Page 1 of Starborn Husbands

PROLOGUE

Many hundreds of years ago…

Treyu

Iwatched the crowd of children gather around the newcomer. He glowed. The predominant color of his gossamer hair was red but mixed with so much blond it muted the amber. But not the glow. Most stars can’t seem to rid themselves of that bit of glow even when they come to Earth.

Zhang wasn’t just any star. His father was the king created by the Gods who ruled the Tauri Nebula of the Pleiades star cluster. He was important and he knew it.

I was also important, and I knew it. My father might not be a king, but he’s head of Pleiadian security, a position he was created for by another set of Gods.

The Centauruses and the Orions. We were meant to work together. Our differences with how to maneuver the many contracts throughout the universe, especially with Earth, were meant to enrich our protocols and actions.

Instead, they drove us apart.

I didn’t like the way Zhang attracted everyone to him without having done a single thing to deserve their wonderment and awe, other than to show up.

“I am here to stay with my mother before she dies,” Zhang said.

“Oh dear, has she fallen poorly?” a little girl asked.

“No, at least not yet. She is human and she will expire in a few short decades. Father would like me to have a human experience with her and then I shall go home.”

Zhang’s father isn’t a God, but that didn’t stop the humans of that time from considering Zhang’s father (and Zhang for that matter) as a God.

The human child didn’t know how to respond to such a statement. She didn’t run off—too entranced by Zhang—but she didn’t ask any more questions.

I had also been sent to that small village by my father. It was his attempt to culture me since my mother was already dead. He didn’t believe it was good to only know one ethnicity of human and so I was being ushered around the globe to learn many cultures and many ways. Zhang’s mother was a Chinese woman. I got a glimpse of her once. She possessed grace and humility, the latter of which had never translated to Zhang. He did manage to inherit her sparkling brown eyes and while their hair was different in coloring, it wisped and swayed as hers did.

“There you are, Treyu,” Zhang said to me. “Father told me you might be here.”

I waved a lofty hand at him. To a human, I would appear five years old, but I’d been brought into existence over fifty years before that. In those days we didn’t bother to hide as we do now. Humans believed in things like Gods, angels, and star children.

And demons.

“I was not treated to a similar warning.”

“It wasn’t a warning. He said we should make friends.”

“I’d like to, really would, but I’m all filled up for friends.”

“Have it your way, Orion. We’re trying to be kind.”

“We don’t need your charity, Centaurus.”

“You’ve already begun to lose your glow. Father says you’re too weak to have a sunstar and that you’ll fall out of the sky long before you ever receive it.”

I was small for an Orion. Orions are meant to be brutes, but it would never be in the cards for me. I mean, I’ve got muscles, and I’m a decent size, but I’m not anything like my brothers. Of course, Zhang had to grow to be the size of a planet just to rub my smaller stature in my face.

I would get my sunstar rune, though, and live to flaunt it for Zhang for the rest of our days.

“Stay out of my way or I’d be happy to slit your throat and take your glow for my own.”

That made the little human children run for their mother’s skirts, kicking up dirt in the dusty little village.

“Are you always so angry?” he asked.

“Yes.”