Born of Legend Read Online Free Page A

sterile.
    Turning the link off, she opened his wallet. Like the link, it was basically bare. Less than twenty credits. No cards or identification of any sort. Only a strange bump in the coin area. She opened it to find a royal Andarion signet ring. Her jaw dropped at the sight of something worth a fortune. “He gave this to you?”
    Vasili nodded. “He said there would be enough inside it to see me home to my parents.”
    The antique ring was more than enough. In fact, it could probably buy a small planet. The joke of it said the ring was worth the tiziran’s weight in gold, and given what Jullien eton Anatole was reported to weigh … that was a lot of creds.
    Stunned past rational thought, she closed it and carefully put them in her pocket. “Stay here, Vas. I’ll be right back.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Not sure what she’d find, she headed for the infirmary where Marshal was cleaning up from having tended the prince. He glanced at her as she entered the room.
    â€œHow’s your patient?”
    â€œNow that Gavin’s flying us, much better.”
    She rolled her eyes at him. “Not you, too.”
    He grinned before he answered her question. “He took a bad knife wound. Poisoned blade. Luckily, it was an indy strike and not a League assassin. Had we not found him, he wouldn’t have made it another half hour before the poison finished off shutting down his vitals.”
    â€œNow?”
    â€œShould pull through. I think I got it all cleaned out.” He left her.
    Alone with the tiziran, Ushara headed to the bed where Jullien lay unconscious. For the first time, she allowed herself to see his features. He was much better looking than he’d been in the old royal photo they’d shown her on screen, and more so than she’d realized in the bar where they’d met.
    Of course, then she’d been more focused on her son and those out to harm him. Jullien had been the last thing on her mind.
    Now, however …
    He was exquisite. Tall, but lean from too many missed meals, the former tiziran was incredibly ripped. Every part of his tawny flesh was cut and defined. Every single muscle in his entire body was sculpted and honed like an athlete in training. Yet that being said, he was riddled with vicious, intersecting scars … knives, blaster wounds, claws—even bite marks. It appeared as if every type of creature imaginable had done its best to end him.
    Sympathy choked her hard as she realized that he’d been forced to fight hard for his life.
    Often.
    Before she could stop herself, she stepped closer and touched the deepest jagged scar that ran so close to his heart it was a miracle that it’d missed it. There was another that ran along his collarbone, and a series of faint, faded smaller ones across his right rib cage. They were unlike any she’d ever seen before and she couldn’t imagine what had caused them.
    How peculiar for a tiziran to be so marred when Andarions valued physical beauty above all else. Indeed, this much damage could cause an Andarion son to be disinherited, shunned, and ridiculed.
    And he had definitely been disowned. There was no missing the marks that crisscrossed his shoulders in a distinctive pattern where his mother had slashed his lineage and marked him Outcast. A harsh punishment for his kind that forever severed him from his birthright and exiled him from any Andarion territory or outpost.
    â€œOuch,” she breathed as more sympathy for him choked her. No matter what he’d done, she couldn’t imagine how any mother could be so cruel to her own child as to cast him out of his lineage and banish him from his home and family.
    From everything he’d ever known.
    Curious about this enigma before her, she dropped her hand to his and examined it. Like the rest of his body, his knuckles were scarred and bruised from fights. His claws torn and ragged, not the manicured hands of a spoiled