Becoming the Heirless Dragon King's Fated Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Not For Sale

Aldric walks out and names Linnea his bonded mate, breaks Hask's contract before his own riders, and the Hold's healer says she is already carrying the heir.

Aldric took her hand and walked her out of the cave into the white morning.

Thirty riders sat their horses on the slope, and Godfrey Hask sat in front of them with a livid bruise on his throat.

He saw Linnea's wrist, and then he saw the duke's.

Both marks glowed faintly through the cloth.

"Your Grace," Hask said, and the title tasted sour in his mouth. "You hold my property."

"Say that again."

"The girl is my bride by contract. Four hundred crowns, witnessed and sealed. I came to fetch her home."

"You came with thirty men to a duke's mountain," Aldric said, "to take a woman who bears my mark."

A murmur ran through the riders.

Several of them stared at the silver rune and went pale.

Hask did not.

"Marks can be forged," he said. "The law says a signed contract stands."

"The law says a bonded mate of the Frostmere line cannot be sold or claimed," Aldric said. "Any man who lays hands on her answers to me."

He stepped off the ridge, and the snow shook.

Silver scales rippled up his neck and hands for one breath, and the horses screamed.

Riders fought their reins, and two men fell off.

Hask's mount reared, and he clung to the mane.

"Show them the purse, Baron," Linnea said.

She had not known she was going to speak.

Every head turned to her.

"My stepmother has four hundred crowns in her coat," she said. "She sold me before the priest and before the vows, and he struck me in the carriage before I could answer."

She touched the swollen cut on her lip.

"Ask his men whose blood is on the carriage window."

Nobody answered.

One of the riders looked at his boots.

"These two wives behind your lodge," Linnea said. "Ask them how they died."

"Be silent, girl," Hask snarled.

"No," said Aldric.

He did not raise his voice.

"Your contract is void on my land, Hask. Your fen seat is held by my grant, and I have just seen you drag a woman bleeding into the snow."

"Your Grace, I protest."

"Ride home. Go before I decide that the gift of your seat was a mistake."

Hask's face went the color of raw liver.

He turned his horse, and the riders followed him down the slope in a ragged line.

One young rider glanced back at Linnea and lowered his head in a bow.

Aldric watched them go.

Then he sagged, just a little, and his hand tightened on hers.

"Come," he said. "You are half frozen, and the Hold has fires."

He did not let go of her all the way down the mountain.

At the Hold's gate, a sentry stared at their joined hands.

Servants poured into the courtyard.

An old man with a steward's chain took one look at the duke's arm, whitened, and turned to run for someone.

Linnea was bathed, wrapped in wool and put in a bed with a hot brick at her feet.

A healer arrived, a stout woman with strong hands.

She checked Linnea's lip and her frostbitten toes, and then she placed two fingers on her wrist, right on the silver rune.

The healer went very still.

"My lady," she said. "When was your last bleeding?"

"Eleven days ago."

"And when did you lie with the duke?"

Linnea's face burned.

"Last night."

The healer closed her eyes for a moment.

"The Frostmere blood quickens at once when the bond takes," she said. "There is a heartbeat under my fingers already."

Linnea stared at her.

"That's impossible."

"It is the oldest rule of the line. The dukes bond once, and the heir is begun in the same night."

The healer's voice dropped.

"The duke has waited six years for a mate who might never come. He will want to see you."

Linnea put her hand on her flat stomach.

The rune on her wrist pulsed once, warm as a second pulse.

She had run from one man who owned her.

She did not know yet what she had run into.

The door opened.

Aldric stood in it, in fresh black, with his hair still damp and his eyes fixed on her hand.

"Is it true?" he said.

There was no joy in his face.

Only a hard, fixed look that frightened her more than Hask had.

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