Rebel Prince (The Coalition Rebellion Novels Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise for The Coalition Rebellion Series

  Other Justine Davis Books from Bell Bridge Books:

  Rebel Prince

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Please visit these websites for more information about Justine Davis

  Praise for The Coalition Rebellion Series

  “[Lord of the Storm has] so many sparks that it’s a wonder the book doesn’t set itself on fire while you’re reading it.”

  —LikesBooks.com

  Rebel Prince is the long-awaited conclusion to

  The Coalition Rebellion Series

  First two books in trilogy recognized as

  Romantic Times 200 BEST OF ALL TIME!

  Lord of the Storm’s Accolades and Honors:

  Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award

  Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award

  Romantic Times Career Achievement Award

  Reader’s Choice Award

  RRA Book Award

  BTC Bookstore Network Award

  Skypirate Accolades and Honors:

  Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award

  Romantic Times 5-Star review !

  Praise and Awards for Justine Dare Davis

  Romance Writers of America’s RITA

  4-time winner, 7-time finalist

  RT’s Reviewer’s Choice Awards

  5-time winner, 19-time nominee

  RT’s Career Achievement Awards

  3-time winner, 6-time nominee

  Authored 4 books selected for

  “Romantic Times 200 BEST OF ALL TIME.”

  Other Justine Davis Books from Bell Bridge Books:

  The Coalition Rebellion Novels

  Book 1: Lord of the Storm

  Book 2: Skypirate

  Book 3: Rebel Prince

  The Kingbird

  (A Coalition Rebellion Short Story)

  Also:

  Wild Hawk

  Heart of the Hawk

  Fire Hawk

  Rebel Prince

  Book 3: A Coalition Rebellion Novel

  by

  Justine Davis

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-562-1

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-556-0

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2015 by Janice Davis Smith writing as Justine Davis

  Published in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites

  BelleBooks.com

  BellBridgeBooks.com

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo/Art credits:

  Man (manipulated) © Aleksminyaylo1 | Dreamstime.com

  Woman (manipulated) © Branislav Ostojic | Dreamstime.com

  Background (manipulated) © Leeloomultipass | Dreamstime.com

  Ship (manipulated) © Philcold | Dreamstime.com

  :Mprt:01:

  Dedication

  For twenty years, I have waited to write this story.

  For twenty years, readers have asked for it.

  For twenty years, rarely a month went by without someone asking if I was please ever going to write it.

  Twenty years is a very long time.

  Thank you all for waiting with me, for asking, for remembering.

  (And for a particular group of you—you’ll know who you are—yes, the epilogue is just for you.)

  Prologue

  “I’M GOING AFTER her. I’ll take the next transport.” Dax Silverbrake was pacing the floor of the Triotian royal palace’s private quarters, covering the same twenty feet of floor time and again. Barely suppressed energy nearly crackled around him.

  King Darian of Trios watched his best friend in obvious amusement. “Are you sure confrontation is wise just now?”

  The pacing continued. “What I’m sure of is she has no business scarpering off like that. Off world, without even a word of explanation.”

  Dax half expected a reminder he himself had done much, much worse. But Dare looked as if he were considering his next words so carefully that Dax knew what was coming, and hastened to forestall it.

  “I know, this is my doing. Perhaps it wasn’t the best decision, but I only wished her safe, and free of pressure, for as long as possible.”

  “Lying to your child is rarely the best decision,” Dare said.

  “I didn’t lie,” Dax said. “I just . . . omitted something.”

  “Spoken like the skypirate you once were.”

  Dax winced. And there it was, he thought, stopping in his tracks.

  Dare pressed the point. “You omitted something indeed. The biggest thing of her life. Her destiny. And she is, in fact, an adult now,” Dare added.

  Dax spun around then, glaring at his oldest, closest friend. “You are not being any help, Dare.”

  “I am a father too,” he said.

  “But not of a daught
er. They’re . . . different.”

  “That I cannot argue with,” Dare agreed with a grin. “Women are thankfully different.”

  “Califa’s too damned calm about it,” Dax muttered.

  For the first time Shaylah, Dare’s mate, spoke. “That’s because she’s not worried about Shaina’s welfare.”

  “How can she not be?” Dax spun around to look at the queen he so admired, the woman he loved like a sister as he loved Dare like a brother. She was smiling so serenely that Dax felt a spark of irritation.

  “Because she knows Shaina is safe.”

  Dax blinked. “What? How can she know that?”

  “Shaina was upset, furious really, and feeling betrayed.”

  Again Dax winced, but this time the feeling went clear to the bone. He was beginning to realize the scope of the mistake he’d made.

  “Califa knows because she knows her daughter. She knows where she would go. Where she always goes when something goes wrong in her life. Which is why she will be safe.”

  Dax frowned. “Are you saying . . . ?”

  “Of course. She went to Lyon.”

  Chapter 1

  AS LONG AS THEY didn’t know who he was, he had a chance of staying alive.

  Lyon held to that hope as he sat in the darkness of the tiny room they’d thrown him in. His head ached where the cudgel had caught him, and his shoulder ached where he’d gone down on the taproom floor, but nothing ached quite as much as his pride. He’d been taken like a green cadet, by one of the oldest ruses of all time.

  But the worst part was that when Shaina heard about it, she’d be able to say, “I told you so.”

  And say it she would. She’d hold this over him until they were both old and gray, and for Triotians that was a very long time.

  All this assuming, of course, that he was alive for her to say anything.

  Instinctively he checked the chain around his neck. The heavy ring bearing the royal crest lay safe against his chest. He’d taken it off before he’d arrived. The ring was too recognizable, and he’d wanted this bit of anonymity before the rest of his life began.

  How long had he been out? Minutes? Hours? It had been daylight when he’d risen to wander Galatin, the capital city of Arellia, his mother’s home world. And now it was—

  His thoughts broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps. The door rattled. He leapt to his feet, ignoring the pain that shot through his head at the swift movement. He’d already felt around in the darkness, knew they hadn’t left him anything to fight with. This was going to be hand to hand.

  So be it, he thought.

  He backed up against the wall. He raised one knee, bracing his foot against the wall. Light poured in as the door swung open, and he blinked reflexively as it stabbed at his eyes.

  “Awake, are you? Good. I was afraid you were out permanently.”

  The cheerful voice didn’t fool Lyon this time, as it had when the jolly-looking round-faced man had approached him asking directions. That had been just before the man’s unseen companion had bludgeoned him senseless. He’d awakened to find his money pouch gone and a lump on his head the size of a whisperbird egg. So much for being the pride of the Triotian War College.

  “Not feeling talkative?”

  He could make him out now, an unprepossessing man with a tendency to wear an absurd grin. Lyon contemplated making a run, and tensed the leg braced against the dank wall, ready to push off, thinking he could bowl over the rotund man and be gone before he could recover. Except for one little problem. He didn’t know where the second man was, the tall one who was altogether too handy with his cudgel.

  “Well, that’s fine, you just stay quiet, and when the man with the coins arrives, we’ll just be on our—”

  A hollow thump in the corridor was followed by the thud of something heavy falling. The man in the open doorway looked toward the sound.

  “Rickel,” he called. Silence. “Eos, that man,” he muttered. His voice rose a notch. “Rickel, don’t play any of your silly games now.”

  The man took a step in the direction the sounds had come from. Lyon knew he had to take this chance—he might not get another. He shoved away from the wall, lowered one shoulder, and ran for the light.

  The man wasn’t nearly as soft as he looked. Lyon heard a grunt as his shoulder took the man at kidney level, but he didn’t go down. His hands wildly clawed back at Lyon. Grasping fingers tangled in his long mane of hair, and yanked fiercely. Lyon winced. Twisted away. Struck out at the round man’s face.

  Lyon heard another thud, just like the first. The round man jumped, yelped explosively. He glanced down the dark hallway, as if facing a secondary attack from the rear. The glance was only a split second, but Lyon didn’t waste the opportunity. He drove a precisely aimed foot sharply into the man’s ample gut. Air whooshed out of him. Lyon swept the man’s legs out from under him with a swiping kick. Swiftly, he grabbed his own blade from the man’s belt and used the hilt to send him to sleep.

  One down. Now for the other. I’ll relish paying him back for this headache.

  “Cub! Over here!”

  He froze.

  No. It was impossible. She had sworn she wasn’t coming. She was home, on Trios. There was no way in Hades that Shaina Silverbrake could be here.

  But he knew that voice too well. And no one else dared use that childhood nickname any longer.

  “Come on! These skalworms will be coming around any minute—you’d better get moving!”

  He spotted her the instant she spoke the second time, from the shadow of the large archway. She was grinning at him, that insufferably taunting grin he’d seen directed at him all too many times in his life. She’d always seemed more vividly alive than anyone he knew, and now she was fairly crackling with life. She was fire and spirit and beauty afoot. She took his breath away.

  She doesn’t want you except as her loyal companion, so stop even thinking about it.

  “Will you move, Cub? I’m out of rocks to throw. Don’t mess up my chance to rescue you for a change.”

  He’d deal with her unexpected appearance here later, he thought. In the meantime, she was right—as she so often was—and he’d better get moving.

  She led the way unhesitatingly, and just as unhesitatingly he followed. She wasn’t the exact navigator their beloved Rina was, but she knew the way and he didn’t, given he’d been unconscious when they dragged him in here.

  They ran until they reached the alley behind the taproom. And that, too, brought back memories. Shaina had always been quicker, and able to outrun him, until a growth spurt had given him the height and stride to beat her. And their instructors in the warrior arts hadn’t been above using their competitive natures to get the most out of each of them.

  And of course his father had advice.

  Don’t get cocky. A smart woman doesn’t need muscle or strength to get the better of you. And Shaina is very, very smart.

  The words had been delivered in a wry voice, interrupting Lyon’s crowing over his first-ever victory over her in a footrace. The comment had been followed by a teasing comment from his mother, and then his parents had exchanged That Look that told him they’d be disappearing into their chamber for a while. He’d been just old enough by then to realize what that meant, and had quickly gone back to his crowing to hide his embarrassment at his parents’ lovesickness.

  And his father had been proven right in their next race, when Shaina had distracted him at the start and gained herself a ten-stride lead he hadn’t quite been able to overcome. Their race now was to get clear of this dark, rather dank alley—he’d swear he’d seen a fanged flymouse hanging upside down in that high corner—and it ended at the street. A street that was full of rowdy Arellians, reveling in remembrance of their declaration of independence from the Coalition.

&
nbsp; They merged into the crowd, thankful the celebration seemed to still be going full speed. As they worked their way down the street, Lyon watched celebrants who clearly gave little thought anymore to the years-long war that the declaration had caused, a war that left many dead and more wounded, some permanently. Judging by the people he’d talked to since his arrival, looking forward, not back, was the Arellian wont. He had the odd thought that he, only half-Arellian, probably knew more about their history than they did, thanks to his parents’ insistence.

  But this was not the time to be thinking about history. Or even the future, that distant time when he’d be dealing with the burden his father now carried. Life was interesting when your father was the man who saved worlds and you were set to follow in his footsteps.

  But right now he should be focused on saving his own backside. And Shaina’s. Not that her backside was something he wanted to even let into his mind. It was enough to deal with the fact that she, the very person he’d come here to get away from, was walking beside him, apparently completely unaware of his turmoil.

  To her you’re just the big brother she never had, he told himself.

  And you’d better remember it.

  “HERE, CUB,” SHAINA said, pulling her long, dark hair free of the cap she wore, “stuff that mane of yours under this.”

  Lyon was sitting across the small fire from her, on the folded thermal cloth he’d pulled from the pack he’d retrieved from his hired room once they were sure they’d eluded his captors. They’d escaped to the high ground above the city, at the base of the ancient mountain, camping as they had often done at home while exploring the slowly healing face of their world.

  He caught the cap she tossed. Frowned.

  “I don’t need it.”

  It came out more sharply than he’d intended, but he was on edge. Not so much from the narrow escape as because that nickname was beyond wearing on him. But he knew if he said anything, she’d just use it more often. She liked being the only one who could really disconcert him.