And another.

Then he donned his own pair of holo-glasses and took her down to her domain, which smelled of bitter coffee and spice and her.

Immediately, she was surrounded by her own people, who greeted her with questions and problems; with orders and requests.

With warm, loving chaos.

There was a buzzing, euphoric energy about the place that Ikriss had never witnessed anywhere before.

Only humans could do that.

Later. He’d given her a final lingering look and disappeared into the cold morning, content in the knowledge that she was safe.

* * *

Alone, he flew to some small fiefdom called Monaco, where his navigators had placed the location of a human called Luca Caselli, who was apparently some kind of prominent lordling.

It seemed humans had their noble houses too, although they were more symbolic than anything else. Compared to the wealth and power of the Kordolian Noble Houses, they were just subatomic specks in the wind.

But one of these lordlings just happened to be Sienna’s father.

This Luca Caselli was a somewhat wealthy man who had a roving eye for females. According to Ikriss’s intelligence, he had fathered at least a dozen illegitimate children.

And all of them carried this Royal Kordolian gene.

All of them were now being covertly watched by Darkstar soldiers.

Ikriss found Caselli lounging in the sun beside a shimmering blue pool surrounded by lush manicured gardens. His home was a grand, sprawling estate of arches and towers and angular tiled roofs and ostentatious stone carvings. The surrounding compound was vast and well maintained, and that suited Ikriss perfectly, because he simply landed the cloaked and sound-suppressed Crurix on a lawn beside the pool, stepped out, and walked over to the flat chair where the lordling lay, his pale body on full display. Ikriss could hardly believe that a creature as divine as Sienna could have come from this male’s seed. He had thinning grey hair and a paunch that bulged over his overly tight red undergarment.

But if he looked closely, he could see some slight similarities, mostly in the bone structure of Caselli’s face.

His shadow fell over the man as he stood over him, waiting for some sort of realization…

But none came until Ikriss viciously kicked the long, flat recliner chair that Caselli was stretched out on.

“Wake up, Luca,” he said softly.

The man sat bolt upright and stared at Ikriss. His face started to turn red. He launched into angry rapid-fire speech in a language that Ikriss didn’t understand.

“Speak Universal,” Ikriss snapped.

“Who the fuck are you?” Caselli snapped, switching effortlessly to Universal. “How did you get in here?”

Ikriss simply lifted the arm of his holo-glasses, letting Caselli see his true form for just a split-second. The bright sun was irritating to his eyes, but he had covered his skin in a layer of nano UV protection so he wouldn’t get burned by the harsh Earth sun.

Caselli nearly fell off his chair. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I repeat, what the fuck are you doing here? I-I have no dealings with your kind.”

In the background, armed human security guards were approaching. “Call off your guards,” Ikriss ordered, “or they will all die.”

Caselli hastily signaled to his guards to back off.

“I am the one that is responsible for Sienna’s happiness,” Ikriss said quietly.

“S-Sienna? Y-you mean Stella’s kid?”

“Your child,” Ikriss corrected.

---