Kayzon's Wish Read online

  Kayzon’s Wish

  Michele Mills

  Contents

  Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Newsletter

  Rayzor’s One

  Excerpt

  About the Author

  Also by Michele Mills

  Summary

  Kayzon of Twenty-Six is beastly.

  Small offspring cry at the sight of his hulking frame and the vicious scar that bisects the right side of his face. Banished from his home world and deemed unworthy of a Bride—his mere presence strikes fear into the hearts of most beings.

  Except for one fierce, tiny female. She alone is unafraid.

  Kia is astonished when a sexy Xylan Warrior strides through the crowded marketplace of New Earth. When she attempts to speak to him, he replies in a deep, husky voice, “Leave human. Nothing good will come from this.”

  But when Hurlian soldiers start dropping from the sky, ready to snatch unsuspecting humans, Kayzon rescues her. And when his bare hand clutches hers, a bolt of awareness strikes them both.

  Then he’s kissing her, claiming her and telling her with hoarse emotion that she is his Bride. Wow, her life is unfolding like something out of a romance vid…until Kia discovers her new husband was never meant to have a Bride. In fact, their mating is in review and she has one planetary rotation to formalize or reject their tenuous marriage.

  Oh hell, what’s a girl to do?

  Copyright © 2017 by Michele Mills. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email to [email protected]

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover art by Meljean Brook

  Edited by Aquila Editing

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter One

  “Pleeeease, Kia, can I have one? Just a bite?”

  Kia glanced down at her little sister—a perfect package of pleading brown eyes, rosy lips and precious little hands clasped in front of a navy-blue school uniform.

  By the gods, this girl was the best beggar in all of New Earth.

  “Can I have some candy, please?”

  The display of multicolored confections at the stall in the open-air market was certainly tempting. Kia’s lungs filled with the scent of warm sugar, a rare delicacy here on New Earth. Her mouth watered. So good. So damn good. She put her hand in her pocket and fiddled with the coins there. It was true she could purchase candy for them both, and in the past, she would’ve done just that…but not now. Not anymore. She shook her head at her sister and hardened her heart. The candy was ridiculously expensive. No way in hell this was happening.

  “Stop asking for things we can’t have,” Kia groused.

  Harmony whimpered.

  Kia clenched her jaw—mad at the world, mad at the unfairness of life and mad at the whole damn situation where she couldn’t give her darling little sister, the baby of their family, what she wanted.

  As the eldest of their three siblings, Kia alone knew Mom barely had enough currency for tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast, and gods knew where they’d get the money to eat the rest of the week. Treats were a luxury they could no longer afford. And each time Harmony asked for something that used to be an accepted part of their family routine, it was a knife in Kia’s heart. And Kia was tired of hurting.

  “I want Dad,” Harmony whined.

  Kia clenched her teeth and exhaled. Didn’t they all? They all wanted Dad back home. Harmony wasn’t exactly a special snowflake in that regard.

  She grabbed Harmony’s hand and dragged her out of the marketplace and onto a path next to a row of quiet apartments.

  “Kia, slow down. Kia? Keeeeuh.”

  Kia ignored her, scanned the area and seeing no one giving her or her sister a second glance. She pulled Harmony aside, onto a quiet dirt sidewalk, a small space between buildings.

  She leaned down. “Cut it out,” she hissed. “Stop asking for stuff we can’t afford. And stop asking about Dad. You did that in front of Mom this morning. You made her cry, Harmony. Did you notice that? As if Mom doesn’t have enough going on right now. She doesn’t need you making her life harder.”

  Harmony blinked back tears. Her lips trembled.

  Kia’s chest tightened, and she softened her voice, “We all want Dad back, okay? All of us. And he’ll come back, but not right now.”

  “When? When is he coming back?” Harmony cried. “Why won’t anyone tell me?”

  “Because we don’t know. If anyone knew, we’d tell you. Dad left in order to protect us and said he’d be back soon, and that’s all anyone knows.”

  They’d always lived a settled and comfortable life on New Earth, as settled as it was possible to be, living on a planet where the cities were essentially giant ghettos, places you were never allowed to leave.

  Dad was Priest of Singapore, the largest city on the planet. He’d owned a successful financial service, lending currency to small businesses. But three moon cycles ago everything changed. Kia’s family was multigod, as were the majority of inhabitants of Singapore. But the recently elected President was firmly unigod. He’d declared unigod the one true religion and outlawed multigod overnight. Anyone caught openly practicing multigod was arrested and executed. Lately the planet had turned into a chaotic bloodbath, even more so than usual. Anyone sympathizing with multigod was shunned. Hordes of citizens dropped the multigod movement and pledged their allegiance to unigod. Kia’s father was made an example of by the new administration. Even though he’d stopped openly practicing multigod and closed the public altar, he was charged with treason for not formally switching allegiance to unigod, and his business customers fled. Overnight they’d gone from comfortable to scared shitless. Their whole lives shattered in an instant.

  Dad left the morning after he’d been charged with treason. He’d gathered their family in the front room and announced he had a plan that would save them all. In order to execute his plan he would need to leave, but he promised to return shortly. They’d all cried. Dad was stony-faced but determined. He’d kissed Mom and left. Walked out the front door and hadn’t looked back.

  That was three weeks ago.

  Kia blinked out of her reverie and focused on her little sister. “Come on, enough of this. You need to get to school, and I need to get to work. Let’s go.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” Harmony muttered.

  Kia grinned and shook her head. “Whatever. When you grow up you can tell me what to do all you want. Right now I am in charge of you. And I’m going to make sure you get to school safe. Then I’m going to pick you up when school is out and get you home safe, too.”

  “I thought Janet was picking me up today.”

  Kia paused. “Oh yeah, she is. Today is Wednesday, isn’t it? Okay then, Janet. So be ready for her. Don’t make her wait.”

  Harmony rolled her eyes. Kia mussed her hair.

&nbs
p; Then she walked her sister to the small school that was right up the street. It was the best school for girls in Singapore, a place that taught actual curriculum. Mom had picked it out specifically to send her girls to. Kia passed Harmony off to the smiling teachers, turned and left.

  She glanced up at the trajectory of the anemic sun glinting in the sky, judged the time, and hurried to her new job back in the marketplace. She’d been hired to stand guard as security for the rows of stalls to the north of the square. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Her family had no idea she was doing this. But Kia was nineteen years old now, no longer a child. She was technically old enough to marry and live on her own. But living on your own on New Earth, especially if you were female, wasn’t a smart thing to do. So Kia stayed at home with the family she adored.

  Mom picked smelly plants she’d always grown in their tiny backyard and somehow turned them into beautiful candles and started selling them for extra currency, their kitchen and living area turned into a workshop. Her younger sister Janet helped Mom with the candles. Harmony was still small enough to require school, so Kia had volunteered to walk her each day, using this as an excuse to get out and scope out a job. She’d lied to her family, eventually telling them she’d found a position mending garments. They all needed to get a job, so this had brought tears to her Mom’s eyes, knowing that Janet recently had to drop out of her last year of school because they couldn’t afford it, but it was what needed to be done. Having food to eat and a roof over their heads came first.

  When Dad had left they’d had currency set aside. But the very next day the administration had decreed that all multigod assets were frozen and confiscated. Suddenly they had no currency, and things went from bad to worse.

  Kia was simply trying to walk down the side of the street when a man roughly pushed her aside.

  “Get the fuck out of my way, little whore,” he snarled.

  She stumbled and glanced up at the asshole in her way. He was wearing a gray unigod cloak.

  Of course.

  To make matters worse, she knew him. It was Felix.

  Tall, skinny, with shocking red hair and crooked teeth, Felix had been an evil jerk when they were kids. Now he’d grown up and turned into a larger evil jerk, taking on the role of unigod enforcer. It was universally acknowledged that Felix was a raging asshole.

  Anger energized her muscles. Something snapped in her brain. Fuck this fucking shit. How dare he say that? Who the hell did he think he was, just randomly tossing out language like that at her and shoving her aside? He thought he could get away with it because she was female, and small. Also, everyone knew her father, Dago Cho, had disappeared three weeks ago.

  Felix planted his hands on his hips and laughed derisively, “You don’t have your daddy to hide behind anymore little girl. What’re you going to do now?” He leaned down and spoke against her ear, his hot breath sending chills of disgust down her back. “You can move in with me. I’ll fuck you hard and give you my protection.”

  Her nostrils flared. Fists clenched.

  She’d been living her whole life doing what she was told. Following the set of unspoken rules that women on New Earth were supposed to live by. And lately, she couldn’t handle it anymore. Not for one more second.

  Women’s rights were Kia’s pressure point, that one thing she was well known for not being able to keep quiet about—a push button to immediate righteous rage.

  Today was no exception.

  Kia caught her balance, whipped around and swiftly rammed a knee into his groin. Felix grunted and wheezed, his knees smashing to the ground. She smiled with satisfaction then glanced around furtively, hoping no one noticed her show of force. She was stronger than any other female on New Earth. Stronger than most men. Kia was petite, but it was deceptive.

  The crowd continued to mill about. Felix groaned and fell against the dirt sidewalk, his hands cupping his crotch.

  Kia grinned and strode away without a backward glance.

  Her whole life she’d been freakishly strong. Stronger than anyone she knew, except for her father. He was so strong he could bend metal. Dad had taught her how to keep their strength a secret. He’d said it was his special power and he’d passed it on to her.

  It was both a blessing and a curse.

  They never told anyone about it. Not even her smaller sisters. The strength was a secret her parents kept about their family.

  Yep, a blessing and a curse.

  Kia was extremely lucky to get the job as security at the marketplace. Such a position for a female was rare. But the shopkeepers liked the idea of a woman as guard, an unexpected secret security that other men wouldn’t expect. And Kia loved the opportunity to flex a bit of her secret muscle.

  Kia continued walking through the bustling morning crowd, almost reaching her destination, when something above caught her eye. She tensed, expecting the worst and instead saw a bit of unexpected beauty. The browns and grays of the busy marketplace muted in her periphery, and for a moment Kia saw a flash of clear blue sky. She bit her lip, flooded with happiness at the sudden explosion of color. Her eyes scanned the murky atmosphere. There it was again, that bit of blue shining over the heads of the men and women pushing past her in the central square of Singapore, unaware and uncaring of the rare miracle popping overhead. Finally there was a break in the crowd and Kia could stop and watch from her vantage point as the clouds parted and the two suns winked. Her lips curved. She gloried in the majesty shining overhead, the feeling of rays of light kissing her skin, the vivid color of the bright blue sky and the tranquility in the midst of a chaotic New Earth morning.

  The smell of savory cooking wafted from nearby stalls, the sweaty skin of the masses and their too-sweet perfumes—all of it clogged her senses but that sky, oh that sky—she focused on it like a talisman, dreaming of escape. The raucous laughter of teenage pickpockets and the hawking of wares from nearby stalls—shouted right in her ears—all melted away for the moment as she stood, awestruck at the sudden break in her gray wren existence.

  What she wouldn’t give to escape off-planet in a ship through that gleaming blue sky and live past the stars, safe and clean. Someplace where she could leave the house and not fear for her family’s life. Someplace where she didn’t have to train secretly every freaking day just for the chance to gain a position as a Bounty Hunter in order to care for her mother and two younger siblings.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled. Dad was in hiding and she was unable to contact him. Mom had no idea where he was or when he’d come back. If ever.

  Her eyes grew hot and her nose pricked. No. She wouldn’t allow herself to melt down here, in a public place. These were the fears she indulged in late at night, in the bunk above Janet, letting the tears fall, trying her best to hide the shuddering sobs that racked her body when she let the fears consume her.

  She was the eldest, technically an adult herself. Dad had taught her well. On his way out the door he’d paused and met her gaze, deep and full of meaning. “Watch over them,” he’d whispered. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Kia inhaled.

  No time for daydreams. She needed to turn her secret into a plan that could get them all off of this death trap, this hive. The Hurlians, who dominated all the inhabitants of New Earth, wouldn’t let humans live off-planet, but Kia had discovered a loophole. As a Bounty Hunter she would be part of their Union, and she would no longer be under the rule of Hurlians. She would be allowed to move for her job, and she could take her family with her. So their future was up to her, all on her shoulders. She was her family’s only hope.

  She shook her head, leaving the daydreams behind. Time to get back to work.

  Kayzon continued to drag his target through the busy human marketplace, not giving one shit that they were all staring at him with mouths gaping open.

  He heard their gasps of surprise. Their shrieks of horror.

  Civilians. They were the worst part of his job.

  His muscles bunched with
each step, his brow ridges lowered and his jaw tightened. Let them stare. Stare and worry they would be his next target. Kayzon was a Xylan Bounty Hunter, with the insignia on his chest armor to prove it. He could grind their best warriors into space dust with one arm tied behind his back and have their blood smeared on the ground in seconds.

  “Mommy, Mommy, what’s that?” an offspring cried as he passed. The mother turned and looked up into Kayzon’s harsh features. A shrill scream issued forth from her open mouth. She dramatically threw one arm in front of her as if to ward off his attack.

  Kayzon puffed out a sigh of irritation and instantly regretted retracting his helmet. And not taking the longer route on his return path to his ship. This shortcut through the marketplace was a bad decision.

  He was taller than any being in this crowd. His royal pigment and black Bounty Hunter armor were distinctive. But he knew what was causing their fear.

  His cybernetic eye.

  And the deep scar that bisected the right side of his face.

  Always that damn scar.

  The other humans in the busy open-air marketplace scrambled to clear a path for him as he forged through the crowd. They bumped against each other in their haste, dividing like water beasts under the bow of an ocean ship. They whispered and elbowed, nodding in his direction, staring at him with wide eyes.

  He noted their strange flat features and colorless skin. They were weak compared to Xylans. There were a few larger males among them, some with darker skin tones who showed promise, but still nothing to compare with the feeblest of Xylan warriors.

  Although Kayzon’s human target, THX690, had been strong and difficult to retrieve. He had fought valiantly, nearly escaping his carefully laid trap. And that had been unexpected. But on the other hand, Kayzon suspected his target wasn’t actually human, just hiding amongst the humans.