Savage Prince by Alison Aimes

 

1

Isolated moon of Tarus

Animalistic grunts mixedwith soft whimpers and vicious snarls.

Face and body hidden by his hood and long cloak, Maxheim stepped through the weapon detectors and got his first glimpse inside the converted warehouse.

Tonight, the massive space had been haphazardly remade to serve as the site for an illegal omega auction.

Writhing bodies, cages, and flashing paddles dominated the landscape.

Just to his right, a massive, purple-skinned male with his trousers down to his knees thrust between the thighs of a chained omega tossed over a rickety table. The rutting couple was watched by a wild-eyed group of four Alphas, their stares glued to the cock tunneling in and out of wet flesh as they fisted their own meat.

Not his scene. His family trafficked in arms, not bodies.

Not to mention, he had his own agenda for tonight, and pussy wasn’t on it.

He was here for one reason alone: to capture his targets and get his questions answered.

“Smells like sweaty balls and bad choices.” His brother Alexi appeared on his left side.

“You’d know.” His youngest brother Damien came to stand on his right, his stare lingering on Alexi’s rumpled hair, bleary blue eyes, and a throat covered in teeth marks from whatever omegas he’d screwed last night.

Alexi studied Damien’s bloodied knuckles in return. “So would you.”

Maxheim counted to five. “Check your masks.” From beneath his hood, he tightened his straps.

Alexi followed instructions. For once. “Hells, look at this place. The conditions of the omegas are disgusting.”

Maxheim grunted. Meat markets like this illicit omega auction happened all over the galaxy, one-stop carnal bazaars where slavers showed up with their merchandise to serve the local populations. Most of those trafficking were so small-time, Maxheim had never given them a second look.

But he was paying attention now.

Whack.Something sturdy knocked his shoulder. His hood fell from his face.

“Watch where you’re going, you . . .” A thick-necked Alpha with bright green skin whirled around, his words trailing off as his chin lifted and he took in Maxheim’s skin markings.

The male’s eyes went wide. “F-Forgive me, Alpha Lord. I-I had no idea.” Knees bending, he started to kneel.

Maxheim waved him off. “Get the fuck out of my sight.” Under the right circumstances, he didn’t mind having a nice little bootlicker bowing at his feet, but now was not the time.

Actual tail between his legs, the big-talker scurried off, slamming into someone else before fading into the crowd.

“Big brother’s charm wins out again,” teased Alexi.

Damien’s smirk was unmistakable. “Good to see our reputation proceeds us, even here.”

For now. Maxheim smoothed his hood back into place. Fortunes changed in a heartbeat.

He and his family knew that better than anyone.

They hadn’t always been so powerful.

But they’d hustled and sacrificed, and now his family was part of the Brotherhood, the largest, most feared crime syndicate in the galaxy: a collection of twelve warlord cartels who ran the star system.

Their word was law. Even the Federation, the sole law enforcement within Anarcheim, cast nothing more than a weak light over its galactic inhabitants, like a futile sun near a black hole.

But power had to be constantly maintained and secured, or it slipped away.

And even the Skolov family and the Brotherhood had places their power did not reach.

Enemies who dared to challenge them.

Like the targets Maxheim sought tonight. Cowards who sulked in the shadows and used the backwater outskirts of Brotherhood territory to hide in plain sight while they carried out their insurrections.

Though not for long, if Maxheim had anything to say about it.

No one fucked with his family.

They might be pains in the ass, but they were his everything.

“Look out.” He sidestepped a blur of fangs and flying fists.

Three horny, fighting Alphas smashed into a table, the metal splintering beneath their bulk. Cheap liquor splashed the warehouse walls and dirty floor. Fortunately, it just missed him.

Damien wasn’t so lucky. “Son of a Tarus whore.” Wet, dark hair plastered to his face, he scowled at the liquid dripping between the laces of his leather vest and down his stomach.

“Nice reflexes.” Alexi smirked, and then flinched, not fully recovered from recent injuries sustained during a hit against him, despite his insistence otherwise.

“Nice healing,” taunted Damien in return.

Alexi snarled.

Damien pushed into his face.

Maxheim wondered again why he’d brought these two hotheads. Oh, right. His eldest brother, Nikolai, had insisted, and both brothers had begged.

Nikolai’s omega, Dahlia, was about to push out his first offspring, so he was staying close to home—and driving the doc, and everyone else in the vicinity, insane.

Plus, the last time Maxheim had shirked his family duties, the results had been disastrous.

Palming Damien’s neck, Maxheim shoved the kid away from Alexi. “Let’s move.”

He waded deeper into the crowd.

The caged omegas pressed themselves closer to the bars, thrusting their hips and begging him to come near.

They couldn’t help it. It was the omega instinct—and the more powerful the Alpha, the more powerless they were to resist. One more reason he was damned glad he’d been born a free Alpha.

One omega shoved her hand between the bars and tried to touch Alexi’s hair. He had that effect on females.

Another hissed at Damien. He had that effect too.

Alexi chuckled.

Damien scowled.

Maxheim ignored them both.

The auction was massive. There were hundreds of omegas in cages and even more guards and harried betas serving drinks and paddles as they wound through the crowd.

He also sighted the occasional male Alpha slave. Their bare, oiled chests, black neck collars, and shrunken pupils from the suppression drugs, made them easy to spot as they dragged cages to different stations.

Maxheim snarled despite himself. Alpha slaves might be a part of Anarcheim life, but their unnatural subservience always left a bad taste in his mouth.

Still, it was what it was. The weak got chewed up and collared. The strong did the chewing.

Which was why in a matter of minutes, this event would be shut down and everyone in attendance on their knees, captives of the Skolov family.

His soldiers were already getting into position.

Everyone would be detained. Interrogated. Squeezed for whatever information they knew.

He didn’t give a shit about subtlety.

He would paint the fucking walls of this shithole red until someone told him what he needed to know.

A recent vision from Nikolai’s omega, whose gift allowed her to see the past, had revealed that the twin baby brother and sister he’d thought killed in a fire fifteen years ago had actually been abducted.

According to her vision, they’d been taken by the same bastard employed by the unidentified enemy who’d orchestrated the recent hit against Alexi and almost caused an all-out war within the Brotherhood.

Maxheim didn’t doubt the accuracy of Dahlia’s vision.

He wanted to know if his now fifteen-year-old brother and sister were still alive.

Then he wanted to kill those responsible for the abduction and the more recent attacks against his family and the Brotherhood.

It was a simple plan. Just the way he liked them to be.

“Anyone have eyes on target A?” He scanned the crowd.

“Not yet.” The response crackled through the comms from his head guard.

Stifling a curse, Maxheim told himself to be patient.

He’d done his research. His intel was good. He’d worked many near-sleepless nights to ensure it. Rav Byrel, the bastard Dahlia was sure had taken the twins, had been sighted by surveillance feeds on more than one occasion at these auctions.

Getting even that intel had been difficult. Few within the criminal galaxy wanted their business known, and transactional records of any kind were hard to come by, but that hadn’t deterred Maxheim. He’d dug until he uncovered early official records that indicated Rav Byrel been born in the slums of a Federation city to an omega whore who’d died a few years later. Byrel had disappeared after that and had not reappeared until, at the age of seventeen, he’d sauntered into Maxheim’s childhood home, stolen the twins, and ripped the Skolov family apart.

“No sighting of target B, either,” came the report from the comms.

Target B was Aldar, a low-level scumbag slaver connected to Byrel.

Intel on the small-time criminal’s early life had been easier to come by than Byrel’s. Aldar too had been born in a Federation city and worked himself up through the criminal ranks until he was the head of a minor-league neighborhood gang that profited off the backs of orphans. Sometime after that, he’d managed to improve his fortunes and expand his business.

Whether Aldar was Byrel’s owner and the clandestine, underhanded enemy pulling Byrel’s strings remained to be seen, but his proximity to target A made him suspect—and ensured his capture.

“How about an omega with shimmery silver skin and blue streaks in her hair?” This time it was Alexi who spoke into his comms.

A slight pause. “Nothing, Alpha,” was the guard’s response.

Maxheim stared at his brother. Hard.

“What?” Alexi pretended innocence. “If the omega from Dahlia’s vision is among those we find and round up, you need to know. She could be your fated mate.” He tapped his gums. “Remember the way you reacted to her in Dahlia’s vision? The teeth. The whole flipping out, stopping shaving, eating, and acting like a crazed beast thing? Sure signs of a fated-mate reaction.”

This time, Maxheim counted back from ten in silence. “I’ve committed to the Sartin prime-omega contract.”

“I don’t know why.” Alexi scowled. “Those bastards are stuck-up snakes and our main competitors.”

Maxheim didn’t disagree, but in these unsure times, a treaty with another Brotherhood family—especially one that had been more enemy than ally—was exactly what the family needed and duty required. At twenty-six years of age, it was past time for him to settle and start breeding.

Plus, the fated-mate bond might be recognized as the ultimate genetic marker of breeding compatibility, but it also eroded an Alpha’s already tenuous control.

Two hot-headed brothers and one trouble-making sister in their family were enough.

His job was to fix problems, not create them.

So, while he didn’t doubt the omega Dahlia had seen in her vision was likely his fated mate, he didn’t see the need to pursue it.

He had too damned much on his plate already . . . and if there was a faint voice in his head that accused him of being perhaps slightly afraid of the vehemence of his reaction to the violet-eyed omega, he refused to countenance it.

He didn’t do out-of-control emotions. Or fear.

How could he? He barely felt anything at all anymore.

A fight broke out to Maxheim’s left.

He sidestepped it.

“Is it because of Raquel?” Alexi kept pushing.

“No.” Maxheim strode on.

“But—”

“It’s not. Leave it at that.”

For one blissful moment, Alexi was quiet and Maxheim thought he might have finally shut the guy up.

The subject of Raquel tended to have that effect. His brothers knew she was a sore subject. They’d gotten everything else about the situation wrong though.

“So, not because of Raquel?” Unfortunately, Alexi didn’t appear ready to drop it.

“That’s right.”

Unlike most Alphas, Maxheim didn’t fuck around. He hadn’t even in his younger seasons. So, at the age of seventeen, when he’d gotten together with Raquel, who was ten years older and had already lost her Alpha mate, his brothers had assumed strong feelings were involved. In truth, it was more of an arrangement than a passion. He’d been young and horny, but not dumb, and fully aware it required less time and complication to enter into an arrangement with one omega than deal with the entanglements of a stable.

His arrangement with Raquel had worked fine for a while. He’d focused on his family and business, but come to her for release. She’d welcomed him for the protection, prestige, and pleasure his presence provided —until she’d ignored his warning and gone out shopping beyond Skolov territory and been killed by a rival faction. In retaliation, Maxheim had destroyed the gang. The guilt, however, had not gone away. Nor had the sense that she was one more soul he’d failed to save.

His brothers had mistaken his fury for love and concluded he was so devastated by her loss that he’d retreated into work and stopped caring altogether. He hadn’t had the heart to tell them the ice inside him had begun to form long before Raquel’s death.

“Fine. If your hesitancy to find and claim the raven-haired omega is not because of your past,” doubt thickened Alexi’s voice even now, “then why?”

“I already told you. I’m committed elsewhere.”

“What about how grateful your fated mate will be to be rescued?” Persistent as ever, Alexi eyed an omega deep-throating an Alpha while another took her from behind. “Compared to this situation, any omega in her position would be beyond thankful to be safe, surrounded by luxuries, and in service to one cock.”

Despite himself, Maxheim’s dick hardened at the thought of just how the violet-eyed omega might express her gratitude—before he realized that was exactly the kind of rise his brother was trying to get out of him.

“Stop fucking around and drop it.” He forced his voice to remain cool as ever. “This conversation is a waste of time and a distraction from what really matters.”

“No emotion, right?” Alexi threw up his hands. “No loss of control. No pesky weaknesses like the rest of us mere mortals. How could anyone forget your mantra?”

“Give it a rest, Alexi,” snapped Damien. “Why do you have to keep pushing everyone? At least Maxheim isn’t a selfish prick out to get himself killed like someone else in the family.”

“Screw you, brother. I’m not the one fighting everyone I can just so I’ll forget the one I really want to be touching.”

The two hotheads lurched into each other’s faces, ready to spill blood as easily as they did each other’s private pain.

Maxheim didn’t know what to do with either of them.

He’d taken on more of their responsibilities so they’d have time to deal with their individual bullshit, but it didn’t seem to help.

Since Dahlia’s vision, Alexi—who’d already been trouble—was out every night saying he was hunting for clues, but he came back each morning stinking of pussy, Xtatal, and dark secrets. At the same time, Damien and his goon squad had been using the extra hours to look for information by knocking down doors and breaking heads with a zeal that was troubling even for the Skolov family.

Fucking drama queens.

“Enough.” Maxheim’s voice was calm as ever. “Put the personal shit aside. Nothing gets in the way of this mission. The twins are counting on us.”

The mention of the twins was better than a kick to the balls.

Both brothers stepped back, neither quite looking at the other.

A muscle worked in Alexi’s jaw. “Sorry.”

“Yeah,” grunted Damien. “Me, too.”

Not exactly a tear-jerking show of reconciliation, but it would do.

Because somewhere along the way, Maxheim had lost the ability to speak with his brothers the way he had when they were young. A cold as stark as an Abzalian winter frost had settled between them. One he had no idea how to thaw.

But that was a worry for another time. First things first, find the targets.

Without warning, Maxheim’s skin tingled.

“Anyone else feel that?” Alexi tilted his head to the side.

“Yeah.” Damien scowled. “I feel it too. It’s . . . ah, pissing me off.”

All Maxheim sensed was a softness rippling against his skin, stroking lightly over his cock.

“Alpha Skolov?” The buzz of his comms pulled him from his thoughts as his lead guard reported in. “We’ve reached the back rooms.”

“Any sign of them?”

“No.” There was a slight pause. “But there is something you need to see.”

He exchanged a look with his brothers.

They barreled through the crowd and reached the private back rooms in record time.

A handful of Skolov soldiers stood in front of one of the VIP areas, their expressions grim.

Damien strode through the entrance first. “Holy hells.”

Maxheim was right behind. His dick went hard. That faint scent…

He shook his head. Refocused. Because his reaction? Totally not right, given what awaited them in that room.

There was no sign of Byrel, Aldar, the twins, or even an omega.

But the room was crowded nonetheless.

Blood splattered the walls while five corpses littered the floor.

All of them dead from what looked like self-inflicted wounds.

But that wasn’t even the most interesting part.

All the dead were Alphas—and Brotherhood.

He recognized a soldier from the Prendel family, a higher-up from the Kuril cartel. The list went on.

Someone was sending a message. A taunt, a warning, and a strike against the syndicate all rolled into one bloody package.

Maxheim had no doubt Byrel and his mysterious employer were behind it.

“Alpha,” one of his guards hustled over, dragging a terrified, ash-skinned beta with him. “This male was nearby cleaning one of the other rooms.”

“Speak.”

Adam’s apple bobbing, it took the beta three tries to get his vocal cords to work. “I-I didn’t hear much. The rooms are soundproof.”

Maxheim continued to stare.

“M-mostly screams. Moans. W-when the door slid open, there was a female.”

“Of course, there was a female. This is a fuck den.” Maxheim waved him on. “Tell us about the males in the room. Was one of them silver-skinned?” He wanted confirmation that Byrel was close by. He was also curious to learn more about the assassin who’d carried out the hits.

The beta’s gaze darted from one looming Alpha to another. “We’re not to listen or get involved. Just clean.”

“But you heard or saw something and, if you’re smart, you’ll tell me before I decide you have no value to me at all.”

“Y-Yes, Alpha Lord.” The male was quaking now. “I did see a silver-skinned male, but he wasn’t inside the room. He was outside of it, talking with his owner. Th-They weren’t leaving, but going to reserve another room for . . . for more.”

“More?” Maxheim’s gaze locked with his brothers, adrenaline—and a strange sense of inevitability—coursing through his blood. “They don’t know we’re here.”

“They think they have time for another strike.” Damien cracked his knuckles.

“We can still take them by surprise if we get lucky,” agreed Alexi.

“New plan. Be discrete, but fan out and find whoever did this.” Maxheim marched toward the door, that faint mouthwatering scent filling his lungs. He told himself to ignore it. “They’re about to get an ugly surprise.”

He needed to focus on doling out the pain and nothing else.

He could not afford any kind of distraction.

His family was depending on him. He refused to fail them again.