A Wife For The Torturer

Daniella Wright

Contents

Prologue

1. Darkness

2. Flight

3. Capture

4. Inhuman

5. Choices

6. Mother

7. Quantum

8. Tenth

9. Impulse

10. Girl

11. Fascination

12. Morality

13. Family

14. Pathways

15. Leading

16. Arrival

17. Demon

18. Horrors

19. Survival

20. Formidable

21. Explosion

22. Reunited

23. Control

Epilogue

More By Dany

Four Daddies’ Secret Twins

Auctioned To The Armitage Brothers

© Copyright 2019 - All rights reserved.

It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

Created with Vellum

Prologue

Prince Markus Aurelius Alin III was ninth in line to the throne of his family’s prosperous, powerful kingdom, which was tucked away in the perilous, snow-capped peaks of dragon-shifter territory.

Ninth in line behind five sharp-tongued brothers and three beautiful sisters. Nine was a number that Markus could hardly ever forget; even if he wanted to ignore just how inconsequential he was to his family and his kingdom, he would inevitably be reminded of it by one of his self-involved siblings.

Markus never quite understood why his older sister Lilia, eighth in line to the throne, never felt the same way that he did about their position in the royal bloodline. After all, Princesses were much worse off than Princes; they were treated like pawns, delicate and well-dressed tokens to be married off in order for their parents to secure even more power. But, it seemed to Markus that that was the fate Lilia wanted all along; she preened and pranced around for dozens of foreign Princes, eagerly awaiting her chance to be sold off.

It turned Markus’ stomach.

Most of the time, the ninth royal heir was able to avoid his family. He bounced from kingdom to kingdom, and even planet to planet, attending raucous parties. He had devious friends in all the right places who introduced him to the best drugs and the best women. Markus figured that, if he was never going to be King, he might as well enjoy the wealth and prestige that came with being a dragon Prince somehow.

But, even Markus couldn’t avoid the mandatory royal dinners that occurred on the first day of every month. It was the day he always dreaded, the day when all eight of his siblings, his parents the King and Queen, and the various uncles, aunts and cousins that had clawed their way into King Alin’s closest circle all gathered at one very large, very chaotic table for a painfully long, fifteen-course dinner.

Markus hated all of them.

That night, he managed to make it through three courses without having to say a single word or acknowledge any of his family members. It was a record, actually, and Markus thought that it was a good sign that he’d managed to fly under the radar for three entire courses; it was going to be a relatively painless night.

That was until his uncle, the Duke, decided to fixate on his brother’s ninth child, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Markus,” said the Duke, his voice almost as deep and loud at the King’s. Markus often wondered if his uncle was ever spiteful about being second in line behind his brother when their father, Markus’ grandfather, died and passed on the crown.

With a quiet sigh, Markus regretfully looked up from his dinner plate. He’d been enjoying the food and hadn’t even been too bothered by the sound of his female cousins gabbing obnoxiously with his sisters directly beside him.

His uncle smirked at him. It wasn’t an unkind look, but it certainly wasn’t friendly either. The Duke had never been a particularly friendly man.

“It’s nice to see you in the flesh, Markus,” said the Duke, leaning across the table and offering Markus a patronizing grin, as though he were still a child, rather than a man who was well into adulthood. “Usually I only get to see you when your face is plastered all over the intergalactic tabloids.”

Markus replied to his uncle with a humorless smirk, but the Duke wasn’t finished.

“What was it I saw just yesterday?” he mused, pretending to search his memory for something that was very clearly at the forefront of his mind. “Oh, right! ‘Bad Boy Dragon Prince Attends Rocketship Rave, Beds Princess Flora.’”

Most of the table was listening in, but at the mention of Princess Flora, the King himself turned his attention to what was happening between his pest of a younger brother and his last heir.

“What was that?” asked Prince Jack, Markus’ brother, second in line to the throne.

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” chuckled the Duke, very clearly enjoying himself and the chaos he always managed to cause. “Your little brother fucked your betrothed.”

Markus groaned as he watched Jack, who was ten years his senior, immediately go white in the face, likely from an anger so pure and strong that it leeched all the color from his body.

It wasn’t technically true, though. Well, the sex part was true. Markus did, in fact, sleep with Princess Flora, who was a dragon Princess on their neighbor planet. But, Princess Flora wasn’t Prince Jack’s betrothed. At least, not yet. The King and Queen had been trying to finalize that alliance for years, and Jack himself had been exerting every ounce of effort he could muster to woo the charming but mischievous girl into giving a damn about him. It went without saying, but Jack hadn’t had much luck. The fact that his brother, his youngest brother, ninth in line to the throne, had managed to accomplish what he hadn’t, caused his blood to boil.

“You shouldn’t believe everything you read in those tabloids,” Markus told his uncle, feigning perfect innocence. Meanwhile, King Alin was glaring at him with a frightfully intense gaze.

And then, because he was feeling reckless, Markus turned to his brother Jack and shot him a wink.

But, Prince Jack was used to the ninth heir’s antics. The anger inside him that had flared so suddenly at the mention of Princess Flora had almost instantly died down into a gentle simmer. He knew that Markus only acted out because he felt inferior and unimportant. It was sad and pathetic, really.

Jack couldn’t help but poke at his brother’s fragile facade.

“You’re such an embarrassment,” sighed Jack, clucking his tongue in disapproval.

Markus didn’t take the bait and instead turned his attention back to the food on his plate and the wine in his goblet.

However, everyone else at the table seemed keen to continue the conversation. It was their favorite game, listing all the ways that the youngest son of the illustrious, intimidating King of the Dragon-Shifters was such a foolish disappointment.

Markus’ cousin, a silly girl with a cloud of fluffy blond hair and cold gray eyes, giggled cruelly and nudged Markus in the ribs with her elbow. He fought the urge to rip her arm off.

“Daisy said she saw you doing a line off Duchess May’s breasts last week at that fucked up intergalactic drug party or whatever,” commented his cousin. “You’re lucky there’s no photographic evidence.”

“It was an international music festival,” Markus replied, feeling more exhausted by the minute. “Not an intergalactic drug party.”

“Same difference,” shrugged the blond.

“You really should be more careful, Markus,” added his sister Lilia, the eighth heir. Markus shot her a glare and she immediately quieted.

Yet Prince Jack took the opportunity to continue voicing his own opinions about the man he considered to be the runt of the litter, though Markus was hardly small or weak.

“Lil’s right,” said Jack, taking a sip of glimmering, golden champagne. Markus had always thought he was a pompous asshole; the sparkling beverage really drove the point home. “Do you even think about how your actions reflect on the rest of the family? On the kingdom?”

At that moment, Prince Ry, the firstborn, the crown Prince, the gem of the kingdom, the first heir to the dragon-shifter throne, cleared his throat.

Markus could only imagine what was about to come out of his oldest brother’s mouth. He hardly ever stooped to gossip like the rest of the family, and instead chose to focus on matters of state, disappearing for hours with the King to discuss strategy, resources and the future of their people. He barely interacted with the rest of the siblings, let alone Markus.

“Perhaps,” sighed Prince Ry, setting his knife and fork down gently on the tabletop. “We should let the King and Queen alone pass judgment on the youngest Prince.”

Markus blinked in surprise.

“Though I do, in truth, find your behavior incredibly intolerable,” continued Ry, shooting Markus the quickest of glances, as if he couldn’t even be bothered to meet his brother’s eyes for longer than a fleeting moment.

Markus frowned.

“Thank you, Ry,” said the Queen on the far end of the table. Her voice was quiet and soothing but tinged with an unquestionable authority so powerful that it did not have to be shouted like the King’s or growled like the Duke’s.

Everyone else fell silent when the Queen spoke.

“Markus,” sighed his mother, who adjusted the golden crown atop her wild dark curls with a delicate, bejeweled hand. “I would like to have a discussion later this evening about your behavior. We’ll leave it at that. Now, who’s ready for the fourth course?”

Beside him, Markus’ cousin snickered under her breath. Across the table, the Duke smirked down at the table as the servants came in to take the plates away and replace them with a fresh course.

Something hard formed in the pit of Markus’ stomach. It was an orb of hatred, fueled by the coldness and darkness that ran in Markus’ veins. It grew as he took in the disdainful glances and rolled eyes of his family. It morphed into something ugly, something hungry for blood.

Markus could feel the dragon side of him coming out, urged on by the loathing and frustration that festered and multiplied in the very core of his being. His fingernails began to sharpen into claws; his eyes began to burn and he knew that if he looked in a mirror, they would be the vibrant scarlet color of dragon eyes. Markus sat at the table, glaring down at his untouched fourth course, breathing hard against the darkness that rolled through him like pummeling ocean waves. His shoulder blades began to itch and he yearned to let his leathery, powerful wings break free and unfurl.

“Markus, calm down,” whispered his sister Lilia on his right.

The table had fallen silent. Dead silent. It was quiet enough to hear a single diamond drop on the pristine marble floor. Over their heads, the King and Queen’s royal blue banners quivered slightly in a strange breeze.

The truth was, King Alin preferred to avoid having his youngest heir shift into his true dragon form. Something about Markus had always been a little too strong. He carried with him a fearsome energy that was always under threat of exploding. King Alin feared that, if Prince Markus ever shifted in close quarters, fueled by the wrong emotions, he might kill them all.

Prince Markus didn’t know that his father thought such things.

With a curse, Markus stood up from the dinner table so quickly, his chair toppled over backward onto the cold stone floor.

“Markus,” thundered the King. “You have not been excused from this table.”

Markus shot a glare so icy and wicked at King Alin that it caused Prince Ry and Prince Jack, who were each on either side of him, to immediately stiffen into protective stances.

“I’m excusing myself,” hissed Markus.

And with that, the ninth heir to the throne stalked out of the dining room for the last time.

I’m excusing myself, Markus had thought to himself as he left the room. From this family.

Chapter 1

Darkness

Markus

The darkness weighed heavy in my stomach, but I relished it.

I let the shadows twist and warp my insides, taking over my body until I was steeped in gloom. Then, with a roar that sounded far too animal, I slammed open the doors to the palace apartments that had been designated mine, in the farthest south corner of my family’s castle.

I’d had enough.

In fact, I’d had about twenty-eight years worth of enough.

I stormed into my bathroom and leaned over the sink, gripping the smooth marble sides with my hands. I noticed the dragon claws that had threatened to make their appearance at the dinner table had melted back into normal human nails.

Auburn hair, wavy like my mother’s, fell over my eyes as I bowed my head over the deep blue basin. My chest heaved and my skin felt like it was on fire. With a loud, frustrated grunt, I yanked my shirt over my head and tossed it aside on the stone floor. Anger caused me to tremble as I lifted my head and took in my reflection.

My eyes, usually so dark they were almost black, were a strange flickering hazel color. It was the in-between hue that my irises took on just before turning a deep, rich red. Red like blood. Dragon eyes. I blinked furiously, willing them to settle back into the usual smooth inky shade I’d been born with.

A wave of dark, smoking anger struck me hard at the sight of my features, inherited from my cursed, cruel parents. I sank my fist into the glass before me, shattering the mirror into a hundred pieces. My hand came away bloody, but I couldn’t feel the pain through the darkness.

All my life, I’d been nothing more than the ninth heir. The youngest son, and therefore the least important member of the precious Alin royal bloodline. My older brothers, especially the first two, were given the best tutors and training, as well as the most attention from our parents. Meanwhile, as I watched my sisters, the sixth, seventh and eighth heirs, being groomed for arranged marriages, I was tossed aside.

I was a Prince, of course. I was given all the delights and wonders a young royal boy could imagine, but it was always as a second thought. Half of my birthdays passed forgotten. My father, the King of our region, barely spared a single minute to get to know his ninth heir. He was always too busy with Ry and Jack, the first and second sons who would be most likely to rule one day.

As a teenager, I grew spiteful, as any kid would have. I started acting out. I hung out with the wrong crowd of elites and nobles, snuck out of the palace in the middle of the night and had far too much fun drinking my way through the dirtiest clubs in the kingdom.

After a few years, my bad behavior was no longer something that could be considered a cry for attention. As I got older, I cared less and less about earning a glance from either of my parents for any kind of stunt I pulled. I simply got used to breaking the rules and being a royal disappointment. It became my persona.

But, I would have never turned out this way, with a heart as black as night, if the King and Queen had learned to love the nine children they produced with equal measure, and if their goals were centered around more than just power and the continuation of the legendary Alin dragon-shifter reign. I also probably wouldn’t have been like this if my siblings hadn’t been the awful fools that they were. Jack, with his patronizing glare. Ry, with his determination to ignore the fact that I even existed. Lilia, with her stupid devotion to our family, despite the fact that she wasn’t much better off than me in terms of succession lines.

Not to mention all the others, with their sidelong glances at dinner and their unnecessary comments. I had a feeling at least a couple of them were just jealous that they’d never had the guts to disobey our parents’ wishes and do what they wanted.

I hated them. I hated all of them.

I hated the disdain and arrogance. I hated that I was expected to behave like the perfect royal, but that I would never come close to being King.

After all, I’d only become King if every single one of them died.

The dark pit in my stomach sparked at the thought.

I wandered out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. Rich velvet tapestries hung from the stone walls. An elaborate chandelier made of twisted iron and blood-red rubies dripped from the ceiling, suspended over a massive canopy bed draped in silver silks and ebony cottons.

Kneeling next to the bed, I reached underneath and pulled out a glossy wooden box that only I knew the code to. Wordlessly, heart pounding in my chest, I unlocked the box and rummaged through the contents: a collection of contraband hallucinogens in plastic baggies, a few more common narcotics among them, a pure silver knife that once belonged to my grandfather, the former King, and, at the very bottom, a small business card.

The business card was pure white, and the writing on it only a few shades darker in a muted gray. I remembered the party I received it at; a private gathering on the other side of our world. It was the first night I’d met Princess Flora, who also had the same renegade tendencies as I did, though she was certainly much better off than ninth in line to her own throne.

A tall, thin man with a sharp jawline and deep blue hair, a human who thought of himself as like one of the witch-like aliens from our neighbor planet, had offered me a drink at the glowing bar. At first, I assumed he’d been coming onto me, and I was preparing to tell him that I usually didn’t go for other men, when he’d cocked his head to the side and slipped into a well-practiced bow. The type of bow you offered to royalty.

Of course, at most of these parties, it was no secret that I was a Prince. That kind of status was what earned me a place in the intergalactic party scene in the first place when I was just a teenager. But, of course, I wasn’t the only royal in the entire world who went off the rails and got themselves into a bit of fun and trouble every other night. Princess Flora was proof of that. Usually, no one even bothered to acknowledge the status of other partygoers at these type of events; the entire point was that we were there to escape all that nonsense.

So when the strange, blue-haired stranger inclined his head respectfully toward me, I narrowed my eyes at him, giving him my full attention.

“Prince Markus Alin,” he’d said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

I simply humphed in response, shrugging my shoulders as I accepted another shot of bright green liquid from the bartender. I knocked it back without a wince. The stranger watched, his smirk growing.

“My name is Lee,” he told me that night. “I’ve heard you’re a fan of intergalactic thrills.”

Snorting, I simply nudged him aside and was about to head off to my crowd of close friends, a couple of similarly cast-off Barons and Dukes, when the skinny human named Lee placed a steady palm on my forearm.

I froze instantly. “I’d recommend keeping your hands off a dragon shifter.”

“Pardon me, Your Royal Highness,” Lee responded, not an ounce of fear in his voice. “But, I think I may have the solution to all your problems.”

He handed me a small white card embossed with writing that was almost impossible to see. I glanced down at it, squinting through the flashing lights of the club to see what on not-Earth he’d handed me, but my head was spinning far too much for me to be able to make it out.

When I lifted my head to demand an explanation from the stranger, he was gone.

I hadn’t thought much about it until three days later, when I finally came out of that bender and fished the strange business card out my pocket.

It turned out that Lee was a Rogue Time Agent.

I’d always been fascinated by Time Agents. They were employed by the intergalactic government, tasked with fixing or eradicating broken timelines. It took me years to wrap my head around the concept of multiple timelines, and the idea that other parallel worlds were happening alongside the one I was in, that even a parallel Markus might be living out another story at the same time as I was, still boggled my mind.

The Time Agents were some of the most intelligent people in the known universe. They had ways of finding timelines and worlds that were ruined or broken, but repairable, and they organized the time and space continuum so that the rest of the world could continue functioning without a hitch.

But Lee wasn’t like those Time Agents.

I’d heard about guys like him. Rogue Time Agents who were just as smart, just as cunning, but who made it their mission to find ruined timelines and shattered worlds that were due to be erased by the official Time Agents any second, and ran free wreaking whatever havoc they wished. That had always thrilled me, that you could go to a completely different world where no one knew you and do whatever you wanted with no repercussions because that world was about to be erased by federal Agents anyway.

They were called Dark Tourists, the ones who went on these timeline adventures to live out their darkest fantasies in opposite worlds. It was a mysterious, but lucrative business. A friend of mine, the somewhat pretentious Baron Lakefield, had gone on a Dark Tourism trip recently. He didn’t tell the rest of us what he’d done on the trip, or what kind of crimes he’d committed in the timeline the Rogue Time Agents brought him to, but he’d returned exhilarated and refreshed. I’d been jealous of his energy; it was like he’d been reborn.

I ran my thumb over the series of contact numbers on the card and chewed my lip.

It had been months since Lee had slipped it to me. Perhaps he’d given up on me ever calling. Probably not, though. A Prince’s money was valuable, after all. Business from elites, in fact, was what kept most of the Dark Tourism industry running, as well as so lucrative.

I lifted my wrist to my mouth. A small, sophisticated communication device was strapped to it, and I began to dial Lee’s number before I even realized it.

I knew what I wanted to do. I knew that it would never be possible in my world or in my timeline. It would be too dangerous, and the real Time Agents would probably come after my head in minutes if I even tried to initiate my newest ambition.

My plan would gain me the satisfaction I’d always craved. Power would be mine. The throne would be mine.

I was going to take this stranger up on his offer and embark on one of these ridiculous Dark Tourism trips. I had money. I had time. In fact, I had all the money and time in the world. I was an unimportant, unlikeable Prince. I had nothing else going on.

But I wouldn’t just be doing it for the thrill.

No, there was something I desperately craved to do.

I wanted to kill my family.

Chapter 2

Flight

Markus

As usual, my family hadn’t noticed when I disappeared again. I’d taken my usual ship, a compact vehicle with a fast engine, and nothing more than a single duffel bag of necessities.

My absence would be nothing out of the ordinary.

“Oh, he’s away again, getting himself into the usual trouble,” my mother would probably say to the rest of the family. “Nothing new.”

My ship docked cleanly on the massive vessel that Lee had given me directions to, located halfway between my planet and the next. The journey hadn’t taken me long, just over an hour, but the further away from the royal palace I got, the freer I felt. My body thrummed with electric energy, yearning to live out my newest, darkest fantasy.

Mass regicide would be messy, sure, but I was willing to take the risk.

I needed this.

“Welcome aboard, Prince Markus,” said Lee, who was still blue-haired and thin as a pole. “I’m glad you finally called.”

I rolled my eyes at the title and clapped a firm hand on Lee’s shoulder. The slimy smirk slid off his face as he flinched slightly at the burst of pain. Dragon-shifters were, after all, much stronger than humans.

“Let’s get one thing straight before takeoff,” I murmured. “On this ship, I’m just Markus.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Lee. I decided I didn’t trust him; the vaguely sarcastic tone of his voice, laced with something akin to humor, and yet somehow more menacing, set me on edge. Still, he would get me where I needed to go, and therefore played a rather important role in my dream of murdering my entire family becoming a reality, so regardless of my distrust, I knew I had to at least tolerate him.

With a single nod, I stepped through the threshold between my vehicle and the colossal timeline-traveling ship.

A different Rogue Time Agent, dressed in loose-fitting black clothes, showed me to my assigned room and handed me a plastic holographic keycard. He must have been fairly low in rank to be tasked with something as inconsequential as showing the Dark Tourists to their private quarters. The room was basic but tasteful. A double bed sat against the far wall, which was dominated by a massive window looking out at the galaxy beyond. There was a small desk, shelves for storage and a private bathroom.

Obviously, the point of these Dark Tourism trips wasn’t the glamor or the hospitality, but I still felt like I could offer a few suggestions here and there, especially if they were so keen to entertain the whims of more elites and royals. A higher thread count, for example.

I dropped my duffel bag down at the foot of the bed. Outside the window, everything was dark and calm, mirroring how I was feeling now that I was out of the palace and on my way to the next, most satisfying adventure.

Not sure what else to do with myself, I decided to try and find my way to a common area so that I could figure out what other demonic people I was sharing a ship with. I wondered if anyone else was here with the intent to kill their relatives. Or kill anyone, really.

The curving hallways of the time ship wove around the perimeter, circling what I assumed was the main control center in the middle. Windows, shaped like the kind of small portholes you would find on a boat, dotted the left side of the halls, showing more darkness. Somewhere out there, perhaps visible out of one of these windows, was my planet. It was a small planet, made even smaller and less inviting by the fact that I knew my family was on it, ignoring the fact that I’d left again, just like they ignored me whenever I was there.

Eventually, the hallway ended in a large circular room ringed by soft couches and plush lounge chairs. It had clearly been designed to hold about fifty passengers, but only a handful of people milled about, including a few people dressed in the same black clothes as Lee and the attendant who’d shown me to my room. I noticed they were also all wearing the same white pin on their lapels: a tiny t.

Not sure what else to do, I sat down on a sofa and watched everyone else. Much to my surprise, a woman sat down next to me a minute later. She looked to be about twice my age, with a kind, round face and charming curves. She offered me a smile and held out her hand in greeting.

“Rosa Ricardo,” she said by way of introduction.

I leaned forward to shake her hand. “Markus Alin.”

She nodded as if I’d said something painfully obvious. “Mhm, you’re that bad boy dragon Prince, ain’t you?”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I didn’t want to make enemies on the first day. “I guess so.”

“Hmm,” she said, nodding again. “I heard there’d be a royal on this trip.”

“Where’d you hear that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

But Rosa merely shrugged, her broad shoulders rising and falling inside her oversized brown sweater. “Ain’t nothing happen in this galaxy that I don’t hear about.”

“...Right.”

Rosa shot me a wink. I liked her, despite her nosiness. There was a gutsiness about her.

“So, what are you here for?” I asked.

Rosa snorted and shook her head. “This is your first trip ever, huh?”

I frowned in confusion.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t go around asking that kind of question,” she explained. “There’s an unspoken ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ type of situation aboard these ships.”

“Well, then what are you doing sticking your nose in my business?” I asked, smirking.

Rosa smacked me playfully in the arm. “Couldn’t help myself. Always wanted to meet a royal.”

I laughed, but didn’t have the heart to tell Rosa that I was hardly a good excuse for a royal. I was rude, reckless, and, now, murderous. I wanted to tell her that the rest of my family was much more polite than I was, but I couldn’t stomach paying them any kind of compliment.

“You see that man over there?” Rosa lowered her voice and pointed at a man dressed in gray standing on the other end of the room. I noticed that everyone who walked by seemed to be giving him a wide berth. That was odd, since he was fairly small and thin, with wispy brown hair and watery eyes. Still, he had a weird aura about him; something just the slightest bit wrong. It was chilling, even to me.

“What about him?” I asked.

“His name’s Zik,” she replied. “Guess he’s part human, but mostly alien. He’s from my planet. Rumor has it he got thrown in jail a couple decades ago for hosting some kind of torture chamber in his basement. He was cutting up all these humans, boiling them alive, psychopathic shit like that, you know? So they threw him in prison. Thing is, though, he got out a couple years ago for good behavior. I know, right? Crazy. So, even though he’s a reformed citizen, I’ve heard he’s still got these compulsions to hurt people; he, like, can’t shut ‘em off or something. And he goes on these trips to live out his torture porn fantasies in ruined timelines, then goes back home and tells his parole officer that he’s all good. Guess it works for him.”

“Oh,” was all I could manage in reply. “That’s…interesting.”

“Ain’t it?”

It was disturbing, that was what it was. But, after all, I was on this trip to do almost that same thing. Though, I suppose I’d never intended to torture my family. The only plan I’d come up with so far was to cut their throats in their sleep; something quiet and mild, but just enough to quell the horrible dark bubble of anger in me.

I decided to steer clear of that Zik guy.

At that moment, Lee walked up to the front of the room and clapped his hands for everyone’s attention.

“Hey, guys,” he called out. The other Rogue Time Agents paused their milling about and turned to face front. “My name is Lee, I’m co-Captain of this ship and my crew here are what we call the Rogues, mostly because we’re Rogue Time Agents hellbent on ensuring you all get to live out your darkest desires in the ruined timelines we find for you. This is pretty much the first and only time any of us are going to bother you; I just wanted to give you all some basic information before we take off.”

Rosa chuckled quietly. “This kid’s such a busybody.”

I snorted. Yeah, I definitely liked her.

“First of all, the ship is yours to explore, except for the central chamber where the Rogues command the ship. All doors into the command center are marked with white Xs, so please do take care to not walk through any of those,” Lee continued. “Second of all, we have quite a small trip this week, which does happen from time to time. We’ll be visiting a total of five timelines. The Rogues have done research ahead of time to locate the ideal timelines for each passenger, and from that, we’ve determined the following order…”

Behind him, a screen lit up on the wide window. Five names were listed on the screen, implying the order in which our turns for debauchery in ruined timelines would go.

Zik was first.

Someone named Ryan was second. Rosa was next, then an older couple named Paul and Patty. I was last.

I was just grateful that my name was simply listed as Markus. No Prince, no other names. Rosa might have known who I was, but that didn’t mean everyone else had to.

I didn’t mind that I was going last, either. It meant I had more time to plan out my attack; the best way to murder my eight siblings, my parents and any cousins or uncles that happened to be standing in the way. It was, no doubt, going to require quite a bit of focus and stamina.

“Lastly,” Lee was saying, “we want this trip to be as enjoyable and fulfilling for you as possible. If, at any time, you need anything from us, don’t hesitate to ask myself or one of the crew. Other than that, have a nice journey!”

Naturally, applause would follow an announcement like that. But, the room simply dissolved into an easy quiet, most of the Rogues venturing off to prepare the vessel for takeoff, and all the other tourists heading back to their private rooms, presumably.

Rosa stood up with a quiet groan, her joints creaking. “Well, kid. I’m gonna go find myself something eat. See you later.”

“See you,” I said, offering her a wave. She winked again and wandered off.

After only a few minutes, I was alone in that wide open room. Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on my knees and stared out of the massive windows to the entirety of space beyond. In the far distance, I could see the colorful glows of other planets and galaxies and bright flashes of faraway, dying stars.

My shoulder blades itched again, my true form begging to be set free. I choked it back down, wanting to wait for the perfect moment to allow myself to morph into a full dragon-shifter Prince. That moment, undoubtedly, would be when I could stand over the bodies of my dead family and sit atop the iron throne that had been so far out of reach for me for the entirety of my life.

Soon, I would have my chance.

Chapter 3

Capture

Markus

The next morning, we arrived in the timeline chosen especially for Zik’s twisted torture fantasy.

The Rogues recommended that the rest of the tourists stayed on the ship if it wasn’t their destination, likely so none of us would accidentally fall victim to the horrors in one of our minds. We could, however, try to catch glances at the action from the common room with the help of the same wide crystal clear windows that stretched across half the room. Also, for our entertainment, the Rogues provided the rest of us who weren’t participating in this timeline with a factsheet, so that we could at least try to follow along.

We’d landed in the ruins of a concrete city. All around the ship, jagged metal pipes and electrical wiring shot up from the cracked, dusty asphalt like black and silver plants. According to the factsheet, we had traveled to a planet dominated by humans, though they were nowhere to be seen. I assumed they’d been smart enough to scatter as soon as an alien time ship appeared out of the sky.

The reason this timeline was due to be erased was because of a robot war that had occurred just a few years prior, crazy as it sounded. Apparently, these humans grew so advanced in their technological capabilities that they managed to create artificially intelligent lifeforms that started to fight against human control, until an outright war broke out. The humans won, but they hadn’t had electricity, internet or intergalactic communication in years. What was worse was that, even though the robots had been completely destroyed, most of the human race had been decimated alongside them. There were still pockets of humans here and there across the lonely, pathetic planet, but the official Time Agents had declared it still not worth saving. Evidently, the unbroken timeline -the correct outcome -had resulted in a beautiful, green, flourishing world.

It all sounded kind of sad to me, but I supposed it wasn’t really my problem. After all, once the actual intergalactic government swooped in and erased this timeline, this planet and all the people on it wouldn’t even exist anymore. I didn’t understand the finer details of it, but I was also pretty sure that none of us on this ship would remember it, except for the memories tied to whatever Zik had planned.

As far as any of us knew, Zik’s entire plan was to kidnap a handful of humans from this timeline and bring them onto the ship for the duration of the trip. He’d paid the Rogues very well, according to Rosa, and they’d built him a special, soundproof torture chamber. I didn’t even want to think about what would be happening in that secret room while the rest of us ate and slept and lived out our own goals and fantasies.

For starters, it wasn’t any of my business. But also, despite my reputation and my overwhelming darkness, torture never quite appealed to me.

It was a little too sociopathic for my taste.

Zik had left the ship as soon as we landed, but the rest of us had taken our time with getting dressed and eating breakfast, milling around the common room in the relative calm and quiet of the Rogue ship.

After about an hour, figures appeared on the other side of the glass. Zik, accompanied by two Rogues, dragged with them about ten prisoners, their hands chained behind their backs. Thick cloth bags had been forced over their heads as well, and they marched in the correct direction only with the help of Zik’s cold pistol pressed to the nape of each of their necks and the loud barking shouts of the Rogues.

Moments later, we moved into the bare entryway of the ship as Zik’s prisoners were led away from their planet and into the gaping jaws of the Rogues. If only they knew what was about to befall them. Except, actually, it was probably best they remained unaware. “Ignorance is bliss” and all that.

I bit my lip, watching with furrowed brows beside Rosa as the ten prisoners were forced to their knees. The Rogues yanked the bags off of their heads while Zik stood by, visibly impatient from the incessant tapping of his foot.

The humans were of varying genders, ages and sizes. It seemed that Zik didn’t discriminate when it came to his victims. They did, however, have certain characteristics in common. For example, they were all skinny, exhausted and generally rumpled; it was exactly how I imagined a bunch of humans would look in the immediate aftermath of a devastating global war.

Lee entered the room at that moment, carrying a small device that resembled a gun, but had a larger barrel and a digital screen. I grew even more confused as he pressed it to the forehead of the human male on the far end of the line. A few beeps sounded from the strange device, followed by a negative message code on the screen.

With a nod, Lee gestured at Zik. “This one’s fine.”

He then moved on to the next person in line, pressing the not-gun to their forehead the same way. The humans watched us with wide, wondering eyes. They didn’t seem to realize they were in immediate danger, or perhaps they’d simply grown used to being confronted with imminent peril, given the rather dire situation on their planet.

“What are they doing?” I whispered to Rosa.

Rosa shrugged casually. “Routine stuff. Checking to see if any of them are time lost before they pull them out of there. If they aren’t time lost, Zik can go ahead and have ‘em; they’ll cease to exist the minute the Agents evaporate the timeline anyway. But, if they are…” Rosa simply pursed her lips and shrugged again, her way of communicating to me that she wasn’t quite sure what would happen in the latter situation.

My curiosity was piqued.

Time lost wasn’t something you heard about often. With my limited understanding of time travel, most of which I’d gleaned from gossip and hearsay over the years at parties and soirees, I knew that being a time-lost person was extremely rare.

If I understood correctly, being time lost meant that someone didn’t belong to just one single timeline. It meant that they could, theoretically, flourish in a multitude of timelines and live out an infinite number of scenarios. It also meant that, if their original timeline (the timeline they were born into in the first place) was destroyed, they would survive. They wouldn’t be erased from time and space, or forgotten for the rest of eternity.

The Rogues were probably covering their own asses by checking to see if any victims were time lost. They couldn’t have someone who wasn’t a paying client wandering around the universe blabbing the details of what they got up to. But I also figured it was deeper than that. Because time lost individuals were so rare, I assumed they had some kind of monetary value to the Rogues. Dark Tourism was, when it came down to it, driven by financial gain; it was the cold, hard truth.

As Lee moved methodically down the line of Zik’s prisoners, it became clear that none of them were time lost. Rather, they were perfectly ordinary.

That was, until Lee reached the final human and pressed the time-lost-detector to her temple.

A strange, high-pitched ding emitted from the device and a bright green plus symbol appeared on the tiny screen.

I froze, craning my neck to get a better look at the human. Zik was glaring at her.

Lee was smiling.

“Well, friends,” said Lee. “We’ve got ourselves a time-lost lady.”

The entryway cleared as the Rogues pulled the other nine prisoners away, probably toward the special torture chamber they built, with Zik following close on their heels. Still, he shot one last backward glance at the tenth human left behind, either because he was also curious about her time lost status, or because he was angry that he’d missed out on another person to torture horrifically.

I guessed it was the latter.

With less people in the room, I could see the human clearly.

She was, admittedly, gorgeous. Undeniably stunning, breathtakingly pretty. Long, chocolate brown waves spilled over her petite shoulders, messed up from her capture and also, probably, basic survival, though irresistibly sexy nonetheless. Pure green eyes, framed by a charming smattering of freckles on porcelain skin, glared up at Lee with a mixture of confusion and defiance. With that look alone, she was daring Lee to lay a finger on her.

I took a step forward. No one paid me any mind, their attention fixed on the woman.

“What’s your name?” asked Lee.

She cocked her head to the side. “Who wants to know?”

Gutsy.

Lee chuckled at her sassy response. “My name is Lee Leoni. I’m an alternative time travel expert and dark tourism guide.”

The poor woman clearly had no idea what half of those words meant, but she appeared to soak them in anyway, as if she were storing them for further use. It was the type of thing strong survivors did.

I was enamored by her.

“I’ll ask again,” sighed Lee. “Your name?”

“Ellen Moore,” she answered.

Around us, the time ship’s engine started up again. We hadn’t been on the planet for long, but I supposed the entire point of this destination wasn’t to stick around, but instead to gather up some innocents and hand them off to the Rogues’ well-paying customer and then carry on with the trip.

Ellen seemed to realize that there was no getting off this ship at that point and frowned at the hard metal floor beneath her. Perhaps she, too, had some comments to make about the interior decor of this place or perhaps she was merely pissed off, confused and wanted to know why the hell she’d been dragged onto a foreign spaceship by a crowd of well-dressed aliens.

I didn’t blame her.

I felt the urge to reach out to her, to pull her attention away from Lee.

“Well, Ellen Moore,” continued Lee. “It appears to me that you’re time lost.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” she snapped.

I snorted quietly. Lee never was very good at explaining himself. He was all about dramatic effect in favor of clarity.

“I’ll explain in time,” answered Lee. “In the meantime, please allow one of my crew to show you to a private room for you to wait in.”

A Rogue attendant helped Ellen off the floor of the room and unlocked her chains. She shook them off and rubbed her wrists, eyes fluttering around to the attendant, to Lee, to the door behind marked with a large white X. She was taking in her surroundings, making mental notes about possible escape routes and logging away any other information she could pick up about the people around her.

Yeah, definitely a keen, unstoppable survivor.

Her eyes skittered over mine for the briefest of seconds, her gaze not holding mine even though I was practically burning a hole through her with the intensity of my stare. I supposed I was of little consequence to her survivor-mode brain.

That brain of hers seemed to come to the conclusion that, given the fact that she was in foreign territory surrounded by mostly inhuman creatures, it was best not to cause a scene. Not to mention the very real possibility that any trouble started would probably earn her a place back in chains and in the bloodthirsty hands of the menacing Zik.

“Fine,” Ellen replied at last, fixing Lee with a distrustful stare. “Whatever.”

I watched her and the attendant walk away, feeling every cell in my body yearning to follow.

But I couldn’t. Not yet, at least.

All I knew was that I had to talk to her.

Chapter 4

Inhuman

Ellen

There were two possible explanations for what was currently happening to me.

One: I’d inhaled some seriously intense fumes in my mother’s chemistry lab and was now experiencing strange, hallucinogenic side effects.

Two: I really, truly had been kidnapped by aliens and taken onto their spaceship to be dissected and tortured or whatever, only to be deemed “special” by their leader and put into some kind of holding cell.

Time lost.

The blue-haired guy’s words echoed in my head. I had no idea what they meant. No one on my planet had had any contact with aliens since the AI war destroyed pretty much every bit of technology there was. As such, I didn’t know much about what went on in the intergalactic plane of existence, nor was I familiar with the technology they’d produced. None of us back home were.

We were just trying to survive day by day.

All I could think about was my parents, who were probably worried sick about me, wondering where on Earth I’d disappeared to. People didn’t just go missing in our village. Since the war, there were so few of us left that we had no choice but to congregate in close-knit communities. Because of that, not much happened without everyone else hearing about it.

I was going to have to find a way off this ship as soon as possible.

With a sigh, I sat down on the edge of the bed in the sparse room I’d been led to. I hadn’t been able to tell what their intentions were when I’d been brought in here. They’d been fairly violent with us when we were grabbed from the streets of our ruined city, but it seemed like the moment that strange gun-like device chimed differently for me than it did for the others, I was no longer treated as roughly. At least, they hadn’t physically forced me into this room the way the other nine people had been dragged off with the disturbing, gray-eyed man.

I knew all of them. And I had a sick feeling I’d never see them again.

A soft knock on the door set my heart hammering in my chest again. Maybe they had decided I wasn’t as important as they originally thought and were going to take me away with the others. I frantically searched around the room for anything resembling a weapon, but came up with nothing. The room was practically empty except for the basic furniture.

They could really stand to improve their hospitality.

“Come in,” I called to whoever was knocking, doing my best to keep the tremble out of my voice.

I expected the sinister man with a murderous aura, or at least the weird man with blue hair and a silver tattoo on his neck.

Instead, an unfamiliar man gently inched open the door and stepped inside the room. He closed the door quietly behind him as if he was trying not to draw attention.

The first thing I noticed about the man was that he was insanely, almost inhumanly, beautiful.

Glimmering auburn locks curled softly atop his head, arranged artfully and fashionably around his lightly-tanned face. Deep brown eyes, so dark they were almost black, fixed on me with obvious curiosity. I tried to take in the rest of him as fast as I could, as if all my eyes wanted was to drink him in before he could disappear again. He was all broad shoulders, a strong jaw and sharp, powerful limbs.

I wondered briefly if he was one of them; one of the kidnappers or part of the black-clad ship crew. But, he carried himself with a confidence and grace that was almost regal, and it became clear to me that he was of a much different status than the blue-haired man and his cronies.

“Hello,” he said, his voice accented in the most subtle way. “How are you?”

I cocked my head to the side, observing as he approached the bed. He stopped a few feet away, hands clasped behind his back as he stared down at me. There was a darkness about him, something just the slightest bit off, or even dangerous, but he also felt…stable. Sure. Dependable. He bit his lip thoughtfully and I found myself feeling a little jealous of his teeth.

God, I was a loser.

“Are you a doctor or something?” I asked, unsure what he could possibly be doing in a hostage’s room if he wasn’t here to hurt me or interrogate me.

He snorted at that. The sudden humor that glittered in his eyes and danced on the edges of his lips hinted at something playful and boyish within him. Almost mischievous, as if he was one of those people who equated fun with trouble.

“No,” he replied. “I’m not a doctor.”

His voice was smooth like a deep, crooning melody. There was no way this guy was human.

He gestured to the chair at the desk nearby with a questioning glance and I nodded, watching as he sat down and leaned forward to place his elbows on his knees. He glanced up at me through thick lashes and I desperately tried to remind my racing heart that I was most likely in extreme danger and that it was no time to be swooning.

“Are you…a therapist?” I prodded.

“A what?”

“Nevermind.”

He offered me a coy smile. “I’m just…Markus.”

I sighed heavily and shifted on the bed so that I was facing him properly. “Well, just Markus, what can I do for you?”

Something vaguely devious flashed in his eyes, but then the curiosity reappeared, softening his features into something less…greedy.

Markus shrugged. “I’ve never met a time lost person before.”

There was that term again. “I don’t even know what that means,” I admitted.

“Oh,” he answered, brow furrowing. “I can try to explain… I’m hardly an expert, though.”

“I’m all ears,” I responded. Markus seemed confused by my phrasing, as if he’d never heard the terminology before, but opened his mouth to offer his explanation anyway.

“I’ve heard that someone is time lost when they can, theoretically, be pulled from their original timeline and placed in another without ruining the balance of the time-space continuum,” he said, his voice edging around the words as if he wasn’t quite sure about them himself.

My head was already spinning. “So, there’s more than one timeline?”

Markus nodded. “Oh, there are millions. Billions, even.”

“Like…parallel universes?” I pulled from my small memory bank of sci-fi knowledge that I’d gleaned from various movies when I was younger, before the humans had no choice but to destroy all electronics and technology in the AI war.

“Sort of,” he replied.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and pursed my lips, gazing off into the opposite corner of the room in thought.

“But…why would I be time lost? Like, how does a person get to be like that?”

Markus shrugged. The casual rise and fall of his shoulders was somehow endearing.

I really needed to get a grip. I’d been kidnapped, barely escaped possible death, was who-knew-how-many-miles away from my family, and all I could think about was how hunky this strange alien guy was? Maybe I had been inhaling too many fumes in the chem lab.

“That’s the part I don’t understand, either,” replied Markus. “A friend once explained that it’s as if a time lost person holds so many future possibilities within them, like they could potentially live so many lives, that one timeline alone can’t hold them. That’s why they can be extracted so easily.”

I still didn’t totally understand, but it was beginning to come together. I wondered what my other life possibilities were… Surely they had to be better than being one of a handful of survivors of a horrifying robot war that destroyed my entire planet.

At least, I hoped so.

“So, what am I doing on this ship? What are you doing on this ship?” I asked.

Markus sat up and shifted uncomfortably. “We’re tourists, of a sort,” he replied. “Lee and his crew take us to different timelines, ruined ones that are due to be erased by the feds anyway, and… Well…we do whatever we want, I guess.”

Lee must have been the guy with the blue hair. I was glad to finally be able to put a name to that cold and calculating face.

“So, kidnapping me and those other people was all part of that creepy guy’s vacation?”

“Um, yeah,” he replied, clearly holding back some important information. I narrowed my eyes at him, but let it slide. I’d get the details out of him eventually. Or, out of someone, at least. “His name is Zik. Absolute psycho, if you ask me. It’s a good thing you managed to avoid that.”

I chewed my bottom lip and fixed Markus with a steady stare. “So, what are you here to do? Are you an absolute psychopath, too?”

Markus chuckled darkly at that. “I’m not psychopathic, no. Just…vengeful.”

That last word was uttered with so much venom and desire, it practically turned my blood to ice. There was no denying that there was something ungodly about this guy, and it wasn’t just the devilishly good looks.

“Right,” was all I managed in reply.

“So, Ellen…” he said. His use of my name shocked me a little. I must have not noticed him when I’d been led onto the ship and forced to introduce myself after being deemed special enough not to murder. “It probably goes without saying, but it’s best not to trust Lee…or any of his people. They’re kind of anarchic. Anti-establishment. A little evil. At the very least, really weird.”

“Yeah, I gathered that,” I replied. “It’s pretty clear to me that I can’t trust anyone on this ship.”

Markus looked like he wanted to protest, or like he wanted to promise me that I could trust him, but he seemed to think better of it. At least he wasn’t a liar.

“It’s a good idea, generally, not to trust anyone,” was his confirmation.

I frowned at him. “You really think that?”

Markus sighed. “Can’t trust anyone but yourself.”

I thought that was a pretty sad way to look at the world, but I decided to keep my opinion to myself.

A sudden knock on the door, sharper and louder than Markus’ had been, caused both of us to stand up in surprise. Whoever it was didn’t bother waiting for me to tell them to come in before they opened up the door.

“Hi, Ellen,” said the intruder. “My name is L- oh, hello, Markus! What are you doing in here? Chatting up the pretty prisoner?”

I glared at the pompous asshole with his stupid blue hair. So, I was still technically a prisoner.

Markus shot Lee an equally demonic glare, only Lee seemed to actually be affected by it coming from him. Lee was, clearly, a human just like me. Whatever Markus was, Lee knew better than to challenge him too strongly.

Lee sniffed and wandered over toward me, clipboard in hand. He was alone, and I didn’t see any handcuffs, so I figured I wasn’t totally doomed yet.

“Prin- I mean, Markus… Would you be so kind as to give me and Miss Moore some privacy?”

Markus rolled his eyes, but stomped toward the door anyway. He shot me one last backward glance, as if to remind me what we’d just discussed, before ducking out of the room and disappearing.

I turned to Lee, my arms crossed against my chest in a defensive stance.

“Now, Miss Moore,” said Lee, flopping down onto the edge of the bed and tapping his clipboard with excitement. “We have much to discuss.”

Chapter 5

Choices

Ellen

Lee was making himself at home in my makeshift prison cell. He settled back on the bed, leaning against the headboard casually as he flipped through the papers on the clipboard. I decided to keep my distance, taking up Markus’ abandoned chair by the tiny desk.

“So, Miss Moore,” said Lee, offering me a patronizing smile. “Tell me about yourself.”

I fought the urge to tell him where to shove that stupid clipboard.

“First of all,” I snapped. “You can call me Ellen. No need for formalities if I’m your prisoner, after all.”

Lee chuckled, but the sound wasn’t necessarily pleasant.

“Alright then, Ellen,” he replied. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to ask you a few questions. Your cooperation would be appreciated.”

Something told me my cooperation was actually non-negotiable.

Lee didn’t wait for me to give any indication that I agreed, glancing down at the clipboard while tutting his tongue in thought.

“Where were you born?” he asked.

“New York City,” I answered. “Or what remains of it, at least.”

“So, you were born on planet Earth?”

“Um, yeah?”

“In what year?”

“2763.”

“Hmm,” he replied. “And your parents?”

“What about them?” I practically growled. Obviously, my family was a bit of a touchy subject at the moment. Lee clearly didn’t care.

“They were also born on Earth in the twenty-eighth century BCE?”

“As far as I know.”

“And what do you do for work?” was the next question.

I furrowed my brow, snorting quietly. “For work?”

“Yes, what is your career? How do you make money?”

But, Lee was mistaken. I wasn’t stupid; it wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he was asking. My issue with giving him an accurate answer lay in the fact that it had been a long time since any of us on Earth used real money, let alone earned it in any type of formal career. What had once been a sophisticated capitalist world had dissolved into a primitive bartering system, and our jobs were simply the tasks and duties we had to perform in order to keep our small communities functioning well through the next handful of weeks.

“My work, I guess, is surviving,” I replied.

“Interesting.”

I wanted to knock my fist into his nose.

It was unlike me to think so violently, but something about this guy really irked me. Maybe it was the way his little minions had forced me and my villagers to our knees aboard the spaceship, and discussed our fates as if we weren’t real people. Maybe it was the way he would have happily handed me off to be the victim of that terrifying, soulless man with icy eyes. Or, maybe it was because the way he’d pressed that strange gun to my forehead had been cold and impersonal, like I was a cow about to be led to slaughter.

Whatever it was, all I knew was that I would have delighted in causing Lee any kind of pain. Maybe Markus would help me with that. I didn’t miss the annoyance that flared in his black eyes when Lee walked into my room.

Lee, totally unbothered by the waves of hatred rolling off me and in his direction, flipped to the next page on his clipboard. “Ellen, are you aware of what it means to be time lost?”

“Vaguely,” I replied, grateful that Markus had found me beforehand to explain a little. I hated being in situations where I was the one who knew less. Survival odds were greater if you had the upper hand, especially in terms of knowledge.

“Well, we grabbed a DNA sample when we picked you up,” he explained simply, as if he hadn’t just admitted to completely violating both my privacy and my autonomy. “According to our analysis, if you hadn’t ended up as one of the sole survivors of that crazy robot war, you could have been any number of things. In fact, there are currently a number of surviving timelines in which you, Ellen Moore, are flourishing.”

I listened carefully, trying to keep up and understand. This was all new to me, and it almost felt like I’d walked right into some kind of twisted nightmare where nothing made sense and all the childhood bedtime stories I’d heard as a kid were actually true.

Lee carried on in his explanation. “It seems that among the possibilities is a future for you as an award-winning artist, as well as an alien’s beautiful consort, and, perhaps most insanely, the President’s wife.”

“The President?”

“Yes. That is, of course, in a version of your country that still has a need for a formal presidency.”

“Of course,” I replied, inclining my head as if this was the most normal conversation I’d ever had.

“But, anyway, regardless of all that, the fact that you are time lost makes you quite a valuable…asset.”

I shifted in my chair nervously, but Lee was still focused on whatever was written on the paperwork in front of him. I didn’t like the way the word “asset” sounded coming out of his mouth, as if he’d been presented with the world’s greatest treasure, i.e. me.

Lee lifted his head and fixed me with a stare that wasn’t unkind, but wasn’t entirely pleasant either. “I have a need for a certain type of individual in my crew. Time-lost humans are incredibly useful, especially for our business… Your condition would allow you to enter into a variety of timelines and assist in our clients’ plans. It’s an ideal situation and you would, of course, be fairly compensated for your efforts.”

If I was understanding correctly, Lee wanted me to be like one of the crew members who had gone down onto Earth with the evil man that Markus had called Zik and helped him kidnap me and those nine others. Not only that, but from what it sounded like, I’d be expected to play an important role in any number of horrors that went on these types of fucked-up adventures.

Fair compensation aside, I could never sleep at night knowing that I contributed to other people’s suffering. I just wasn’t that kind of person.

“What if I refuse your offer?” I asked.

Lee sat up on the bed, flipping back to the front page on the clipboard.

“Ellen, I’ll be as clear as possible,” he began. “Time-lost people are rare, yes, but they are not impossible to find. I have access to as many timelines as the entire official Time Agency, and will happily spend the rest of my life hunting your type down.”

I was unable to look away from his chilling gaze. Icy gray eyes held me in place, frozen to my seat. Though they were both obviously dangerous, Markus’ eyes weren’t like Lee’s; there was something deep within them that was redeemable, I could tell.

“So, in short,” Lee continued. “You have two options. You accept my offer and join the Rogues, or I give Zik the good news that he can, in fact, have his tenth prisoner back.”

Join or die, essentially.

It wasn’t much of a choice, and he knew that.

I thought of my parents. From what I’d learned so far, they were doomed to be erased from the universe when these so-called federal Time Agents eradicated the ruined timeline. Did that mean they would also be erased from my memory? Was I fated to forget my entire family? Not only that, but would I have no choice but to never remember anyone I’d ever known growing up?

“I’m happy to give you some time to think about it,” offered Lee.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Oh, how kind of you.”

But, my rudeness didn’t bother him. In fact, he chuckled loudly at my response.

“Ah, she bites back!” he exclaimed. “If it counts for anything, Ellen, I do hope you join us.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Oh, one more thing, Ellen,” said Lee. He sat up and set the clipboard beside him on the bed, face down so I couldn’t catch a glimpse of whatever had been printed on it. I watched him fold his fingers together, the picture of practiced calm. “How do you know the Prince?”

“Who?”

Lee narrowed his eyes, visibly puzzled. “The Prince? Prince Markus? He was just in here.”

Prince Markus? He hadn’t mentioned that part.

“I don’t know him at all,” I answered. “He just came in here to say hello, I suppose.”

“To say hello?” Lee barked out a humorless laugh at that. “How funny.”

I made a mental note to interrogate Markus further about this alleged Prince status of his. It did make sense, though, when I really thought about it. The perfect posture, the delicate aura of arrogance, the practiced smirk.

“Well, Ellen Moore, allow me to give you some advice,” said Lee, standing up and making his way toward the door. I stood up as well, crossing my arms again. “That man? Markus? He doesn’t just say hello. He’s famous where he comes from…for being a royal trainwreck. Drugs… girls… Not to mention the fact that he’s now a criminal for engaging in the Dark Tourism network. And you seem like a sweet girl. Guard yourself, sweet pea.”

My chest tightened nervously. I’d been right; Markus wasn’t the greatest guy in the universe. Maybe he wasn’t even a great guy, period, given what Lee had said.

But Lee was also obviously biased. He didn’t seem to like Markus very much, likely because it was clear to any bystander that Markus could easily crush Lee like a bug. I had a strong feeling that Lee didn’t like being inferior to others.

“Thanks for the tip, sweet pea,” I replied, faking a smile.

Lee chuckled again.

He turned to go, but paused before turning the knob. “Please do think about my offer.”

His offer. Become a time-lost minion of his and help people around the galaxy live out their worst, most horrible fantasies. Do that, or die. It wouldn’t be just any death, either. I was certain it would be a slow, dreadful death.

I had no choice if I wanted to survive this, and surviving was all I knew.

As he opened the door, I took a step toward him. “Wait.”

Lee grinned and glanced over his shoulder at me, giving me a look that said he already knew what I was about to say.

“I accept your offer,” I told him.

His grin doubled in size. “Wonderful! I’ll come collect you tomorrow to begin your training. In the meantime, enjoy free reign of the ship, but do steer clear of our clients. They’re a nasty bunch.”

With a wink, Lee stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

In the silence that followed, all I could manage was a quiet sigh.

Sometimes we had to do things we didn’t want to in order to survive. As I turned to gaze out of the enormous window that stretched the entire length of the far wall and took in the sight of the galaxy stretched out before me, all pitch black sky and twinkling stars, I told myself that the only thing that mattered at that moment was that Lee believed that I’d willingly accepted his offer and that I was happy to work with him.

It was the only way I’d convince him to trust me, even if it was only a little bit. It was the only way I’d find a way to get off this ship. Maybe, in the meantime, during whatever this supposed training entailed, I could even learn how to get back to my timeline and save my parents before my entire world was destroyed.

And maybe, just maybe, I’d have the opportunity to get to know this mysterious Prince Markus a little better.

Chapter 6

Mother

Markus

A day passed before I saw Ellen again.

I’d searched the ship for her, just to make sure Lee and the other Rogues hadn’t changed their minds and given her up to Zik after all. I had to keep asking myself why I cared so much. What did it matter if some silly, inconsequential human girl was handed off to a torturer? Especially since Zik had, in fact, paid good money for the opportunity to torture her.

But there was something about her. I couldn’t shake the thought of her. Those dark curls, emerald eyes. She was brave, for such a fragile creature. She fascinated me.

After half a day, I’d stooped low enough to ask Rosa if she’d seen her. If Rosa was right about knowing everything that happened in the galaxy, surely she would also know everything that went on in a single ship.

Rosa had given me a look; half curiosity, half amusement. It wasn’t as if she was judging me for being obsessed with the human, but more so like she was invested in witnessing how this situation turned out in the end. Then, she’d told me that she saw Ellen coming and going from the central command chambers of the Rogues, looking a little exhausted, but definitely unharmed.

I wished I didn’t feel so relieved at hearing she was okay. It would make this trip a lot easier if I could stop thinking about her and get on with the business I’d come here to do in the first place.

We’d already landed in the second dark tourist’s fantasy world. It hadn’t been far from Ellen’s version of Earth. It was a barren, red planet, almost completely devoid of life. We’d watched in confusion as the man named Ryan wandered out onto the planet. According to the factsheet, the planet had been uninhabitable for humans for as long as it existed, but that a scattering of scaly, serpentine aliens had landed and claimed it as their own about a century ago.

But Ryan wasn’t like the serpents. I was pretty sure he was just as human as Lee. As Ellen.

“What in the galaxy is this fool doing?” asked Rosa, mostly under her breath as we stood beside the old couple, Patty and Paul, at the windows in the common room. Ryan had stepped down onto the fiery sand of the mostly abandoned planet and lay down in the dust, closing his eyes.

When the engines of the ship started up again immediately, I had to admit to being thoroughly confused, and grabbed a nearby Rogue for an explanation.

“Sir,” said the silver-haired girl, her small white t pin glowing under the lights as the ship prepared to take off after such a short stop. “He wished to be erased within a timeline. It’s scheduled for destruction in just a few hours.”

“Oh, my,” Patty, the elderly woman tourist, had breathed.

I had noticed that the Ryan fellow was a little quiet and that a strange, sad aura followed him around. I wondered briefly what he’d experienced in his life to want to meet such an unpleasant end. Not only did he want to die, but he wanted to be totally erased. He wanted no one to retain a single memory of him. Even us, the rest of the dark tourists, would forget about him as soon as the Time Agents came down to destroy the red planet’s ruined, serpent-infested timeline.

But I decided not to concern myself with such a foolish thought process. I’d hated my life plenty of times through the past few decades, but not once had I ever considered ending it. The option hadn’t even occurred to me.

I supposed people dealt with their pain in different ways. Some of us elected to die, others simply chose to kill their entire family.

Anyway, between that small adventure and my thoughts of Ellen, the previous day had passed incredibly quickly, and now we were in Rosa’s chosen timeline.

I was alone in the common room, sitting at a couch right beside the window. Rosa had rolled her eyes when I told her I was eager to see what nonsense she got up to, but hadn’t said anything. Paul and Patty had disappeared off into their room, likely to prepare for their timeline, which was coming up next.

Rosa’s chosen timeline was on her planet. Hers and Zik’s, actually. It wasn’t far from my home planet, only about a day’s journey. Dominated largely by witch-like aliens who had the strange ability to control certain elements, and a scattering of highly-intelligent humans, Rosa’s planet didn’t seem to be very ruined in this timeline. In fact, it looked almost exactly the same as the handful of times I’d visited it myself.

I chewed my lip, thinking up all the possibilities as we touched down on a modest airship base.

“This seat taken?”

A feminine voice caused me to jump halfway out of my skin and I looked over to find Ellen standing by the couch, arms crossed nervously over her chest. I hadn’t even heard her approach. Human women were far quieter than others.

I cleared my throat and shook my head, wordlessly offering her the space next to me.

“Where are we?” asked Ellen.

Tall golden spires shot up to the sky in the distance; glittering buildings that stood by sheer elemental power alone. The sky was unnaturally blue, the greenery and flora oddly bright and luscious. I imagined it probably looked like a dream to someone like Ellen, who came from a ruined technological wasteland of a planet.

“It’s called Londi,” I told her. “Nice place, isn’t it?”

“It’s beautiful,” she replied quietly.

I stole a sideways glance at her, trying not to be obvious. She didn’t notice. She was enamored by the city outside the ship. Diamond pavement and shimmering platinum vehicles glistened in the sunlight, throwing rainbows of light into the common room. No one seemed bothered by the presence of our ship.

“What could possibly be ruined about this?” Ellen murmured.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I admitted.

I held up the factsheet for her to see and she took it from my hands.

“Enemies… Earth shifters? Destroy the planet with their rivalry,” Ellen read quietly to herself. “What’s an Earth shifter?”

I shrugged. “These people… You see them?” I gestured to the tall, willowy aliens walking the streets in the distance, faces stoic and calm. “They can manipulate the elements. Earth, air, water, fire. Seems like a few of them got a little power-hungry and ripped apart their utopia in the process.”

“Hmm,” was all Ellen said in response, setting the factsheet down between us and leaning forward more in her seat. Her eyes were bright and curious. I found myself thinking that maybe she’d found her calling with the Rogues, that maybe she could do well. Maybe she would even flourish, with all this opportunity to see the farthest corners of the galaxies and all the timelines in between.

But not all timelines were as pleasant as Rosa’s was. In fact, for all I knew, Rosa was just as ruthless and demonic as the rest of us. Who knew what she was up to down there on her pretty planet? It couldn’t all be magic and wonder. After all, Zik was from the same place.

“So, what’s your master plan?” Ellen asked while we waited to see what would happen.

I tensed. For some reason, I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want her to look upon me with her pure, kind eyes while I admitted my darkness. It would feel too much like a divine judgment.

“Haven’t the Rogues told you?” I replied. “You’re not supposed to ask that question.”

Ellen snorted. “Oh, come on, dragon Prince… What evil are you hatching?”

I cringed. So, she’d been told the truth about me.

I was going to murder Lee. How difficult was it to keep someone’s identity a secret?

“I, um… I read about you,” Ellen continued. “They gave me access to the intergalactic media files. It’s been fascinating, actually. But, you… You seem like you have a lot of, um, fun.”

I sighed heavily. “It’s really none of your business.”

Even I was surprised by the coldness in my voice. Ellen shied away slightly, visibly disturbed by the darkness in my tone. Still, she didn’t run away.

Courageous to a fault, maybe.

Thankfully, the awkwardness was cut off by Rosa’s reappearance. Through the window, Ellen and I watched in silence as she approached the ship, a small bundle of blankets in her arms. A handful of Rogue agents met her outside the ship. I pressed my face to the glass and craned my neck to watch as Lee held the time-lost sensing gun to the blankets. A flash of green burst from the gun, just like it had when it had been held to Ellen’s head.

“Is that a baby?” gasped Ellen.

I stiffened at the thought.

Not a single dark tourist on this ship was a good person. We were, by definition, criminals. We were accomplices in a massive, intergalactic conspiracy against the Time Agency. We were not supposed to be infiltrating ruined timelines, let alone doing the horrible things we had planned in them.

Though Rosa had been kind to me, she had a roughness about her. A strange darkness that echoed the darkness within me. Perhaps that was why I found myself wanting to trust her.

If Rosa had been after a time-lost baby, it couldn’t be good.

But, Ellen was smiling.

Rosa climbed the steps into the ship and disappeared from view, the bundle still in her arms.

“They said she’d been searching for years,” Ellen whispered, sitting back down on the couch. Her eyes glistened slightly, as if she was going to cry. “I heard Lee talking to another Rogue. Rosa’s baby… She died. Well, she died in her original timeline. I guess she lost her mind a little, started researching all this time-travel stuff, and she found out there was a timeline in which her child not only lived, but was time-lost. She could take her out of the timeline, alive and well.”

Oh.

Instantly, I felt wracked with guilt. Something worse, too. Shame, maybe. Here I was, plotting the death of my family, making nice with a woman who I assumed to be just as fucked up as I was, only to find out that she was a Dark Tourism veteran only because she’d been combing through timelines searching for her once-lost child.

There were few times in my life when I truly saw myself as a monster. They were brief moments; fleeting. But it was what I felt in that moment.

Ellen offered me a smile, misunderstanding my silence for emotion at what we had just witnessed.

“I guess not all of you are terrible,” she murmured.

I could see in her eyes that she was hoping that statement was true for me.

But, it wasn’t.

I was terrible. I was a monster.

Ellen would figure that out eventually. She’d run far and fast. And she would be much better off because of it.

Chapter 7

Quantum

Ellen

I had a lot to learn, that much was obvious.

The Rogues were, surprisingly, very thorough and patient in their instruction. I didn’t know what I expected. Operating such an extensive dark network of time travel undetected by the Time Agency required extreme intelligence and gracefulness. Of course the Rogues would be smart. Of course they would want to make sure I understood what was going on. They couldn’t afford to have any new recruits mess everything up.

However, I hadn’t accepted Lee’s offer with the intent to join them loyally. I’d done it because it was the only way I was going to survive this trip. Thankfully, after just two days of informal lessons, I was beginning to gather enough information to begin formulating my escape. I just wanted to be able to take the Rogues down on my way out.

It would be tricky. The Rogues were smart. Lee himself was frighteningly clever. It was almost as if he could read minds.

However, that wasn’t true. He was just a human. He wasn’t like those elemental aliens I saw yesterday, or a powerful, regal dragon like Markus. He didn’t have any special powers, though I could tell he wished he did. No, Lee’s only advantages were perfectly human. Intelligence. Wit. Astuteness.

“Ellen? Can we focus?” Lee said, waving a hand in front of my face.

I rolled my eyes at him. “I was just thinking.”

“About your pretty dragon boy?”

Lee was such a pest. Like the older brother I’d never had and was now happy to do without.

“He’s hardly mine,” I snapped in reply, settling back in my chair. “I can tell he’s up to no good. I’ll steer clear of that.”

Lee snorted. Clearly, he knew what Markus was on this trip to do. I desperately wanted to know, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to give up my ignorance. What if it was just as horrible as Zik’s torture fantasies?

But, what if it wasn’t? What if he was simply after a happiness as pure and whole as Rosa’s dream of finding her child again?

“Let me offer some advice,” Lee said, leaning across the table and smirking at me coldly. I fought the urge to spit at him. Something about his stupid face made me want to rip the blue hair from his head and shove it down his throat.

I supposed there was a darkness in all of us.

“Advice?” I asked.

“Mhm,” Lee replied, his smirk growing more pronounced. “Don’t waste your time thinking that the Prince is a good person. You must be dreaming, hoping, wishing, that despite the parties and the drugs and the women, that he’s redeemable. Believe me when I say, he isn’t. His Royal Highness comes from a long line of formidable, murderous, bloodthirsty dragon royalty. There’s a reason his surname is feared far beyond the boundaries of his own planet. Even if the Prince were an upstanding citizen, he’d still have darkness in his veins.”

My blood chilled slightly at Lee’s words.

But, still, I couldn’t believe him. People weren’t purely dark, just like they weren’t ever purely light. Even me… I knew I had a dark side. Maybe it wasn’t as strong as Markus’ dark side, but it was still there. So, despite all of Lee’s provocative declarations about Markus’ evilness, I was certain there had to be light in him.

Even Lee… There had to be something good in him. I just had to find it. Expose it. Use it to my advantage.

“Your concern for my wellbeing is touching,” I replied, keeping my voice light and unbothered. Lee chuckled and shook his head. I knew he could tell that I was pretending at remaining casual, but that very acting amused him. I figured it was best to keep him entertained, rather than disinterested or disappointed. I still feared I’d be tossed in with Zik’s other victims.

“Can I continue with the lesson?” asked the other Rogue agent at the table. She was a pretty girl with long silver hair and black eyes. Some kind of alien, but with mostly human features and abilities. She was obedient when it came to Lee, but I could also tell she wasn’t his number one fan. It was more useful information that I stowed away for later use.

Lee shrugged, the annoying look of superiority still stuck on his face. I had a feeling he was born with that expression. “Proceed.”

The Rogue girl, named Loretta, gestured to a small digital tablet on the table in front of us.

“So, Ellen,” she said. “This is the Quantum drive. It’s a Time Agency invention. It houses highly sensitive information and data; it’s the most confidential material in the known universe.”

“Not that confidential if you all got your hands on it,” I replied.

Lee snorted.

“Yes, well, we have some very skilled hackers on our side,” replied Loretta. “Our access to the Quantum drive is how we find ruined timelines that are scheduled for destruction. It’s also how we track the location of official Time Agents, so that we can be sure not to run into them when traveling through time and space.”

“You must also have Rogues on the inside,” I commented.

Loretta stiffened. “You’re clever.”

“She’s more than clever,” muttered Lee.

“Yes,” sighed Loretta. “We do have a limited number of Time Agents that we pay handsomely for their help, loyalty and secrecy. It’s a delicate, risky relationship. It’s one of the reasons why we benefit so much from particularly wealthy clients. It allows us to pay off the necessary people so that we can stay in business.”

Particularly wealthy clients. Like Markus. Why did everything go back to him?

“So, even away from Earth, money is the driving force for everything,” I sighed.

“I suppose so,” Loretta replied. “Now, let me show you how to use the search feature in the drive.”

Quietly and dutifully, I sat and watched Loretta go through an extensive tutorial on using the Time Agency’s Quantum drive. She showed me how to search according to planet, time period and how to scan through a variety of timelines.

The Rogues had an elaborate, sophisticated system of marking timelines for their clients. The federal Time Agents flagged timelines that were ruined, using their own algorithm for figuring out which ones weren’t worth saving. There were more obvious indicators, like what had happened in my timeline. Devastating war, famine and plague were clear triggers for destruction. But some timelines were also destroyed because they were too similar to another, with only a few key differences that would eventually lead to it imploding on its own. In order to avoid too-similar timelines continuing on alongside each other and messing up the time-space continuum, the Time Agents would have to determine which timeline deserved to survive and which one could stand to be destroyed.

It was all incredibly complicated, and I knew I could study these theories for years before I had any true understanding of the intricate details. Still, I wasn’t looking to be an expert. All I needed was to know enough to get myself out of here and shut these criminals down.

Something nagged at the back of my mind. I realized that if I exposed Lee’s operation to the real Time Agents, the intergalactic government would probably be able to get access to the Rogues’ extensive list of clients. Then, surely they would go after anyone who had ever paid the Rogues for their illegal services.

That meant Rosa would probably get in trouble, even though all she’d ever wanted was to be a mother again.

It also meant that Markus would be arrested for his crimes. Of course, he probably had enough money and influence to avoid too harsh of a sentence, and if he really was on this trip to do something horrifying, maybe it was for the best to turn him in…but I still couldn’t bring myself to see him as a totally bad person.

“So, how do they actually destroy a timeline?” I asked, leaning over the tablet and taking in an entire universe - literally - of information before me.

“It’s a fragile process,” Lee answered. “And unpleasant. We’re quite happy we don’t have anything to do with that part.”

Loretta pursed her lips. “The Quantum drive is equipped with a specific type of software designed by a human scientist. It allows the Time Agents to literally unwind time. It simply unravels, dissolving into nothing. Just small particles, floating around space.”

My stomach twisted at the explanation. The reality that such a thing would happen to my timeline, my parents, everyone I’d ever known, made me feel sick. I had to figure out a way to have a moment alone with the Quantum drive, so that I could find the scheduled date of destruction for my timeline. Maybe I could put a stop to it, or at least save my parents beforehand.

My list of tasks was becoming scarily long. Escape the Rogues, expose them for the monstrous criminals they were, try to stop thinking about a certain handsome dragon Prince and somehow save a ruined timeline.

I had my work cut out for me.

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” said Loretta.

“I’ll walk you to your room,” Lee said, standing up at the same time as me. I narrowed my eyes at him, but allowed him to lead me out of the central control chambers. I didn’t bother mentioning that I knew the way; Lee wasn’t doing this out of courtesy. He simply wanted to play with his newest toy for a little bit longer.

“Us humans really should stick together,” Lee sighed as we approached my room.

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t pretend like you care at all about other humans. You fed nine of them to that monster.” I gestured with my hand to the farthest end of the hall, where we all knew the torture chamber was. That entire section of the ship was avoided by almost everyone. No one wanted to be anywhere near Zik and his twisted tortures.

But Lee only laughed. “You’re right.”

Crossing my arms across my chest, I leaned up against my door, clearly indicating that Lee didn’t need to take a single step further.

“You cross your arms when you feel threatened,” he commented, nodding his head in the direction of my chest.

With a glare, I forced myself to drop my arms to my sides. “You’re such a sociopath.”

“Hmm,” was all he said in reply. “It’s an unconscious maneuver, you crossing your arms. Almost like the deepest corners of your mind are able to connect the dots between what is dangerous and what you need to defend yourself from it. But, still, your conscious mind tends to dwell on the possibility of peril. As if you crave it.”

I snorted. “I crave peril?”

“You crave darkness.”

Lee knew he was right, but I couldn’t bear to give him the satisfaction.

So, instead, I placed my hands on my hips and raised a single eyebrow at him. “And you… You’re a sadistic, money-hungry, psychopathic criminal who reaps monetary rewards from the torture fantasies of murderous monsters.”

“Yes,” he replied, smiling slightly. “You are correct.”

With a huff, I yanked open my door and made to slam it in his face. But, before I could, Lee called out after me from the hallway.

“You do know how to turn a phrase, Ellen Moore,” he said, voice dripping in sarcastic delight. “It’s no wonder you were a writer in another timeline.”

I’d had enough of the time-lost talk. It freaked me out, imagining all the possibilities that other versions of myself were experiencing at this very moment. Lee seemed to gain endless amusement from making me feel disturbed.

So, instead of responding, I slammed the door in his face.

Chapter 8

Tenth

Markus

A loud banging on the door to my room woke me from a deep sleep. I sat up with a start, shaking off the fading wisps of the dream I’d been steeped in; all I could remember were a pair of bright green eyes and the ghost of an angelic smile.

I growled in response to the knocking, and whoever it was took it as an invitation to open the door.

Lee’s second-in-command, a girl with silver hair whose name I couldn’t remember, poked her head in.

“Can I fucking help you?” I snapped, my voice thick with sleep as I angrily tossed my legs over the side of the bed and sat up properly.

“Sir,” she said, shrewd eyes tinged with only the barest hint of fear at the sight of a grouchy dragon shifter. “We need you in the command center.”

“What?”

“Something’s…come up.”

I sighed heavily, but nodded in response. “Give me a minute.”

“I’ll be just outside,” she replied quietly.

With a groan, I stood up and grabbed the shirt that was hanging on the back of the desk chair and tugged it on. It snagged slightly on my back and I frowned, feeling the itch of my dragon wings yearning to burst free. As far as I knew, no one else in my family seemed to have the same problem of having to fight back their more monstrous physical form like this. I’d only seen my sisters and my mother as dragons a handful of times, and even the men in my family preferred their more human side.

For me, it was like a constant nagging. A strange, dark power that was impossible to ignore, always begging to be set free.

Soon, I told my dark side. Soon, you can be free.

I shoved my feet into a pair of boots and stomped out into the hallway, shooting the Rogue lady a glare.

“This way,” she said simply, leading me down the hall. We took a left just before Zik’s gross torture chamber and stopped at a plain door marked with a white X. I watched as the girl placed her palm on a sensor and it ding-ed happily once, then twice. I thought that alone unlocked it, but then she had to type in an extensive password into the keypad that I couldn’t follow even with my quick eyes. I wondered why they bothered telling us to avoid the doors marked like this if none of us dark tourists even knew the passwords to get in anyway. It was probably just another way for Lee to assert himself as the leader. Pompous ass.

This part of the ship was crawling with Rogues. There were dozens, way more than I originally thought. I followed the girl quietly through rows of Rogues at computer screens, bent over tablets, reading printouts of data, monitoring whatever mess of information was spilling out in front of them. None of it meant anything to me, and I was fine with not understanding the details. As long as they got me to a timeline where I could feel the twisted pleasure of killing my family, I’d be a happy customer.

“Hey, Loretta,” called one of the Rogues. “Where’s your trainee?”

I made a mental note to remember this one’s name. Loretta. I glanced at her as she shot her colleague a quick smile.

“Mind your business, Richard,” she replied, though her voice was playful. The Rogue named Richard snorted and turned back to his computer, but not without shooting me a nervous glance.

“In here,” Loretta said, gesturing me into what looked like a small conference room, but with one wall made entirely of a busy computer screen.

Immediately, I noticed Ellen sitting at the table beside Lee, tapping her pen against the tablet in front of her. She wore all black, and though she hadn’t been given a small t pin yet, she looked just like the rest of the Rogues. Except, not completely. She had too much light in her eyes. Too much kindness.

Lee stood up at the sight of me, but not out of respect. It was more like the dramatic flourish of a circus master, as if I were his favorite animal to parade around the ring. His most well-paying customer to date.

“Prince Markus,” he said, sweeping into a mocking bow with a devious grin. I fought the urge to pounce on him and rip his heart out. “We have some interesting information for you. Please sit.”

Loretta remained standing, moving over to the screens, but gestured for me to take the seat next to Ellen.

Why the hell did I suddenly feel so timid in her presence?

“Hey,” she said, offering me a sweet smile that I definitely didn’t deserve.

“Hey,” I replied, curving my lips into the closest mirror of her expression as I could manage. Lee caught the exchange and snorted to himself. Much to my amusement, Ellen rolled her eyes at the sound. She looked like she wanted to murder Lee almost as much as I did.

Maybe she wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies, after all. That was promising.

“What’s up?” I asked. “Why’d you drag my ass out of bed? Did you do this with the others?”

“You were sleeping?” asked Lee. “It’s noon.”

I shot him a look.

“Sir, it’s just that…we’ve located a ruined timeline for you to enter in which your family exists in much the same way as they do in your original timeline,” began Loretta, barely glancing up from whatever was in front of her. “There’s just some information we feel the need to impart on you before we go. Ellen can explain; it was her first task to find this timeline for you.”

Brow furrowed in confusion, I glanced over at Ellen.

She offered me another small smile and then glanced down at the tablet, tapping her pen even more rapidly.

“Well,” said Ellen, biting her lip. “Markus… It seems that this timeline has been watched closely by the Time Agency for decades. With a high-profile family like yours, this is perfectly normal. They like to make sure that any parallel timelines are stable. So, um, they’ve put a lot of research into this ruined one. They’ve been able to predict the outcome… Which is why it’s going to be destroyed.”

I wanted to tell her to just get to the point, but something about her nervous rambling was slightly endearing. I watched as Ellen met my eyes briefly, blushed, and then looked back down at the tablet with a frown.

“So, what’s the problem?” I asked.

“It seems...” said Lee, cutting off Ellen, “...in this ruined timeline we’re headed for, there’s a tenth heir.”

I froze.

Markus Aurelius Alin III, youngest Prince of the Dragon King’s blood, ninth in line to the throne.

Ninth.

Last in line.

“Tenth?” I practically choked.

Lee looked far too entertained at the sight of my reaction.

“Yes,” replied Ellen, her voice gentle. “A Princess. She’ll be thirteen when we enter the timeline, as it seems the Time Agency is set to destroy the timeline just before her fifteenth birthday.”

“What happens on her fifteenth birthday?”

Lee snickered. Even Loretta cleared her throat awkwardly.

Ellen, who had no idea what my plans were, who had no clue what was going on in general, reached over and placed a hand on top of mine. I tensed in surprise, not used to such a tender sentiment. She was comforting me.

“Markus… She…” Ellen sighed. “This Princess… She…”

Lee huffed in exasperated impatience and leaned across the table toward me with a wicked smirk. “The little girl kills her entire family. Your entire family.”

“Oh,” was all I could manage.

The universe had a twisted way of operating. Here I was in my own timeline, the ninth heir, filled with a hatred for my family so strong that I was traveling through time and space to kill them, only to stumble upon another timeline where a tenth heir is predicted to beat me to the punch. There was a strange symmetry to it.

“She kills…everyone?” I asked.

“Yes,” replied Loretta. “Including you.”

“Interesting,” I responded, nodding slowly.

I almost wanted to meet this fourth murderous sister of mine. I was pretty sure I’d like her a lot more than the rest of my sisters, that was for sure.

But, of course, she killed me. Or, rather, she was going to kill me.

What a bitch.

The others were silent, watching me. Loretta observed my reaction coolly, Lee remained smirking and Ellen still had her hand on top of mine, biting her lower lip nervously. In the very back of my mind, I wondered what it would be like to bite that lip of hers, to taste her.

I needed to focus.

I cleared my throat and squared my shoulders to the three of them, sitting up straight in the chair like a proper royal.

“And there’s no other timeline?” I asked.

Ellen shook her head and took away her hand to scroll through the information on the tablet. I immediately wished for her touch to return. “There are only two timelines in which the Alin dragons exist, at least as royals. The original one, or the one this version of yourself is from, and…the one where the tenth heir kills everyone.”

“I see,” I replied.

“The good news is,” added Lee. “We can get you in there before the Princess goes psycho teen girl assassin on your entire family...”

I flinched, knowing the next words that were about to come out his mouth.

“...so that you can kill them before she does.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Ellen sit up straight in her chair. Her pen dropped to the table with a clatter as she stiffened, practically turning to stone before our eyes.

Lee pretended to gasp aloud. “Oh, Ellen! You didn’t know?”

I sighed quietly and forced myself to meet her gaze. She looked horrified.

I told myself it was for the best. She was better off seeing me as a monster. She would be safer that way, and far happier. Dealing with a darkness like mine was not anything anyone should have to do with their lives.

Still, I felt an odd pang in my chest at the look in her eyes.

“That’s what you’re here to do?” she asked, her voice so quiet that it was almost inaudible. “To kill your family?”

“Ellen, as Rogues, we don’t pass judgment on our-” Loretta began.

“What did I tell you?” Lee said, interrupting his second-in-command with a flutter of his hand. Loretta’s eyes flashed angrily, but she quieted. “The Prince is not the dashing hero you think he is.”

I shot Lee a glare, but he was focused on Ellen’s reaction. As if he were trying to drink it in, like he gained power from the satisfaction of watching her interest in me turn into pure hatred.

I may have been a fledgling murderer, but Lee was truly sick in the head.

Ellen stood up from the table. “I just need a minute,” she said, mostly to Loretta.

Loretta pursed her lips in disappointment, but nodded anyway. Then, without another glance in my direction, Ellen hurried out of the room, hand pressed to her chest.

“Well, anyway,” sighed Lee. “We’ll set our course for the crazy dragon Princess timeline, yeah?”

With a frustrated growl, I snatched up Ellen’s abandoned pen and tossed it at Lee’s head. He dodged it at the last second, the perfect smirk still affixed to his face like it was painted on.

“Whatever,” I snapped, standing up and storming out.

Chapter 9

Impulse

Ellen

There was something seriously wrong with me.

I’d stormed out of the conference room when I’d learned the truth about Markus’ presence on this ship, acting as if I were personally offended by the dark desires of a man I barely knew.

Because that was the truth. I barely knew him. Sure, I found myself unbearably attracted to him and desperately searching for a goodness that I could feel within him, but I didn’t really know that much about him. I knew he was a party boy, a little reckless, and kind of childish. Spoiled, entitled and spiteful.

But was he really a killer? Could Markus really be capable of murder? And not just any murder, but the murder of his entire family?

And, if he was, why the hell was I knocking on his door?

I must have had a death wish.

I stood outside the door of his room, hand raised to the metal as I knocked timidly.

“What now?” he called angrily. I resisted the urge to turn and run away.

The stomping of his boots came closer as he approached the other side of the door and then yanked it open, the heavy iron relenting easily under his dragon-fueled strength.

“Oh,” he said, most of the annoyance immediately melting off his face. “Sorry. I thought it was Lee.”

Against my better judgment, I let a small laugh escape. “Yeah, I feel the same way about him.”

The look in his eyes was hard to read. It was defiant, as if daring me to judge him. I had a feeling he was used to wearing that expression, that he’d come to expect harsh criticism from pretty much everyone in his life. But, there was also something soft underneath it. Something nervous, as if he actually cared what my judgment on him was.

I was probably reading too much into it. They were just eyes, not windows to the soul. That was just poetic bullshit.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“Um, sure.”

Markus stood aside, letting me into the room. It was surprisingly tidy. I’d imagined a room with an unmade bed, strewn with clothes and maybe a few empty vodka bottles. Maybe my party boy stereotypes were a little inaccurate. After all, I didn’t have much to go off of in my world. We were all too busy trying to survive to have the time or energy to party like Markus did.

Markus offered me a soft lounge chair by the window. His room was slightly more luxurious than mine, clearly designed with a royal guest in mind. Still, it was pretty basic. If these Rogues really wanted to start taking on more high profile clientele, they seriously needed to consider better accommodations.

I sat down, but Markus remained standing, crossing his arms in front of his chest. I thought briefly of what Lee said to me yesterday, about how I crossed my arms when I felt threatened. Asshole.

“What are you doing here?” asked Markus.

I looked down at my hands.

“I was kind of hoping I could convince you to…to not…”

Markus exhaled sharply. “To not kill my family?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I guess.”

“What makes you think you have the power to convince me of anything?” he practically growled. “You’re just some human girl. You can’t just waltz in and tell me what you think is best for me.”

I pursed my lips. “You’re such a child.”

His eyes flashed with anger. “I’m a child?”

“You’re so petulant!” I replied, raising my voice slightly and throwing up my hands in exasperation. “Someone tries to be even slightly contrarian to you, and you just throw a temper tantrum!”

Markus simply humphed in response, which certainly didn’t help his argument.

But, I was on a roll. “What the hell is wrong with you anyway? Killing your family? Do you even know how lucky you are to have a family? Do you know how many people back on my planet had to grow up without their families because they were killed in the war? Do you even realize that I’m not even going to see my parents ever again?”

Markus appeared to be shocked into silence.

But then he leaned against the wall and rolled his eyes, shaking his head at the floor.

“Just because some people don’t have families, doesn’t mean that I have to love mine,” he replied, his voice deadly quiet. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

In that single sentence, I could sense his pain. A lifetime of neglect, of being cast aside like he was worthless and unimportant. I assumed that was the pain felt by the murderous tenth heir in his ruined timeline, and that he shared that pain with her. He was right; I couldn’t imagine what that was like. I was lucky enough to have two parents that I loved. But feeling hurt wasn’t an excuse for murder.

“That may be true,” I replied, “but you don’t know what something like that will do to you.”

“What do you mean?” He still sounded pissed, but at least he was still talking and hadn’t thrown me out of the room yet.

I stood up and approached him by the wall, standing as close as I dared.

“I mean that we all have dark impulses,” I told him, returning my voice to my normal, gentle tone. “We all have darkness in us. Even me. And sometimes it’s good to indulge in the darkness a little bit; it can be good for us. But, giving in to it completely? There’s a serious danger in unlocking our darkest impulses. Sometimes they’re better left buried.”

Something sparked in his dark eyes, and I thought for the smallest of seconds that I was getting through to him. I could tell he was listening to me, that my words weren’t just going in one ear and out the other, but he was still a stubborn young Prince. He wasn’t used to taking the advice of others, or doing anything other than what he pleased.

“I understand what you’re telling me,” he answered, “but, I need to do this.”

I sighed in frustration and reached out to touch his arm. He tensed at the contact, but didn’t shove me off. It was definitely stupid to corner a literal dragon the way that I was, yet something told me Markus wasn’t interested in hurting me. Maybe my survival instincts were broken.

“Think about Zik, though,” I replied. “He has incredibly dark impulses, and he gives into them. He tortures people for fun, Markus. And when he goes back to his planet and his timeline, he’s fine for a little bit, sure. But he keeps craving it. He can’t stop himself from giving in, from being dark. He’s never satisfied… What if you kill your family and then you can’t stop? What if you just start killing anyone and everyone who hurts your feelings?”

Markus scoffed.

“Or,” I continued. “What if you kill your family and it haunts you forever?”

Before I even knew what was happening, Markus knocked my hand away and grabbed my shoulders. He spun us around so I was the one shoved against the wall.

I gasped as he stepped in close, hands pressed to the wall on either side of my head. My heart hammered in my chest, mostly from fear, but also from…something else.

A chill ran down my spine as I watched Markus’ eyes lighten from inky black to an unnatural golden-brown that flickered like fire. Flashes of red swirled in near the iris and my breath caught in my throat. Was he going to transform into his dragon form right here, in this close proximity?

Was I about to die?

Markus held my gaze with a ferocious glare, eyes dancing between black and hazel as if they couldn’t decide which form to take. He rolled his shoulders once, as if shaking off an annoying fly.

“When I take my true form, my dragon form, my wingspan is longer than this room,” he whispered, lips pressed close to my ear. I was frozen beneath him, torn between fight, flight and surrender. “My nails turn into talons, sharper than razors. My teeth sharpen, too. Like knives. My eyes turn red. I’m resistant to fire, almost indestructible. I could take down any entire building in seconds on my own. That’s how strong I am. That’s how dangerous I am.”

I swallowed hard, desperately wishing he would let me go.

And yet, goosebumps blossomed on my skin at our proximity.

“The dragon in me can smell the adrenaline in your veins right now,” he murmured. The tip of his nose skimmed my earlobe and I drew in a sharp breath, sinking back into the wall as if I could be absorbed into the cold metal. “I can practically taste it.”

I squeezed my eyes shut in terror as he lifted a hand to brush back a strand of hair from my face, worried that he was about to strike me. I couldn’t bring myself to speak; my voice was caught in my throat.

“I’m not some silly human with a broken mind like Zik,” he hissed. “I’m a dragon Prince, born of the most powerful bloodline the galaxy has seen in centuries. I don’t have dark impulses because I’m sick. I have dark impulses because that’s who I am.”

Because I clearly felt like dying at that moment, I shook my head and managed to choke out a single word.

“No.”

He chuckled, ducking his head so his breath fanned out across my collarbone. I thought of those knife-like teeth his mentioned as his mouth hovered barely an inch from my skin. Would he rip my throat out like some kind of vampire?

“No?” he repeated. “Listen to me, Ellen Moore. Don’t pretend to understand me. You will only be disappointed.”

“Markus Alin,” I breathed, somehow managing to find my voice. “How could I understand you? I don’t even think you understand yourself. I’m only trying to help you.”

Suddenly, both of his hands lifted from the wall around me and then slammed back down hard. I jumped, the blows just barely missing my head. He growled loudly and his eyes started to become golden again.

Christ. Learn to hold your tongue, Ellen Moore.

“I don’t need your help,” he grumbled in response.

I nodded. I couldn’t help it. He needed to hear that someone cared about his wellbeing, that someone was invested in his redemption. “Yes, you do.”

And then, Markus did the one thing I never expected him to.

I don’t even think he expected himself to do it.

He kissed me.

In the span of half a second, all his rage and frustration melted into something more raw and less easy to ignore. His lips, soft and supple, pressed to mine.

I was too shocked to respond at first, but my body caught up to what was happening before my mind did. And my body… It wanted him.

I thawed under his touch, hands reaching up around his neck as his body pressed against mine. He deepened the kiss with a quiet groan and we parted for a moment only to gasp in unison.

Around us, the ship disappeared. For all I knew, we were floating in open space, the stars twinkling around us, burning pure and bright.

As quickly as the moment started, it ended. Markus seemed to realize what he’d done and stumbled back, staring at me as if I was the one who’d completely lost it and then kissed him out of the blue.

“I…,” he said, clearly unable to form complete sentences any longer.

My breath was coming fast and my body yearned to be close to his again, but I knew what I needed to do.

I needed to leave. The survivor in me told me it was time to get out of that room.

So, I did. Without another word, I left Markus behind, still staring dumbly at the place where he’d had me pinned to the wall.

Chapter 10

Girl

Markus

In the dream, I was a child again.

It was my seventh birthday, and the castle was quiet. I had the endlessly unfortunate circumstance of being born in the same month as the first heir, Prince Ry. Every member of the Alin royal family was ten miles southeast on the seaside celebrating the twentieth birthday of the Crown Prince of the most powerful dragon shifter bloodline ever known. It would be a lavish celebration, an entire month of parties, galas and dinners. No expenses spared for the dashing, clever Ry.

No one had noticed when the ninth heir, a little boy with dark eyes and auburn waves stayed in the shadows of the castle, refusing to join everyone else in his oldest brother’s birthday celebrations when he was turning seven.

Seven was a very important age.

For example, at seven, my legs were finally long enough to vault me out of the window of my childhood bedroom chambers; it was the perfect way to escape. But, escaping had always been easy for me, anyway. In fact, it could hardly be considered escaping if no one was particularly concerned about keeping you captive, or paying you any attention at all.

But, something in the dream was a little off. Black, wispy shadows leeched color from the corners of my vision as the seven-year-old version of myself wandered down the grand marble halls of my family’s castle. My little leather shoes clicked on the glossy floor, but it was otherwise silent. Everyone was down at the beach with Ry, letting their dragon wings loose in the summer sun.

A strange feeling settled in my stomach as I approached the throne room. At seven, I hadn’t spent much time in that room. Still, something was calling to me. The darkness on the edges of my vision murmured to me, whispering for the young boy that I was to approach.

Suddenly, the dream dissolved from memory into pure imagination.

I knew that because the moment I stepped into the throne room, I saw the bloodied body of my mother, the Queen, lying dead on the silver carpet beneath the throne.

But, the Queen wasn’t dead. My mother wasn’t dead. Not in my timeline, nor in the ruined timeline we were heading to in the waking world.

Or rather, she wasn’t dead yet.

In the dream, I remained a seven-year-old boy as I stared down at the dead Queen. Her throat had been cut, pure porcelain broken to reveal a cascade of rubies. The blood pooled around my shoes, but I didn’t step away.

And then, much to my surprise, an unstoppable urge to run overtook me. It wasn’t the horror of a young boy, but a very real and tangible desire to unsee what I was experiencing in front of me.

Thankfully, at that very moment, I woke up.

I sat up straight, the room dark. It took me a full minute to remember that I was on an airship traveling through time, and not a boy again, back on my home planet, seeing the dead Queen - who was not really dead - on the carpet of the throne room.

Dropping my head in my hands, I sighed heavily and tried to shake off the image of my mother bleeding out in front of me.

What had gotten into me? Wasn’t that what I’d planned all along? Quick and easy, a quickly cut throat for each and every one of them?

So, why did the sight of it fill me with nothing but an all-powerful and unflinching sense of wrong?

I checked the communication device on my wrist and saw that it was still several hours before sunrise. Glancing out of the large window that spanned the entire length of the back wall of the room, I saw nothing but darkness. We must have been between timelines, or traveling through a particularly dark part of the universe. Regardless, there was no way I was getting back to sleep. It was like the image of my dead mother had been burned on the inside of my eyelids.

That really pissed me off, because that meant that Ellen had probably been right all along. Which also meant that I acted like a total asshole for no reason.

I snorted quietly to myself. I was so stupid. Kissing some pretty human girl moments after trying to convince her I was the scariest person she’d ever met. Not to mention, believing myself when I told myself over and over that there was no way I’d be disturbed by the sight of my dead family members because, if I was killing them in a ruined timeline, it was actually real. They weren’t really dead. It was almost the entire point of dark tourism.

Dragging myself out of bed, I threw on a sweater and stepped out into the hall, leaving my boots unlaced as I tried to quietly move throughout the ship. I shuffled past the door to Zik’s fantasy torture room carefully. Not a single sound came from within, either because all nine of those people were already dead, or because the Rogues had done a really good job at making sure it was soundproof. I didn’t feel like investigating the design of the room much further, so I hurried along in the darkness.

I was just as quiet when passing Rosa’s room. Her reason for embarking on a trip with the Rogues had been the most shocking one yet. She’d all but disappeared into her room the moment she returned from the ruined timeline of her home planet, a little baby girl in her arms. Her name was Emily, and she was the daughter that Rosa had lost in her original timeline.

The shame that had itched in my chest at the thought of such an innocent reason for breaking the law to become a dark tourist threatened to take over again. Rosa, despite her quirks and her roughness, was full of light. She was a good person.

I never imagined I’d be able to call myself a good person. Some people were bad and some were good. I just happened to not be the latter.

Badness was inside me from the moment I was born. A certain darkness that had been inherited alongside my Alin blood; unfortunately, the dark warped me much more than the rest of my family. It made them terrifying and strong; it made me a monster.

With a sigh, I wandered into the common room.

However, I wasn’t alone.

A familiar silhouette was perched by the wide windows, staring out at the tiny pinpricks of distant stars and planets. Dark curls spilled down her back, and though her face was turned toward the galaxy and away from me, I knew instantly by the defiant set of her shoulders that it was Ellen.

I approached timidly, not wanting to scare her or to start another fight. Admittedly, she’d surprised me a few hours ago. Not many people had the guts to argue with a dragon Prince, let alone any kind of dragon shifter. She was either incredibly brave or frightfully stupid.

I cleared my throat quietly. Ellen didn’t jump. She was, after all, a survivor. It was her main purpose to be fully aware of everything around her. Maybe she hadn’t known it was me, but she had been aware of another person’s presence the second they walked into the common room.

“Hi,” she said without turning to look at me. Her voice was soft like the darkness around us.

I sat down beside her on the windowsill, mirroring her position and leaning against the windowpane. She had both of her legs pulled up to her chest in an unconscious defensive stance. Always ready to protect herself.

“Sorry about earlier,” I said, foregoing any kind of greeting. “I don’t know what got into me. I guess I’m kind of…going through a rough time.”

Ellen snorted quietly. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

I winced. She was right. How did I have the audacity to complain about my life as a spoiled Prince when she’d been ripped from her parents, her loved ones and the only life she’d ever known?

“Right,” I replied, keeping my voice low. “Sorry.”

She was quiet for a moment, but I waited for her to speak. “It’s okay,” she finally told me, tearing her eyes away from the deep, black world outside to meet my gaze. Piercing green flashed in the dark, lighting up my own starless irises.

“What’s okay?”

“What happened earlier,” she explained. “Sometimes arguments are good. Productive. Sometimes they’re the only way to have a breakthrough, and someone just needs to be brave enough to push another person to the edge.”

I sighed and pressed my forehead to the cold glass. “I dreamed I saw my mother. Dead, that is.”

“And how do you feel about that?” she asked.

The corner of my mouth quirked up in the tiniest of smirks as Ellen bit back a small smile of her own.

“Don’t you therapize me!” I joked. “You humans think you’re such an emotionally superior race.”

The sound of Ellen’s giggle was like music to my ears.

“I’m also sorry about…the other thing,” I added, shifting nervously.

Ellen glanced away. “The kiss?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “That.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, I know I have a bad reputation that precedes me, but I’m not… I’m not like that. I don’t just, like, force myself on women when I’m angry,” I struggled to explain myself. I was also struck by the reality that I was even trying to explain myself to a woman of interest. I’d never bothered to indulge the courtesy before in my life. “Honestly, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it…the whole time. It was like the one thing that broke through my anger in that moment.”

Though it was dark, I swore I could see the slightest blush rise to Ellen’s cheeks.

“Like I said,” she responded, refusing to meet my eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

I grinned. “So, you liked it?”

Ellen’s mouth broke into a smile, but she still seemed to be refusing to meet my eyes.

“I’m not going to feed your ego,” she replied, voice tinged with humor.

“So, that’s a yes,” I said, nudging her shoe with mine.

She snorted and shook her head. She was so beautiful, even in such poor lighting. Her beauty was almost angelic, it was so pure and unruffled. I’d never been so enamored with a girl. She had a strange effect on me, this Ellen Moore.

For the next hour, as a dozen distant suns rose on a dozen faraway horizons, Ellen and I sat in silence, just the toes of our boots touching on the windowsill. It was the most comfortable I’d felt around another person. Usually, I was trying to prove myself, or disappear in the shadows or perform for intergalactic social circles. No one ever let me simply just be the way that Ellen did. There was something so free of judgment in her gaze; though I knew she yearned for me to show her the light that she swore was inside me, she wasn’t going to force it out of me.

She would wait patiently for me to become a good person.

And, for the first time, with her, I wanted to be a good person.

Chapter 11

Fascination

Ellen

I was alone in the Rogue command center, poring over the data screens in front of me. It was the same room I’d been in yesterday when I learned the truth about Markus’ plans for his ruined timeline and his entire family.

Last night in the common room after our fight had been something I’d never experienced before. It went without saying, but I’d never had much time for romance back in my timeline on Earth. We were all trying desperately to survive, which did involve reproduction to an extent, but our society hadn’t quite reached a stable enough stage where a baby could be expected to survive, let alone a pregnant mother throughout the entire nine months.

I wondered, though, if I had been left behind on Earth and not picked up by the Rogues, if I would someday carry someone’s baby, for the sake of our civilization.

Sighing quietly to myself, I scrolled through the search results on the bright screen in front of me. I hadn’t been able to sleep after Markus found me in the common room, so instead of tossing and turning, I decided to come in here and get a headstart on the next day’s training. Hopefully, Loretta would be impressed. She was a tough egg to crack.

Loretta was supposed to be teaching me how Lee sought out potential clients using the same Quantum drive that helped both the Time Agency and the Rogues find ruined timelines. She had explained that it was Lee’s specialty, his ability to find those who were so desperately unhappy in their own timeline that they craved a certain adventure in another world entirely. I had to admit, annoying as he was, Lee was good at reading people. He understood them.

It probably had something to do with the fact that he was a total psychopath. He’d spent his entire life watching people closely enough to be able to mimic them and pass as a regular person that he became an expert at knowing the finer details of everyone’s psyche.

I wondered how he found Markus and convinced him to become a dark tourist. After all, being a Rogue wasn’t just about the trip itself, or even just being able to find the right type of person to pay for the trip. It was about persuading them to break the law, to risk being thrown in jail for decades at the hands of the intergalactic Time Agency. It was about making them see that they craved something darker.

I wasn’t sure I was up to it.

Thankfully, it wasn’t my intention to make a career out of being like Lee or Loretta.

After I managed to get out of here and put an end to the monstrous, illegal activities I’d witnessed, I wasn’t sure was my next step would be, but I knew it wasn’t going to have anything to do with unlawful intergalactic travel. I just couldn’t picture myself tolerating the kind of stuff that the Rogues did for their clients, especially when it came to the services they provided to horrible animals like Zik.

But, it wasn’t like I could go back to my original timeline. It was set to be destroyed in a matter of months. I certainly couldn’t go to any other timeline that parallel versions of myself existed in. Loretta had explained that seeing an exact copy of oneself, but from a different dimension, could do serious damage to someone’s mental stability.

I assumed Markus, when he was done with his ridiculous, evil, foolish plan in his ruined timeline, would go back home. Maybe he would be happier and satisfied. But, I wasn’t sure. When he’d admitted that the sight of his dead mother in his nightmare made him feel so wrong inside, it became even more obvious to me that Markus would never be able to stomach actually killing his family, even if it wasn’t going to have any lasting consequences in a surviving timeline.

He was a good person deep down. I could see it. There was a light in him.

But there was also darkness in him. Undeniable shadow, twisted and warped into something that scared me a little bit. If I was being honest though, it also fascinated me.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and returned my attention back to the Quantum drive’s search matrix.

Loretta had explained that finding clients like Markus was easy. He was infamous throughout the galaxy. His picture was always plastered on the cover of gossip magazines, detailing all of his bad-boy escapades and dangerous behavior. Everyone knew about the youngest heir to the celebrated Alin bloodline. Everyone also knew how reckless he was, and how much he resented his own family. It had been a piece of cake for Lee to determine him as a potential client, and even easier to locate him in the galaxy. Markus was wherever the wildest, most exclusive party was.

According to what Lee had told me, he simply slipped the Prince a business card and waited. Apparently, he’d had to wait a bit longer than he expected to, but Markus had inevitably given him a call.

There were other ways of finding dark tourists. People like Zik, for example. Criminals released from prison who were having a difficult time adjusting to the real world. Evil, unbalanced people who needed a certain kind of release that they couldn’t achieve in their own timeline without being tossed right back into jail.

And then there were others, like Rosa. People who were well attuned to intergalactic gossip and underground activity. The kind of people who were after something very specific, and were willing to pay whatever price to achieve it. The kind of people who sought out the Rogues, rather than the other way around.

Loretta had mentioned a potential dark tourist in a timeline close to mine. A young girl named Ayla, just seventeen years old. She was kind of a recluse, constantly shoving her nose in a book or lifting her head up into the clouds. Lee described her as a desperate, incurable dreamer. The perfect client. Lee also suspected that she was time lost and that she could even turn from dark tourist into ideal Rogue recruit. I had a feeling she was going to be my first trainee, once I got my feet underneath me.

The problem was locating her. I knew her timeline and we’d been able to pinpoint her general location using the Quantum drive, but the Time Agency’s data was experiencing a lag in Ayla’s timeline. A two-month gap in information; for some reason, they couldn’t get the same up-to-the-minute information they were able to receive for all other timelines. Loretta theorized that it was probably because someone in the timeline was messing with the time and space continuum. Because of that, it likely wouldn’t be long until the Time Agents decided to simply destroy her timeline.

It made Ayla the perfect client. Lee would go down onto her planet, another version of Earth, and convince her to pay for a trip. He’d be able to confirm if she was time lost, and if so, would gain another Rogue recruit. Money and followers, that was what drove Lee.

I switched off the computer screen and rested my head down on the table. I couldn’t help myself letting my mind wander to Markus. My thoughts could hardly move an inch without touching the memory of him yesterday. Fighting with me, kissing me and then sitting with me in perfect, peaceful silence.

I desperately wished he wouldn’t go through with his plan. I wanted so badly for us to land in his ruined timeline and see him refuse to leave the ship, or immediately demand that we turn around and take him back to his family. He wasn’t a killer. He couldn’t be.

But, maybe the potential for evil was inside all of us. After all, my violent urges whenever Lee pissed me off particularly badly were hard to ignore. Maybe, in the right conditions, I could even feel the desire to kill him. Markus had lived twenty-eight years treated like the runt of the litter. Unimportant, forgettable, worthless.

It was no wonder he wanted to wipe the cause of those feelings from existence.

It felt crazy that a small part of me felt like I understood Markus and his motivations.

At that moment, the door to the tiny laboratory opened and Lee wandered in. He jumped at the sight of me, eyes still clouded with sleep. It must have been the early hours of the morning at that point, which meant I’d barely slept in twenty-four hours. I’d had a hard time relaxing on the ship, surrounded by an entire organized crime business and creepy dark tourists. Not to mention, a handsome dragon Prince that I couldn’t seem to shake from my mind. It was no wonder sleep eluded me.

“Rough night?” grumbled Lee. It must have been too early for his trademark smirk, and I was thankful for it.

“Just wanted to get some work done on the Ayla files,” I explained, gesturing to the screens even though they were currently dark.

“Yeah, looks like it,” he snorted, bustling around in the corner at the coffee machine. It almost made me laugh. Even a thousand timelines away, floating in between worlds, caffeine drove humans more than anything else. “I saw you and dragon boy on the security cams.”

I rolled my eyes. It didn’t surprise me that the common room had cameras in them. Dark tourists were, of course, always at risk of causing trouble, even on the Rogues’ ship.

“Are you stalking me or something?” I replied.

Lee simply shrugged. “Gotta keep an eye on my investments.”

Sighing heavily, I dropped my head back down onto the table. So, I lasted a full minute without wanting to seriously injure him.

Lee snorted quietly and sat down at the table next to me. “Well, tell me about Ayla.”

Relieved that we’d already moved on from discussing Markus, I switched on a tablet and slid it over to Lee. “We only know where she was two months ago, thanks to the lag. Problem is that she moves around a lot on her version of Earth. She’s a floater, never in one place for too long.”

“Does she have any patterns at all?”

I shrugged, gesturing to a few hotspots of the Time Agency’s data. “There are a few cities she frequents more than others. One in particular, an entire ocean away from her hometown. We could try there first?”

Lee grinned, scrolling through the information I’d spent the past several hours digging through. He was quiet for a moment.

“Ellen Moore, I think you’ve found your calling,” he said, shooting me a sarcastic wink. Lee could tell I was less than happy to be dipping my toes in this particular line of work and clearly gained a sick sense of pleasure from seeing me succeed at something I was so determined to hate.

I decided not to respond to that, and asked a question of my own that I’d been curious about since the moment Lee had introduced himself to me.

“How did you even get started in this business?” I asked.

Lee’s smirk appeared then, snide and vaguely cruel. “Believe it or not, twenty years ago, I was just as innocent and wide-eyed as you. I joined the Time Agents. I worked with the intergalactic agents who destroyed the ruined timelines. Over time, I saw the opportunity in those timelines. I was making shit money, anyway. Breaking the rules just tends to be a little more lucrative.”

Wow. Lee? A Time Agent? Working for the government? I couldn’t picture it.

Still, I was grateful for the knowledge. Survivors stayed alive because they gained every bit of information available and maintained it for future use. Knowing that Lee was once, evidently, just like me, could be helpful. And maybe, just maybe, we really weren’t that different.

Chapter 12

Morality

Markus

Paul and Patty, who appeared to the rest of us as a sweet old couple, turned out to be just as sick as the rest of Lee’s long list of dark tourist clientele. We landed in their ruined timeline overnight, in a world largely dominated by humans.

And then, with the help of the Rogues, Paul and Patty initiated nuclear warfare. Understandably, none of us could be down on the planet to witness it with our own eyes. The bombs were launched from a second Rogue ship not far from us. Paul and Patty sat in the common room together, holding hands and giggling with delight as they watched an entire world burn beneath them. I didn’t bother looking at the factsheet for this one; I didn’t even want to try to understand.

Rosa had barely been seen since she’d gotten her daughter back, so I knew why she wasn’t bothering to witness what little elderly Paul and Patty were up to in their ruined timeline.

That left me, standing alone in my room, looking down on a planet engulfed in flames.

Ellen came and stood with me, having finally managed to free herself from her intensive training in the command center with Lee and Loretta.

“They’re psychopaths,” Ellen murmured, pressing her fingertips to the glass as she watched, eyes full of horror, as millions of people burned alive on the planet below the ship. Sure, they were due to be erased from existence soon anyway, but a fiery death was still incredibly unpleasant. Even I found it difficult to watch.

“Are you surprised?” I asked.

Ellen shrugged, shooting me a glance and a sad smile. “I guess not. They’re just so…sweet.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” I replied.

I watched Ellen bite her lip. I knew she was thinking about the way my own looks had changed before her eyes, black eyes turning golden, then bright red. Shoulders itching to set free a set of massive dragon wings. I was shocked that she was so willing to be alone in the same room with me again, but Ellen was also unreasonably brave. And determined.

When she saw the light in someone, she certainly wasn’t going to let it burn out.

“So, how’s the…training?” I asked, sitting down on the edge of my bed and forcing my eyes away from the tragic destruction orchestrated by Paul and Patty.

Ellen snorted and sat down beside me. Her legs were a little too short to reach the floor from the bed and she kicked them back and forth idly like a young girl, still chewing her lip.

“Honestly?” she asked. “It’s kind of interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“I know, I can’t believe I’m interested either,” she sighed. “But Lee’s entire business structure, especially the system for seeking out potential dark tourists… It’s so elegant. Really intelligent. It’s hard to turn my nose up at it, even if it is driven mostly by evil.”

“Did you just compliment Lee?” I asked her incredulously.

Ellen laughed, nudging me with her shoulder. “Hardly. But, he is smart.”

I wanted to kiss her again. Properly, this time, and without the scary antics. But, it didn’t seem right, not at that moment. Not with a burning planet and countless people dying outside the window. Not with Lee breathing down our necks on the security cameras, which I had no doubt were also in the private bedrooms, not just the common room. It was the only way to explain how Lee seemed to know everything that went on inside the ship.

Instead, I reached out and placed my hand on top of hers. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Ellen instantly flipped her hand over and entwined her fingers with mine. The look in her beautiful green eyes thawed my dark, frozen heart just the slightest. Just enough to let a sharp pang burst through my entire chest.

I wanted her. But, I didn’t deserve her. She was so good, so kind, so perfect. And I wanted to kill my family. I was a killer. She was a survivor. We were too different to ever make sense together, and the truth of that was what caused me so much pain as I held her hand in mine.

“I need to tell you something,” she said after we were quiet for a few minutes. The soft silence that tended to settle between us was a kind of peace that I’d never known in my life.

I ran my thumb along the space between her thumb and index finger. “What is it?”

She cleared her throat quietly, glancing outside the window for a moment and then seeming to immediately regret it. Ellen flinched away from the sight and looked up at me.

“I’ve been spending some time alone with the Quantum drive,” she told me. “It’s how they find ruined timelines scheduled for erasure. It’s also how they locate clientele and even potentially time lost people. It’s actually a really sophisticated piece of technology. Lee stole the codes from the intergalactic government back when he was a Time Agent, and the Rogues have been hacking the software ever since.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Lee was a Time Agent?”

“Crazy, right? Lee, working for the government.”

I exhaled sharply. I definitely hadn’t expected that kind of backstory from a guy like Lee. I’d assumed he was the kid of a couple white collar criminals, or the only heir to a mafia fortune with too much time on his hands.

“Anyway, they use the Quantum’s data to figure out where the Time Agents are at any given time, in order to avoid running into them, handing themselves in to the cops, et cetera,” she continued. “And, I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious I’m not the kind of person who’s about to make a career out of organized crime with a bunch of assholes who call themselves Rogues. So, I’ve been looking for ways to cross paths with the Time Agents somehow.”

I listened, not entirely sure where she was going with this.

Ellen shifted beside me to face me better. “I also think there could be a way to use the Rogues’ version of the Quantum drive to send a message to the Time Agents. Some kind of code that would look suspiciously out of place, similar to the type of data that’s flagged in ruined timelines. I could turn Lee in. I could turn them all in. Put Zik back in prison. Paul and Patty with him…”

I froze, my hand going stiff in hers. “So, you’re planning to go all insurgent on their asses? Do you know how dangerous that is?”

Ellen pursed her lips and it looked like she wanted to roll her eyes at me, too. “Yes, Markus. I’m well aware. I’m not new to danger.”

Turning in the Rogues was, of course, the moral path. I didn’t know why I didn’t realize Ellen’s actions after being kidnapped would lean in that direction. She was good. She wouldn’t only want to escape and get her revenge, but also make sure that no one else ever suffered at the hands of the Rogues and their dark tourists ever again.

And she had a point. Zik needed to be put back in prison. Maybe even hanged. Paul and Patty could also do with some time behind bars, even if they already were on their last few years of life. Who knew how many years they’d been wandering time and space, blowing up planets along the way?

But, it also meant that Rosa would be implicated. Sure, she had a good explanation for her criminal activity as a dark tourist; all she wanted was to be reunited with her daughter. The Time Agents would probably give her a slap on the wrist for something like that; the government were a sappy, optimistic bunch.

And me. I’d be in trouble. I hadn’t done anything yet, not technically. We hadn’t even reached my timeline, and even if Lee told the Time Agents the truth about my purpose for being on this trip, it was the word of a creepy criminal against an incredibly powerful dragon Prince. Still, I’d definitely face a handful of smaller charges for paying for Rogue services in the first place and willingly stepping on their ship. I definitely wouldn’t go to prison, not with the type of influence the Alin bloodline carried across the galaxies, but I would definitely be plastered on a hundred more intergalactic tabloids. Not to mention it’d be another talking point at the dinner table; something else for my uncle and older brothers to sneer about over their stupid champagne.

Familiar anger flared within me at the thought of them and what had happened at dinner the evening I stormed away and decided to give Lee a call. Maybe I was having cold feet about killing my mother, but I definitely would enjoy murdering my father’s stupid, pompous brother.

But then it struck me. My uncle had probably felt the same way that I did my entire life. Maybe not quite as intensely, but to some extent. Always a Duke, never a King. He’d walked in my father’s footsteps his whole life, just like I’d grown up in the shadows of eight older heirs. Perhaps that was why he always seemed to be so fixated on me. He saw himself in me and, because he hated himself, he was determined to hate me, too.

Wow. Was I…therapizing myself?

It had to be Ellen’s influence. I’d never been particularly concerned about understanding the varied layers of my family-related trauma. I’d always just been content to react before thinking, get trashed and disappear for months at a time. I had never thought about the Duke as anything other than my asshole uncle who had a penchant for humiliating his brother’s youngest heir at every possible opportunity. I certainly hadn’t ever tried to empathize with him.

What was even more startling was that I agreed with Ellen. I understood that she wanted to do the right thing, but I could also acknowledge that it was the right thing, and that doing the right thing was the preferable option in a situation like this. In fact, it was the best option in most situations. Even if it meant that I would get in trouble, turning the Rogues in using the Quantum drive was necessary because it was good.

Ellen leaned into me, pulling me out of my reverie.

“You’re deep in thought,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” I breathed, resting my forehead against hers.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked.

“Lee,” I replied.

Ellen raised her eyebrows, tilting her face away from mine in confusion.

I shot her a wink. “Putting an end to him, I mean. I’m with you.”

“Really? Seriously?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t expect that from you,” she admitted. “I was prepared to do this whole thing on my own.”

Chuckling, I pressed a chaste kiss to her temple. “I know you were.”

Ellen smiled and shifted closer to me. Carefully so as not to crush her, because she’d always seemed so fragile to me, I placed an arm around her.

“You’re not going to break me,” she joked. “You didn’t seem all that concerned about being gentle yesterday, after all.”

I snorted. “I thought you forgave me for that.”

Ellen nodded. “Oh, I did. But, what’s with the change of heart? It can’t all just be my nagging that’s making you want to become a hero.”

Shrugging, I pulled her in close to me, letting go of my original timidity.

“I guess you just make me want to be a good person.”

Chapter 13

Family

Markus

Ellen left my room not long after our brief cuddling moment. She feigned tiredness, but I knew she was craving some time alone after what we’d just witnessed from Paul and Patty. Thankfully, the planet was now thoroughly burnt to a crisp and the Rogues had steered us on a course away from the disturbing sight of the old couple’s fantasy of an entire world being destroyed by poisonous flames.

I laid on my bed, willing sleep to come, but it wouldn’t.

Then, for the first time since I set foot on the Rogues’ airship, the small communication device on my wrist dinged with a message. I was surprised it was still working, as far as we were from my home planet and original timeline.

The tiny screen lit up blue in the darkness and I frowned. Usually, I only got messages from my friends when there was a new party invitation making the rounds, but the name of the person sending it didn’t belong to any of my partners in debauchery.

It was my sister.

Lilia. The eighth heir, the fourth sister. Just as unimportant and forgettable as I was, but somehow more loyal to our family than anyone with that status should be. I’d never been particularly fond of her. It had always been difficult for me to stomach the sight of her scrambling for attention and affection from the rest of the family her entire life. It was a shame; because we were so close in age, as well as the last two in line for the throne, we should have gotten along. Though I supposed I didn’t hate her the way I hated my brother Jack or my asshole of an uncle.

Still, she was on my list of family members to kill in the ruined timeline.

With a sigh, I read through her message.

Markus, it read. Where have you gone now?

I snorted. Questions like that hadn’t been asked of me in over a decade. No one bothered to care where I disappeared to; in fact, it would be even stranger if I stuck around at the family castle for prolonged periods of time. The fact that Lilia was sparing even a second of her time to ask me where I was suggested that something out of the ordinary was happening.

Usually, I wouldn’t respond to any message from my siblings, but I was alone on an airship barrelling toward a timeline in which I was planning on cutting the throats of those very siblings.

And I was bored. Though it had only been a handful of days, I’d grown used to Ellen’s company. It was nice to have someone to talk to and bounce my ideas off of.

I typed out a quick reply back to Lilia. On a trip. Why?

Lilia’s response came more quickly than I expected. Mother went to find you after dinner and you were already gone. You’re not in the tabloids like you usually are. Thought you fell off the face of the planet or something.

Though she couldn’t see me, I rolled my eyes. Miss me?

Hardly, she messaged back. Mother asked me to reach out.

So, suddenly the Queen cared about the whereabouts of her ninth child. My first instinct was to think that something was wrong, or that someone had even died. But, Lilia wouldn’t be the one to reach out to me if that were true, nor would she start off the conversation the way she did.

For whatever reason, my mother was checking up on me. She hadn’t done it in years, but maybe her maternal instincts were kicking in. Perhaps she could tell that something wasn’t quite right with her sixth son, wherever he was in the universe.

I wondered idly if she discussed it not only with Lilia, but with my father, too. The King rarely spared me a glance, much like the crown Prince Ry, but the thought that he may have had the fleeting question of where I might be, or even if I was okay, made my stomach squirm uncomfortably.

I blamed Ellen. I’d admitted to her that she made me want to be a good person, and that was true. I definitely wanted to be a good person. I could see the light inside Ellen, the way it made her glow from the inside and the way she emanated such a beautiful energy to the rest of the world. It was mesmerizing. I knew that, when people looked at me, they saw a dark Prince. Dark eyes, dark soul, dark intentions. They would never glance my way and feel an entire ocean of hope and purity wash over them.

That was how I felt when I looked at Ellen.

I rolled onto my side and stared angrily into the darkness.

One last time, I glanced at the communication device, still glowing faintly in the shadowed room. I’ll be home soon, I sent to Lilia. I didn’t feel like offering any more information than necessary. The truth was, I suddenly wasn’t sure if I was going to stay on this airship for the rest of the week in order to stick around and follow through with my plan to end the lives of my family members in a timeline scheduled for destruction by the Time Agents. Part of me wanted to simply give up on the whole venture entirely and just get on my personal ship and head back home.

But, the latter option meant that I’d be leaving Ellen. I’d be leaving her to deal with her plan for ending the Rogues by herself. And it wasn’t that I didn’t think she could handle it on her own… Rather that I just really wanted to be around to see the look on Lee’s face when his newest time-lost toy stabbed him in the back and turned him in to the feds. I knew Ellen could do it. She was smart and quick. She was a survivor.

She was fierce, too. Brilliant. Incredible.

Though I didn’t think myself capable of the emotion, it almost seemed to me as if I loved her.

With a huff, I flopped over onto my back again, glaring up through the blackness.

Love.

It was a foolish concept. The idea that someone could have such a strong romantic attachment to someone that they would do something as silly as pledge their lives and loyalty to them.

And, yet… I yearned for Ellen. I was enamored with her, fascinated by her. I could hardly stop thinking about her, and the thoughts were always colored by an undeniable affection that was unlike any emotion I’d felt before, even as a foolish teenage boy. The thought of seeing her hurt made me feel murderous. But, it wasn’t just a basic protectiveness I felt for her. No, that kind of feeling came from something much deeper.

“Well, fuck,” I muttered to myself.

Maybe I did love her.

But, how could you love someone after knowing them for only a handful of days?

Perhaps that was how it worked sometimes. I was hardly an expert, after all.

All I knew was that I wanted her.

Without thinking too much about it, I yanked off my communication device and tossed it onto the rumpled sheets. If any more of my family members felt the need to act completely out of character and attempt to contact me, they could wait.

I stood up, shuffling through the shadowed room for my boots and the nearest clothes I could reach.

When I opened the door to my room and stepped out into the hallway, I thought briefly of when Ellen mentioned the security cameras that were installed throughout the Rogues’ airship. The fact that Lee had been watching us in the common room, sharing that moment that had felt so private, made me want to punch him in the face. Actually, it made me want to punch him in the face several times.

In the dimly-lit hallway, I glanced around, unable to locate any cameras, but feeling hyper-aware of the fact that I was probably being watched. I was sure Lee would be entertained to see where I was heading.

I swallowed hard and forced Lee out of my head. What I was about to do was either going to be the best or worst decision I’d ever make. I needed to focus.

Her room was on the opposite side of the ship.

The halls were deserted. The rest of the dark tourists had, at this point, retired to their rooms to relish in the successful adventures they’d had in their own timelines, probably even recording it in order to reminisce on the moments in the future. At least, that’s what I imagined the others were doing. Other than Rosa, of course, who was busy with mothering a newborn. And Zik, who was, presumably, still busy torturing the nine humans who were kidnapped alongside Ellen from her original timeline.

The Rogues were either all in the command center or sleeping in their private quarters.

I didn’t run into anyone on my way across the ship.

When I finally reached Ellen’s closed door, I paused.

She was probably sleeping. She’d been through so much in the last week, it was a wonder she hadn’t dropped from the pressure; she deserved every minute of sleep she could manage. Recognizing that clued me in further to the fact that I cared for her deeply.

But, could I tell her that? Could I, Prince Markus, demonic dragon bad boy from the formidable Alin bloodline, actually utter the word love aloud?

Even if I could, there was no way Ellen felt the same way. She was too good to care for someone like me. She had admitted to liking the kiss we shared, and she seemed determined to convince me not to be a killer for the sake of my own mental health, but someone like her could hardly ever love someone like me.

I was an idiot.

I groaned quietly and leaned against the wall outside her room, and then sank down onto the cold, metal floor. Resting my elbows on my knees, I dropped my head into my hands.

If Lee was watching from the security cameras, he’d probably be cackling to himself. Poor Princeling, he’d think, reduced to a pathetic sack of bones outside a pretty human girl’s bedroom because he didn’t have the balls to knock on the door and tell her how he felt.

He’d be right.

Silently, I lifted my head and leaned it back against the cool metal. Closing my eyes, I imagined Ellen on the other side of the wall. Asleep, peaceful. Maybe even dreaming. I wondered idly if her eyelashes fluttered in her sleep when she dreamt. I wondered what she dreamt about.

I stayed there, sitting outside her bedroom in the dark and quiet. I was frozen there, unable to bring myself to leave her, but just as equally incapable of standing up and knocking on her door to tell her what I desperately knew I should.

With a jolt, I realized that nearly everything I’d ever wanted in life came to me easily. It was one of the many privileges of growing up a royal. All I really ever had to do was snap my fingers and whatever I wanted would be handed to me on a silver platter, even as the ninth heir. But it wasn’t like that with Ellen. She wasn’t the kind of thing I could have so easily, with no effort at all. Every girl I’d bedded had been so easy to seduce; a blink of my eyes and any woman I’d wanted would fall apart in my hands.

Ellen felt more important than that. She felt like someone that I wanted to work for. Someone that I wanted to earn.

And yet, I still could not bring myself to stand up. I was a coward.

Chapter 14

Pathways

Ellen

Part of me knew that I was dreaming.

Still, it all felt so real.

I was a child again, the world around me large and surprising. My limbs were small and skinny, clumsy with the newness of a child bursting out of their toddler stage and into something fresh and full of wonder. I looked down at my feet, at the little pink sneakers on them, and noticed that I was pedaling a small bicycle. I recognized it immediately. It was a little yellow tricycle that my father had taken the wheels off of after I’d thrown a fit, insisting that I was ready for just two wheels.

Around me, the world was green. I was in Central Park, surrounded by lush trees and beautiful bursts of color from all the flora blooming in the magic of mid-spring. Far off, I could hear other children laughing loudly and screaming with delight. I glanced around for my parents, but they were nowhere to be seen.

I looked up at the sky, taken aback by just how blue it was. The sky hadn’t looked that way in a very long time.

If I was just a young child, then it must have been before the horrible AI war that destroyed everything, including life as we all knew it. Before technology gained sentience, autonomy and a thirst for power. Before nearly everyone I knew died.

I knew that if I was tall enough, I could probably see the concrete, steepled sky of the city. I’d always loved the tall buildings. I loved that they were stronger than the hands that built them, and almost as resilient. My father worked in a building not far from the park, and I loved the days when I would get to visit him in his office with my mother, riding the elevator up all the way to the very top floor. I would sit on his lap as he reclined back in his leather chair and stare out at the beautiful, gleaming city. I loved that the little people on the sidewalks looked like ants. I loved that I could see a million different lives through the windows of the buildings nearby.

There was so much life here.

In the back of my mind, I knew that the scene in my dream was no longer a reality. I knew that the once towering, imposing buildings of the city I loved were all but wreckage, a mess of shattered steel and broken wires. I knew that broken glass would crunch under my boots and decades-old dust would clog my airways if I tried to walk the same path that I once had as a child. The honking cars, blaring televisions and whirring metro tracks would be silent. The colors of a new season would be muted, always and forever. The smells of the city, once varying and enticing, would become something harsher, tainted with a certain metallic taste in the air.

Still, to see the city again as it once was, in its former glory, was as close to a miracle as I’d ever expected; I didn’t even mind that it was just a dream.

My child-sized legs pedaled the bicycle through the park. I hummed an old nursery rhyme to myself, smiling at the sight of a small, fluffy dog nearby. A fat, buzzing bee floated past me, off to hover around a nearby bush of hydrangeas.

The path was wide. All around me, people walked and jogged and biked. Scooters and skateboards whizzed past. Lovers holding hands and school friends giggling to each other wandered on by. I continued on the bike, no longer sure if this was a dream, or merely a perfectly preserved memory, blessedly unearthed from the very depths of my subconscious.

That is, until the people around me began to disappear. Little by little, the brilliant green pathway that had once been teeming with city slickers grew quiet and empty.

I hesitated, though I continued forward nonetheless. The pathway narrowed slightly, but the colors remained just as bright and captivating as ever as I wove my way deeper into the park. In a matter of minutes, I suddenly found myself alone on the pathway, not a soul to be seen in either direction. If it were reality, the child version of Ellen would have immediately turned around to search for her parents. She’d apologize for wandering off and not paying attention to how far she’d gone.

But, in the dream, I carried on.

The park fell silent. Barking dogs and splashing fountains were muted. The whisper of wind through the leaves was inaudible, as if it turned off with a switch. The quiet wasn’t entirely disturbing, but it still caused my young heart to beat a little bit out of tune with uneasiness.

It wasn’t until I came to a fork in the path that my feet finally stopped pedaling, two small feet coming to rest on the warm pavement. My hands clenched on the bicycle handles as I took in the sight of the three diverging paths before me.

To my left was Zik. Even toddler Ellen knew who he was. He stared at me with cold, gray eyes, but he didn’t come toward me. Instead, he held out a single finger and beckoned me forward with a cruel smile. I knew what awaited me down his path. Pain, torture, eventual death. No, thank you.

I turned my head to focus on the middle path. Before it stood Lee, flanked by Loretta and a number of other Rogues.

“Hello, Ellen,” said Lee, his trademark smirk fixed perfectly to his pale face. “Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it? Why don’t you come join us over here?”

My stomach lurched with queasiness. The Rogues didn’t look inherently evil, at least not the way that Zik did, but they still maintained an aura of wrongness that went with a level of rule-breaking that bordered on reckless behavior. Their eyes were colored with a greediness, as if they were hungry for money and power and were willing to do whatever it took to achieve those things.

And yet, I could see parts of myself in them. Intelligence and curiosity mirrored in Loretta’s stern gaze. Pure defiance in another’s. Disrespect for authority and a desire to succeed in Lee’s chilling look. I wasn’t entirely different from the Rogues, if I was being honest with myself. There was a darkness within me that could be nourished and grow in a magnificent beast with their guidance. I could be good at helping with the kind of horrors they orchestrated.

But something about the way Lee was staring at me, as if he would happily throw me down Zik’s path if I chose not to walk his, caused me to hesitate.

I glanced down at my feet, surprised to see regular, adult-sized shoes below me. The bicycle was gone, and I suddenly stood much taller than I had just a second before. I was no longer a child, but the current, most up-to-date version of Ellen Moore.

Slightly confused, I looked at the path to my right. I expected to see my parents, or even a childhood friend. Some kind of representation of my deepest longing; after all, I would have given anything to be back home, a child once more, alive and flourishing in a thriving city made of unbreakable stone.

Of course, all things were breakable.

To my right, Markus stood at the head of the third pathway. His hands were clasped behind his back, his posture straight. He looked impossibly regal, dressed in a stunning black velvet suit. A delicate crown, a simple twist of iron, sat atop his auburn curls like an afterthought.

The dragon Prince. Markus Aurelius Alin III.

The dream version of him smiled at me, his mouth slightly crooked. He shot me a wink and then swept into a low bow, holding out his hand palm-up as if to invite me forward.

He was so beautiful. Though I could see the darkness in his eyes, a heaviness that swam around him like persistent shadows, there was something golden about him. He was a good person, despite what he thought, and despite all the violent cravings and urges that came to him.

Markus only needed to be shown the way to lightness.

Timidly, I took a step toward him.

Next to us, Lee tutted his tongue like a disappointed father. “Choose carefully, Ellen.”

When I looked back at Markus, he was no longer the well-groomed young Prince I’d seen moments before. Rather, he’d morphed into something monstrous. He crouched in the pathway, naked from the waist up, with two unbelievably large leather wings unfurled behind him. I froze, watching with a hammering heart as he lifted his gaze from the concrete and met my eyes.

His were scarlet. Brilliantly red like rubies. Like blood.

I gasped.

And then, with a start, I woke up.

“Holy hell,” I whispered to the dark, empty room around me as I pressed a hand to my chest. I took a moment to remind myself that I wasn’t in the pre-war Central Park, but on an airship where I was a pseudo-trainee-prisoner-plaything for the Rogues.

I usually didn’t dream so vividly. What a trip that had been.

I thought about the choices my unconscious mind had placed before me. I certainly didn’t want to die, so I would not have chosen Zik’s path. I didn’t want to become a darkened, hardened criminal, so even though I could recognize pieces of myself strewn down that pathway, I knew I would not have chosen it.

My mind knew, even in the throes of a silly dream, that going home and seeing my parents again wasn’t an option. That was why there had been no path with them on it.

Which left Markus, both versions of him, standing on the last pathway, sunlight beaming down on him as if he were a fallen angel.

I knew, despite the first shock of seeing him in his dragon form, or what my subconscious imagined his dragon form to look like, I would have chosen him.

Growing still in the thick blackness of my bedroom, a very sudden realization washed over me. I didn’t just want Markus to choose goodness and lightness. I didn’t just want him to toss aside his plans of murdering strange, ruined versions of his family. I didn’t just want him to go home and rekindle any spark of familial fondness he might have lying dormant in his heart.

I, plain and simple, wanted him.

I cared for him.

Maybe I even loved him.

I breathed aloud a single word into the dark around me.

“Markus.”

Then, I shot out of bed and barreled toward the door, desperate to get to him, even if it meant running across the entire airship in the middle of the night wearing nothing but a rumpled Rogue t-shirt and a pair of undies.

I yanked open the heavy metal door and took a step outside my room.

Only to find the very thing I was craving sitting on the floor outside my door.

He looked up, clearly surprised to see me not only awake, but up and obviously about to go somewhere.

“Oh,” I whispered, breath coming fast. “I was looking for you.”

Chapter 15

Leading

Ellen

Before I even realized what I was doing, I reached for Markus and tugged his arm upwards until he was standing in front of me.

“What a coincidence,” he muttered, his voice blending seamlessly with the night. “I was looking for you, too.”

I smiled as he shrugged his forearm out of my grip and then immediately took my empty hand.

“What for?” I asked, even though I had a strong feeling it was the same reason I’d suddenly had the indescribable need to be near him.

“I need to tell you something,” Markus admitted.

“Tell me in here,” I replied, pulling him back into my bedroom with me. The door closed again, hopefully not loud enough to wake anyone, and we were plunged into blackness. Unwillingly, I slipped my hand out of his and stumbled through the dark room until I found the switch that flipped on a series of small, twinkling lights hanging over the headboard. It was surprisingly cutesy for the Rogues, but I’d asked Loretta for lighting that was a little less harsh than the fluorescents and the fairy lights were the only thing she’d managed to dig up.

Now, of course, they really set the mood.

I cleared my throat and faced Markus. His eyes were flickering between black and gold and red again, but not in a frightening way. Not this time. This time, the emotion waking his dragon side appeared to be something more akin to hunger. The dim light cast dramatic shadows across his face and I fell speechless at the mere sight of him standing there.

“What did you want to tell me?” I asked.

Markus took three quick steps toward me and, with a surprisingly gentle grip, lifted his hands to cradle my face.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed.

The corners of my mouth tugged upward as our lips edged closer and closer to each other.

“Is that all?” I murmured.

“No,” he answered, swallowing hard. “Also… I want you.”

“I-”

“Actually, I need you.”

Just like that, Markus pressed his lips to mine.

The moment we met in a kiss, it was like a switch being turned on. Like the sun rising. Like a distant star exploding.

I gasped against his mouth, a chill running down my spine as our tongues tangled together. It felt so good to touch him and to feel his hands on my body in such a way that was so much different than it had been when we’d been in his bedroom and he was trying to scare me off.

Though I considered myself first and foremost a survivor, and had done a lot of surviving throughout my young life, I had to admit that I’d never felt more alive than I did at that moment. It was like I’d been electrified.

With a quiet groan, Markus moved his hands from my face to my hips, forcing me back against the metal wall. Again, the parallels between this moment and our last were undeniable, except for this new tenderness. It was a different kind of passion entirely.

I felt Markus’ hands dancing at the hem of the t-shirt I was wearing, as if he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to make that move, or as if he was afraid that it wasn’t what I wanted. To show that I definitely wasn’t doing anything I didn’t want to do, I reached down to shove his hands out of the way and then tugged the shirt over my head, leaving me in nothing but my panties.

“Oh,” whispered Markus, visibly surprised that I clearly wanted him just as badly as he wanted me. Our kiss broke apart for the briefest of moments, just long enough for me to watch his bewildered, breathless expression turn into something that I was more familiar with coming from him: mischief and playfulness.

He smirked at me, stealing a quick, chaste kiss. “I like a woman who can take charge like that.”

“Do you really?” I murmured in reply. “I thought Prince Markus preferred to lead, not follow.”

“You thought wrong, love,” Markus whispered, dipping his head to press his lips my throat. I tilted my head back, eyelids fluttering closed in ecstasy as he peppered kisses along my neck and collarbone.

Then, with all the strength I could muster, I placed my palms flat on his chest and shoved as hard as I could. Markus laughed in surprise, stumbling backward until the backs of his knees hit the edge of my bed and he sank down onto the rumpled sheets. With a devilish grin that I’d never had reason to wear before, I climbed onto his lap and straddled his hips.

Markus leaned forward for a kiss, but I immediately placed my hand on the base of his throat and forced him back onto the bed, the gentlest of grips around his neck. His eyes, always so dark, darkened to something even deeper. Something animalistic.

“No stealing kisses,” I whispered in his ears. “Not while I’m in charge.”

He moaned, though the sound came out more as a growl, as I kissed the spot just below his earlobe, trailing the very tip of my tongue across his warm skin. His grip on my hips tightened, and I could tell he wanted to flip us over, to be on top of me, to dominate.

But I was determined to put this royal bad boy in his place and prove that I could be just as strong and powerful, even if I was merely a human. I wanted to show him that I was on his level, and that, despite everything else, we weren’t that different.

I did away with his shirt and pants quickly, tossing them onto the floor without a second thought. Markus lay beneath me, watching me with eyes that glittered with an odd mixture of desire and something akin to amazement. It was as if he could hardly believe what he was seeing, what he was experiencing.

With a giggle, I grabbed his wrists and forced his arms over his head, pinning them to the bed.

“You’re my prisoner,” I murmured, kissing his jaw, his cheekbone, his temple.

“I sure am,” he whimpered.

I began moving my hips in small circles against his stiff manhood. The only thing separating us was our underwear, and my own panties were growing damp at the friction. Markus’ breath stuttered on his next exhale.

“Please,” he panted. “Please.”

“Please, what?” I asked, feigning innocence as I continued to move against him.

Markus practically growled, fingers clawing at the fabric of the only clothing that separated us.

“You’re more of a monster than I am,” he said, shooting me a wink as I quickly maneuvered us out of our underwear. I reached down for his erection and stroked it softly as I perched on his lap. Markus lifted up onto his elbows in a feeble attempt to sit up, but I pushed him back down with my other hand.

I shifted slightly. And then, without much warning, I slid his member into my entrance.

I gasped and practically collapsed forward onto Markus, but steadied myself with two hands on his muscled abdomen. He held my hips tight in his hands, neck arched at the feeling of being buried deep inside me. He filled me up perfectly, so flawlessly that I began to tremble as I began thrusting once more.

Biting my lip, I rocked my hips against his. My entire body was alive with wild pleasure, blossoming outside from my pulsing center to the very tips of my fingers and toes.

Though I’d spent most of my life in a post-apocalyptic world that was centered on surviving just to see the sun rise in the east the next morning, I’d been intimate with a handful of men before. Most of the experiences had been acts of teenage rebellion, a reckless reaction to the crumbled world around me, or, later into my adulthood, desperate attempts to feel something human beyond simple hunger and thirst and exhaustion. I’d never done it because I was in love with someone, or because I merely craved a man so deeply that I couldn’t bear another moment of not being as close to him as possible.

But, now, with Markus, it was like I was experiencing an entirely new spectrum of human pleasure. Or rather, not entirely human pleasure. It was like my eyes were open for the first time in over twenty-five years. It was like I’d been waiting my whole life for this moment, walking through the years half asleep while something deep and dark within me sat coiled and ready to be let loose the second I met him.

As we made love, fast and hot and heavy in the darkened room of that cold, cruel airship, I couldn’t help but think that Markus was a perfect mirror of my soul. He was the dark that filled in the cracks in my light, the desire that showed me that life was about more than just surviving.

Underneath me, Markus sat up. This time, I let him. I clutched onto his shoulders as our torsos came together and let a sharp moan escape up to the ceiling at the sudden change in angle.

Markus grabbed my hips and slowed us down. I was so overcome with passion that I hardly noticed him taking that small amount of control. That was, until a moment later when I corrected it and increased the tempo of my hips, moving him deeper within me. His large length pressing into my delicate walls, after so long not being touched by another, was almost uncomfortable, but the pleasure-pain only brought me closer to the edge.

“Ellen,” breathed Markus, pressing his face into my neck with a gentle groan.

“Come on, my Prince,” I crooned, approaching my climax quicker and quicker by the second.

Markus cursed under his breath and I felt him unravel beneath me, a warmth releasing inside me. He collapsed backward and I rocked my hips once, twice more before dissolving into a shuddering orgasm on top of him.

Suddenly tired as if I’d just run a marathon, I climbed off of him and dropped down onto the bed beside him. Together in silence, we waited for our breathing to slow and for our pulses to stop thudding so loudly in our ears.

After a minute, Markus turned his head to look at me.

“Holy hell, woman,” he sighed. “Are you sure you’re not a dragon?”

I laughed, accepting his embrace as he rolled over and pulled me into his arms. Tilting my face up to his, I kissed him softly. His lips were smooth, supple and tender as he deepened the kiss for only a brief moment, before pulling away with a smile I’d never seen on him before. It was a boyish grin, full of a youthful light. The way he was looking at me, eyes sparkling, a rosiness high in his cheeks, it was as if he was staring at an angel come to Earth, or whatever the equivalent to that was on his home planet.

“What?” I asked, biting my lip self-consciously as he continued to gaze at me.

“You’re just so beautiful,” he replied. It hardly sounded like the kind of thing that would come out of Markus’ mouth in any other situation. But, even in just the past few days, he’d transformed in front of my eyes. From the intimidating stranger who didn’t seem entirely human that had knocked on my door minutes after my kidnapping, to the monstrous dragon Prince who attempted to scare me into not caring about him, to this strange, wonderful new creature in front of me with adoration in his eyes and tenderness in his touch.

“Oh, and one more thing,” he added.

“Hmm?” I replied, already halfway to sleep in his arms.

“Next time, I’m in charge,” Markus chuckled, his deep voice colored with longing.

In answer, I simply smiled and curled closer into his side.

Chapter 16

Arrival

Markus

When I woke up to find Ellen’s naked body wrapped around mine, I breathed a sigh of relief.

So, it hadn’t been just a dream.

It had really happened.

I closed my eyes again, relishing the memories of our lovemaking. Her long hair, dark and spiraling down her bare back. Her emerald eyes alight with dark passion. The way it felt to be inside her… So right. So perfect.

I sighed and carefully extracted myself from her embrace, sliding out of the bed and tip-toeing to the window. The airship was still; it must have landed in the middle of the night not long after both Ellen and I fell asleep. I recognized my surroundings immediately. It may have been a ruined version of my original timeline, but it was still very much my home.

In order to remain inconspicuous, Lee had directed the Rogue ship to land deep in the spiked, perilous mountains that surrounded my family’s castle. A fresh blanket of snow covered the soil and the thick, towering pine trees. The Rogues had managed to find a clearing large enough for the ship, and I noticed from the first rays of light in the east that, if I were to walk back across the ship to my room on the other side, I would see the twisting spires of my childhood home in the distance.

With a nervous glance at Ellen, I pulled on the clothes she practically tore off my body yesterday and slipped out of her bedroom. The ship was still quiet as I made my way through the empty halls. I knew it wasn’t a particularly classy move, sneaking out of a girl’s room before she was even awake. Especially since I actually cared about what that girl would think when she realized the other side of the bed was empty.

But, I was home. Or, rather, in a parallel version of home.

And that meant I had things to do.

Though I realized that Ellen made me want to be a good person, and I certainly felt like a new man in her presence, it didn’t automatically turn all the darkness within me into light. Even love itself wasn’t that strong. We were who we were, and that was undeniable. Bad people could actively make good choices, and vice versa, but the true driving force behind a person’s actions and desires would always be the same.

I’d called Lee for a reason. I’d walked on to this ship for a reason.

I’d already paid the fees and already made my plans. I’d risked everything becoming a dark tourist. Though my reputation certainly hadn’t been spotless before this little adventure, it certainly hadn’t included explicit criminal activity that purposefully went against intergalactic federal Time Agency laws.

The Rogues certainly wouldn’t refund me if I told them that I simply didn’t feel like following through with my original plan anymore. After all, we couldn’t exactly turn around. We’d landed on my planet, in a ruined timeline handpicked specifically for me and my dark urges, that much was obvious from the view outside every single window on the ship.

I paused halfway back to my bedroom and rerouted my footsteps to the common room. As usual, it was empty. That was to be expected on a trip this small, but I found myself wondering what it would be like to go on one of the longer, busier dark tourism trips in which the ship was absolutely crowded with demons itching for debauchery. I imagined it would be a lot easier for me to ignore the lighter parts of myself surrounded by so many other dark people.

Dropping down onto the same couch I sat on on the day of my arrival, I sighed heavily and stared out of the massive windows at the snowy, mountainous landscape of my childhood. I thought back to the day that changed everything, that set this entire plan in motion.

The sneer on my uncle’s face, the indifference on my father’s… All of my siblings and cousins, watching me as if they were all equally ashamed of me and afraid of me. I didn’t care that Lilia claimed our mother was looking for me, as if she truly cared about my wellbeing. All I could think about that night was how much I wanted to make them suffer as much as I had. I wanted to end them.

If I was being completely honest with myself, I didn’t want to ignore the darkness within me. I didn’t want to cast aside everything that made me who I was, every symptom of my life experiences, just for the sake of some higher moral calling that Ellen was so obsessed with.

I didn’t want to fight the urge to kill my family.

My entire life, I’d been nothing more than the little Prince. Despite my physical size, that was how everyone had always thought of me. I’d never even get close to the crown. I remembered what the Rogues said about the ruined timeline that we were in. The tenth heir, a little Princess, who snapped and killed all of us when she was only fifteen years old… I could relate to those feelings. Being ignored for a lifetime was enough to drive a person to madness.

But, now that I’d had a week to think about it, I knew I didn’t just want to kill them for some kind of reckless revenge fantasy. It was deeper than that. If they were all dead, that would mean I’d be the King. It was an idea I’d never entertained before, given that it was almost impossible. Maybe I would like being the ruler of my country and my people, but maybe I wouldn’t. Years spent watching my oldest brothers learn the ropes at my King’s side showed me that it wasn’t just a parade, but a stressful and demanding job.

Still, how could I ever know if I truly cared about being a King if I’d never even been given the opportunity to really learn what it was like? My father had failed me and my younger siblings in that regard. He never bothered to teach us how to be leaders; instead, he used his daughters for pawns in marriage alliances and shrugged off his youngest son because there was no way, in a million years, that Markus Aurelius III would ever be faced with the responsibilities of the throne.

Now that I was here, the time had come. I had eight siblings, two parents, a dozen cousins and a handful of other family members to kill.

Despite all my earlier thoughts, a bubble of anxiety burst in my stomach. For a fleeting second, I imagined staying on the ship and not going through with it. I imagined going back to Ellen and curling up beside her in her bed once more.

“Excuse me, Your Royal Highness?” came a voice to my left.

I jumped and turned to find a young woman with platinum hair. It was Loretta, Lee’s second-in-command. Lee must have been too busy to come bother me personally.

“Markus,” I corrected her. “Just Markus.”

“Right,” she replied. Somehow I knew she wasn’t a fan of informality and no amount of reminding her that I didn’t want to be called a Prince on this ship would make her stop. “Well, it’s obvious at this point, but we have landed in the ruined timeline that will be the perfect opportunity for you to kill your family. The tenth heir, the Princess we spoke about earlier, is just thirteen at this time. While she is not completely murderous, she has just begun to descend into her psychosis, so it will probably be best for her to be among the first of your kills.”

I nodded, letting my gaze slip from Loretta’s and back to the distant horizon where the golden castle of my youth was beginning to light up with the oranges and pinks of the sunrise. Just outside the window, the pure white snow began to glisten in the early morning light. It was beautiful. It almost made me wish that I was home. Truly home, in my original timeline.

“We have a vehicle that will take you down to the castle discreetly,” Loretta continued, unbothered by the fact that I was clearly only giving her half of my attention. “A small team of Rogues will accompany you in order to ensure that everything goes smoothly. Once you are satisfied, simply return to the ship and we will be off, finishing our dark tour by dropping off each of you in your respective home timelines.”

“Got it,” was all I could manage in reply. I was suddenly feeling the tiniest bit sick to my stomach.

“Are there any questions I can answer for you before you begin?”

I shook my head and waved her off. Loretta disappeared immediately, though I did catch a glimpse of her pursing her lips at my rudeness. Still, she bent into a shallow bow before walking away, unable to shake the reality that I was royal. I wondered what she was doing before becoming a Rogue. She was so formal and full of conditioned respect for authority that I figured she was probably part of some distant planet’s army. I imagined she would be formidable on any battlefield.

I groaned quietly and collapsed sideways onto the couch like a child.

What was I doing? Was I really about to go sneak into my own palace and murder everyone who shared my bloodline? What would that feel like, to see my mother, Lilia, and the tiny insane Princess, bleed out at my feet? I closed my eyes against the image. The memory of my nightmare, with my mother, the Queen, covered in blood on the floor of the throne room with her throat cut, attacked me.

With a curse, I punched my fist into the plush pillow beside me.

Ellen was right. I shouldn’t do this.

I couldn’t believe myself. I was a fool. I’d left a beautiful, naked girl, who I was pretty sure I was in love with, behind in her bed in favor of a violent, murderous rampage. Lightness and darkness beside, I knew in that moment what was better for my heart, mind and soul.

It was her.

Screw the Rogues. Screw this timeline. They could keep my money.

In an instant, I was back on my feet, practically racing back to Ellen’s room. A startled Rogue jumped at the sight of me hurrying around a corner, pressing himself against the metal wall as I ran past him without a second glance.

I stopped suddenly at Ellen’s door. It was almost the same scene as the night before, when I’d hesitated outside of her bedroom. Thankfully, something in her had craved me just as much as I was yearning for her, and she’d found me. Pulled me inside. Made me hers.

I was hers. She was mine. That much, I knew to be true.

I hoped she wouldn’t be mad at me for leaving her.

With a deep breath, I opened the door to Ellen’s room and paused, taking in the sight of the tangled sheets on the far side of the room.

The bed was empty.

Ellen was gone.

Chapter 17

Demon

Ellen

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was brilliant, early morning sunlight peeking over the pointed tops of a thousand evergreens. I gasped in wonder, pressing my fingers to the cold glass as I took in the sheer beauty of the scene before me.

A blanket of the purest white snow I’d ever seen rested over everything. It glittered like diamonds as the sunrise inched higher over the distant horizon. Towering, beautifully green trees stretched up to the azure sky like fingertips toward the sun. I could almost hear the soft whisper of a gentle breeze through the millions of pine needles, swirling the topmost layer of snow up into the air like dustmotes.

Far off, I could see the shadowed spikes of mountain peaks, jagged and terrifying, and yet somehow still undeniably stunning. I lay there in awe, not having seen such natural beauty in all my life, even before the war began. I’d grown up in the city, after all. Save for a handful of childhood adventures north with my parents, all I’d ever known was stoic concrete and planned parks.

I realized, suddenly, that this must be Markus’ planet. Well, not quite. A perfect copy of his planet would be the more accurate description, with a young Princess assassin being the main, and probably only, difference. I couldn’t believe he’d grown up in such a wonderful fairytale of a planet, and yet somehow harbored such a strong affiliation for the dark and twisted.

With a sigh, I tore my eyes away from the view and rolled over.

My fingertips danced over an empty expanse of sheets, cold and abandoned. Frowning in confusion, I sat up and stared at the space in my bed where I’d sworn Markus had been throughout the night. Had it all been a dream? It couldn’t have been.

The bruises blossoming on my hips in the shape of his hands and the delicious ache between my legs told me that I hadn’t imagined the wonder and passion of last night. It was real.

And yet, he wasn’t here.

I flopped back down onto the sheets and stared up at the ceiling, wondering if I’d done something wrong. Maybe he’d been ashamed that I was in control, and wanted to duck out before I was awake, unable to show his face. But, no, that couldn’t be it. He’d certainly looked like he was thoroughly enjoying me on top of him.

Maybe he was calling his family to apologize for running off yet again without warning, and was telling them that he’d be home soon. Maybe he’d decided once and for all that he wouldn’t go through with his original plan of killing the parallel versions of his family members, and that he would instead find a different way to cope with the darkness inside him.

But, if I was being honest, that didn’t seem entirely likely either.

I cursed under my breath and pressed my face into the pillow he’d slept on. It still smelled faintly of him.

Maybe the cold, hard truth was that Markus was nothing more than a spoiled dragon Prince with a rockstar attitude and reckless, cruel habits. Maybe I, the innocent and doe-eyed human girl, had been just another notch on his bedpost, and I’d been a fool to think he’d come to me in the middle of the night for anything other than a piece of ass.

Maybe he was simply acting as he always did. Party, seduce, run away. It was his pattern. After all, as I continued to remind myself, I hardly knew him. Though he felt so comforting and familiar when he was around me, the reality was that I’d only met him about a week ago. And, after all, if I hadn’t been determined time lost by the Rogues, Markus likely would have never been curious enough to visit me that very first time. I would have been tossed into Zik’s torture chamber with the rest of the kidnapped people and never thought of again.

I was so stupid. I always did this. I always expected people to live up to my idealized versions of them.

When I was sixteen, the first boy I ever felt more than a schoolgirl crush for had been the first one to teach me this lesson. The war had been over for only a few years at that point, he and I among the handle of survivors on the entire planet. His name was Jack. He was eighteen at the time, and in the pre-war times, had been in juvenile detention for a laundry list of petty crimes; robbery, breaking and entering and even mild auto theft. But, the thing about our post-war world was that criminal status fell to the wayside in our efforts to survive. There were so few of us left that we couldn’t spare a dozen people to be tossed into a makeshift jail, let alone a dozen more to guard them.

My parents, of course, had warned me not to spend so much time with Jack. But he was handsome and devilishly charming. I liked the way he made my teenage soul feel alive inside a dead world. We snuck around for the better part of a year, stealing kisses in the shadows and making love in abandoned buildings.

And then Jack killed someone. It was a boy he’d known before he was thrown in prison, a survivor that had fought his way across the hellscape that Earth had become to reach our colony. Apparently, the boy had been the one to turn Jack in and land him in juvenile detention.

With no police or law enforcement of any kind in our new world, Jack took it upon himself to exact the revenge he’d craved for years.

But, murder was tolerated even less in the post-war era. Survival was so difficult that willfully taking away the chance for it from another person was a crime that everyone could agree deserved the worst punishment possible. They exiled Jack from our community, dragging him out into the wasteland that had once been a lush, green forest. They abandoned him there and left him to fend for himself. As a silly teenager, I almost thought he would make it somehow. But, they found his body weeks later, picked apart by scavengers.

It took me a long time to be able to give my heart to someone again. In fact, I hadn’t ever really given it fully, completely ever again.

But now, with Markus, I had entertained the idea of being totally, unabashedly his. Of holding nothing back.

I really had been a fool with Markus. A fool, again.

I hadn’t thought about Jack in years, but the memory of him had me wondering if I was crazy. Insanity was, after all, repeating something several times while expecting a different result. Even if I hadn’t totally lost my mind, this obsession of mine with nurturing dark, disturbed creatures into the light was going to get me in trouble one day.

Arguably, it had already got me into trouble plenty of times.

I sat up and forced myself out of bed, stumbling across the room to find a clean pair of clothes. Because I’d been forced onto the ship with nothing but the clothes on my back, I’d had to make do with a lot of the secondhand, mostly black clothing that the other Rogue women had lying around. Today, I tugged on a pair of black leggings and a short black dress, preparing myself mentally for another day of training with Lee and Loretta; another day plotting my revenge against them.

Markus had told me he would help me find a way to turn them in to the Time Agents. I had a feeling that his help was no longer guaranteed. That was fine; I was strong and smart, and I could figure out a way to get out of this mess of a criminal career path on my own.

I wondered idly if Lee would make any comments about Markus’ presence in my bedroom last night. Surely, he would have seen the security footage. He was obsessed with the Prince’s and my relationship, or lack thereof, I guess, and would probably have some kind of snide comment to make about the image of Markus sitting outside my door, head in his hands. I was just going to have to ignore Lee and brush off his stupid words. If I was going to be successful in my endeavors of putting an end to the Rogues, I was going to have to keep Lee from being suspicious of me. Any behavior that was different than I’d already exhibited in front of him would clue him in to the fact that I had something brewing in the back of my mind, especially because Lee was incredibly intuitive.

I hated thinking about Lee.

But, the more I thought about Markus, the angrier I became. A black pit of darkness swirled in my stomach at the fact that he’d been the one to come to me last night, the one to beg me to take control of him, the one who moaned the loudest as we made love…and yet, he was gone by morning. It was immature of him, actually. The fact that he couldn’t face me after sharing a moment like that.

Maybe I wasn’t the fool. Maybe he was.

Or rather, perhaps we both were, because he was the fool who had managed to make a fool out of me. If I was going to survive much longer in this galaxy, I was going to have to get better at guarding my heart.

I glanced outside and figured that Markus had probably already left the ship. It was more than likely that he was already on his way to his family’s castle to kill them all. I urged myself not to care, to simply let it go, but the heartache stung like a knife wound in my chest.

With a frustrated huff, I threw open the door to my bedroom, not entirely sure what my next destination was, but knowing that I needed to get out of that room, that place that Markus and I had shared such a meaningful moment in.

The moment the door banged open and I caught sight of the hallway, I froze.

Someone was waiting for me.

It wasn’t Lee, nor was it Loretta. It certainly wasn’t Markus.

It was Zik.

“Um, hi,” I said, stupidly.

Zik’s facial expression didn’t change. It remained cool and stoic like stone. Everything about him made my blood chill and my skin crawl. His aura felt so wrong. It was neither dark nor light, but a disturbing, murky gray.

“Ellen Moore,” Zik replied, his voice as cold as ice. Two brown eyes fixed me with a terrifying glare. “I’m in need of some assistance.”

I swallowed hard and stepped out of my room. If I was going to play at being a Rogue, it meant that I had to go out of my way to help every dark tourist, including the downright horrifying ones like Zik. Maybe Lee had sent him as some kind of test.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.

The moment that Zik’s thin lips curled into a grotesque smile, I knew something was wrong.

I should have stayed in my room.

Faster than lightning, Zik lifted his hand and blew a sandy, white powder in my face. I squinted and flinched away, coughing as the powder entered my airways. Almost instantly, the edges of my vision started to go black.

No. No. What was going on?

My body crumpled beneath me like it was nothing more than a bag of bones and I fell to the hard metal floor, staring up at Zik as I fought to maintain consciousness.

His savage features were the last thing I saw before the entire world went dark.

Chapter 18

Horrors

Ellen

When I regained consciousness, I was in hell.

Zik was nowhere to be seen, clearly having dragged my body into his specially designed torture chamber and then immediately hurried off to either grab another victim or some more supplies. My hands were bound behind my back with what felt like thick, twisted rope. I struggled into a sitting position, blinking away the haze of whatever chemical Zik had drugged me with and tried to take in my surroundings.

Unfortunately, the surroundings were incredibly bleak.

Instantly going into survivor mode, an incredibly familiar state of being for me, I did my best to remain calm and look around me with cool, logical thoughts. Even though I wanted to scream at the sights around me, I knew that this room had been sound-proofed by the Rogues when they built it for their twisted, torturer client. Furthermore, I knew that screaming would only waste precious energy that had already been depleted by the drug that had knocked me out in the hallway outside my bedroom.

Still, I couldn’t help groaning quietly at the nine bodies scattered throughout the room, limp and abandoned like rag dolls. Though I hadn’t been particularly close with any of the people I’d been kidnapped with - we’d simply been grabbed as a group when we all happened to be in the same place in our ruined city - I cringed at the sight of their fate.

Disturbing stains coated the walls and floor, and I didn’t want to think too hard about what had caused them. Already, my stomach was roiling with nausea and I was grateful that it was empty. All around the room were an assortment of terrifying, unidentifiable tools. They were all sharp points and razor edges, and I fought back the urge to burst into tears at the reality of all the pain that had been experienced in that room in just the past week.

As I maneuvered myself backwards to rest against the farthest wall, I noticed the slightest of movements to my left. I turned to take in the sight of two men, both about twice my age, with their chests still rising and falling with stuttered breaths. One of them was missing a couple of limbs and the other appeared to be bleeding from a thousand different wounds, but they were both still alive.

I cleared my throat. “Hey,” I hissed.

My eyes flickered to the doorway, wondering when Zik would return and force me to go through the same horrors that these people had. Biting my lip, I dared to whisper just a little bit louder. “Psst. Hey!”

But, neither of the men answered.

It became clear to me that they were both deeply unconscious, slipping in between the dreamlike realms that our minds often forced us into, over dealing with the terror of reality.

I shook my head and then closed my eyes, letting the back of my head drop against the cold wall behind me. All ten of us had been through a global war that destroyed nearly everything we knew. All ten of us had toughened and hardened under the pressure of desperation and famine. All ten of us had dreams of seeing home again, of wishing we could turn back time and at least tell what few loved ones we had left goodbye.

I hated myself. I hated that, while I had been skipping around the ship training to be a bad girl insurgent with the Rogues and flirting with a dragon Prince, my people, who were the only pieces of home I had left, were being torn apart and murdered right underneath my nose. And I’d known about it. I’d been fully aware that Zik was doing terrible things on the Rogues’ airship, and that he had paid good money to be able to do it.

I couldn’t believe I’d allowed it to happen. I had no idea what I could have done; after all, I was vastly outnumbered. Maybe Markus would have helped me, but even he was no match for a dozen Rogues and a handful of other psycho criminals.

Some things were out of your control, but that didn’t mean that they were easier to digest. Easier to understand. Easier to accept. I was powerless to have put a stop to Zik’s evil before it began, that much was clear and obvious and true to me even in my current mental state, but I still yearned for a chance to erase it all from history.

A small glimmer of hope sparked deep inside me suddenly.

Our timeline, the one that the ten of us humans had been ripped from, was scheduled to be destroyed by the Time Agents in less than a week. When that happened, every single person on the planet would be erased. No one would remember them. It would be like they had never existed in the first place. That same thing would happen to all of these people, excluding me due to my time lost status. There was a tiny flicker of hope that, not long from now, these poor people sprawled out around this disturbing torture chamber would not exist anymore. Their pain and suffering would be erased alongside them.

Sure, it wasn’t particularly cheerful or pleasant, but it was better than this kind of ending. Swept away, burned to meaningless ash, and tossed away with the garbage once the Rogues landed at their headquarters and began preparing the ship for another dark tourism trip.

My eyes scanned the room, looking for something very specific. I hoped I wouldn’t find it. Prayed, even, that the Rogues were not as disgusting as I feared they were.

Unfortunately, my prayers were not answered. In the corner of the room, perfectly diagonal from where I sat, was the small, almost imperceptible black hole in the ceiling where I knew a security camera sat. The presence of that small device caused my blood to boil and I had to fight back the urge to scream again, only this time in pure, unadulterated rage.

The Rogues knew every detail of what happened in this room. They’d even been able to watch it happen, like some kind of sick entertainment being performed just for them. I doubted Loretta would willingly watch Zik cause humans agony and abuse, but Lee… I had a feeling that Lee probably tuned into this specific security camera every once in a while for his sociopathic fix of sadism.

Every violent thought I’d ever had for Lee multiplied tenfold in that moment. I made the decision, right there in that haunted room, that when I saw him again, I would let every shred of darkness within me take over completely and tear him apart. I’d use all of Zik’s monstrous tools against him. I’d watch him scream.

I wanted to put an end to him. Forever.

The thought surprised me. I’d never, not once in my life, ever felt like I wanted to kill another person. It almost caused me to understand Markus’ motivations for leaving me that morning in favor of assassinating his family members. He was driven by something so strong and overwhelming that he simply couldn’t resist the temptation to become the darkness.

Markus.

I sighed heavily.

However, any thoughts of that foolish Prince that were about to intrude upon my mind were cut off by the quick opening and closing of the door to the chamber. Zik slipped inside. He was alone, of course, though I couldn’t shake the eye of the security camera watching from the other side of the room. Maybe Lee was tuning in right at this very moment. Maybe he could see me here, about to become one of Zik’s victims, and was simply shrugging it off. He had algorithms and inventions to get him more time lost Rogue recruits, after all. I wasn’t that non-expendable. Maybe Zik had even gone to him and paid him an even higher sum than his original invoice just for the opportunity to steal me from my bedroom and drag me away.

I wouldn’t put it past Lee to give in to monetary incentives over all else. He was a greedy monster.

“Hello, pretty,” Zik murmured, stepping closer. The single fluorescent light that flickered on the ceiling cast a sickly glow on his pale skin and I flinched, pressing myself back into the wall, wishing I could sink into it and escape from this hell.

I knew what I had to do to prolong my chances of survival.

Zik wasn’t the type of predator who fighting back against would be productive or effective. In fact, resisting him would probably only egg him on even more. A torturer, after all, enjoyed the visible suffering and pain. It was why they tortured before killing; if they simply wanted to kill people, they’d just be murderers and be done with it quickly.

I had a high pain tolerance. I wondered how much of this demon’s torturing I could withstand, and for how long, before I could manage to figure out a way to escape.

I didn’t bother saying a single word to him. In fact, I remained completely stoic and expressionless as Zik approached, more ropes in hand.

My mouth remained shut tight, my eyes unblinking, and my limbs perfectly stiff as Zik worked, a small but proud smirk on his face. He was happy with himself for capturing me. He’d finally managed to ensnare the tenth victim that had been promised to him since the beginning. All was well and balanced in his world, even while mine completely fell apart.

Zik didn’t engage in conversation as he tightened the ropes around my wrist and then looped the knot through an iron ring affixed to the wall above my head, forcing my hands above me. He bound my ankles together as well. I almost expected him to gag me, too, but then I realized that the sound of my screams would probably bring some kind of pleasure to him.

I wanted to throw up.

But I had to stay strong. I had to be smart. I had to keep my cool and let my survival instincts take over. If I could simply have faith in my ability to stay alive, I knew that I would make it through this. I wasn’t ready to die, especially at the hands of a savage like Zik.

So I continued to feign surrender, knowing that catching him off guard would be the only way to get out of this. If I could convince him that I was weak and defenseless, he wouldn’t expect me to fight back with all the strength that I knew I had inside me.

I wondered if the other nine people had fought back, at least in the beginning. Knowing where they came from, it was a given. The first to die had been the luckiest, and I felt another sad pang in my chest for the two men in the corner who still struggled with their half-lives, having watched their companions be destroyed in front of them, witnessing all the horrible things that would soon be done to them.

Goosebumps erupted on my skin as Zik finished tying me up and walked across the room to a metal tray strewn with bloody torture devices.

You can do this, Ellen, I thought to myself. You can survive.

You have to.

Chapter 19

Survival

Ellen

I couldn’t deny it: I was so afraid that I was shaking in my bones.

Though I wasn’t exactly a stranger to pain, I didn’t particularly look forward to it.

On the other side of the room, Zik was busying himself with a particularly disturbing object. I wondered if he had something especially awful in mind for me, as a way to punish me for evading him in the beginning, though we both knew that I hadn’t had much to do with it. After all, Lee had been the one to deny Zik his tenth victim, not me. But I supposed Zik wasn’t that picky when it came to revenge.

I watched quietly, dread growing in the pit of my stomach, while Zik took a small rag and began cleaning a long, thin blade. I didn’t want to think too hard about what he wanted to do with it, and instead focused on what I could do to escape, and if the device would be helpful in formulating a plan of defense once it came near me.

I thought about what I had learned about Zik from the Rogues during my training. I knew that he hadn’t cared much about the specifics of the timeline he kidnapped humans from, only that they were all relatively healthy adults.

At least he didn’t torture children.

Maybe, given that fact, he wasn’t completely evil after all, but I groaned internally at the thought as it crossed my mind. There I went again, looking for the light in an incurably dark person. I had to stop doing that and stop making a fool of myself. Markus’ face flashed in my mind briefly, almost fleetingly, but I forced it away. I had to focus on the incredibly important task in front of me, not on the dragon Prince I’d thought I loved.

Zik finished cleaning his weapon and then fiddled with a switch on the bottom of it. Immediately wishing I wasn’t watching, or that I couldn’t witness it with my own eyes, I watched as the thin blade whirred to life and began to spin rapidly. Clearly, it was not merely a knife, but a drill. A drill designed specifically, I was sure, for human flesh and bone. I imagined it was probably the type of tool that was highly important and crucial for surgeons and doctors, but in Zik’s hands, it was nothing but the work of the devil himself.

As he approached, the tool gripped casually in his hand by his side, I quickly went through my options before I turned into a slice of human swiss cheese.

For a human, I was strong. Zik had only bound my hands and ankles, not my legs or torso. Either he was becoming a little sloppy, he underestimated my ability to fight back or he was, in general, a lazy torturer. Realistically, it was a combination of all three of those things. But, if that was the case, how did nine people not manage to fight back and kill Zik?

The door was only able to opened by a special electronic keycard that Zik had, so I knew that the nine others had probably figured out they wouldn’t be able to get out of the room, even if they did manage to stop Zik from attacking them. Of course, once the Rogues saw such a thing happen on the security cameras, they would step in to protect the criminal who invested a large sum of cash into the venture.

That didn’t seem like the viable option.

No, I could see in the redness of Zik’s eyes, the creases around his mouth, the sagging cheeks, and his drooping shoulders that he was exhausted. It had taken a lot of energy out of him to torture so many people in such a short amount of time. He was tired, but he couldn’t resist his dark urges. He couldn’t deny his desire to destroy one more person: me. But the effort it required for him to accomplish this one last task was costing him every ounce of vitality within him.

Hope flared in my chest as I realized this was a weakness I could exploit for my own gain.

Zik knelt down before me, and I remained still. I forced my eyelids to flutter closed slightly, feigning the weakness that had lingered in the aftermath of the drugging.

With a grunt, Zik aimed the drill at my forehead and I froze. So, it would be a quick death, then. Right into the brain. The lights would go out almost immediately; the pain shouldn’t last long.

However, I wasn’t giving in.

I stared down the point of the drill as it came closer and closer to my face, the loud whir of the machine echoing inside my head.

At the very last second, I tucked my knees into my chest and thrust upwards, knocking into Zik’s elbows and causing him to jerk the drill upwards. It was a risky maneuver that could have earned me a drill in the forearm or hand, but, thankfully, the drill plunged into the tangle of rope that bound my wrists and shredded it to pieces.

Instantly free, I slammed my hands into Zik’s arms and knocked the drill out of his hands. It skittered across the floor. With a growl that, frighteningly, barely sounded human, Zik lunged for his precious torture device, but I kicked out and managed to dig my heels into the backs of his knees. Zik collapsed onto the concrete floor next to one of the bodies, but he didn’t offer it a single glance.

Instead, he glared at me. Obviously, he did not get a kick out of his victims fighting back.

I nearly screamed and shrank away at the venom in his look, but did my best to remain clear-headed. I knew I didn’t have time to reach down and untie my ankles, so I stayed on the floor and rolled to the drill that still whirred and vibrated cruelly nearby. It was the closest weapon; my only hope for survival.

As I crawled toward it, I was aware of Zik struggling to his feet, fighting exhaustion as he fumbled for a knife. Just in time, I rolled to the side as he lunged and attempted to plunge it deep into my ribcage, earning only the slightest of cuts across my stomach. I hissed in pain, but managed to get Zik off of me again.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I could think of nothing but survive, survive, survive.

My hands touched the handle of the drill just as Zik jumped forward with another knife, this one longer and with a serrated edge. Without thinking, I gripped the drill in both hands and twisted out of the way just in time, stabbing the drill into the first bit of Zik I could get a clear shot at.

His temple.

The next few moments were a blur.

I watched, completely numb, as bursts of red blood clouded my vision. I was only vaguely aware that the blood didn’t belong to me. As I struggled to sit up, ankles still tied tightly together, I stared in confusion, almost not understanding the body that fell to the floor in front of me. It went still after only a moment. The drill switched itself off in the chaos.

The room fell silent.

Dead. Skull. Brain. Blood. Murdered. Killed.

Killer.

A series of scrambled words flew through my mind, but all I managed to formulate at that moment was the fact that I had just killed someone.

Blood rushed in my ears and I could hear my pulse thudding loudly. My breath started coming faster and harder, and I knew that I was having a panic attack despite the fact that I was sitting so still in front of the corpse I had just created.

Glancing down at my hands, I noticed that they were not only trembling but covered in scarlet blood. They were the hands of a murderer. The hands that a deeply dark person would have.

I couldn’t look at Zik. He facial features had been ruined by the drill being stabbed into the side of his head, but the memory of his evil face staring at me from across the ship filled in the blanks as I forced my eyes shut and tried to keep my breathing even.

I had to get out of here.

Reaching down, I fumbled at the ropes binding my feet together. Before I could make much progress on the complicated series of knots Zik had created, the door burst open.

A handful of Rogues flooded in, including Lee and Loretta. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad that I wasn’t going to have to figure my own way out of that horrible chamber of death.

But Lee had an expression on his face that I’d never seen before.

It wasn’t a smirk. It certainly wasn’t a smile.

It was a cold glare. The kind of icy, piercing gaze that could freeze all the oceans in the universe.

I knew then, in that moment, that I wasn’t safe. My struggle for survival wasn’t over yet.

“Ellen Moore,” hissed Lee, marching forward. His voice was devoid of all the mischievous humor and sarcasm that it usually held. He was livid. “Please tell me you did not just murder one of our good-paying dark tourists.”

I couldn’t help myself. I threw my arms up in exasperation and gestured at the room around us. “Only because he was trying to murder me, you psycho!” I spat back.

Beside Lee, Loretta shifted, eyes scanning down the length of my body as if to check for injuries. Confusion settled on her face, and I realized that it was probably unclear whose blood was whose.

“Yes,” sniffed Lee, glancing around the chamber with a disinterested look. I almost wished I’d plunged the drill into his skull instead of Zik’s. “Well. I’m afraid you’ll have to be punished for this.”

I scoffed and reached down again to try to untie my bonds, but a sharp slap across my face from Lee sent me sprawling backward onto the concrete. I screamed instinctually from the harsh, stinging pain and lifted my head to look up at Lee.

“What the hell?” I asked. Around me, a half dozen Rogues began to close in. They stepped around the bodies that littered the floor as if they were nothing more than stray clutter. In the corner of my eye, I noticed Loretta hanging back by the doorway, watching the exchange with cool, clear eyes.

“Honestly, dear,” sighed Lee, kneeling down beside me. He reached out to tuck one of my stray curls behind my ear. Overcome by a violent flare of rage, I spat at him. He flinched back, and I caught the barest hint of his trademark smirk before his features melted back into the devilish savagery that was natural to him. “I don’t think you have what it takes to be a Rogue, and you’ve seen too much. How do I know you won’t go running off to the Time Agents and tell them everything you’ve learned here? We’re going to have to kill you.”

Then with a snap of his fingers, the Rogues pounced.

I may have been a match for one very exhausted, skinny man, but I was no match for six well-trained organized criminals. They forced me to the ground, tying me back up. The bonds were more elaborate this time, and much tighter. When I was all tied up and completely defenseless, Lee waved everyone off and stepped up beside my body laying at his feet.

And then he pulled out a gun and pointed it at my head.

Chapter 20

Formidable

Markus

I’d reached the main exit of the Rogue airship before freezing in place. Something deep inside me stopped me from stepping forward even one more foot, rooted in place at the threshold. I was early; the Rogues wouldn’t meet me for another twenty minutes.

I stood in the open doorway, looking out at the snowy forest and spiked mountain peaks along the horizon. Cold air bit at my cheeks and I breathed in the fresh air I’d known since childhood. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was actually home in my original timeline.

My body, ruled by the subconscious need to reunite with the familiar, wanted to make that final step out into the snow. But something in my head, mirrored by something in my heart, stopped me.

I knew I wasn’t going to do it.

I no longer felt pulled toward the violent ends I’d dreamed of for my family. The sight of Ellen’s empty bedroom had spurred me into action, tugging me halfway out of the airship, away from anything that would cause me to accept the light that stirred within me. But I couldn’t bring myself to follow through.

Something was pulling me. My senses tingled, and it was almost as if an invisible tether was trying to wrench me away from the exit and back into the depths of the airship.

Something was wrong.

It wasn’t just the ruined timeline we were in. Nor was it the strange silence of the ship, which was usually teeming with noise and activity in the launch of the dark tourists’ ventures.

A strange ache settled deep in my chest. A sense of longing, mixed with undeniable worry.

Ellen.

I had a bad feeling. Something inside me told me that she hadn’t just gone for a simple stroll when she’d woken up and found I disappeared in the early hours of the morning. That wasn’t like her. Somehow, I knew that someone had taken her. And it couldn’t have been just anyone.

No, the person who had taken her at the beginning. The person who had always seen her as his, as a toy that was taken away from him when it was discovered that she was time lost.

Zik had finally made a move.

The darkness inside me, which was nothing compared to the darkness within him, and yet still similar in a way, knew that he wanted to repossess Ellen. I could tell that, ever since she was pulled away from him on that first day, he would become obsessed with her.

I cursed and immediately jumped into action.

Ignoring the temptation of the open door and the possibilities for revenge beyond it, I flew across the ship. I paused only briefly at Ellen’s door, which had been left swinging open on its hinges since I’d stopped by in my insane need to slip back into her sheets before she even noticed I was gone in the first place.

Hurrying onward down the hall, I noticed the heavy iron door that had remained closed for almost every minute of the past week was open.

I knew what that door led to, though I wasn’t certain what I would see beyond the threshold.

The first person I saw was Loretta, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. The sounds of struggle came from within and I heard Lee’s muffled voice.

Loretta quirked an eyebrow at me. “There you are,” she said. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”

Her words were odd and confusing, but I didn’t bother to spare them a second thought as a gasp of surprise sounded at the same time the click of a gun being cocked reached my ears.

I shoved past Loretta, who remained strangely calm, and hurried into the room.

Six Rogues stood around Ellen’s body, which had been tied to a series of metals rings bolted to the floor. Around them, nine other bodies lay, dead.

No. Ten bodies.

Zik’s mangled face, dead as dirt, gazed up at me from behind Lee’s boots.

It almost looked as if the Rogues were planning on torturing Ellen the way that Zik would have, but I knew what was going on. Ellen had been the one to kill Zik, that much was clear. She, always the survivor, had found a way to use his own weapon against him. It was the only explanation for his…condition.

The Rogues weren’t going to torture Ellen. Lee had a gun aimed at her head. He would be quick and efficient about it and burn her body along with the others.

They all looked up at my entrance, but I only had eyes for Ellen. Our gaze met across the room, and in that single second, I swore I could see the invisible tether pulling us together, as if the universe had been fighting to connect us all along, but the threads had always just been too tangled.

And then I saw Lee’s finger tense on the trigger of the gun.

I lost control.

They say the Alin dragons are among the most powerful in the universe. They say that the darkness in their veins allows them to shift more quickly than any others like them in the known world and that they are so formidable that they are never to be crossed.

I knew my father could see I was the strongest of my siblings, and that the thought unnerved him. Strength was better suited to the eldest heirs; it was useless in the hands of a Prince who would never be King.

But, at that moment, my strength was not useless.

With an animal shout, I allowed the massive leather wings burst and unfurl from my back. The world turned into shades of red, like a film had been placed over my eyes, and I knew that they were glowing scarlet. My fingernails became talons, and my teeth became fangs.

Finally, finally, I’d transformed into my true dragon self. I’d been saving it for the moment I killed my family, but now was an even better opportunity to give in to the monster I was.

In seconds, the deadly claws that protruded like razors from the edges of my wings took out three of the Rogues, their bloodied corpses joining the others.

Lee, quick on his feet, flipped the gun so it was pointed at me, but a dragon’s skin was thicker than he knew. The bullet practically bounced off, and I knew that it would become nothing more than a bruise over my heart.

For the first time, I noticed panic erupt in Lee’s normally cool demeanor. He ducked behind his cronies and used them as shields, while one of them grabbed a sharp tool from Zik’s arsenal of torture devices. I dodged the attack as if I were doing nothing more than turning around a corner. The Rogue, perplexed, watched as his own weapon flew back at him, swift, unstoppable.

Five remaining Rogues shot at me, five pairs of eyes watched in disbelief as a dozen bullets bounced off, five screaming voices echoed in the room when they saw the skin of my right wing repair itself after one bullet grazed it. I was used to eliciting those emotions. Denial came first, then fear, then, finally, acceptance. It all happened too fast.

As I stood over Lee’s cowering body, I tried to resist the urge to make him suffer. I had to get Ellen out of there. He fixed on me with his usual cold glare, made a little bow and lunged forward, knife in hand, trying to reach my eyes. I ducked as his body passed next to mine, his face red in rage, the blades of my talons going through his body. Lee collapsed onto the floor. The room fell silent.

They were all dead.

I took a moment to calm my hammering heart; a high like that would be difficult to come down from, but I still had lives to save.

Never had I been concerned with saving lives.

My wings returned to their place, melting into my skin. The remnants of my shirt, which had ripped off during my transformation, fluttered away as I knelt beside Ellen and shredded her bonds. My eyes blinked rapidly as the world changed from red to gray, and then back to its normal colors.

Ellen was staring at me, but not in fear. I didn’t have the space in my mind to decode exactly what was in her eyes as she took in the sight of me, but I could sense that it wasn’t damning.

“Come on,” barked Loretta. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

I still had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded and scooped Ellen up into my arms. Loretta clearly didn’t answer to Lee, otherwise she would have tried to stop me along with the other Rogues. It became clear to me, as we ran out of the torture chamber and through the twisting hallways of the ship, that Loretta had goals of her own.

Maybe she always had.

Under our feet, the airship rumbled to life. The other Rogues in the command center must have seen what just happened and were probably trying to prevent our escape.

I steered us toward the port where I’d docked my personal ship, cradling Ellen in my arms. She was light as a feather, curled up and clutching onto my neck like her life depended on it. To be honest, it probably did.

Shouts sounded out behind us and I quickly threw open the door to my ship. Loretta hurried in, taking over Ellen’s wellbeing as I set her down in a seat and then turned to the controls. With nimble fingers, I undid the controls that connected my small, personal ship to the main power line of the Rogue ship so that they couldn’t prevent us from taking off. The Rogue ship was lifting up and away from the ruined timeline’s version of my planet, dragging us along with them.

With a grunt, I flipped all the necessary switches. I turned gears, pressed buttons and did all the things I’d known how to do since I was just a teenage boy and had wanted nothing more than to know how to fly an airship so that I could escape from home whenever I wanted, without having to bother with the inconvenience of chauffeurs or chaperones.

Finally, after several pained, anxiety-fueled minutes, I managed to tear my ship away from the Rogue vessel. The two ships spiraled out away from each other as gravity loosened and we slipped out of the timeline. I held on to the sides of the cabin and gritted my teeth, watching the Rogue ship get further and further away. I expected them to pursue us, but they clearly seemed more concerned with disappearing and never being seen again.

“Markus,” snapped Loretta. I still didn’t know how she’d managed to become a part of this escape mission, but something in me told me that she was trustworthy. I assumed it was light-influenced instincts kicking in. All this time around Ellen and her survival skills had attuned my mind to another person’s specific vibes. I knew that Loretta wasn’t here to hurt us.

She was here to hurt someone else. Something else.

“She needs you,” Loretta said, nodding toward Ellen, who was slumped in a seat with her head lolling onto her chest, her eyelids barely flickering open. “Let me drive. We need to go after them.”

“Are you insane?” I snapped, blocking the controls.

Loretta glared at me, and then reached into her pocket.

She pulled out an official Time Agent badge.

“I’ve been undercover for a long time, Prince Markus,” she muttered. I froze at the sight of the intergalactic government’s formal seal. “I’m not about to let everything I’ve worked for slip through my fingers. Lee may be dead, but the Rogues will live on if you don’t let me take control of this ship right now.”

The look in her eyes, coupled with the authority her badge offered, told me it wouldn’t be wise to argue any further. So I moved out of her way and went to Ellen’s side.

“Markus,” Ellen moaned, leaning into my body as I took her back into my arms.

“Shh,” I whispered. “I’m here. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” she murmured before slipping into unconsciousness.

Chapter 21

Explosion

Ellen

All the adrenaline that had coursed through my body for the past couple of hours drained out of me the moment that Markus’ ship disengaged from the massive Rogue airship. It was like a sigh of relief, though I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t quite finished yet.

Through my drooping eyelids, I could see Loretta at the controls of the tiny space vehicle and tried to make sense of it. There had always been something decidedly not-Rogue about her, whether it was the way she tended to glare at Lee almost as venomously as I did, or the fact that she always maintained an oddly formal set of mannerisms, despite the Rogues’ tendencies to be colloquial and, admittedly, crude.

Markus was beside me with a damp cloth, pulled from somewhere in the back of the ship. He dabbed at my face and arms, washing away Zik’s blood from my skin. He worked silently, fingers gentle as they floated over my body.

“Where are you hurt?” He murmured, his voice low as Loretta drove. Her back was to us, but I could tell she was doing her best to pay close attention to us while she drove. If she really was a Time Agent, that kind of behavior made sense; it was similar to the survival instincts that had been drilled into me since I was a child. Both of us knew to be prepared for anything.

I swallowed hard and gestured to the cut on my stomach. Markus lifted my shirt up and over my head to clean the wound. I breathed a relieved sigh when I saw that it was just as shallow as it felt. Zik had definitely been the one who fared worse in our altercation. Other than the cut, a few smaller scrapes and bruises were the only injuries I maintained, alongside the rope burns around my wrists. The Rogues had not been gentle when they’d tied me up on the floor of that room.

A chill ran down my spine at the memory and Markus paused in his methodical motions.

“You’re safe,” he whispered. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you ever again.”

My immediate reaction to his words was to tell him not to make promises he couldn’t keep, but something inside me told me that, maybe this time, I could truly be safe with him. Something felt right about this moment, the two of us free and together, drifting through space and time.

However, the time for heartfelt confessions and romantic declarations hadn’t presented itself yet. There were still countless loose ends that needed clarifying before I could truly relax in Markus’ arms.

I turned to Loretta, who stood at the controls and was acutely focused on a small red dot on the radar screen, which I assumed was the Rogue ship. She adjusted the steering wheel so that we could continue following them from a distance and then pulled out a tablet.

It was a very familiar tablet; the same one that housed access to the Time Agency’s Quantum Drive, and the same one that I had been trained on.

I cleared my throat, wincing as I sat up and shifted my body to face Loretta.

“Hey,” I said as sharply as I dared. “Explain yourself.”

Markus grew still beside me, clearly just as interested in what Loretta had to say for herself as I was. Was she really a Time Agent? Or was she truly a Rogue, and this whole thing was an elaborate, well thought-out scheme put in place as some kind of contingency by the horrible, and now dead, Lee?

Loretta paused. For a moment, I wondered if she would simply ignore me, but then she flicked on a switch that I assumed was some kind of autopilot and then turned to face us.

“I’ve been working as a Time Agent for just over a decade,” she began. “I was in Lee’s inaugural class, in fact. I knew him well, though we weren’t friends back then. Lee doesn’t have friends, after all.”

I watched her face for any signs of lying, but detected nothing. She was either being truthful or she was highly trained in fibbing. For our sake, I sincerely hoped it was the former, rather than the latter.

“Lee left the Agency about a year into his first assignment. Our supervisors had always suspected that he had nefarious intentions and wouldn’t last very long as a Time Agent. Our goal, after all, is to maintain the delicate balance of the time and space continuum. Not to exploit it.”

My eyes flickered to Markus. He swallowed nervously. I realized then that he could be in serious trouble. He’d broken the law by becoming a dark tourist, and actively participated in the evil doings of Lee, who had clearly been a most-wanted criminal for several years. Now, faced with a real representative from intergalactic law enforcement, Loretta could very easily arrest Markus. Maybe his Prince status or his family’s money would save him from prison, but I had no idea how serious the Time Agents were about those who broke time laws. Until very recently, I’d had no idea such an elaborate system even existed.

But Loretta’s main concern was obviously not to turn Markus in. Her mission was much bigger than that.

She continued her explanation and I sat listening with rapt attention. “Not long after Lee left the Agency, we started to get reports of suspicious activity in timelines set for destruction, and the rise of an underground organization that referred to themselves as Rogues. Over the years, the Time Agents have sent countless people after Lee, but none have been successful. I’ve been working with him for two years, convincing him to trust me by declaring that I share the same anarchic ideals as him. I can assure you, I do not. My main goal is to put an end to Lee and his organization.”

Loretta sighed and met Markus’ gaze. “Truly, I would have preferred to arrest him, but I suppose it’s fine that he’s dead. He was an awful creep.”

A wash of relief overwhelmed me. I’d always sensed that Loretta didn’t like him. Part of me thought it was something more to do with competitive colleagues and the hierarchy of the organization, but to learn that Loretta had been plotting his downfall all along brought an incredibly strong sense of satisfaction to me.

“So, what about all the dark tourists that have paid Lee for his services for the past decade?” Markus asked. It was a gutsy question, that was for sure. I didn’t think I wanted to know the answer.

Loretta pursed her lips. “Obviously, the Time Agency doesn’t quite like that there have been thousands of individuals participating in Lee’s criminal activity, but it’s actually been quite useful in rooting out dangers to society. Zik, for example, will not be missed. In fact, the Time Agency will be very grateful to learn you’ve done away with him; we don’t believe a person like that should be allowed to live, in prison or not.”

I leaned forward, ignoring the stab of pain in my stomach at the motion. “So, Markus isn’t going to…be in trouble?”

Loretta sighed heavily and took a minute to glance away, monitoring our progress at the controls for a moment. I tightened my grip on Markus’ arm. He’d done so well, refusing to give into the darkness and choosing not to go through with his plan for his family in the ruined timeline. If he was going to be punished for his intentions, I worried it would only foster his darkness.

Finally, Loretta spoke again.

“The Time Agents are not particularly concerned with prosecuting dark tourists, except for those who have committed criminal activity repeatedly and are already wanted for breaking separate laws,” she explained. “Prince Markus has done nothing wrong, technically. Other than aiding and abetting a known criminal by providing him with monetary support, of course, but we’ll waive that in the intergalactic courts given that His Highness also helped put an end to him.”

“So you were the only Agent onboard?” I asked.

Loretta smiled in approval at my prodding, glad that I was keen on asking about the finer details. She had trained me well. “Rosa Ricardo. She never reboarded the ship when we landed in that timeline, though it appeared she did. Lee was suspicious of her, so I convinced him to leave her behind. She is, of course, back at the Time Agency headquarters, playing her role in this mission very well.”

“So, the baby…” Markus murmured.

Loretta shrugged. “The baby was a time-lost infant that had been orphaned. She has since been brought to a timeline that isn’t ruined or set for destruction and adopted by a loving family.”

Markus nodded once in acknowledgement and then, perhaps in response to Loretta’s earlier words about the intergalactic justice system, turned to me, a question in his eyes. I could tell that he was searching for my approval, too. He needed to know that he’d done the right thing. He needed to see that another person had witnessed the light in him in order for him to be able to see it inside himself.

I reached out to tangle my fingers in the curls at the base of his neck, pulling him closer to me so that I could press a kiss to his mouth. He hesitated in answering the kiss, clearly surprised by my actions. I was surprised, too. I’d been ready to curse him out and swear off men forever when I’d seen he’d managed to slither out of my bed before I’d woken up.

But, something between us had changed since that moment.

Loretta cleared her throat again. “I should also mention…we’ve been preparing for this day for years. The outcomes of this timeline, the one we’re in right now, with the three of us and the Rogues and Lee and whatnot, have changed slightly over the past few years, but the Time Agency has been watching this timeline for years. It wasn’t until recently when it was deemed the most viable option for taking Lee down.”

I frowned in confusion. I had, after all, only had a handful of days of training on this kind of information.

Loretta nodded at the look of misunderstanding on my face, prepared to lecture me the way she would have in that tiny conference room, with Lee watching on nearby, an amused smirk fixed on his face.

But, Markus spoke up before she did. “You knew,” he replied, staring at Loretta with a look of absolute shock. “You knew about her. About Ellen. About me. You knew all of this would happen.”

Loretta shrugged. “We knew, generally, that a time-lost human would be kidnapped by one of Lee’s dark tourists and we knew that, yes, you, Prince Markus Alin III, the ninth heir to the dragon throne, would be on that ship. We also knew that the two of you would fall in love. In fact, after extensive research with the Quantum Drive, it appeared that the two of you falling in love was imperative to this timeline being a successful option for the mission.”

“How?” I asked. “What do the two of us have to do with anything?”

Loretta merely shrugged. “Timelines are complex and delicate things. Sometimes even the smallest, most seemingly inconsequential moment can be the only thing keeping the balance. In this case, you and Markus just appeared to be the key.”

In other words, Markus and I were meant to be. Fated, even.

The pull I’d felt toward him from the moment he knocked on my door the first day instantly began to make sense. Of course we’d been drawn to each other. The entire universe could sense that us being together would do something good for the world.

I was about to say something far too cheesy to Markus when Loretta clapped her hands together. Markus and I watched as our small dot on the radar approached the larger dot that was the Rogue ship. Outside the windows of the airship, we could see it in the distance. It had slowed slightly, allowing us to catch up, but Loretta quickly pulled us to a stop, leaving us suspended in space.

“What are you-?” I began.

The corner of Loretta’s mouth quirked upward. I realized it was the first time I’d seen her smile.

“I rigged the ship,” she said by way of explanation.

“Rigged it?” I asked, jaw dropping as I began to understand.

“Yes,” she replied simply. “With explosives. We cannot allow the Rogues’ version of the Quantum Drive to continue existing. It needs to be destroyed, so ensuring the destruction of the entire ship was the most effective method.”

“Why did we have to follow them, then?” I asked, confused as to why we had to stalk the Rogues instead of escaping to somewhere safe and far away if they were all destined to die a fiery death without question.

“The Time Agency has its methodology and laws,” was Loretta’s answer. “There need to be witnesses to the destruction of the Rogues so that we can testify in the intergalactic courts later on.”

Finally, Markus found his voice, eyes locking on the Rogue ship hovering in the distance.

“You-” Markus began, standing up immediately.

But, he was cut off by a brilliant, fiery explosion in the distance.

I watched, eyes wide, as the Rogue ship burst into a rage of flame and crumbled into an ashy inferno.

Chapter 22

Reunited

Markus

I could tell that Ellen was slightly disturbed by the sight of yet another thing bursting into flames, and even more people dying. I knew that she was thinking about the nine people who had come with her onto the ship from her timeline, and that their bodies would be lost forever to ash in the solar system.

But I could also tell that she understood it was necessary. The Rogues had to be destroyed. Though it had only been yesterday when we watched Paul and Patty burn millions of innocent people alive, this was different. Nobody on that ship was innocent.

I was grateful that Rosa hadn’t been on it. I’d sensed something in her that wasn’t completely dark or evil, and I was glad that I’d been proven right.

But, I was still confused about the situation and the explosion. Why would the Time Agents want to destroy everything, rather than bring the perpetrators into court for justice to be properly served? The answer came to me a second later after I’d finished thinking the question.

They didn’t want any copycats. They wanted to completely erase the Rogues from existence. The Time Agents didn’t want any stragglers running around thinking they could be the next Lee and make millions off the exploitation of time, space and individuals’ dark desires.

“Wait,” Ellen said, wincing as she stood up. I quickly tried to settle her back down in the seat, worried about the state of her injuries, though they weren’t as serious as all the blood on her clothes made them seem. But, as always, Ellen was stronger than she looked.

Loretta raised an eyebrow at Ellen.

“My parents,” she said. “In training, you said that those who interacted with time lost individuals on an intimate level for extended periods of time could be pulled from timelines in the same way, without any consequences.”

I watched Loretta purse her lips in thought, and I knew that I would gladly morph back into my dragon form to scare her into doing this one last thing for Ellen if I had to.

I’d killed for her. I’d do it again. I’d do it anytime, anywhere.

After all, I was, apparently, meant to find her all along. We were fated for each other.

“I can do my best,” Loretta replied finally, immediately turning to the controls and directing my ship in the opposite direction. I didn’t mind letting her drive; it allowed me to give all of my attention to the girl I was pretty sure I loved.

It didn’t take long to reach Ellen’s ruined timeline. Apparently, all versions of her timeline and all versions of mine were never very far from each other. It was, according to Loretta, a side effect of the invisible threads stringing Ellen and I together, the universe trying to manipulate the very fabric of reality in order to make us one.

It was, admittedly, incredibly romantic.

I’d never been all that concerned about romance, but something about Ellen made me want to be. Something about Ellen made me want to be a good person.

So I would be.

Loretta landed the small airship expertly on a vast, open field. Or rather, I imagined it would have been a field, had there been an inch of greenery around us. Whatever life had once flourished here, on Ellen’s version of the planet Earth, had been crushed to a pulp and stunted from regrowth by a devastatingly poisonous war.

“I’ll wait at the ship,” Loretta said as both Ellen and I hurried off. I couldn’t remember when she’d said that this timeline was set for destruction, but I knew that it was soon, and I had a feeling that, while Loretta was clearly a high-ranking Time Agent, she probably didn’t have the power to delay something as important as the destruction of an entire timeline.

Ellen stepped down onto the hard, brown dust carefully, staring around her with her mouth slightly open.

“I never thought I’d be back here,” she said quietly. Around us, the skeletons of buildings that I was sure had once been glorious and towering stood crooked and barren against the gray sky. I’d only caught glimpses of this world outside the windows when the Rogues had first landed here for Zik to kidnap his victims. I could hardly believe that Ellen had called a place like this home. It was no wonder that she was as tough as she was, and as attuned to survival as she was.

“We can’t stay long,” I told her, taking her hand and leading her toward the end of the park that looked like it was inhabited by a series of makeshift tents and huts. She followed, her steps timid at first, and then more confident.

As we drew closer, but still remained far enough away for us to remain undetected, Ellen paused, kicking up a cloud of dust with her boots.

She looked over at me, sadness weighing heavy in her sparkling green eyes.

“We can’t save them all,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but instead, a statement. A true statement. We could take her parents away from this world, and bring them somewhere that they wouldn’t be erased from existence, but nobody else had been close enough with Ellen for their genetic makeup to be affected well enough to survive that kind of transportation. At least, that was how Loretta had explained it as we landed.

Silently, we agreed with a silent look that we would have to sneak her parents away without being detected. If anyone other than just them caught word that their world was about to be destroyed and the only escape was a small space vehicle currently parked about a mile away, there would be riots. These people were driven by hope for survival.

Ellen waved me over to the edge of the park, and together we dipped in and out of the shadows of the broken buildings, sneaking toward a small makeshift house constructed with large sheets of metal and scraps of wood.

“It used to be called Central Park,” Ellen whispered to me, nodding her head to the massive expanse of crumbling Earth under our feet.

When we reached her post-war home, Ellen snuck us around the back and through a thin opening in the haphazardly placed materials. Inside the small shelter, two people who looked like older, split versions of Ellen stared in surprise at the sight of their daughter. A woman with blond hair and green eyes, alongside a man with dark curls and dark eyes, ran toward her and engulfed her in their arms.

My chest stung with a sharp pain at the image of such obvious familial love. It was clear how much they cared for each other. I wished I felt that way about my own family, wished that I had something special like that.

But, I did have something special in Ellen.

And it wasn’t too late to build something real and meaningful with my family. I was still young.

When the heartfelt reunion faded into quiet sniffles, Mr. and Mrs. Moore seemed to finally notice my presence in the room.

“Who’s this?” asked her father, eyes stern and calculating.

“Dad, this is Prince Markus,” Ellen said, coming to stand by my side. She took my hand and I saw the knowledge dawn in both of her parents’ eyes. Her mother looked delighted, though her father remained wary at the sight of his daughter in love. “He saved my life.”

Those words warmed him slightly.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, offering my hand to shake like I knew that humans from Earth tended to do. They both shook my hand.

“That’s a lovely accent,” said her mother, offering me a gentle smile. I answered it in kind, wondering if she could see the darkness that still danced on the edges of my aura. I knew that it would never truly dissipate, but I’d come to accept that all people were careful balances of both light and dark. Choosing the lighter side more often than the darker side was what was important.

“Where on Earth have you been?” asked Ellen’s mother. “And please tell me that isn’t your blood.”

Ellen shot me a wink and then shrugged. “Well, the thing is… I haven’t been on Earth. And I can’t be here for very much longer. None of us can.”

“What are you talking about, sweetie?” asked her father.

Ellen stepped forward and took both of them by the hand, urging them out of the house. In their confusion, they followed easily, walking back into the shadows outside with us back toward the ship where Loretta was waiting. I wished I’d thought to get the guest room ready for Mr. and Mrs. Moore. I hadn’t been expecting to entertain a lover’s parents this week, that was for sure.

Of course, Ellen was more than just a lover at this point, but I still didn’t quite know what to call her, so that label would have to do for now.

“I promise I’ll explain,” Ellen told her parents, leading them further and further from the small settlement. “But, if you want to survive, you need to follow me.”

Those words alone seemed to do the trick. The word survive flipped a switch in her parents’ heads and they immediately released their tension, quickening their steps as we hurried through what had once been a green park to the compact black ship that hummed to life at the sight of us.

We reached the ship and the four of us stepped on.

Loretta, after quick introductions, immediately closed the vessel and prepared for takeoff again. Ellen’s parents’ faces were practically glued to the glass as the ship rose off the ground and gained speed, bursting back into the open stratosphere within minutes. Ellen was sandwiched between them and they each had an arm around her waist, as if they wouldn’t even willingly let go of her ever again. I watched from afar, standing beside Loretta as she continued piloting my ship with expert hands.

“Where to, Your Royal Highness?” asked Loretta, fingers hovering over the series of switches and knobs.

I sighed quietly. “Home, I suppose.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

I was. It was time to begin a new chapter of my life. I was ready.

“I’m sure,” I told her.

And, just like that, we set course for my planet.

Chapter 23

Control

Ellen

It had taken hours to explain everything to my parents. Mostly because I had to repeat pretty much everything that came out of my mouth because they didn’t believe it the first time around.

Eventually, they’d come to accept the reality of our timeline’s situation. Though it was difficult, the truth was that we couldn’t save all the survivors on our planet. Only time lost people and those who had been changed deeply by their proximity to a time-lost person could be pulled from timelines like that.

It was a small comfort that those people struggling for the next day down on the Earth would no longer have to suffer. They wouldn’t feel pain in the end, not the pain of hunger or thirst or exposure, nor the pain of losing loved ones in a horrifying war. They’d simply…stop existing.

After a while of explaining all the details to my parents, with the help of Loretta behind the wheel of Markus’ ship, I’d managed to get them into Markus’ guest bedroom. They fell asleep quickly, clearly affected by the sudden changes all around them. I remembered what it had been like to be yanked from my own timeline and faced with something so intense as the reality of an intergalactic Time Agency and millions of timelines, not to mention a demonic ex-convict who wanted to torture me and a dragon Prince who had a strange fascination for me.

With my parents comfortably unconscious and Loretta occupied at the control panel, I went looking for Markus. I found in the far back corner of the ship in a private suite designed for what I assumed were longer journeys. He was sprawled on the massive bed, staring up at the ceiling, but glanced up and immediately sat up straight at the sight of me.

I’d since changed out of my bloodied clothes and washed the grime from my skin, and also changed into an old shirt of Markus’ that fell halfway to my knees and served as more of a dress than anything.

“Hey, beautiful,” he murmured, patting the empty space beside on the bed.

With a grin, I plopped down next to him and leaned into his side.

“I have something to tell you,” he murmured.

“Hmm?” I asked, leaning in for a quick kiss. He obliged, but then pulled back with a playful grin.

“I love you,” he said.

I almost didn’t think I’d heard him properly. But the look in his eyes told me that I’d heard correctly and that he was terrified of what my reaction would be to a declaration like that.

But I knew I loved him back. The entire universe knew it.

“I love you, too,” I whispered, climbing onto his lap to straddle his hips like I had just the night before.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I deepened the kiss, pressing myself close to him.

He chuckled and parted only an inch to murmur, “How in the hell do you have the energy for this after the day we’ve had?”

I giggled. The truth was, I didn’t know. I knew I should have been exhausted, and even a little traumatized, but all I could think about was the happy endings we’d accomplished together. Zik and Lee were dead, the Rogues were destroyed, my parents were safe and Markus loved me.

And I wanted to relive the night before. I wanted to feel my skin on fire again.

“I have to admit,” I muttered in Markus’ ear. “Even though I was tied up by evil criminals, watching you turn into a dragon was kind of…hot.”

Markus snorted softly. “Was it?”

He warm breath fanned across my neck as he peppered kisses along my collarbone.

“Mmm,” I sighed in response, pushing him down onto the bed with a rough shove.

I pulled the borrowed shirt up and over my head, surprised by how naked I suddenly was on top of him.

Markus seemed surprised, too, his hands stroking the bare skin of my thighs with a timid grip.

“Ellen,” he laughed. “Your parents are on this ship.”

I chuckled. The fact that he was concerned about my parents overhearing us was kind of endearing. It meant that he’d learned to care less about his own pleasure and what he could gain from a situation. He’d grown so much in the past few days. I knew that, in the future, he would still have moments where he wasn’t the most light or most good, but so would I. I’d proven earlier that day that even I was capable of something as dark as murder, even if it had been in self-defense.

But I was fine with that. I wanted to know what a future with him would hold.

“Oh, come on, party boy,” I crooned, biting gently on his earlobe. “I know you’ve got this flying bachelor pad sound-proofed.”

Markus chuckled loudly. “How do you know me so well?”

“We’re soulmates, remember?” I joked.

In response, Markus tightened his grip on my hips and pulled me closer against him. I moaned quietly, already so desperate to feel him inside me again. It was like our first time making love had destroyed the dam that had been keeping my desire for him at bay. Now, I couldn’t hold my hunger back from him. I wanted him, more than I’d wanted anything.

“Well, if that’s the case,” Markus murmured. “I seem to remember us agreeing that I’d be the one in charge this time.”

My stomach swooped in a strange thrill at his words and I smiled against his kiss.

“Go for it, then,” I sighed.

Markus let out a quiet groan and flipped us over so that he was on top of me, leaning over my recumbent form with a wicked grin on his face. I bit my lip as I stared up at him, but the tenderness was gone in mere seconds as I watched the animal passion took over him.

With strong hands, Markus took a hold of my hips and flipped me over onto my stomach. In the same breath, he brought the palm of his hand down hard against my bare bottom with a sharp slap. I gasped in surprise, but the brief pain mingled with the pleasure growing like fire between my legs, and I moaned.

“You like that?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Mhm,” I half-moaned with a quick nod, biting my lip as I lifted up onto my knees and elbows, wiggling my hips closer to him. “Do it again.”

He obliged. My gasp colored the heated air around us with a delicious burst of passion.

“Again, my Prince,” I demanded.

I felt him come closer and lean over my backside. He’d done away with his clothing quickly, and I felt his hardness against my inner thigh.

“Your Prince isn’t accepting demands at this time,” he murmured in my ear. “He’s only giving them… Now, spread your legs.”

With a smile, I did as he said, thoroughly enjoying giving into his control. Even though I’d always wanted to be the one in charge of my own destiny, letting him be in charge was like the final piece of the puzzle in me being able to relinquish the harsh guidelines and tight morals I lived my life with.

I was allowing myself to give into the darkness, even if it was just a little bit.

Markus buried himself inside me with slow, measured thrusts. I pressed my face into the sheets to muffle my moan, even though I knew no one else on the ship would be able to hear us beyond the door to his bedroom.

He groaned in pleasure, bracing himself with one hand on the headboard above me as he deepened the thrusts. After a moment, his hand slipped away again though, reaching around my hips to massage small circles into the pulsing bud between my thighs. The pleasure increased tenfold and my low moans dissolved into something higher and more breathy, almost desperate sounding.

I could tell already that neither one of us was going to last much longer. There was too much pure lust coursing between us; we’d probably have to go for several more rounds before either one of us could be satiated. And then it likely wouldn’t be very much longer until we needed to be wrapped up in each other again.

The hunger that flourished between Markus and I was something that couldn’t be quenched with one night, or even a handful of nights.

No, it would be a lifetime of this kind of passion.

I was okay with that.

“You feel so good,” whispered Markus, trembling above me.

“Oh,” I sighed in reply. “Harder.”

Though he claimed to not be accepting my demands, Markus did as I said.

The headboard thumped quietly into the wall as Markus thrust into me. I relished the feeling of him gliding in and out of my warm center. It was incredible how well our bodies fit together, as if they’d been designed for this all along. No wonder I’d never felt this way with anyone before. My whole life, I’d been waiting for this man to come along and bring my body the true passion it craved.

I rocked my hips back against his, matching his tempo. His fingers quickened their pace on the pink pearl just above my entrance and I cried out, unable to figure out which of his touches was bringing me closer to the edge. My mind was spinning with the overwhelming sensation of it all.

“I love the sounds you make,” Markus hummed.

In answer, I let out another moan, shifting my hips to widen my legs and change the angle slightly. Markus mirrored my moan, and our bodies collided, gracefulness being tossed to the wayside as we both yearned for sweet release.

Less than a minute later, we unraveled together, bodies shaking from indescribable waves of pleasure.

I rolled onto my back once more when Markus pulled out of me and dropped onto the sheets.

“I love you,” he whispered, his breath coming fast as he pulled me close and pressed a kiss to my temple.

I smiled and trailed my fingertips down the center of his chest, tracing the tiny beads of sweat that had collected there during our lovemaking. “I could get used to hearing that.”

“I love you,” he said again.

I giggled, pressing my palm flat against his well-muscled stomach.

“I love you, too,” I replied, letting my fingers dip further town to take his manhood in my hand. He sucked in a sharp breath, still sensitive from his orgasm, but it didn’t take long for him to melt into my touch as I stroked his length until it was hard again.

“Greedy girl,” he moaned into my ear, his breath stuttering.

I grinned and shifted down the bed so that I was kneeling between his legs. I ducked my head and wrapped my lips around the tip of his erection.

Swirling my tongue around the tip for a few seconds, I pulled back and glanced up to offer him a mischievous smile. “Oh, I’m just getting started.”

Markus cursed under his breath, reaching down to tangle his fingers in my hair as I took him back into my mouth.

“Yeah, I really love you,” he groaned before his words turned into nothing more than quiet whimpers and sharp pants.

The night descended around us as the ship flew through the galaxies, and neither one of us had any intention of sleeping. There were too many things that needed to be said, but spoken with our bodies rather than our mouths.

So, just as the universe intended, two became one.

Epilogue

The King and Queen of the Alin dragon throne were, admittedly, incredibly surprised when Markus returned, as requested, the next day. They were even more surprised when they realized that he’d not only brought a girl home with him, but her parents, as well. A set of guest apartments were quickly prepared for the unexpected guests with one quick flick of the Queen’s wrist at the palace servants. There were a small race of humans on this planet, and Ellen’s parents would fit in well with them in the village that surrounded the glorious Alin palace.

Markus had taken Ellen’s hand in his when he entered the throne room. It was the same room of his nightmares, the one in which his mother bled out before him, as well as the room in which he’d been nothing more than a shadow for his entire childhood.

Together, the young couple knelt before the formidable rulers of the dragons and all eight heirs. Ellen remained quiet while Markus apologized for his disappearance, and all of his disappearances of the years.

“I need more from you,” Markus had said to his parents and his older siblings, very bravely. “I am more than the ninth heir. I am your son, your brother. I deserve just as much respect as the others, despite my status in the royal bloodline.”

Markus’ parents were incredibly proud of him for speaking up from himself. Prince Ry, the first heir, nodded at his youngest brother’s words. The Crown Prince had often thought it must have been less than ideal to be the most forgotten member of such a powerful family and could see that a positive change had come over Markus throughout the past week. No one knew the details of what Markus had been up to this time around, but they were sure that he would tell them in time.

Even Prince Jack admitted that he was looking forward to a new chapter in which his little brother wasn’t as much of an embarrassing trainwreck of a royal.

“Now, who’s this?” asked King Alin himself when Markus had finished explaining himself, nodding his head at Ellen.

Her head had shot up the moment she realized she was being acknowledged, and she stared up at the huge family of dragons with awe in her eyes. She’d never seen anything like it; a united front of magnificent creatures capable of so much beauty and so much power. It made her love Markus even more.

“This is Princess Ellen Moore,” Markus introduced her.

Later that evening, when Ellen and Markus finally managed to be alone again after the flurry of his arrival with her and her human parents in the dragon-dominated castle, Ellen turned to Markus with confusion in her eyes.

“Why did you tell them a Princess?” she asked Markus, wondering if he was somehow ashamed of her regular, insignificant human status and felt pressure to make something up in front of his parents so that they would be more likely to accept her presence in such an elegant, regal place.

But Markus smiled at her.

“Because,” he explained. “When someone marries a Prince, they become a Princess.”

Ellen froze in place. Markus’ bedroom windows were thrown open to tempt in the early spring breeze and a light wind ruffled her curls as she stared in shock at the gorgeous man standing in front of her.

“Oh,” was all she managed to utter.

Markus chuckled at her reaction.

And then, in a move that even the Time Agents and the Quantum Drive itself had probably not expected, Markus dropped down onto one knee and smiled up at Ellen through his thick, dark eyelashes.

“Ellen Moore,” he whispered, taking both her hands in his. He didn’t have a ring yet; he hadn’t had time to slip into the locked vault of royal jewels and procure one of the dozens of brilliant diamond rings that had graced the fingers of soon-to-be Alin brides for centuries. Markus knew that Ellen wouldn’t mind.

“Ellen,” he said again, his voice somehow even softer this time around. “I am so lucky to have found you, and I will spend every day for the rest of my life thanking the stars and the moons and the planets and every floating fragment in our known universe that, somehow, by some miraculous force of nature, our paths crossed. I love you. You bring out the light in me, but you also bring out the light in the world. You are light. Anyway… Will you marry me?”

And, of course, Ellen’s answer had been, “Yes, Markus. I’ll marry you.”

The universe breathed a sigh of relief, delighted that this small moment had gone right and that, amidst the turmoil and chaos that abounded, at least one happy ending had been realized, at last.

More By Dany

Four Daddies’ Secret Twins

Get It Here

I snuck out to Werewolf City and spent the night with four men...

Now I'm pregnant and don't know who the father is.

It was all an accident.

When my own father found out, he locked me up to give birth in a bunker...

No prince charming is coming to my rescue.

Or princes, in this case --they are royal, after all.

But none of that matters right now...

Does it?

It's been so long I'm not even sure they remember my name.

Or the night we spent together.

And who would have thought...

I am carrying not one, but two of the only heirs they'll ever have...

What would they do if they ever found out?

Auctioned To The Armitage Brothers

Get It Here

"There are private auctions, held by the wealthy elite of this city.

It may be your only option for a better life for you and your daughter.

But I have to ask, are you still able to bear children?"

The chills run through my spine.

But what other option do I have?

A single mom.

A convicted, abusive ex-husband.

A world that is crumbling.

What else can I ask for?

I will keep my daughter safe, no matter the cost.

"OK", I said.

"Sign me in."

Four days later, a letter shows up in my mailbox:

"Dear Mrs. Robson,

It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been purchased by Mr. George Armitage, Esq.

Mr. Armitage is a pillar of the Chicago community, and is the CEO of Armitage pharmaceuticals.

They are an extremely wealthy household, and I am sure you will settle in very nicely there.

As for what services you will be providing, Mr. Armitage is looking for..."

But I couldn't read anymore.

Oh Lord...

What did I get myself into!?