Born of Legend (9 page)

Breathless and stunned, Jullien followed her to the door and watched that sexy, seductive walk until she vanished from his sight.

He bit his lip as he imagined what it would be like to actually make love to a female like her.

Don't even go there.

But he couldn't help it. All he'd ever wanted was a single loving hand to touch him.

Just once in his worthless, godforsaken life.

It was why he kept the old photo of his parents on his link. To remind himself that while his parents had raised him with only scorn, hatred, and distaste in their eyes whenever they looked at him that he had at least been conceived in love. In the very beginning, before his birth, he'd been wanted by them both.

“It should have been you who died! Why my Nykyrian? Why not you!”

“Since the moment of your birth, you've been nothing but a bitter disappointment to me. How I wish you'd been stillborn or had died rather than see you grown into the disgrace you are. No wonder your mother lies in a drugged stupor. I hope she never comes out to face the reality of what she birthed.”

Wincing, Jullien rubbed at the scar on his forehead and tried to blot out the memory of his parents' hatred.

“You're a hard bastard to kill. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why can't you die already?”

Just like his mother screaming at him that he should have died in Nyk's place when he was a small boy, he'd never forget the look on Merrell's face when Jullien had survived his cousins' vicious attack on him as an adult.

As the tattoo on his arm said, he was born to suffer. He knew that as sure as he was standing here.

And the gods had no intention of allowing death to spare him a single moment of it. The best he could hope for was to endure this misery and learn from it all. There would never be peace for him.

Sighing at a single truth he could never escape, he locked the door and turned around to inspect his new home.

“Well, at least there's not much to clean.” He shrugged his coat and scarf off, and looked for a place to put them. Opening the door on his left, he found the small bathroom with a toilet and shower. While it was the size of a closet, it wasn't the closet. The kitchen was a tiny area behind him with a small rectangular table and four plain white chairs that must have been made for a young girl's playhouse.

He went to the kitchen where another closet seemed to be.

Nope. Skinny pantry.

There definitely wasn't a closet in the small living room in front of him. All it contained was a monitor on the wall and a minuscule glass table below it. A couch and desk were cut into the wall opposite it with a narrow ladder to a loft above.

Jullien tossed his coat and scarf over his shoulder and climbed to the loft where he had to hunch over or risk a head injury. There, a very short bed awaited him with the promise of an extremely uncomfortable sleeping position. But at least it was clean and it had a pillow and blanket. The closet for the room turned out to be sliding cabinets along the side of the bed. He folded his coat and saw that there was another small stand up here with a monitor and lamp.

“Home sweet home,” he breathed as he sat on the bed, toed his boots off, then emptied his pockets.

Not the way he'd expected his day to end, by a longshot. He was still alive.

Merrell had been right. He was a hard bastard to kill.

Jullien disrobed and slid into bed, with his pants still on in case he had to run for his life later. He reached for the remote and turned off the lights before he armed the security. Out of habit, he put his blaster beneath his pillow and kept his hand on it.

Closing his eyes, he listened to the silence.

When he'd lived in the palace, he'd always slept to music. But the necessity of having to stay vigilant for assassins and bounty hunters had caused him to give that up years ago. He hadn't listened to music for pleasure since the day his parents had disinherited him.

Against his will, he remembered the last time he'd tried to see his mother and brother. To apologize and try to make some kind of amends for it.

Sickened over what Aksel had done to them and for his own part in it, Jullien had gone to the palace the day Nykyrian had been released from the hospital.

Tylie and her girlfriend had met him in the foyer with that ever-same look of ball-shriveling hatred burning in her eyes. “What are
you
doing here?”

“I need to see my matarra.”

His ever regal, beautiful Andarion aunt had stepped in front of him, cutting off his path to the family wing. With that haughty, smug sneer, she'd shaken her head. “You've done enough harm to your mother and this empire. She doesn't want to see you after what you did to your brother. I told you to go stay with your father.”

But his father hadn't wanted him. Because of the turmoil on Andaria and their fear of bringing war to their empire, the Triosans had refused him landing privileges. They wouldn't even put his calls through to his father. He still didn't know if the government had issued those orders or his father.

All Jullien knew to this day was that his father had never once called to check on him during the coup. Not even to see if he'd lived through the bloody rioting and royal arrests and executions.

Weary, wounded, and aching, and suffering horribly from his unsupervised detox, Jullien had only wanted to see his mother. Just one last time before he died.

For one single minute.

He'd tried to step past his hateful aunt. “I don't want to fight with you, Tylie.”

She'd shoved him back so forcefully that he'd been tempted to hit her, but he'd refrained. “Then leave, or I'll call the guards on you and have the arrest warrant I've already signed for you executed. And you should know, Galene Batur is now the prime commander of the armada and Talyn Batur has been promoted to lieutenant commander. I'm sure they'd just
love
to have
you
in their custody after what you did to them.”

That threat had hit home. Out of his own stupid fear and jealousy, Jullien had only meant to intimidate and insult Talyn while Talyn had been assigned to his guard. But things had escalated fast and skidded out of control when Chrisen and Merrell had gotten involved, and Talyn had gone on a killing quest for their throats.

Jullien had arrested Talyn—with the intent to release the boy, after he'd been roughed up to teach him a lesson. But because of his personal hatred for Talyn's father, Merrell had seriously screwed Talyn over and marked him as a disinherited traitor before his brother Chrisen had broken Talyn's legs and shaved his head. The two of them had deported Talyn to Onoria and left him there to die.

To his eternal shame, Jullien had done nothing to stop it. Worse, he'd helped them to cover it up. Like a mindless idiot and too afraid to stand up to his older cousins who had already tried to kill him, too, Jullien had gone along with their plans for Talyn, hoping he could survive their treachery before he became their next victim.

If either Galene or Talyn ever laid hands on Jullien, they'd gut him for his part in what had happened. Just like Talyn had done to his cousins.

Talyn had brutally slaughtered both Merrell and Chrisen. Even though he'd faced them in the Ring that was supposed to house a
fair
fight, they hadn't stood a chance against the Andarion champion fighter.

And unlike Galene who ferociously protected her son, Jullien's mother wouldn't stop it from happening.

Jullien's second lesson in life had been that he was on his own. When the wolves came rushing for his throat, his family ran to save their own asses and left him locked outside with the wolves, to fend for himself.

He had no one at his back. His side or anywhere near him. Hell, he was lucky if they weren't throwing anchors on his body and tying raw meat to this throat.

But Tylie hadn't been through with him. She'd smiled coldly in his face with a gleam of sickening satisfaction in her white eyes. “You should also know that you've been removed from succession. You're no longer tahrs. Nykyrian is now the crowned prince and heir of Andaria and Triosa.”

Those words had gutted him. Not because he'd been disinherited, he'd expected as much, but because his mother hadn't had the decency to tell him herself.

Or his father, either, for that matter. They'd done it without a single word to him.

He'd lifted his chin with as much pride as he could muster. Another thing his family had taught him early on was to never show how much pain his enemies wrung from him. Even when those enemies were close blood relatives. “I see. I'll just get my things, and—”

“There's nothing here for you. Why don't you do us all a favor and go? Don't you understand that the very sight of you sickens us? Or is that what you want? To cause us all as much pain as you can?”

No, that was the last thing he'd wanted.

As he'd turned to leave, Tylie had stopped him. “Aren't you forgetting something?”

What? His dignity? That, they'd shredded long ago. So he'd simply stared at her.

Aggravated, she'd frisked him until she dug out his link. “This is Andarion royal property. You're not entitled to it or anything else anymore.” She'd stepped back and gestured at the guards. “Escort him from the premises and make sure his access is cleared from all accounts. He is not to return here again. For anything.”

With that, they'd followed him all the way to the outer gates.

He could still hear the slamming of the doors behind him as Tylie had him locked out of the only home he'd ever known. Furious and past rational thought, he'd finally started back in, when Kelsei, Tylie's girlfriend, had shot him and driven him off the premises.

None of them had ever called him after that to see if he'd even survived the blaster wound. He wasn't even a passing afterthought to his own parents.

I'm nothing to anyone.

Rolling to his side, Jullien growled under his breath as he tried to forget everything in the past.

But he couldn't.

Every night, he went through this. Regret after regret. All the things he wished he could have done differently. All the ones he'd hurt that he shouldn't have.

He should have been a better son. But every time he'd ever tried to see his mother, he'd been shoved away. Either by Tylie or Galene, or one of the ever-revolving doctors who'd monitored his mother's health.

“Your presence upsets her. It's best for her delicate state if you just stay away from the tizirah.”

“She doesn't want to see you, Jullien. She only wants Nykyrian. And you're not your brother.”

Since he was five years old that was all he'd been told. And on the rare occasions he'd actually seen his mother, she'd looked past him or shoved him aside. “Have you seen Nykyrian? Where's your brother? I know he's here. Why are you keeping him from me? Nykyrian!” Then she would either attack him for daring to be alive while Nykyrian wasn't, or show him a picture of his brother that she wore over her heart.

Never his photo.

Only Nykyrian's.

Or worse, she'd mistake him for his uncle who'd tried to murder her when she was a girl, and go into hysterics where she'd try to kill him and they'd have to sedate her while he tried to make her understand that he wasn't Eadvard, and that he meant her no harm.

That he just wanted to love her.

Between his mother's insanity, his father's neglect, his aunt's cruelty, and his own insecurities and fears, his grandmother had gotten into his head and mind-fucked him to the point he hadn't known which end was up. Every which way Jullien had turned, he'd been used at best, abused at worst. If he ever made the mistake of trusting someone, they betrayed him or were murdered.

Or worse, they were psychotic …

“I killed your brother. Don't think for one minute I won't kill you, too, if you don't do exactly as I say. You may be the only grandson I have, but you're not the last of the Anatole bloodline, and at least the others are full-blooded Andarions, not sniveling human byblows. You're weak and pathetic. Just like your worthless human father. A disgrace to our mighty Andarion lineage.”

Cursing, Jullien got up from the bed and dressed again. There was no need to try and sleep. His demons were out in full force tonight, and they were flogging him. Guilt over what he'd done to his brother rode him hard.

Yes, he'd wanted Nykyrian dead as much as his grandmother had. His whole life had been made miserable because of him. But that wasn't Nykyrian's fault. Anymore than it was his.

Both of them had been screwed over by their family. Yet what he'd done to Nykyrian because of their grandmother and her hatred for the human race was unforgivable and he knew it.

I am my father's son.

More human than Andarion.

Leaving his new home, Jullien followed the alley back to the hangar and found a Tavali crewman. “Where's a bar?”

The Tavali curled his lip in repugnance of Jullien's ragged, outdated clothes before he answered with directions.

Thanking him, Jullien headed for it, determined to drown the demons in something potent.

It didn't take long to find the dive on the station. Apparently, it was a common destination for Tavali, as it was near the hangar, and crowded with humans and aliens, even at this hour.

Which was good for someone who didn't want to be noticed.

Jullien headed to the dimly lit bar in the rear corner and ordered a bottle of Tondarian A-Grade Hellfire—the strongest of their hard liquors and a small fortified beer to bomb it with. After he paid for it, he debated going back to his new home, but honestly, he didn't want be alone with the voices in his head. So he carried his drink to the back of the bar and had to wait a few minutes for one of the small standing tables to clear.