Page 1 of Claimed by the Savage Dragons
Chapter One
MARI
‘This one’s sick. They’ll be here soon. You want them to take offense? Get rid of her. Now!’
‘But she was chosen!’
Beady eyes narrow in the faint light. ‘This ain’t the first time I’ve brought their Tribute. I was here years ago for the last time. The time before that, too. Truth is they only pick one. Disappear her before they get here, and they’ll never know the difference.’
I wince as the girl with stringy hair and a wan complexion is grabbed by the second, younger man. She shrieks, and her fingers lock onto the girl next to her whose terrified eyes are silently pleading for her to let go, to not draw attention to her as well. She grits her teeth, eyes narrowing on the girl who’s been coughing wetly all night, and she pries her fingers off her arm with a small shake of her head.
‘No!’ the girl screams. ‘No!’
She won’t let go, and the older, stinking guard who’s been sitting in the chair by the exit all night making sure we don’t escape snarls. He hits her hard across her cheek, his patience clearly at an end. Her head lolls, and his friend picks her up by the scruff of the neck like an animal, practically throwing herlimp body through the open door that I can only squint at after the many hours I’ve spent in the dark over the past few days.
I don’t know where we are. Since I was given to these men by people I knew, humans I thought I could trust, we’ve traveled only at night. Two other girls have been added to our ranks. All of them with the same shell-shocked expression that I know has been plastered on my face since the town elders decided that it was me who would be given. They literally pulled my name out of a hat, I heard. I wasn’t even present when they ‘chose’ me. I don’t even know what they chose mefor. I only heard whispered words.
Tribute.
Slave.
Where, for whom, and why me? I have no clue. Though I don’t suppose my name would have been at the top of the list if Elder Eddard Smyth hadn’t been coveting what wasn’t his.
I always knew he was out for himself and his family, but I never realized what he’d do to make sure I was out of his way.
I thought tributes in general were supposed to be beautiful virgins. I mean, he got the second part right. All the boys in town knew I was a frigid bitch after I slapped Pete Townsend when he tried to put his hand down my pants behind his dad’s barn, and his little sister told all her friends.
The truth is, I was never interested in the town boys, not their dads either. I saw what happened once a man fucked you. He either laughed at you with their friends, or you got pregnant and had a baby to feed if you didn’t die in the birth.
My own mama was usually a laughingstock except to whatever guy she was currently fucking. At least until she got knocked up and my baby sister killed her in the womb last May.
I pinch my arm. There’s no point in thinking about all that. My home might as well not exist anymore. Even if I could go back, I never would. There’s nothing there for me now. ElderEddard made sure of that when I was chosen, and I was stripped of my worldly possessions.
Can’t own a shop if you’re a tribute. That’s the law.
I’m pretty sure Eddard moved his daughter and her new husband into my place before the sun had set that day when I was given the great news.
‘Congratulations, Marigold, you’re going to be taken from everything you know. You’ll be given to a band of stinking horse riders and taken north to the Barelands where nothing grows, and the skeletons of the old cities rise out of the ground like giant gravestones. But don’t worry. It’s for the greater good. You’ll be celebrated. Because of your sacrifice, the town is safe. Your shop? Your home? We’ll take care of it all. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’
Assholes.
I pinch my arm again.Stop thinking about it.
I cast my eyes around the dim room in the shack they’ve had us holed up in for the past two days. The door is closed again, and we’ve been left alone while they deal with the sick girl. I can hear them arguing about her outside.
The other girls’ eyes are all trained on the door as we hear the leader’s distinctive grating voice. There’s a snap and a thud in the dirt.
I guess they dealt with her.
‘Shit,’ the blonde one murmurs, raising a brow at us. ‘Whatever you do, don’t fucking cough.’
A bubble of laughter comes up from my throat out of nowhere, and I gag on it, forcing it back down. How could I laugh at a time like this?
The blonde’s knowing eyes find me, and she raises a brow. ‘If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.’
I give her a jerky nod, but don’t speak.
‘What happens if they choose one of us?’ the one next to me asks.
