The Taming: Book 3 in the Tribe Warrior Series by Imogen Keeper (romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

think of her, she would not meet them looking slovenly. If nothing else, she would represent her people. Prove to the people of Vesta that their enemy, the Argenti, were people too.

She took her time, lotioning, pinching her cheeks for color, lamenting all her powders and creams, left behind on Spiro’s ship.

Tor stomped in and left her dress on a hanger, freshly clean and smooth, her slippers beside it. With a glower, he dropped her bodice beside it and her socks, and after a moment, he set her mother’s pearls on the shelf, and then her travel documents and her memory card and the shawl he’d given her. Those items, and her plant, were the sum total of every possession she could claim in the universe.

She tightened the towel draped around her breasts and turned away to smooth her hair into an elaborate coil with shaky hands.

If she asked about the style of dress on Vesta, Tor would only mock her concerns as childish or vain.

Smile. She shoved in the last of her hair pins. In her experience, a heartfelt smile could smooth over a thousand minor breaches of decorum.

She dressed, leaving off the restricting bodice and hot stocking, and took her seat in the bridge while he took his own bath and dressed. Her stomach was too tangled to eat, and her heart kept pounding twice as hard as it should.

Jitters had her feet tapping a beat on the floor of the bridge.

The enemy planet. She was about to set foot on an enemy planet. She’d heard horrible things about Vesta. Rumors of cannibalism and hedonism, slavery. Tor was hardly a paragon of gentility.

“The ship just began landing procedures. Time to strap up.” Tor’s voice sounded from beside her. She’d been so preoccupied worrying, she hadn’t heard him approach.

She took a long breath, waiting for more lectures and hostility.

There were none.

His eyes, for once, were warm. “You look beautiful. Your clothes are fine. We can buy you new ones in the next couple days if you want, but you look good.”

She didn’t bother to ask how he’d known exactly what was bothering her.

He half-smiled. “I know you better than you think I do.”

She dropped into her seat and buckled her straps. Of course, he could read minds.

He squatted down in front of her, his smile strangely kind. Kindness from Tor was almost too painful to endure.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you.” He took her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. “You’re mine now, Klym. I don’t know what that meant to Assamo when you had your agreement, but it means something to me. I protect my own.”

When he kissed her, it felt like the sealing of a contract.

“For twelve more days,” she whispered. “Then I’ll be free.”

“You’re already free. You just haven’t figured it out yet.” He turned away to buckle his own straps.

THE LANDING was shockingly anticlimactic, as far as arrivals on the planet of the enemy went. Vesta simply grew larger and larger in the viewscreen, until the round amber sphere took on greater detail. An amber sea that faded to palest gold along the coasts covered most of the planet. Along the equator, continents of white beaches and pale mountains were veined with dense turquoise foliage that Tor called jungles. The poles glittered with pale ice the color of canary diamonds.

Curiosity got the best of her. “Where is your home?”

“Tamminia? The continent in the middle. Where it’s solid turquoise. That big gold blob in the shape of a half-moon is the Lake of the Sun.” There was something almost wistful in his voice, a note she’d never heard from him before. He loved this place.

The rest of the planet looked arid, but there, around that lake, it was lush and rich. “It looks like fertile land.”

“We make about forty-two percent of all the produce on the planet.”

“How many states are there?”

“Upwards of a hundred and fifty.”

“And you rule?”

“I will,” he grunted and tapped a few notes in the controls. The humming of the ship around them intensified, and the whole thing took up a violent shuddering.

Her eyes on the fiery lake growing in the viewscreen, Klym replayed his words, trying to remember what she’d learned of Vesta in school. If only she’d paid more attention to Vestige history and less to Malina’s sketches of Tutor Heilani’s bald pate.

One thing was important on any planet. Food. That she could easily understand. “Tamminia must be quite powerful if it produces all that food.”

“It is. Vesta has one government. If Tamminia defected, Vesta’s ruling government, the Alliance would crumble. They can’t feed the population without Tamminia’s support.”

Klym couldn’t hide her surprise. “Is that what you want? To leave the Alliance.”

His eyes gleamed. “I’ve never been much for taking orders.”

“And they’re going to come for me?”

“Wife-rites are some of our most ancient laws. You’ll be safe, amiera. I will never let anyone hurt you.”

“Anyone except you, you mean.”

“Orgasms don’t hurt.”

She plucked at her dress. “Am I to cause a war, then?”

A grin stretched across his face. “You could.”

“I thought being my father’s political pawn was bad enough. Now I’m bait. It’s a big step down.”

“Depends how you look at it. You’re also a queen now. That’s a huge step up.”

“A fake queen.”

“Not according to everyone once we land. According to them, we were married by ancient custom.”

“What’s that?”

“I claimed you. Took you for my own and gifted you with my seed.”

Her belly clenched. “Some wedding.”

“I loved it.”

So she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the warm look in his eyes, she leaned forward to watch as the planet she’d spent her whole life believing was worse than the very depths of the underworld filled the viewscreen. The external thrusters slowed the ship. Air friction heated the interior. Broad strokes of color gave way to buildings and roads and trees.

They hovered over an enormous landing pad, and she knew, down to the depths of her soul, that there was no going back.

She had landed on Vesta with one of