Samantha Dorsey flicked her short fingernails in a steady, annoying rhythm, purposefully torturing the two irritated crewman sitting before her. She received mischievous pleasure in watching their backs stiffen as they tried to concentrate on the task at hand. Her cool, violet eyes were outlined with black liner. She turned to study them, partly laughing, partly mocking, and mostly playful.

"Hum, Captain Sam thinks she's got us." Evan Cormier, her go-to man on the ship, lifted his chocolate-brown eyes in amusement as he looked at her fingers. He had short black hair, with glints of silver along his temples. His sexy appeal was completely lost on her most days, but now he was beginning to look a little cute. Too bad she didn't sleep with her crew. According to the many women Evan had taken to his bed, he was able to 'read' what a woman wanted and give it to her. Sam knew it was because he was part telepath--a fact he didn't share with too many. People either got weird about it, or wanted to use him to up their odds in poker games. Sam paused in her nail-clicking as she watched him, his brow rose in silent challenge, and she started the ticking all over again. His low voice rumbled, as he stated, "Chase a star, Captain."

Sam grinned, reaching down into the messy pile of playing cards and drew. A lock of blonde and purple hair fell over her eye and she swept it back. Lifting the ace of spades into her hand, she fiddled with her cards. Evan cleared his throat and gave a meaningful glance at the half empty bottle of Torganian rum. Sighing, she reached for the bottle and chugged a big swallow. It really was nasty stuff. She sputtered and gagged, as she gasped for breath. Making an awful face, she slammed her fist on the table.

"Ugh, it still tastes like Lophibian piss!" Sam spat, grabbing a shot of Earth whiskey to chase the foul liquor down. This time she didn't sputter. "Where did Viktor get this crap?"

Evan and the other player of their torturous card game, Lucien, laughed, nearly falling over drunk in their chairs. Lucien was half human, half Dere, with the strangest red-brown eyes they'd ever seen--unless you counted the red-green eyes of his older brother.

"Do you have a ... eight?" Lucien asked Sam. Sam looked down at her cards. Seeing an eight, she handed it over. Lucien grinned triumphantly, getting out of drinking the horrible alcohol. They were well aware they played a warped version of a child's game, but as drunk as they were, they'd been hard pressed to focus on much else.

Everyone on the ship was at least half human. There were six of them total. Sam was the Captain--mainly because she'd been the lucky one to win the ship in a card game. Evan was the first mate, second in command. Lucien was in charge of communications. Passed out on the couch was Lucien's brother, Viktor. He was one hell of a mechanic and could rig anything. Passed out on the floor was Rick Hayes, their pilot. And, if Sam guessed right, passed out in his room was Dev. Dev was half Belvon, a demonic looking race with red skin. Aside from the intense coloring, he looked human, only larger. He was the ship's muscle.

Sam wasn't worried about her drunken crew. The ship was on autopilot and they weren't currently in hostile territory. The outer edge of the Y quadrant was nearly abandoned from what they could see. Earlier, they'd spotted a small reddish-brown planet surrounded by a blue-green earthlike sky. Initial scans said it was oxygen based and inhabited.

Sam blinked, looking down at her hand. She suddenly realized she had three aces left. Throwing them down, she declared, "Kiss my comet! Drink up boys!"

Lucien and Evan grimaced but took the Torganian Rum and dutifully took their losing drinks. They sputtered in horror as she had and they quickly followed the shot with whiskey. Sam laughed, slamming her fist down on the table several times while trying not to fall onto the floor.

"Ah," Evan spat, stretching his tongue out of his mouth as if that would make the taste go away.

"Oooh, yuck," Lucien grumbled, shaking his head and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Sometimes I wonder about us."

Sam laughed harder. "Hey, what's next on the list? What else do we need to get?"

Lucien grinned, automatically knowing what she was thinking. Swiping the cards aside, he ran his hand over the table. A transparent floating computer screen materialized before him and a control panel opened beneath the flat surface. Pushing a few buttons, he grinned, and said, "A wild beast from a primitive planet."

"What was that planet we just passed? Quri ... Killillrillen ... the red one with oxygen?" Evan grinned, nodding his head. "It didn't have any known landing bases when we scanned it. You can't get much more primitive than that."

"Let's do it!" Sam shot to her feet, swaying terribly on her wobbly legs. "Evan, grab the tazers or phasers or tranq ... hic ... quilizer darts! We're going to bag us a wild ... something or other! Lucien, get a transporter ready. I'll get the food and turn this hunk of metal around. I'm starving. Meet me at the space pod!"

"Aye, aye, Captain," Lucien and Evan said in unison, giving very un-militant salutes, first to their slender Captain, then to each other, and then to the passed out men on the floor.

"They're going to be so pissed when they find out we went without them," Evan snickered, grinning like a fool. He tried to whisper, but the sound just came out loud. On the floor, Rick mumbled and turned in his sleep. They all froze, their liquor-hazed eyes turning down to the pilot. Sam knew he wouldn't be happy if she took over the controls again. He always complained that she reset everything--which she did on purpose. When Rick started to snore, they all relaxed.

Sam and Lucien chuckled like wayward children, stumbling toward the door. Evan was right behind them. She knew they were drunk, and in the back of her alcohol-soaked brain, she was sure going out half-cocked to an uncharted planet was a bad idea. She grinned. It wouldn't be the first time they'd done something unwise, and it definitely wouldn't be the last.

Prince Falke of the Var reached his paws forward, stretching out his sore back as he soared over the earth, sprinting through the forest of his homeland. Being half Var, he was a cat shifter by birth. The blue-green haze of the planet's atmosphere shone through the leaves of the forest. With three suns--two yellow, one blue--the planet was always cast in daylight, with the exception of one night a year when everything fell into perfect alignment and darkness fell over the land. They had one moon, but it was small and unnoticeable most days. Right now it was late in the evening, so there was a softer haze to the light.

He'd grown up on the planet of Qurilixen and knew the forest well. The green leaves of the planet's foliage were overlarge due to the excessive heat and moisture they received. The reddish trees were wider than some of the largest Var warriors. Yellow ferns spread out beneath his swift feet, growing wild in the red earth of the planet's surface. All was serene around him, silent but for the wind rushing past his ears and the thumping of his paws on the ground.

The whole planet was inhabited by two races of male shifters, aside from the women who came to the planet to marry them. The Draig royal family ruled the northern half and his family ruled the southern. For many decades, the Var people had been at war with the Draig.

The Draig were dragon shifters and it had been Falke's father, King Attor, who perpetrated most of the wars between them. Falke wasn't sure if he trusted the Draig. It was hard for him to forget some of the things he'd seen in battle in his half century of leading the Var armies against them. He'd lost many good soldiers. But, his brother Kirill, the new Var king, now strove for peace. Kirill was of sound judgment and Falke would do his best to honor the peace treaty they now had in place.

The only thing was, now that there was no war, he didn't know what to do with his time. Falke felt useless without purpose. He still had to train the men and command the armies, but many of them had been given leave to go home. Besides, he had efficient seconds in command who took many of the duties from him.

King Attor had raised his sons to be warriors, strong and proud. Now that the war was over, Falke wasn't prepared. Not that he liked warmongering, or death and destruction. A large part of him was relieved to be done with war. At the same time, he wasn't holding his breath that it would last. It was too soon to tell.

It was much easier for him to exercise in his shifted state, his strong body molded into the form of a large, white tiger. Ever since Lord Myrddin, an evil man after his brother's throne, had captured and tortured him, he would wake in the middle of the night sore and aching, needing to stretch. If not for his brothers, King Kirill and Prince Quinn's rescue, he'd not be alive today.

The capture had been a great blow to his ego, especially since he was the Commander of the Guard, leader of the Var military. If he hadn't been protecting the human scientists, come to help them rid his planet of biological weaponry, he would've easily taken Myrddin's men.

It's over now, Falke thought, running faster as he did his best to forget about it. Myrddin was dead and the biological threat was gone. Even the shadowed marshes were looking better than they had in about a century, thanks to the human scientists' work. Everything seemed to be looking up for his people. For that he was glad.

King Kirill had lifemated to a former agent of the Human Intelligence Agency, Ulyssa Payne. Soon after, his youngest brother and Var Ambassador, Quinn, lifemated to one of the human scientists who'd helped restore the marshes, Tori Elliot. Both women were pregnant. The Var royal family's future looked bright. With Kirill and Quinn preoccupied with family, as they rightly should be, Falke felt even more alone. There was always Prince Reid, another brother, but he commanded the outlands and hadn't been by the palace as of late.

Reid sulked because he couldn't understand how their brothers choose to mate with a woman. Reid liked the women well enough, but their father would never have approved. Long ago, several hundred years before the Princes' birth, before Attor became King, things had been different for the Var people. It was a wild time, a time when the Var let emotions rule their heads and their hearts. They acted rashly and on pure instinct. For reasons completely unknown to his sons, Attor changed the ways of the Var. He was a good King, one who worked hard for his people--despite the end of his life that was marred by a touch of what could only have been madness.

Attor encouraged emotional detachment so that if one half-mate died, there could be others to take her place. That was why Kirill and Quinn's lifemates were so upsetting to Reid. If something happened to the women, there could never be another for his brothers, and to a race of men who lived for hundreds of years that was a long time to be alone. They'd be able to take women to their bed to fulfill physical need, but the loneliness would slowly eat at them.

King Attor's father had suffered the folly of mating with one woman. She had died when Attor was born and the old King never recovered enough to breed more women for sons. Although he took women to his bed, he left Attor without any brothers to help lead the Var nation. So, when Attor took over the throne, he became reliant on a few noble houses--like Lord Myrddin's, the traitor who'd tried to kill Falke.

It was Attor who encouraged men to have control, to drink nef--a drink that somehow calmed them sexually and gave them restraint. Falke had no need of the drink. His mother, Taura, was half Roane and that heritage gave him all the restraint he needed. Each Prince had different mothers, except for Reid and Jarek, the twins. Jarek was out exploring space and hadn't been home in a long while.

King Attor urged the Var men to prove their worth and dependability with emotionless detachment. He taught by example, that to prove great prowess in the bedroom showed prowess in the field of battle, until strength in one meant strength in the other. Many of the elders followed Attor's example and took many half-mates, though none so many as the King. Lifemates were a privilege of the lower classes--tradesmen, farmers, even hunters and lower ranked soldiers, all men who could ill afford to keep many mates on a planet so barren of women in the first place. However, because Falke was the Commander, he was expected to adhere to this old way of thinking more than the others. If he was to fall in love--which he doubted would ever happen--it would be disastrous to his family's reputation, especially amongst the elders. It would make the House of Var look weak.

Running faster, Falke pushed the limits of his healing wounds. By fighting the pain, pushing his body, he would better be able to generate the energy he needed to heal himself. Listening to the wind, he tried to clear his mind. He'd been too contemplative of late. He didn't like feeling lost and the dreams that haunted him only made the feelings worse. He was tired and didn't want to think about any of it anymore. The loneliness would always be there. No matter what he did or thought, he knew was destined to be alone.