Born of Shadows Read Free Page B

meal, what he really wanted before he checked out was a good lay. One last bang to end all others.
    He laughed evilly under his breath as he remembered the look of dumbfounded shock on the warden’s face when they’d asked him for his last request.
    “Any of your daughters horny?”
    That had been answered with a vicious head slam to the wall. Not that he wouldn’t have done the same, or more to the point, worse, had someone asked him that about one of his sisters. But…
    He was ever a thorn in the ass of those he hated and that was basically anyone who had any kind of authority.
    Yeah well, that’s about to end too.
    He sighed as he stared through the small open window covered in bars, watching the soldiers outside rush around in last-minute prep. There was a part of him terrified about dying. Okay, there was a lot of him terrified about dying. He’d always hoped it would be when he was really old and in his sleep. But practically speaking, the alternative druther would have been in a brutal fight where he took out as many of his enemies with him as he could.
    At least you’re not dying alone in the gutter.
    He flinched at a memory he always did his best not to think about. If he lived a thousand years he’d never forget watching his father die alone like he was nothing but trash. And in all the morbid scenarios he’d conjured over the years for his own death never had execution entered his mind.
    Even now he could hear his sister’s desperate call. “Cai, I’m in the Garvon sector and running from their Enforcers. Can you help me?”
    Kasen had omitted the fact she was transporting prillion—an antibiotic so potent it was outlawed by every government that took payoffs from the medical communities who feared the dent it would put into their profit margins. But to smugglers like him and his sister, it was pay dirt. One shipment would leave you flush for at least a year.
    And it was a death sentence to carry it through certain systems.
    Garvon happened to be one of them.
    Even if she’d told him when she called what she had on board, it would have changed nothing. He’d have still taken her place in the noose.
    Altruism sucks.
    Right now he was thinking he should have learned some self-preservation and been about ten minutes late. But at the end of the day, his sisters were his world and even though he might like to pretend otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to live had he let one of them die.
    Even Kasen’s crabby ass.
    He checked his chronometer and felt sick again. Thirty more minutes and everything was over.
    Thirty minutes.
    He remembered times in the past when that had seemed like an eternity and now…
    He wished he had the power to stop time. To teleport himself out of here and see his rat-infested dive one more time. To have his sister Shahara tell him he was an idiot.
    Well, at least he wouldn’t have to stare at the drab tan walls and that nasty crusted-over toilet anymore.
    Boy, are my creditors going to be pissed. He still owed two years of payments on his ship that had been impounded by the Garvons after his arrest. And face it, he’d dogged the absolute shit out of it and it still had blast marks down both rear stabilizers from his last run-in with the authorities.
    He sighed again.
    His friends and family had tried everything to negotiate a stay of execution. But the Garvon governor had been adamant that they make an example of him.
    “This is to stand as a lesson to any outsider who thinks they can travel through our system and not obey our laws. We might be a small system, but we are big on intolerance.”
    Caillen shook his head as the governor reiterated those words he was obviously proud of just a few feet away from his window to the news crews surrounding him. What an effing idiot. Whatever aide was supposed to keep the governor on a leash was failing epically.
    One of the female reporters panned her camera Caillen’s way to catch a shot of his reaction to the governor’s speech