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He gave me a small bow, more of an inclination of the head and a slight bending at the waist. “Good evening, Your Highness,” he said in a soft voice, his gaze never leaving my face.
Realizing he must have witnessed the whole affair with Venkarr—he was an Imperial, and they noticed every fucking thing—I could barely look at him. He hadn’t intervened. Had he believed that I liked what Venkarr had done to me? Did he think it was consensual and that I’d welcomed Venkarr’s stupid attentions? Full of shame, I turned sharply away to go down the hall to my room. I was seething with anger at Venkarr and almost sick to my stomach with it. I was mortified that Colonel Tariq had seen what had happened.
I knew this couldn’t go on much longer—I was in over my head, and I’d have to tell my parents, but I dreaded the thought of it. I had tried so hard over the years to make them think I could take care of myself and that I was every bit as strong and capable as any of my brothers. I knew I had only to complain to my omak about what he was doing, but I hated—no, I abhorred—the idea of running to him for help, like some kid.
He would raise a huge stink about it, and I’d only be more embarrassed in front of my friends and the rest of the family. No one else in the family had ever needed protection from their own damn guards—no one else needed to be looked after and coddled, like a child. I hated it and wanted only to be treated like my other brothers.
If any of this got back to my father, or even worse, Mikos, who was friendly with Venkarr, I’d never live it down. They already thought of me as—what was it my father had said? Delicate? Gods, if I admitted that I allowed Venkarr to bully me and order me around and force his attentions on me, I’d never be able to face them again, and I’d probably lose what little respect my father had for me as a man and a warrior. I needed to find a way to handle this myself.
I gave Colonel Tariq a quick nod as I passed him, my eyes flashing a stern warning to keep his mouth shut about whatever he saw, when what I’d wanted to do was fall in his arms and let him help me. I’d had a crush on the man for such a long time, and it never seemed to go away, even though it had been ages since I’d last seen him.
Though he was a cousin to Venkarr, they didn’t look very much alike, in my opinion anyway. Tariq’s body was muscular, well-formed and damned near perfect, much like his cousin’s but I thought he was much more handsome. To me, Tariq was the epitome of what a man should look like.
An outsider—which to a Tygerian was anyone not Tygerian—might think Tariq was more rugged than truly handsome. But not me. If you were Tygerian, then you would find the colonel’s hard and rugged appearance to be absolutely beautiful. You would admire it greatly, because Tygerians considered such men to be true warriors. And despite my additional human DNA, so did I. I thought Tariq was the handsomest, most desirable man I’d ever seen. And truthfully, Blake had taught us never to judge anyone only by outward appearances anyway, though it was hard not to when they were as handsome as Tariq.
Blake admired him too and said the Imperials, and that included Colonel Tariq, were a cross between rock stars and badasses on Tygeria, but as with most of Blake’s obscure sayings, I didn’t really know what that meant. To me, though, the colonel was simply devastatingly brave and handsome, even though he sometimes looked severe and a little forbidding. Like he had just now in the corridor.
He had striking eyes of an unusually pale green color, like the leaves on trees when they turned up just before a heavy rain. His eyelashes were thick and dark, and his hair was the darkest shade of auburn. His eyes tilted exotically at the outer corners, like my brother Mikos’s did, and his skin was golden brown under the faint stripes.
I wasn’t sure why I was thinking about Tariq’s skin and his eyes, though like I said, I wasn’t shallow enough to judge the man on his looks alone. That wasn’t the reason I had such a huge crush on Tariq.
Well, not the only reason, anyway.
Tariq probably only barely knew I was alive. Oh, I imagined he was aware, since I was one of the royal princes, though I was so far down on the list of succession that it seemed hardly worth mentioning. Back during the war, when so many young men were dying, families often had six or seven children. But nowadays, big families had gone out of style. Too late for my parents though, who were left raising seven sons, which made most of us superfluous. My father worked it out by making political marriages for as many of us as he could, for military cooperation, mutual protection, and deterrence against our enemies.
My dreams of Tariq were just that—only dreams and wishful thinking. I knew this because of a conversation I’d once overheard between Mikos and one of his ministers about Tariq. I knew from what I’d overheard that he would never notice me the way I wanted him to.
Mikos had been discussing which of the Imperials to send on some mission or other and he’d said, “Colonel Tariq might be the most suitable. Not only is he the best of the Imperial Guards, but he doesn’t seem to mind if he stays away from Tygeria for months at a time. His mate was killed during a skirmish with the Lycans maybe three cycles ago on Precept 3. Since then, he seems to want only to stay away from home as much as he can.”
“That’s tragic. But his mate died a warrior’s death, and that must have been a great consolation to his family,” the other man replied sanctimoniously, nodding as they walked away and out of my hearing.
I’d known that Tariq had mated another Tygerian soldier. Despite the number of humans and other species in my own family, most Tygerians mated with other Tygerians, especially now that the war was over, and when it came time for children, they used a surrogate from one of the female sectors.
It was different for my father’s sons, because the king used political marriage as one of the tools to bring his far-flung and embattled empire together. But that wasn’t the case at all for the majority of our people, who were xenophobic, in the extreme. Tygeria’s unwillingness to enter into treaties for our diamonds had been one of the primary causes of the Alliance-Axis war so long ago. Diamonds were so plentiful on our large planet that we literally ground the things up and used them for paving our roads, but we declined to trade or sell them to other worlds, simply because we wanted nothing to do with aliens. That and sheer bloody-mindedness, of course.
Anyway, I’d asked around after overhearing Mikos’s conversation and found out Tariq’s late husband’s name—Ludolf. So many brave men on both sides of the continuing conflicts after the war had supposedly ended had been killed in those small, breakout rebellions, leaving grieving spouses and children all over Tygeria even today. Peace treaties had been signed long ago, but minor skirmishes, like bad memories, never seemed to completely fade away. It was one of these, on an impossibly faraway planet, that had taken Ludolf’s life.
Apparently, from what I could find out about him, Ludolf had been a perfect soldier—perfect in every way, really. Beyond handsome, beyond strong and brave. And dead, so he was beyond reproach too.
I suppose we tend to yearn for what we no longer have and tend to embellish how great a person was after they’re gone. So, it was hard to say if Ludolf was really the shining paragon everyone said he was, a credit to his family and the king’s army, and a great and terrible loss to Tygeria. Or if he was just a young man and a soldier, doing his best like everyone else.
Was I bitter? Hells yes, I was, because the fact that Tariq had once had a mate probably removed him from the realm of possibility for me or anyone else. Tariq was most unlikely ever to remarry, because that was simply the way Tygerians were, biologically speaking. They mated for life, and if one of the partners should leave or die, then no other person ever seemed to satisfy them, or even attract them. They would often spend the rest of their lives alone and unhappy. That’s what people said, anyway, and I had no reason to doubt it was true.
It was all because of a biological thing that affected Tygerians called bonding. Young Tygerian males had to be careful who they bonded or formed an attachment with, because it was irrevocable and could ruin them for anyone else. Usually, bonding meant having full sex before marriage, or an exchange of bodily fluids, which was why all Tygerian men had to be so careful. And frankly, why they mated so young.
Tariq had never been linked to any other man that I had ever heard about in the time since his husband’s tragic death. And like many other interested parties, I had made it my business to find out.
As I walked down the palace corridor to go into my room, I couldn’t resist a glance back down the hall. I hadn’t seen Tariq in a long time, and I hadn’t heard he was back on Tygeria. I heard Venkarr’s laughter and turned in time to see Colonel Tariq going into the alcove to speak to his cousin, and my face burned with shame and embarrassment. What were they talking about? Was it me? It had to be me, didn’t it? Was that what one of them was laughing about?
Colonel Tariq, despite being an Imperial and despite his fine reputation was still a Tygerian, with all that entailed—all the prejudices against humans and other outsiders that almost all of them had. It seemed to be ingrained in them. Even though I’d been born on this planet, and I was the son of the king, I still looked different, and worst of all, I looked like their most hated enemies—the humans.
Prejudice seemed to me to be a great time saver and spared people from having to think for themselves and form their own opinions. And the worst thing about it was that their prejudice fed on all my self-doubts, and I wondered if maybe they were right about me after all. Maybe I really wasn’t good enough. Maybe I never would be.
****
Colonel Tariq
“You’re playing a damn dangerous game,” I said softly, so no one could overhear. My cousin and I were standing in the hallway of the royal family’s residence, which was only a few doors down, so I was trying to hold onto my temper and keep my voice low, when what I really wanted to do was to rip Venkarr’s head off and shove it up his ass. The young prince had looked terrified when he’d emerged from that alcove, and I knew Venkarr was to blame.
