Page 3 of Claimed By the Sinful Dragon
You know since when.
I let it go. I was in no mood to stand here arguing with myself. Especially when he had a point. Besides, it didn’t matter how large the pack had grown. As long as they feared me enough to stay the hell away from me, and keep to our bargain, they couldlive down here breeding like rabbits for all I cared. Just so long as they did it quietly.
I let out a low rumble of impatience, watching as tension played across the alpha’s shoulders in response. If he didn’t get a fucking move on soon, I was going to eat one of the curs on principle. I wanted to get the hell out of here.
Chapter 3
Kaylee
The whole pack—several hundred shifters—gathered in the clearing in the woods, some still wearing leather aprons from the tannery, others with dirt-stained hands from the woods, and I spotted the cooks from the communal kitchen with blood still staining his forearms. When the alpha called, the whole town came to a halt. The only people not here were those underaged.
More than one set of eyes glared at me, but I ignored them and took my place near the back. Just because I didn’t have a wolf didn’t mean I didn’t belong at a pack meet, despite what most of them thought.
“Quiet, everyone,” Alpha Landon called from the head of the clearing. Silence fell immediately, and his dark eyes roved over the gathered figures. I watched him, careful not to meet his eye. His presence was so completely captivating that it was hard to focus on anything else. And that was without a wolf inside me to respond to the dominance I could sense rolling off him in waves. Every other head in the clearing was bowed in respect, and I quickly dipped mine, too. It was never a good idea to catch Landon’s attention. Nice and inconspicuous, avoiding everyone’s notice, that was how I liked to roll.
“Kaylee Thornton,” Landon boomed. “Where is Kaylee Thornton?”
I started, and a dozen pairs of accusing eyes turned in my direction. Crap. I swallowed hard and lifted my head.
“Here, Alpha Landon,” I said, trying to quash the strained tremor in my voice.
“Come here.”
For a moment—one insane, reckless moment—I considered running. Illogical terror welled up in me, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from turning on my heel and launching myself into the woods. That, and the knowledge that several hundred wolves would be on my all-too-metaphorical tail if I tried it.
I stepped forward, and the sea of shifters parted for me. Murmurs and dirty looks followed me, but that was nothing new. The alpha summoning me at a pack meet, though? Yeah, that was all new, and new was never good.
I reached the front and the alpha nodded to someone behind me. I heard movement and flicked a look over my shoulder in time to see two of the pack’s enforcers take up positions flanking me. A shiver ran through me and I turned back to the alpha.
“What’s going on?”
“Speak when spoken to,” the alpha grunted. I opened my mouth to object because fuck that—I hadn’t done anything wrong—but one of the enforcers gripped my arm and I snapped my mouth shut.
And then, from the shadows behind the alpha, a figure stepped forward. He was tall and broad shouldered, wearing jeans and a shirt that fitted his body closely enough that I could make out the lean, wiry muscle beneath. His dark eyes stared out impassively from beneath close-cropped hair, and as he turned them on me, my breath caught in my throat.
Danger.
He was dangerous. I could feel it as clearly as I could feel the breeze working its way through the trees around us. A shiverran through me, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Something stirred inside me, something primal, something wild and reckless, something that urged me to turn and run into the trees, and take the throat of anyone who stood in my way. I tamped it down before that crazy instinct could get me killed.
“She will do,” the man said curtly.
“Do what?” I asked dumbly, and the enforcer squeezed my arm more tightly. The guy’s eyes narrowed.
“Silence,” Landon snapped. He nodded to the enforcers again, and the asshole currently trying to carve a hole into my arm dragged me to one side.
The alpha turned his attention to the rest of the pack, not bothering to answer my question—not that I’d expected him to—which did nothing to quell the panic rising inside me. Something about this was very wrong.
“This is Rook, guardian of Red Ridge. He has come to claim his Tribute.”
Whispers raced round the gathered pack, and I might not have a wolf but I still had the shifter hearing I’d inherited from my mother. Hearing good enough for me to pick up the word ‘dragon’.
I pivoted, open-mouthed, to stare at Rook. “You’re a myth,” I said.
“I have selected Kaylee Thornton. If any member of the pack objects,” Landon said, “let them speak now.”
No-one spoke, and a heavy silence fell across the gathered shifters. Tribute. He was giving me to the…dragon. Or whatever the hell he was, because clearly ‘dragon’ wasn’t an actual thing. But at the very best, I was about to be given to some sort ofgangster psycho, and honestly that sounded pretty shit to me. And not a damn one of the people I’d known my whole life had a problem with it.
“Iobject,” I protested, squirming in the arms of my captor.
