The Taming: Book 3 in the Tribe Warrior Series by Imogen Keeper (romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

just leave her here with the escape pod and a few weeks’ worth of rations, but she’d die eventually.

Did he care? Not really. But it wouldn’t sit right. He had enough on his conscience already without piling extra bodies on top of it.

He scowled.

He’d gone looking for her to find out if she knew the numerics for Assamo or whatever she’d called him, the other future-mate, but then she’d been half-naked, and he’d forgotten all about it.

He glanced back at the ship and stomped after her.

The ship’s cool air hit his skin like a slap.

He paused in the passageway outside the bathing chamber.

A quick image flashed through his mind of those tits bouncing on the surface of the water in his bathing pool. With her soft honey-gold skin and golden hair, he’d put down half the yenna he had on the odds that her nipples were a nice, bright pink. The same color as her sweet, tight...

He gritted his teeth. More trouble than she was worth. He should have left her with Spiro; she’d have been safer that way, and he’d have been free.

Best plan of operation—contact the limp-dick future-mate, one of them anyway, whichever one she wanted, dump her on one of the peace planets where both Argenti and Vestige were permitted to conduct business, and carry on his merry way.

First, he had to get Jasto. And for that, he needed daylight. The sun would set soon, and his experience on this alien rock was of fast sunsets and nights darker than death, not to mention the killer birds. They’d sleep here, and set off in the morning.

He stomped up to the flight deck to return his mother’s comm and entered the numerics.

Splashing echoed down the passageway while he waited for the connection to establish. The holo burst to life.

One of the family stewards answered.

When Tor asked for his father, the man’s eyes widened briefly. Just a quick pause and a flare of… something. Fear maybe, or nerves. Doubt? And off he went.

Tor frowned. His father was probably off rutting one of his felanas. It would be a while. His father always kept him waiting. A classic tactic designed to remind everyone who was in control.

His mother would give him that look. And his brothers would shake their heads. And his father.

He didn’t want to think about what his father would do after the way he’d left. The last time Tor had seen him had been the day after his father had abducted Sanger’s wife. Tor had stood in his study, bruises still spreading angry and blue across his chest, still crippled from an axe he’d taken to the back on Punt-Rayabad, the latest of his father’s murderous raids on a distant colony, and his father, in the same breath had ordered Tor to revenge-breed Sanger’s wife, and announced that he’d sold Sanger’s sister, Amaline.

He’d stared down at the blood of a thousand faceless men still crusted beneath his fingernails, dropped his family’s ceremonial sword on the floor, turned his back on his father, his whole planet, walked out of the office, out of the cassia, and never looked back.

Tor readjusted the angle of the comm’s holo-feed, and sat in his seat, propping his feet on the console. It would annoy his father to see him lounging like that. But he loved this seat. It was big, and in the years he’d had this ship, it had conformed to his body.

Mother appeared on the comm, eyes harder than he remembered, and they hadn’t been soft to begin with. Crow’s feet spread from her dark eyes, and her hair had turned nearly white. “You’ve been gone too long, Tor.”

She said the same exact thing every time they spoke. He sighed. “Nice to see you too, Mother. Where’s Father?”

Her brows lowered. “Don’t be flippant, Torum. You need to come home. Now. This nonsense has gone on long enough.”

“I’m great. Thanks for asking. Lost my first perp. Jasto, you didn’t know him, but he taught me everything I know about bounty hunting, is dead. I was captured by a rabid Argenti couple and tied up. Don’t worry, though, I got free, but now I’m saddled with a madwoman. But other than that…” He spread his arms wide. “All’s well on planet Araa-Ar—”

“Your father is dead.” Her left eye twitched. That was about as much emotion as Mother ever showed. A normal person might cry or scream or tear at their hair. But not Mother. Never. The most anyone ever got was a twitch and a frown. “So is your brother.”

He pulled his boots off the console. Their thuds echoed off the matte-black metal surface of the walls.

“Which one?” His brothers’ faces flashed in his brain. Dillan, stoic and silent, born to be a leader. Brawny Gaspart, always laughing and eating and fighting. Quiet Jeor, the baby of the family. Which one was gone already?

“Dillan.”

He sucked in a long breath and caught his head in his hands. Dillan was the heir to all of Tamminia. The future Regio.

Eyes shut, he thought about the way Dillan had slapped his back when he’d boarded the transpo that took him away from Vesta the last time, the look in his eyes, understanding and just a touch of envy. Dillan had hated their father every bit as much as Tor had.

“How?”

His mother’s mouth twisted. “One raid too many.”

Tor squeezed his hands. Their father—and the Alliance, the tyrannical government he served—had thrived on raids, constantly sending soldiers on an endless stream of dangerous, bloody missions, heedless of the men who lost their lives. “How?” he asked again, he had to know. He dreaded knowing.

She broke eye contact—she never broke eye contact—and looked down. He’d have sworn her lips were shaking. “A month ago. A stomach wound. He bled out for days.”

Tor swallowed thickly. Even the bravest of warriors feared stomach wounds. “And Father?”

She shook her head. “He was found dead in his study by a steward one morning.”

“When.”

“Two weeks ago.”

He blew out a long breath. His father had