Or worse, be forced to marry Lord Simon.
A small hand touched her fingers and Lily jumped a foot in the air, the hood of her cloak slipping to hang down her back. No one noticed but the boy who stood beside her, whose palm pressed against hers. Jamie, Keara’s apprentice.
“They’re not going to hurt her. And they’re not going to hurt you either. I’ll see to it.”
Lily blinked at the ten-year-old boy who practically gave her a heart attack a minute ago. Was that steam coming out his ears? Must be a trick of the light. His jaw twitched as he started for Keara, his voice loud enough to hear above the roar of the crowd.
“She said, let her go!”
“Step back, Jamie. Now!” Keara waved a hand at Jamie and Lily grabbed his arm, yanking him back. As soon as she touched him, he turned, snarling at her. As if letting the boy die was an option, which would surely happen if she released him.
“We’ll help her later.”
Jamie raised an eyebrow as she spoke, his steel gray eyes holding not a trace of fear. How did Keara’s normally shy apprentice turn into a fearless boy? If she ever got out of this mess, she’d give it some thought. All that mattered now was her friend. How was she going to get Keara free from Lord Simon’s clutches?
Lily’s gaze darted around the square, looking for an escape route, landing instead on what had to be a walking mountain. Her breath caught, her mouth fell open. And despite the surrounding danger, she continued to gawk like a child at a candy shop.
Tall. Sweet Goddess, was he tall, with blond hair tied at his nape, wearing a black shirt and leathers and was that a sword strapped to his back? With an effort, Lily closed her mouth. The man, mountain, whatever, exuded power and strength and held her fascinated, longing for something she hadn’t felt before, a wanting that froze her in place.
And then a man stepped away from the crowd, another tall man, this one with black hair, and he claimed Keara for his wife. How much worse could the day get? Her poor friend. The man saved Keara from Lord Simon, but the raven-haired man was a stranger. What would he do to her friend? How would she save Keara now?
As Keara’s new husband exchanged verbal spars with Lord Simon, Lily’s gaze caught the Mountain Man’s and locked in place. The crowd seemed to fall away, the noise of the mob fading into the background, nothing mattering but his gaze and the tightening in her lower abdomen it evoked.
He belongs to me.
Jamie grabbed her hand, jostling her back to reality. The roar of the crowd hit her like a pitched flour bag and she jumped as she looked at Jamie. What just happened? How could she get so lost in someone’s gaze she completely blacked out on everything else? A quick glance showed the Mountain Man had vanished, swallowed by the mob.
“Lily?” Jamie tugged on her hand. “Come on! We’ve got to get back to the shop before those men leave town with Keara.”
They might have already left. A probable fact she refused to worry Jamie with. “How do you know they’re going to her shop?”
“Where else would they go?” His steel-gray eyes met hers and narrowed. “They aren’t going to hurt her. Don’t worry.” He pulled her in the direction of Keara’s store, his steps the determined stride of a child who knows what he wants and how to get it.
“How do you know that? They could have already left with her!” Did her voice really sound that high-pitched?
Jamie stopped and rolled his eyes. “I know. Now come on. You have to go with me.”
As if going back to her shop or standing in the square with a crazed mob was an actual option. She turned and jogged after Jamie.
****
Son of a goat.
Enar raised his foot, looking at the sole. Smelly brown globs covered the bottom of his expensive leather boot. Not that a Watcher should care about such trivialities as a boot, but he found his appearance went a long way toward promoting fear in everyone he met. And he needed expensive leather boots to help create that fearsome look.
Right
. And Draconi males could leave their mates.
Wiping his boot on the only clean stone he found in the filthy alley, he looked up, only to see Thoren and his female Keara—not that Thoren would admit the red-headed apothecary was his female, stubborn dragon—at the end of the alley, about to turn down another odiferous path.
If he’d recognized Keara as a Halfling Draconi the day before when she treated his headache, it would have saved them the rescue Thoren pulled off moments ago in the town square. He felt his cheeks heat and slammed down the embarrassment before it started doing something crazy like turn his face a nice shade of tomato. Oh, wait. A bit too late for that.
“What are you doing back there?” Thoren turned, his brows a quizzical slash of black.
Keara shot Enar a half smile, but remained quiet. Like Thoren, Enar’s best friend, Keara belonged to a race of sorcerers whose males were shape-shifting dragons. When the Council, the assembly of Watchers and Draconi males who assured the safety of the Draconi, sent Enar and Thoren after a Halfling boy, they should have mentioned a Halfling female lived in this Goddess forsaken town of River’s Run in Cautasia.
Clearly a lapse in intelligence gathering.
“Nothing.” Enar jogged to catch up with Thoren and Keara, diligently avoiding all puddles and brown globs, until he reached his best friend.
A sharp stab of longing surged through him as he watched Thoren walk beside Keara. He wanted what Thoren had. Not a Draconi or a Halfling, but a woman who would be with him forever. Like the pale-skinned woman from the square. The one he had locked gazes with until everything else fell away, the roar of the crowd, Thoren’s rescue of Keara, the stink of the town.
Instead of being thirty feet apart, it seemed like they stood inches from each other, lost in their own world. No other woman had ever caught his attention to the exclusion of everything else and he wanted nothing more than to go on his own personal seek-and-find mission. To find his woman. To claim her. To begin the journey down the road of forever.
Clearly the foul stench of this town had rotted his brain.
He was a Watcher, a guardian of the Draconi. Watchers did not form bonds with women, they claimed them as their child-bearers, as an outlet for their lust.
His friendship with Thoren and the time they spent together meant his thoughts formed a line behind Thoren’s Draconi beliefs—females were to be cherished, cared for, loved.
He wanted the unattainable.
Pulled out of his thinking by a stop at a gate, Enar stared at his surroundings, wondering where they were. Looked like a back alley behind a row of shops. He glanced at his boots. Whew. Clean. Praise the Goddess he missed stepping in other globs of excrement.
Keara darted through the gate, a cry of “Jamie!” on her lips.
Thoren exploded like lit liquor, slamming the gate against the fence in his dash through it. His friend had it bad for the Halfling. Should be interesting to watch how long it took Thoren to realize his mate had red hair.
By the time Enar stormed through the gate, Keara held a boy in her arms, pressed tightly against her chest. The lad poked his head around her arm, glaring at them. Shoving out of her arms, he marched in front of her, hands on hips.
“Don’t you hurt her.”
Point for the boy. It took a lot of nerve to stand before them and speak those words. Bravery, especially in one so defenseless, was admirable.
“Jamie! What has gotten into you? He’s our master now.” Keara pushed Jamie behind her. “I’m sorry, he’s not normally like that.”
“He’s brave. Who is he?” Thoren asked.
“This is Jamie. I found him, took him to the town square and claimed him as mine and since no one refuted the claim, he’s now my apprentice.” She took a deep breath, looked at the sky and then at Thoren. “He’s part of my bride price.”
Judging by her glance upward and her held breath, she obviously lied. Not that it mattered to Thoren. His best friend seemed bent on giving the female anything she wanted. Although in this instance even Enar would give in and take the boy. One didn’t find bravery like his every day.
The whole bride price thing confused him. Keara tried to explain it to them on their walk to her shop, but it seemed to him the fathers in this town wanted to give away their daughters and had to pay off the hapless groom. But what would he know about marriage? The only examples he’d seen were the Draconi bonded pairs, although Draconi didn’t call matings marriage. Closer to home, there was no such thing as marriage or bonding. Watchers claimed women. They definitely didn’t bond with them.
So why did he want his own woman so badly?
He looked past Keara to the door of her shop and his brain forgot the question.
The exquisite woman he saw earlier in the square, the one whose gaze had locked on his, the one he had been thinking about just moments ago, stood frozen in place, eyes wide with fright or wonder.
Mine
, whispered through his head, as he tried to stop the impending erection from forming. No such luck.
The brown tunic, black pants and black cloak she wore made her pale skin glow, highlighting the white hair that streamed down her back. Piercing blue eyes, the same color as his, gazed back at him from an elfin face. Besides those blue eyes, the only color in her face was in her lips. Lush red lips, parted slightly, as if she didn’t know whether to scream or not. Lush red lips that would fit well around his staff as she suckled him.
He had known many women, lusted after more than that, and yet none of them made him feel the way this one did. What was different about her? Her coloring? That had to be it. All Watchers wanted a woman with pale skin, their ideal beauty, although none of them had gotten so lucky. None but him.
His woman. His for the taking.
Thoren’s words snapped Enar back to the present. No surprise his friend had just agreed to Keara’s request to take Jamie with them.
“Is that one part of your bride price, too?” Enar pointed to the pale-skinned woman.
Asking was the polite thing to do. Not that the answer mattered, the woman was his, but if she was included in this ridiculous bride price, it might make things easier on all involved.
He had it on good authority that claiming a woman had a tendency to frighten her.
“What?” Keara glared at Enar, who paid her no heed as he remained staring at his soon-to-be woman. “No, she’s my friend, Lily.”
“I see.” Goddess’s teeth. That made it harder.
And Thoren’s glare wasn’t helping any, either.
“What in the Goddess’s name do you think you’re doing?” Thoren threw his hand out, smacking Enar’s chest. “We’re on a mission, fool. You can’t lay claim to her.”
“She’s mine. I claim her. You don’t have the right to tell me who I can and cannot claim. And she’s mine. Look at her. Exquisite.”
Thoren’s eyes narrowed, one finger pointing at Enar’s chest. “What are you going to do with her? We still have to find the Halfling boy and we already have a female and a boy. This is becoming a traveling circus, not a reconnaissance mission. We. Do. Not. Need. Another female!”
“Forget you. She’s mine.” Enar turned his attention to Lily, who still stood hand on the door, only now Keara stood beside her. “Woman of the exquisite coloring.”
Both females jumped, what little color present in his woman’s face bleeding out. He strode across the yard until he stood in front of them. Grabbing Lily’s arm, he pulled the claiming necklace from a pouch hanging off his belt.
“Lily of the exquisite coloring, I claim you for my woman.” With a quick flick of his wrist, the strand of beads fell around her neck, the ends snapping closed.
Magic streamed through the beads, holding the necklace in place until his death, which he had no plans of meeting anytime soon. The magic also kept the woman from running off like she often wanted to do after being claimed by a Watcher. Once he returned Lily to his village, she would remain there, since the magic in the necklace kept her from walking past the village gates. He didn’t know how far she could wander from him before then so he needed to keep her close.
Gathering her stiff and wide-eyed body into his arms, he gazed into her eyes and felt something shift inside him.
His.
He couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face.
Chapter 2
Lily stared into blue eyes the color of her own and felt the same tie holding her immobile in the square bind her to the walking mountain. Goddess help her, but she liked the feel of his arms around her, liked feeling his hardened muscles press against her. Liked how his arms encircled her, trapped her, claimed her as his.
She was clearly losing her mind.
He was her captor. Her potential torturer. A man who could do anything to her and get away with it.
So why did being in his arms make her feel so at peace?
Next up on her to-do list: find her lost mind.
“Leave her alone!” Keara screeched, breaking Lily from her trance, as she pulled with no effect on the giant’s arm.
“What? You do what with me?” Lily shivered, the warmth from his arms leaving her trembling.
“Claim you. Like Keara did with the lad.”
“But...but you can’t do that anyplace but the town square,” Lily said. Not that it mattered. She was his no matter where they were.
“No, I just did it. With this necklace. You belong to me. It cannot be removed. It cannot be broken until I die. And I don’t plan to do that anytime soon. Therefore, you are mine. But do not fear. I won’t be a hard master to please. I will even allow you to bring some of your things with you.” His mouth curved into a grin.