Pretty Bride (Rags to Riches 3)

Grunting, Aruk followed her into that release, seed spurting over her belly. Then chest heaving, he kissed her. Soon he would rise with Jalisa in his arms and carry her into the sea to rinse the abrasive sand from her skin before continuing to the hut. Not much time did they have to waste.

But time spent kissing her was never time wasted.

Her lips were swollen and smiling when he lifted his head. Then she frowned and her brow pleated…as she heard what he suddenly did.

The rhythmic splash of oars. The creaking of boats. A petulant voice drifting over the water.

“…do you think I will still have her now? After we have all watched that barbarian defile her? Better that I had never cast the spell that let you find this cursed island!”

Jalisa scrambled out from beneath him, eyes panicked. Blindly she fumbled for her shift, shaking loose sand from the silk. Aruk turned to look as she dragged it over her head.

Twelve boats full of armed soldiers—and the vessel at their head also carried three men in silks. One with a protruding bottom lip as petulant as the words he’d spoken. One with a weasel’s sly air and his hot eyes fixed on Jalisa. The other with rigid face whose narrowed eyes returned Aruk’s gaze before he looked down at Aruk’s side, where his ward softly glowed.

“Your father?” Aruk guessed.

“With his pig advisor Fin Ketles and the prince.” Frantically Jalisa tugged on his arm. “We must run.”

“Where to?”

“The hut.” With desperate strength, she tried again to drag him up. “There I will cast a spell that—”

With her blood? Urgently Aruk caught her arms. “Never like this, Jalisa. Never in fear and to harm. The scaling is always unknown but that is more certain to scale larger. You must have seen. Your mother saved you out of love and the scaling was small, but she died when she attacked your father. And your worst scaling was when you spelled the ship in fear and desperation to leave. Swear to me you never will.”

“But—”

“Swear to me!”

“I swear it!” she shouted at him, then her terrified gaze swung past Aruk to the water. “Then what do we do? We cannot fight this many.”

In time, Aruk could. He only needed to flee with her to the jungle that grew on the mountain—and as the soldiers pursued them, he would hunt them and kill them one by one. Or ten by ten. It mattered not to him.

Yet such a plan put Jalisa at high risk. In the confusion of the jungle, a soldier might mistake her for Aruk when loosing an arrow. As they ran and hid, more likely would she be injured. And when he left her to hunt the soldiers, she would be unprotected—not just from her father, but from the fanged predators that stalked the mountainside.

“We will surrender to him,” Aruk said.

Jalisa looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “Surrender to him?”

“You did not defy him. I laid eyes upon your beauty and stole you from Savadon. Here on this island, I held you prisoner and mercilessly ravaged you against your will.”

Eyes filled with tears, she shook her head. “Aruk, no. He will—”

“Kill me?” No. It was her father who would die. As Aruk had vowed to her. “He will keep me alive.”

Her swimming gaze fell to the glowing rune at his side. Helplessly she shook her head. “Let me instead—”

“No,” he snarled. “You risk sacrificing everything. What I propose sacrifices nothing. He will not harm you. And he will do no real harm to me.”

Agony filled her face as she implored him, “Please, Aruk. He will chain you like an animal.”

“Chain me, he might. Imprison me and keep me away from you?” Aruk smiled with grim determination. “He can try. Now rip away from my grasp and race toward the water, screaming for rescue. Then do not watch any of what occurs after.”

“No, Aruk, please,” she sobbed, beating at his chest. “Please. I love you.”

His heart swelled so fiercely his entire soul ached with it. Such a sweet ache.

“Then I have strength to survive anything. As you will, princess, for so much do I love you in return,” he told her gruffly, and her wondering gaze lifted to his. Her sobbing breaths eased, and he saw the hope and determination in her that matched his own. “Now, go.”

After one last lingering look at his face, Jalisa yanked free of his hold and fled. From the king’s boat came the shouted order to take the barbarian alive.

Naked, Aruk turned to face the soldiers surging up onto the beach. Lifting his arms wide, he grinned at them. “Come on, then!”

Because surrender, he would. But not until he unleashed upon them his fury and pain at sending Jalisa back to her father, even for a moment. So he did not surrender until the golden beach was soaked in blood.