Excerpt: Pardblood

 I've been busy! Loaded more books onto Google Play. I still have short stories to load. Am considering making a few shorts free, but am thinking about it.  Might be a Book Funnel thing, not sure. Also am working on A+ content for KDP, which is a bit time-consuming.

To read installments of Pardblood, which is a finished scifi romance, not part of a series(or at least, not yet part of a series) sign up here: Sendfox.com/melisseaires. Two newsletters a month!

Excerpt:

The dream.... So vivid, so real. 

Dahr pondered if it was a dream, or an act of a long forgotten god, favoring the Vhirandal family. They had once believed in such gods. He’d been taught a story as a child of how the Vhirandal had been the first to develop nanobots that healed the family of a poison that covered the world of Lumina, that made them strong. Given to them by a god, who was also their ancient ancestor, Vhirandal. Weapons and protections followed, increasing their strength. Nanobots of the past millennia, formed from rare Vhirandal crystal into all manner of machines and medications, made them wealthy. For centuries, they had been Kings and Queens, first in the Northland, and then over all of Lumina. 

The Vhirandal family built starships and opened trade with Parda, the mineral rich world surrounded by seven equally rich moons, that provided so many rare, raw materials for the new technology. The feline-humanoid Pards had been gracious friends and allies. In the early days, the noble families of both Lumina and Pard had not attempted marriages. That changed in the past century. Half-Pard children had been born. The traditional families disowned their members who married Pards. Dahr’s family had done the same. 

Now the Vhirandal crystal mines were used up, the planet of Parda was poorer and more hostile than ever, and the Family Vhirandal was in danger of ying off. Change was needed.

In the dream… 

A lab deep below the castle, built into the black rock of the foundation stone.  A man worked, wearing a cape of leather with fur trim. He wore an intricate jeweled circlet on his brow. Dahr recognized the circlet, The Crown of Vhirandal.  Shelves carved into the rock walls held all manner of instruments and minerals. 

The man looked up. He had pale gray eyes rimmed in smoke, pale teal hair over black.“I am Caedryn, you are my grandson, many generations apart.”

“My name is Dahr.”

The caped man handed him a crystal vial. “Drink. You will need the strength. To save your own life, your family, and many innocents.” Dahr drank the dark liquid.

Caedryn showed Dahr a stasis cupboard, hidden, a preserved library of ancient texts. Dahr, in fact all his generation, had been taught the ancient scripts. He recognized them as formulas.

The stasis cupboard contained crystals of blood. “My blood, for I am strong. These formed crystals will regenerate the blood. They are my great achievement, so never dispose of them. 

“Vhirandal blood is powerful. Do the blood formula for your weak, for your distant relatives. For your cat people relatives. 

“In life I had a vision there would be a time of great weakness, a time when my line could die. I worked a way to find my family.” He stared deep into Dahr’s eyes. “The world needs the Vhirandal, or it will destruct. The world of the cat people is already on the brink of destruction.”

“I was once strong, but a poison has weakened me for a long time. There few of us left,” Dahr confessed.

“I know of the poison, my son. I also know there are more Vhirandal members than you think. Accept the cat bloods. Abandon the tradition that had the family throw away your own blood. The Parda do not weaken our blood. They will make the Vhirandal Family strong again.”

“What will the blood formula do to the Pards?”

Caedryn laughed. “Make them the strongest of the cat people! Also do the Judgment Mist from the Scroll of Mind Formulas. Root out your enemies. Some may even be within the family.”

Dahr nodded. Someone close to  him fed him the poison. He’d known that since the first dose.

Caedryn then took Dahr down a narrow, rough-hewn, hidden stairway to a cavern deep underground. In the light of a hand lamp, Vhirandal black crystal glittered all around. Small amounts of crystal had been found in modern times time, but  nothing like this. Chunks of rock as big as houses, dozens of them, filled the cavern, glinting in the light of the ancestor’s lamp. The wall shimmered with even more crystal.

The ancestor handed him ancient rock cutting tools. “Cut two chunks. Two is all you can carry now, but someday you can harvest more. You will need to make  strengthening formulas.” He pulled an ancient scroll of parchment from the stasis library.

“Copy this formula to that handy device you carry and return the parchment to the chamber. It is over a thousand years old and is fragile. Take this  treatment daily, for fifty days.”

 They walked up the narrow stairs hours later, each carrying a fist-sized chunk of priceless crystal.

**~**

BLURB:

Two sister planets have been in contact for centuries, but mixing of the two humanoid races—the Parda have feline characteristics—is unacceptable on the planet of Lumina.

Dahr, of the ancient and wealthy family Vhirandel, once rulers of Lumina, is dying too soon. Poisoned a decade ago, he has few days left. 

His once powerful family is in tatters. 

He had a vision. Or was it a visit from a long-gone ancestor?

Welcome the outcasts back to the family. The Pardbloods, with their strength, will give the family a future.

The ancestor shows him a secret lab and a nanobot formula that will save him.

It turns out to be real.

He must save the family.