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

shouting. He had no idea what he must look like, but he had to believe it wasn’t a pretty sight. His face had to be so red it pushed into puce or maybe blue, and he had to have veins bulging everywhere.

Klym thought he bellowed too much. She’d seen nothing.

This wasn’t bellowing, this was battle-roar, primitive rage from a Prime with a threatened mate. He filled his lungs and flooded the room with his fury. It echoed and resounded in everyone’s eardrums, making them unbalanced and confused. It showed on their faces. Sound could make anyone crazy. Even Spiro’s face finally registered a degree of irritation. It played out all over his face. One of the guards flinched as if in pain, and Klym threw her hands up over her ears.

It was the only thing he could do other than loom with the promised threat of retaliation and reminder that if they shot him, they had better not miss, because they got one shot. He’d savage them with knees and elbows and feet if he got even the slimmest shot.

“Stop,” Spiro roared, in a voice that sounded like broken shards of glass clattering across concrete. The sound of a broken voice box. It almost hurt to hear. It was broken, and not even for a second did Tor feel guilty. He’d throw a knife at his throat again a thousand times because even though he hadn’t known it at the time, that man’s voice had given him Klym. It had brought him here.

“Stop,” he rasp-roared again.

Finally, Tor stopped, and in the aftermath, everyone blinked, shaking their heads with surprise.

Spiro touched a hard hand to his throat as if it hurt, and when he spoke, his voice was raw. “I didn’t give my word to force her.”

Klym turned to stare at Spiro, her face registering some strange blend of relief and mistrust that Tor didn’t really understand.

Merona’s weapon lowered, just for a second, and only an inch before he retrained it. “She just said she’d take you.”

“She’s your daughter, sir.”

Merona’s face darkened. “She will be happy once you are Bonded. That’s how Bondings work.” He ticked the weapon back up. “They make you happy.”

Tor shouldered his way in front of Klym.

Spiro lifted a shoulder. “Then we’ll all have to be miserable.”

Thank Vaniiya, a rational person in the room. Tor let his shoulders drop and sent a grateful garble Spiro’s direction.

Spiro tugged his own rezal off his belt and leveled it steadily at the floor. “Let’s everyone just lower our weapons.”

Merona shifted to their left, tightening his grip on the handle of his rezal.

Spiro stepped between them. “Don’t make me point my weapon at you, sir.”

For a long moment, silence stretched. The stink of sweating men and blood filled the air. Hearts beating, the guard with the busted nose breathing around the blood, Klym with her fruit-scent filling the air with her own desperate sadness.

Merona glared at them all, his finger tap-tap-tapping along the shaft of the rezal. “Then I’m taking the Vestige for questioning.”

Tor nodded happily. That was what he’d wanted in the beginning. He’d happily be tortured for a while—however long Agammo needed to show up with the Premier. And it beat the hell out of having Klym fuck some other guy and be brainwashed into loving him for the rest of her life.

He garbled his assent.

Klym cupped her hands over her mouth, shaking her head. “You said you’d let him go. You said you would.” She turned to glare at Spiro. “Please, Spiro. You promised you’d Bond with me.”

Tor snarled at that, flexing and shifting. “Ungh unhg, gnuh!” That one actually sounded like what he meant.

The pearl thief reached out with a thick hand and grabbed Klym by the wrist to haul her away from Tor.

He shoved a shoulder into him, pressing him back, and got a swift kick to the guy’s shin.

The guard staggered back but didn’t relax his grip.

“You can’t torture him,” Klym screamed. “Please, Father.” She kicked the guard too, but he wore too much soft-armor, and her shoes weren’t meant for that. The blow didn’t even faze him.

The pearl thief cocked his rezal, staying well out of Tor’s striking zone. “Step back.”

Tor stared back at his bloody face, studying his eyes, analyzing and wondering. He jerked his eyebrows, and the guy flinched. He took a cautious step forward, probing to see the man’s skill.

“Stop,” Spiro shouted huskily from across the room, and Tor turned reluctantly. “Everyone just stop.”

Merona kept his rezal aimed squarely on him. “He’ll know about their defensive satellites. A regio. He’ll know the locations and capabilities of their security satellites. We could end this. In a heartbeat. Do you know the weapons the Senate has been sitting on? We could finish them,” he snarled.

The endless beauty of it. Everyone wanted to end the war. Peace to be had through marriage between one couple, or peace through the obliteration of his whole planet. Tor roared impotently into the gag.

“That wouldn’t end it. And that weapon would never be sanctioned. Why kill the women?” Spiro lifted his weapon, leveled it at Merona. “Put down your weapon, sir. You’re in breach of at least five different laws I could name, sir.”

Merona jerked his head at the guard holding Klym and swung his rezal at Spiro. So many rezals, two on him, one on Spiro. Everyone stared around the room.

“Don’t make me do this, sir.” Spiro’s broken voice was low. “Lower your weapons, and we will discuss the treatment of the priso—”

Whatever he was going to say, he didn’t finish. Merona fired with his rezal and got him right in the chest with one of his damned darts.

Spiro’s knees hit the ground, and a second later he fell face-first to the floor. His cheeks squished up, and only his eyeballs moved, rolling around wildly.

Klym shouted, and Tor tried to go to her, but the pearl thief waggled his weapon to the negative, laughing with his bloody mouth.

A second later, Merona turned on his own daughter and