And this was saying something, coming from me, Seoafin Wilde, a woman who did not get scared easily.

But no matter how frightening he was, I could not tear my gaze from him so as we cleared the front of the church, I didn’t.

And I saw his eyes were a weird shade of light olive green, not green or brown or hazel but light olive green surrounded by a mass of dark, curling lashes.

As I got closer and then we stopped a few feet from him, I noticed instantly he dwarfed me not only in height but in build. He was two of me, at least.

Oh God.

This was not good.

The man in white robes said something I didn’t understand not because I was freaking out but because it was in a weird language and the man known as The Dragon tore his furious, brown-green gaze from me and looked at him then he lifted a fist.

My torso swayed back as the massive thing sliced through the air.

Dad clutched me tighter then forced me forward so I was standing beside The Dragon as he pried my fingers from his elbow and lifted my hand, curling my frozen fingers over The Dragon’s fist and holding them there.

God, my fingers got nowhere near covering his mighty fist.

The music stopped.

Oh shit.

The man in robes said something and my Dad replied with a loud, authoritative, “Yes!” his fingers squeezed mine then he was gone.

Gone!

Just like that.

Oh shit!

Without any ado, the man in robes tipped his head to the ceiling and started babbling in a foreign language that was nothing like anything I’d ever heard before. And I’d heard a lot of foreign tongues and knew my way around a few of them.

Crap.

This went on for awhile as I stood next to my scary giant groom. Then it went on for another while.

Then it went on.

All the time it went on, I stood with my hand on The Dragon’s fist and, well… that was that.

Strange.

So strange and it went on for so long, I started to relax. Then I tensed when the robed guy turned abruptly and moved to stand in front the statue of the dude with his hands on his hips. The robed guy lifted his arms to the statue and started droning again.

Then he droned more. Then more. Then some more.

About fifteen minutes later, he moved to the statue of the woman with her hands on her belly and started droning again.

Hells bells, if he prayed to all of them for fifteen minutes, we’d be standing there, hands raised, for over an hour.

The packed church was silent behind us and the robed guy seemed like he was in trance of ecstasy, chatting it up in prayer with the lady statue so I figured maybe I should take that moment to get to know the scary guy whose hand I was kind of holding and who would be (maybe if this wedding didn’t last a decade) my husband for a year.

Shit.

I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye.

Okay, slightly less scary. He didn’t look pissed anymore. His eyes were aimed at the robed guy and he looked bored out of his skull.

I could dig that. I was getting bored too. Maybe I could work with this.

So I pulled my shit together and shuffled my body a little closer to his.

I stopped when his head tipped down, his green-brown eyes captured mine and they went from bored to mildly annoyed which was still super-freaking-scary.

I stared up at him.

But what could I do? Really, I had no choice.

So I whispered, “Uh… hi.”

His dark brows snapped together.

Yep, that was super-freaking-scary too.

Oh hell.

I plowed on, still whispering. “Uh… do we have to stand with our hands like this?”

His expression didn’t change and he made no reply.

“I mean,” I went on, tipping my head to robed guy, “he’s kinda into what he’s doing so I think he wouldn’t notice if we took a break.”

No answer but his eyes didn’t leave mine.

I kept going. “He’s so into it, we could probably go sit down or even,” I tried to joke and smiled up at him, “go out, get a beer and come back and he’d still be at it.”

His eyes narrowed on my mouth.

Definitely super-freaking-scary.

I stopped smiling and stopped speaking and his eyes snapped back to mine. I wanted to look away but for some reason, I couldn’t. Maybe it was because, really, upon closer inspection, he could be seriously hot if he didn’t look like he wanted to break me in two.

Then I really wanted to look away when his eyes started roaming, my face, my hair, my crown and then they drifted down where they took their time examining my ample cle**age.

Ho boy.

In the middle of this, for some reason, his jaw got hard (or, harder), his angry scowl returned, his eyes came back to mine for a slash before they turned back to the robed guy.

Well, that didn’t work.

The robed guy moved to the next statue and started jabbering at it.

I tried to figure out my next move but there wasn’t one. I was apparently a princess at my wedding to a man known as The Dragon, both my parents didn’t seem to like me much, I was standing in front of a huge church with a shitload of people in it and I was getting married in the longest, most boring ceremony in the history of time.

Not a single bit of that was good, even the princess part.

Okay, that wasn’t true. The princess part was good. So were my crown and my kickass clothes, not to mention my boots and underwear.

And I kinda liked the sleigh and wished I’d had a moment to enjoy the ride because I was guessing it would have been fun.

I held onto those thoughts as I kept my hand curled around his fist and then the robed guy moved onto the next statue.

Then, ever game (this was my adventure and I had to make the most of it, as I always did because that was what my parents taught me to do), I pulled in a breath and braved another step closer to my scary groom. I got so close, our arms brushed and his chin dipped back down so he could scowl at me.

“Hi,” I whispered, “me again. Your future wife?” I made a lame attempt at a joke.

He did not laugh. He did not even smile. He continued to scowl but said no words.

Maybe he didn’t have a sense of humor. Maybe he actually had no emotions at all except being bored and pissed.

“Uh…” I persevered, “what are those statues made of? That looks like marble. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s gorgeous.”

His head tipped slightly to the side but his eyes went alert.

Uh-oh!

Stupid!

Sjofn would totally know what those statues were made of and likely have seen them countless times before (unless, of course, she wasn’t religious).

Shit!

“Uh…” I mumbled quickly, “I mean, I should know, of course. And I’ve, uh… seen it before, obviously, I mean, seen those statues before just not um…” Shit! “That marble, uh… anywhere else. But I never thought to ask and um… well, we seem to have time to chat.”