I jumped from my seat and screamed, “Stop it!”

“Tooyo!” he shot back at me and that was it.

The Dax was out of his seat, the woman ripped from his hands and thrown at me. I caught her in my arms as the Dax moved on the warrior. The warrior shifted to deflect him but without any apparent effort and so fast the warrior didn’t even begin to defend himself, the Dax rammed his hand, palm first, fingers wrapping around, into the man’s throat, lifted the huge guy right off his feet, took two long strides and threw him down all ten steps, the man flying through the air to land on his back at the base of the dais.

That’s right… threw him. He threw an enormous, grown man through the air down ten steps.

Holy crap!

The Dax stood at the top step looking down and then his rough voice rumbled through the drum filled night when he called, “Kah Dahksahna me ahnoo.”

The warrior scrambled to his feet, the Dax’s body tensed to alert, the crying woman in my arms shoved closer into my body, my arms tightened around her but other than that, I stood stock-still.

They went into stare down and this lasted awhile before the warrior spit on the steps and stalked away.

The Dax turned and, without looking at me or the girl, he moved back to his throne and sat. Two women bustled up the steps and laid gentle hands on the girl, pulling her away from me then to the side of the dais then they ducked into the crowd after they reached the bottom of the steps.

“Kah Dahksahna,” I heard the Dax say from behind me, I turned and caught his painted eyes.

They were burning into mine. Then they looked at my throne and back at me.

Guess it was time for me to sit back down.

I took in a shuddering breath and slowly lowered myself to the pad under the Dax’s black gaze. Once my ass was to the pad, he turned away and jerked his chin at the next warrior.

And then the wedding rite continued like nothing happened.

No joke.

Like nothing happened.

God, I had to get out of this place.

Chapter Four

The Golden Dynasty

Three days later…

“Kah Dahksahna, shalah dahnay,” the woman implored, her hand resting light on my hip over the silk sheet.

My head was to pile of silk pillows; my eyes were open and unseeing. I could feel the soft hides under my body. The light, silk sheet was down around my waist but I was covering my na**d br**sts with my arm.

And I wanted to die.

Every day, I didn’t wake up at home. Three nights of sleep, three days of waking up and I wasn’t going home. Three days of waking up to the attentions of the king. Three nights of being woken to more attention when he arrived back at the tent.

There were no murmured words of tenderness, even ones I didn’t understand. There was no attempt at foreplay. No cuddling afterward. He didn’t hold me in his sleep. He just turned me to my belly, yanked me up to my knees, used me, pulled out, dropped down beside me and fell asleep (or, in the mornings, after he took me, he got up, dosed himself with water from a jug, pulled on his hides without even toweling off and prowled out).

He didn’t share meals with me (not that I got up to eat, I didn’t get up at all, except to use the pot at the back). He didn’t visit with me.

He didn’t even know my name.

At least he was gone during the days.

And he had just left and like every day when he left, the five women who’d seen to me after the claiming rushed in and bustled around his tent with great activity. The one with dark skin, clearly the leader of the group, as usual coming to me, talking gently but increasingly anxiously using words I didn’t understand but her hand was always light on me, the shakes she’d give my body always gentle and I got the message – she wanted me to get up.

I didn’t get up and eventually they gave up and stole out.

I barely looked at them.

I needed to get home. I needed to get the f**k out of there.

I needed to do it but I had no clue, not that first stinking clue, how to do that.

And my nightmare rolled on.

The hand left my hip and I felt her get up from the bed. Then I heard her speaking softly but urgently to the other women.

I shoved my hand under the pile of soft pillows at my head and kept staring across the tent, seeing nothing, still feeling him between my legs, knowing he’d be back.

What could have been five minutes or five hours later, I heard the tent flap slap back, my body tensed, my mind searched the tent to see if it could feel if it was him who had returned (it would be a first, it was still daylight) and I didn’t feel his raw, brutal energy filling the tent.

I relaxed.

Then I felt a presence seat itself behind me and another light hand on my hip.

“Kah Dahksahna, my dear, you must rise, you must eat, you must show yourself to The Horde.”

I blinked and turned to my back, my arm moving to cover my br**sts as I stared up at a very pretty woman with dark brown hair, hazel eyes and a gentle expression. She was wearing the clothing of the natives and speaking my language.

“You speak English?” My voice was scratchy because I hadn’t used it in three days.

Her head tipped to the side. “English?”

Great. She didn’t know what English was. She wasn’t here from a dream either.

I stared at her and guessed she was maybe in her early forties and aging very well. I also knew, in their desperation, the women who tended me went out and found a woman who spoke my language.

Well, interesting to know that there was another person in that vile place who spoke my language but not interesting enough for me to care.

I turned to my side again and resumed my contemplation of nothing.

Her hand shook my hip gently. “Kah Dahksahna, please, you must rise. There are whispers.”

“I don’t care,” I stated though it was more that I didn’t understand but I didn’t care enough to understand either.

“I see you were sheltered,” she muttered to herself, her fingers giving me a kindly squeeze.

No. I wasn’t sheltered. Like Narinda, my Mom died when I was young. It happened when I was ten. A freak incident, the kind you never heard of unless it was on TV or in a movie. Mom going to the bank, a robbery in progress, the robber flipped out when Mom walked in, he turned and shot her. She died in the ambulance. She was doing something simple, making a deposit and then… no more Mom.

My father owned a moving company and was not loaded by a long shot. Therefore, he couldn’t afford to pay for babysitters or childcare but also, with what happened to Mom, I thought it was about him keeping me close and around people he trusted. So I grew up in his office around his men who looked after me, took care of me, were cool about it and I loved them. They did their best to be appropriate around me but they were guys. Shit happened. I heard things. It was the way of the world.