“That must have been awful.”

“It definitely wasn’t fun. And I hated him for it. It was bad enough everyone else mocked and emasculated me. The last thing I needed was some League asshole jerking me around like I was his backseat bitch.”

Her stomach sank as she considered the underlying venom in his voice. “Did he hit you?”

“No. He didn’t have to. He could literally lift me off my feet with one hand. For that matter, he still can. That son of a bitch is huge and ungodly strong.”

“Then how did you become friends?”

He wiped carefully at his face with the cloth. “One night after my uncle had counseled me for a couple of hours, I slipped Nyk’s custody and blew up his prized fighter during my escape.”

Her jaw went slack. She was as impressed with his skills as she was with his stupidity. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah. He was really unhappy about it, and I had no idea how rare a ship it was, or how much he loved it. But after he tracked me down, I figured it out real quick. It was the first time I’d seen him lose his temper. Not something you ever want to experience, believe me. I honestly thought he was going to rip out my spine and beat me with it.”

That had to be terrifying. She’d rather go up against Nemesis again than to face the Andarion prince. Darling was right, Nykyrian was extremely off-putting. “So what did he do to you?”

Darling fell silent as her question took him right back to that stygian alley on the backside of hell where he’d hidden, thinking he was safe from his uncle’s reach. After three days where he didn’t dare spend a single cred lest it be used to locate him, he’d been starving. Half dead from that and a severe cold he’d contracted while sleeping out in the frigid winter weather with no jacket or cover, he’d left his filth hole long enough to try and scrounge food.

There had been a restaurant around the corner from where he’d set up a temporary home on the street. He was hoping to find something to eat in the trash. Since he’d been so careful to cover his tracks and not use anything that could trace back to his location, he’d foolishly thought himself safe.

Especially in the middle of the night.

He’d just found a bag of outdated bread when he’d heard a faint scraping sound behind him in the shadows. Thinking it was one of the restaurant’s late night cleaning crew, he’d broken out into a sweat, terrified that they’d call the authorities on him.

But it had been something much worse.

Nykyrian had snatched him down from the dumpster and slammed him on the ground so hard he’d seen stars from it. Cursing him, Nyk had pinned him with one massive forearm across his throat. “No one fucks with my ship, you little bastard,” he’d growled. “Believe me, it’s worth more than your putrid life. I don’t care what your uncle pays for your protection or what the League does to me. You’re going to die for defiling it.”