The Dragon Circle by Irene Radford Read Free Book Online Page B

about was the missing beacon and the audacious thief. Which led him back to Melinda and her betrayal of him.
    Hestiia offered Konner a platter without meat. He waved it away.
    She pursed her lips in disapproval and offered it instead to her husband, Kim.
    He took it from her with a smile that lighted his face all the way to his eyes. Their gazes locked on each other, grew intense. His hand covered hers, lingered, and caressed before she relinquished the bark platter.
    Konner turned his head away, embarrassed by their intimacy, jealous and lonely in his own isolation.
    Fifteen years ago he had believed he and Melinda could learn to love each other like that. She’d offered him one million Adols, the most stable currency in the galaxy, in exchange for a legal marriage ceremony. She wanted control of her inheritance, the corporation that owned the entire planet of Aurora. But her parents’ will had specified she could not sit on the board of directors or have access to capital funds until she married or turned thirty years of age.
    At twenty-two she decided to take control of her fate and made her proposal to Konner. He’d been only twenty and on his first solo reconnoiter for the family business. Aurora produced a number of high-tech items needed on bush worlds that could not afford to buy them legally. Mum had sent him to Aurora see if they could empty a warehouse without paying for the merchandise.
    Then Konner met Melinda. They had spent a giddy week together on a newly opened bush colony world. No one had asked questions or required much in the way of paperwork before the wedding ceremony. Seven days of sex and wine and laughter and more sex had not been enough for Konner.
    Within hours of returning to Aurora, Melinda had seized control of her corporation, had Konner arrested, and permanently exiled without a single fraction of a coin in payment of the prenuptial agreement.
    Notice of annulment of the marriage appeared on the bush world within hours.
    The humiliation and the loneliness burned so deep in Konner that he had not told his brothers about his marriage.
    Loki planned and executed the theft from Melinda’s warehouse based upon Konner’s information. Konner had participated in the plan without a single guilty thought to slow him down. Only Mum knew of his failed marriage, and she used the knowledge ruthlessly, to keep Konner in the family business when all he wanted was to go off exploring on his own. Mum promised him the time and money to fight Melinda for the prenuptial sums and custody of his son Martin when she completed a project of her own. The time never came when Mum had enough money to bribe the right officials to regain family citizenship. Without those essential papers, Konner had not a prayer of winning anything from Melinda in a legal court.
    But he had kept a copy of the prenuptial agreement and stashed extra copies in key places.
    Shame for his youthful misalliance still ate at him. His only consolation was a chance meeting with a mechanic who had worked a short time at the Aurora Space Docks and gave him the news that Melinda had a son.
    As soon as Martin was old enough to go to summer camp, Konner made a point of working at that camp as a counselor. He’d forged citizenship papers to pass their security screen. He and his son had bonded over many an evening campfire.
    Those flames had burned normal red and gold with a blue heart.
    In front of him, on this early autumn evening on a forgotten planet beyond explored space, pale green flames around a deep yellow layer licked branches greedily. Copper sulfate, he told himself, made the fire burn green. Copper sulfate impregnated every living thing on this planet. He’d never get used to the colors. Wondered if his blood would turn green if he lived here long enough.
    â€œI have to leave in five days,” he said aloud. “I have to leave by then or miss my . . . appointment.”
    Loki nodded his acknowledgment. Kim