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

It should have been him.

The sunlight passed through her dress to make lacy patterns on the lightstone cobbles.

For just a moment, he wanted to take it all back, pull her into the craft, tell the pilot to turn around, reclaim his ship, and take off. Go back to Araa-Ara maybe, live in the hotel there, hunt evil birds by night and fuck by day—just the two of them. She was right. She didn’t belong here on Vesta. The people here were harder, crueler. They would change her.

She glanced back at him, gray eyes as cold as glass.

I wish you’d stop looking at me like that.

She was killing him.

She’d already changed.

He’d changed her.

An hour ago, he’d have said he’d changed her for the better, but now, he wasn’t sure. She’d been bright and bubbly back on Araa-Ara and then Frigorria. And now...

He took a long breath. He wanted the old Klym back. The happy, fighting one who’d kicked him and thrown noodles in his face. Not this beaten-down, formal one.

I wish I’d done this differently. Maybe that’s what he meant to say. Or maybe I just wish I’d asked you first.He’d still have taken her if she’d said no, but maybe he’d have gotten lucky, and she’d have said yes. Now they’d never know.

I wish you’d give this a chance.

Wishes were for jackasses.

He’d make her give him a chance.

He hopped off the craft, stupid plant in tow, and moved to her side.

His childhood home stood before them, shining in the sun. The weather was perfect. The doors and windows were open, leading into the dining hall.

In the darkened interior, a sea of faces stared back at them. Klym’s back straightened, her shoulders pulling back, her chin taking on the customary elegant tilt.

His mother stepped out, looking exactly as she had when he’d last seen her a decade ago, eyes stern, mouth rigid.

His brother Jeor stepped out beside her. He’d grown taller, rangier. And he’d grown a beard.

The shadows behind them shifted, and as if moving in slow motion, felana after felana stepped out to join them. Ah, shit.

A whole godsdamned army of them. Klym’s gaze drifted briefly to his.

Two sisters, about as tall as his knees when he’d left, moved in beside his mother. And seven half-sisters from his father’s secondary felanas, of which there were nine. They were all there.

But Dillan’s wives, his own would-be felanas, were there too, all of them, the whole harem decked out in vibrant gem-studded dresses like a flock of gaudy tropical birds.

It made for a hell of a lot of women. All of them staring at him.

He wrapped an arm around Klym’s waist.

“Who are they?” she asked.

He’d tell her tonight, before someone else told her. “That’s my mother, in red. And my sisters beside her. And my brothers.”

She nodded. “And the rest?”

“Felanas.”

She took his hand and, moving with her customary dancer’s grace, lifted one corner of her gown and dropped into the deep Argenti curtsy he’d seen in vids. It had to take a hell of a lot of thigh muscle to perform, not to mention balance. In her white gown, with her pale hair, she stood out, as regal as a queen.

No one spoke.

Klym breathed deeply beside him, and he couldn’t imagine what she must be thinking, but no fear showed on her face. Her back stayed rigidly straight, her neck long and a warm smile spread across her face.

Gaspart moved to stand somewhere in the middle.

“Mother,” Tor said when she came close. “This is Klymeni Merona na TaKarian, my selissa.”

Everyone held their collective breaths.

“Selissa?” His mother’s eyes widened, and her gaze drifted lower, down over Klym’s hips, toward her feet and up again. “She’s an offworlder.”

“That a fact?”

His mother’s mouth tightened. “Not a felana.”

“But she doesn’t sme—” Jeor didn’t finish his sentence.

His mother and all his brothers and sisters sniffed the air, smelling for proof that wasn’t there.

Tor gritted his teeth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this embarrassed. It was a problem they would have to deal with. Soon.

Gaspart shuffled his feet. “Evidently the lady likes to bathe.”

His mother’s eyes hardened as they had every time he screwed up since he was a kid. He resisted the urge to shuffle his feet or cross his arms. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He met her gaze. This time, he hadn’t screwed up.

“It’s good to be home,” Tor said, pulling Klym close so his mother couldn’t ignore her.

Everyone stared at Klym, their gazes drifting up and down her body.

Klym, for her part, didn’t disappoint, all gorgeous honey-skin softness, with golden-haired elegance, and rigid stillness. She withstood the scrutiny with aplomb, her snobby brows raised high, a placid smile on her face.

His mother’s eyes darkened and landed on Klym. “You risk war over this.”

“I would. But it won’t come to that.”

“Wife-rite is nothing more than a law. They can change laws.” Her eyes were grave, but there was something there. A plea, maybe. Or a warning. “The Alliance is not what it was when you left. It’s grown more desperate.”

“I’m counting on it.”

20

I want to see

your exuberant blood

KLYM STRUGGLED not to fidget under Tor’s mother’s scornful eye.

Rather than risk making some sort of breach of manners, she offered a vapid, non-threatening smile that she hoped conveyed nothing more than polite curiosity.

His mother turned away. “Dillan would never have done something so rash.”

“I’m not Dillan.”

“I know.” The way she said it made it sound like Tor was something less.

Klym held her breath.

Historically, Tor had responded to discord by kissing her, tying her to his bed, reaching between her thighs, spanking, threatening or bellowing. None of which was an appropriate reaction to his own mother. She hoped.

His unbound hair fluttered around his shoulders in the breeze, gleaming under the dying sun as he wound a trailing vine from her plant around his finger. “Fair enough, Mother. I did leave. And you know why.”

A tiny muscle clenched beneath his mother’s right eye. “That is all over. Your father... had weaknesses. I can