Anthelion (PAPERBACK, LGBT)

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PRESUMABLY, THERE EXISTED a time—buried somewhere in the murky past—when Ash’s life had not been a raging dumpster fire. It only stood to reason. He’d been a normal enough child, with a normal enough family. Friends. School. Hobbies. Days passing in a neat row without the constant, pulse-pounding sense that everything was poised to come crashing down at any moment.

Scenery slid past the tinted window of the posh hovercar that would transport him to the estate belonging to the Adjunct to the Premiere’s Clandestine Operations Office. The property was located outside of the Capital—the seat of government on the colony planet of Ilarius. Ash gazed at his surroundings with unfocused eyes, trying not to think too closely about what the coming weeks would hold for him. The stiff new leather of the collar around his neck squeezed his flesh like unforgiving fingers, but he resisted the urge to tug at it.

For some time now, Ash had known that of all the members of the small vigilante resistance group that called itself the Shadow Wing, he alone held the best chance of gaining a powerful off-planet ally for their cause of overthrowing the planet’s corrupt ruling party. The ragtag collection of human and Vithi would-be revolutionaries was determined to stand against the Vithii-led Regime, a xenophobic coalition that seemed intent on grinding the human population of Ilarius into the dirt. But despite a handful of small victories dragged from the jaws of defeat—usually at great cost—the last couple of months had brimmed with the sense of time running out… of walls closing in around them.

That was why Ash had decided to act.

After months of stringing along the Adjunct—a Vithii by the name of Denrir Lusivian—Ash had finally accepted his slave collar. And may all the gods and prophets have mercy on Ash’s battered excuse for a soul now that he’d taken that final, irrevocable step.

As a veelaht—the human body-slave of a male Vithii—Ash was trading his personhood for money. At least, that was what anyone on the outside would assume. In reality, he’d traded his personhood for something else entirely. Namely, a chance to cozy up to his target in private surroundings. And that target was not, as most people might have assumed, the Adjunct himself.

It was true that as a higher-up in the Regime, Denrir had let slip some useful nuggets of information in the past. The Clandestine Operations Office was often at the leading edge of new attacks aimed at the human population—assassinations of key figures… infiltration into anti-Regime groups… even the development of secret bioweapons. But the intelligence gained from the Adjunct was merely a secondary benefit, not the main objective.

No, Ash’s real target was the Adjunct’s bondmate, Jontalyss Lusivian. To get the access to her that he needed, Ash had just sold himself body and soul to a sadist.

Oddly enough, that wasn’t even the part that had his heart racing and his palms sweating beneath the cool exterior he presented to the world. It should have been, to be sure… but it wasn’t. The only silver lining of the situation was that Ash probably wouldn’t live long enough to reap the consequences of the other decision he’d made in the past few days.

But he couldn’t allow himself to think about any of that right now. Ash focused his attention more firmly on the scenery beyond the window, his eyes falling on a billboard for one of the more popular investment services in the Ilarian Capital. An instant later, a bark of inappropriate laughter almost choked him. He ruthlessly swallowed it down before it could escape past the constriction of the collar.

“RELAX,” the sign blared in flashing neon lettering. “AND LET US WORRY ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

Sure thing. I’ll get right on that, he thought, the words bearing a faintly hysterical undertone within the privacy of his own mind. What a pity there wasn’t a handy company he and his friends could hire to make sure that the corrupt government of Ilarius fell before it could successfully commit genocide against half the colony’s population, right? It certainly would make things simpler if there were. But even back on Old Earth before the Diaspora, the humans had a saying—‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’

Or, perhaps more apropos in the current circumstances—‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ Ash had been privileged, these past few years, to dwell among a group of good men and women who knew better than to wait for someone else to step up and oppose the Regime. With his current actions, he hoped he might give his companions a better chance at surviving the coming civil war than they would otherwise have had.

For that chance, he would take whatever punishment Denrir Lusivian could dish out.

The clear barrier separating the hovercar’s back seat from the driver’s area lowered with a faint hum, startling him out of his reverie. Jumpy, Ash. You’ll need to keep a tight lid on that.

The chauffeur—an elderly Vithii in a smart black suit and billed cap—met Ash’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He had the two-meter frame, bronze skin, and rough-carved features common to his race, but his spiky hair was nearly white where it poked out from beneath the cap, and the passage of time seemed to have softened his sharp edges rather than honing them.

“I just wanted to inform you that there’s a disturbance of some sort up ahead,” he said. “It appears our arrival may be delayed.”

Ash caught a glimpse of flashing lights through the front windshield, along with smoke and flames indicating a major accident of some kind.

“Thank you for letting me know,” he said absently. Sometimes it could be oddly jarring to interact with Vithii who weren’t xenophobic arseholes. The Adjunct’s driver had been nothing but polite to Ash since picking him up, despite the leather collar advertising his status as a non-person—as property—for anyone and everyone to see. If Ash had been able to feel much of anything at all these days, he probably would have felt bad that the sweet old bloke was probably going to end up dead soon.

“What the—?” exclaimed the sweet old bloke in question.

Instinctively, Ash braced against the front seat with both hands as the hovercar braked hard and slewed sideways, machinery screeching in protest as the stabilizers tried to kick in. He closed his eyes. The impact of metal against metal an instant later should have been shocking.

It wasn’t, though. If anything, it had a distinct air of inevitability about it.