The Savage King Read online

  The Savage King

  Lords of the Var: A Qurilixen World Novel

  Michelle M. Pillow

  Sign up for Michelle’s Mailing List

  The Savage King (Lords of the Var) © copyright 2005 – 2018 by Michelle M. Pillow

  Third Electronic Printing July 2015, Anniversary Edition, The Raven Books

  Second Electronic Printing January 2011

  First Electronic Printing March 2005

  Cover art © Copyright 2015

  ISBN 9781452477749

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Published by The Raven Books LLC

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence.

  Contents

  About The Savage King

  About the Lords of the Var Series

  Michelle’s Bestselling Series

  Author Updates

  Note from the Author

  King Attor of the Var

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  The Playful Prince

  The series continues…

  About the Author

  Reading Guides

  Please Leave a Review

  About The Savage King

  Shape-shifter Romance

  Cat-shifting King Kirill knows he must do his duty by his people. When his father unexpectedly dies, it’s his destiny to take the throne and all of the responsibility that entails. What he hadn’t prepared for is the troublesome prisoner that’s now his to deal with.

  Undercover Agent Ulyssa is no man’s captive. Trapped in a primitive forest awaiting pickup, she’s going to make the best out of a bad situation…which doesn’t include falling for the seductions of a king.

  About the Lords of the Var Series

  The cat-shifter princes were raised to not believe in love, especially love for one woman, and they will do everything in their power to live up to their father’s expectations. Oh, how the mighty will fall.

  * * *

  Lords of the Var series is a continuation of the bestselling romance series, Dragon Lords, and is part of the Qurilixen World. They can be read as standalones, but the author recommends reading books in order of release.

  * * *

  For details please visit www.michellepillow.com

  Michelle’s Bestselling Series

  Qurilixen World Novels

  Dragon Lords Series

  Barbarian Prince

  Perfect Prince

  Dark Prince

  Warrior Prince

  His Highness The Duke

  The Stubborn Lord

  The Reluctant Lord

  The Impatient Lord

  The Dragon’s Queen

  Lords of the Var Series

  The Savage King

  The Playful Prince

  The Bound Prince

  The Rogue Prince

  The Pirate Prince

  Captured by a Dragon-Shifter Series

  Determined Prince

  Rebellious Prince

  Stranded with the Cajun

  Hunted by the Dragon

  Mischievous Prince

  Headstrong Prince

  Space Lords Series

  His Frost Maiden

  His Fire Maiden

  His Metal Maiden

  His Earth Maiden

  His Woodland Maiden - Coming Soon

  Dynasty Lords Series

  * * *

  Seduction of the Phoenix

  Temptation of the Butterfly

  Having trouble finding the books?

  Updated Buy Links Here

  To learn more about the Qurilixen World series of books and to stay up to date on the latest book list visit www.MichellePillow.com

  Author Updates

  To stay informed about when a new book in the series installments is released, sign up for updates:

  http://michellepillow.com/newslettersignup/

  To Amelia and My Readers. May you all find the one true prince, who will give up everything in the galaxy just for you.

  (loincloth optional)

  Note from the Author

  Dragon Lords fans know the cat-shifting Var as being the villains of the story, but every conflict has two sides. With King Attor dead, it is up to the Var princes to pick up the pieces. Though these stories can be read as a standalone series, they do begin where the Dragon Lords left off, most significantly after Dragon Lords 4: Warrior Prince. There is also a prequel story, Dragon Lords 9: The Dragon’s Queen that tells the story of how Attor became the cat-shifter king and how the Var-Draig war really started.

  Lords of the Var are interconnected to many series installments, including: Dragon Lords, Captured by a Dragon-Shifter (the dragon-shifters and cat-shifters in modern day times), Space Lords, Zhang Dynasty and more. To find out more about the books, including reading orders, visit my website, www.MichellePillow.com.

  As an added bonus in the Lords of the Var series, see cameo appearances from some of your favorite Dragon Lords prince and princesses.

  To stay informed about when a new book in the series installments is released, join my newsletter mailing list at: http://michellepillow.com/newslettersignup/

  King Attor of the Var

  “To be ruled by a woman is to be ruled by weakness and kingdoms are only as strong as their rulers. A king must stand alone, beholden to none.”

  —King Attor of the Var

  1

  HIA Agent Ulyssa Payne grumbled and banged the communicator across her knee in a last-ditch effort to make the very expensive piece of junk work. Her campsite was close, but it was cloaked so she couldn’t see its exact location. She wouldn’t chance revealing it until she made sure the perimeter was secure. If anything, experience in the field had taught her to be extra careful.

  She knelt on the ground, looking up at the bright Qurilixen sky in frustration. The blue-green haze of the planet’s atmosphere shone through the gigantic leaves of the forest. The planet was always cast in daylight due to its three suns. The only exception was the one night a year when the surrounding heavens fell into perfect alignment. It had been dark the evening she had arrived with a shipment of Earth women on a Galaxy Brides’ ship. She’d been forced to haul her backpack through rough, dark terrain while the Draig warriors partied with their mail-order brides. Right now she would love a little bit of that darkness if only to fall into
a deep sleep.

  “When I get back, I am so quitting the Agency,” Ulyssa ranted under her breath, smacking the communicator vigorously in her frustration. She would never really quit. The Human Intelligence Agency was her life. It was her whole reason for being. “After this I am definitely taking a vacation. I’m going to have a bath, a bottle of hard liquor, and a rare steak as big as this forsaken hellhole, and a male prostitute, a mute male prostitute, who only knows how to follow orders. First I’m going to get clean, then I will get drunk, and then I’m going to get laid.”

  It had been nearly five months since she’d been with a man, and he had hardly been worth bragging about. The sex had been mediocre and afterward he’d wanted to cuddle. She had more fun getting out of his bed than actually being in it. Ulyssa smiled, remembering how she’d climbed out of his window and scaled down fifteen stories while he went into the kitchen to get her something to eat.

  Part of the reason she’d been celibate since then was that she’d been in quarantine, then she’d spent weeks uploading her current mission specs directly into her brain and another several weeks in training on the HSS Demeter starship. As soon as she had finished with her specialized survival training, the Agency had made her go undercover on a Galaxy Brides’ ship as one of the prospective brides. She’d spent a whole month morphed into a hideous character she could barely stand, and surrounded by a shipload of too-much-estrogen-producing females who talked of nothing but the men they were destined to marry.

  “Ugh,” Ulyssa snarled in distaste. As she tried adjusting the buttons on her communicator, she mumbled under her breath, “Why anyone would ever want to get married is beyond me. They act like this is the twenty-first century and women don’t have options. Poor, poor, misguided fools. They really have no idea what they’re in for.”

  Ulyssa, on the other hand, had a pretty good idea what the native barbaric races of Qurilixen were going to be like.

  She looked up at the sky, trying to get her bearings. The reddish trees of the alien forest were colossal, some of them spanning wider than an Old Earth-style home. Yellow ferns spread out about her, growing wild in the red earth of the planet’s surface. She felt like a dwarf running around in the land of giants.

  Only the inhabitants of the planet weren’t technically giants though they were quite large and fierce. Predominately male and in need of some bartered female breed mares, or rather “brides”, the primitive population consisted of shape-shifters—nothing but male shifters. It was a little fact the Agency had forgotten to tell her about in all their preparation and training. The Draig, a tribe of dragon-shifters, ruled the northern half of the small planet. The Var, a tribe of man-cats, ruled the southern half. If not for seeing them quarrel from her perch in the trees, she would never have known.

  What she gathered from the Galaxy Brides’ informational uploads, which were much different in tone than the Agency’s tactical reports, was that radiation from the planet’s blue sun made female children rare. Over the generations, the radiation had altered the men’s genes to produce only strong, large male, warrior heirs. Maybe once in a thousand births was a Qurilixen female born. The fact that they had no women of their own was why the services of corporations like Galaxy Brides were so invaluable to them. In return, they would mine ore found only in their caves. The ore was a great power source for long-voyaging starships, all but useless to the Qurilixen, who were not known space explorers.

  Good thing she was extra cautious and masked her scent before leaving camp. Shifters usually had a great sense of smell, and the Draig warriors would have detected her presence in the forest for sure, and if not them, the Var would have found her. If she had to choose, she was sure she would rather be captured by the dragons. They appeared to be the more civilized of the two creatures.

  This was definitely a primitive planet, perhaps one of the most primitive she’d been assigned to in a long time. As far as she could tell, her campsite was on Var land. It didn’t matter. It’s not like she’d stopped to ask permission to set up camp. In fact, neither group of locals knew she was there. She preferred to keep it that way. If Galaxy Brides went looking for her, their lost bride, all they’d find was a ghost trail to a woman who never existed.

  The Qurilixen were classified by the HIA as a warrior class, though they had been peaceful for nearly a century, aside from petty territorial skirmishes that broke out every fifteen or so years between a few of the rival houses. The best comparison anyone could make was that the men were like the warriors of Medieval Old Earth, the romanticized version anyway. The Qurilixen worshiped many gods, favored natural comforts to modern technological conveniences, and actually preferred to raise, grow, and cook their own food, the true mark of a primordial society.

  Although, it seemed times were about to change. The forest literally crawled with both races. She wasn’t stupid. She could tell the planet was on the verge of an all-out war. The last thing she needed was to get caught in the middle of it.

  Ulyssa growled under her breath, swearing every dark curse she knew. She needed to report to headquarters if the damned communicator would ever turn itself on, and tell them her mission was over. Realizing she’d gone through the Galaxy Brides torture for nothing didn’t make her happy. But, on the bright side, while on the bridal ship she’d gotten some permanent hair removal done, and a few itchy battle scars removed, although such foolish luxuries hardly made her present situation worth it. Shaving had never been a primary concern, and she would only collect more battle scars to replace the old ones.

  Picking at the dried mud caked to her tanned skin, Ulyssa grimaced. She needed a decontamination unit. Hell, she’d even try a primitive water bath, just so long as she could scrub clean.

  Suddenly, the communicator lit up. She sighed, not liking the fact that she had to report to her superiors that her mission had been fruitless. She liked even less the fact that she was trapped on a barbaric planet until one of the company ships could swing by and get her.

  “Hello?” a sweet, elderly voice asked from the communicator.

  “Agent 596,” Ulyssa answered. The unit clicked.

  “Report,” a grim voice ordered from the small hand-held unit, replacing the first computer-generated operator.

  “Ulyssa 596, codename Gena, Qurilixen,” Ulyssa said into the unit.

  “Go ahead,” the voice answered.

  “Target dead, killed by his own.” Ulyssa pulled the unit back to add a bitter curse. She had just spent the dusky night in the forest, huddled by a tree while the Medical Mafia clones packed up camp. Her target, Doc Aleksander, a leader in the Medical Mafia, was killed by his daughter who acted in self-defense. They assumed Doc had been on the planet to make a trade for some of the precious ore. “Daughter has disbanded family line, no information to be had.”

  “What?” another voice demanded, harder than the last. Ulyssa recognized the mission director, Franklin. She rolled her eyes. “What do you mean she disbanded the family?”

  “Are we secure?” Ulyssa asked, careful to keep her voice soft as she glanced around the forest. The trilling call of a sofliar came from the dense underbrush, carrying over the hum of insects. All was peaceful.

  “Yes, Agent, speak plainly,” Franklin said.

  “Doc is dead. His daughter, Nadja Aleksander, has married one of the princes from the Qurilixen House of Draig. She’s disbanded the family and left everything to her mother. The Aleksander branch is ended. I’m transmitting a full report now.” Ulyssa stopped talking and pressed a button. When the report was sent, she demanded, “Now, get me off this damned floating barbarian rock, Frank!”

  “Got it,” Franklin answered. “Good work.”

  Ulyssa snorted. She’d hardly call a fruitless mission good work. “What about my ride?”

  “Well, Agent,” Franklin cleared his throat, “to tell you the truth you don’t have one. We didn’t expect this to happen. The seers didn’t predict Doc’s death, only that he’d be on the planet. We were plannin
g on having you there a lot longer than a few weeks.”

  “How long Frank?” Ulyssa asked, her voice hard.

  “The closest ship is three months from there.”

  “Three months?” Ulyssa swore. “I didn’t spend a month on that damned Galaxy Brides’ ship, simpering like a morphed bimbo fool, grabbing my breasts and making inane comments, just to spend three hellish months on this nowhere planet for no darned good reason. You get me a ship faster!”

  Franklin chuckled. “What? We’d thought you’d like pretending to be a girl for a while 596.”