Claimed by the Savage Dragons

Chapter 1

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 her limp 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 me for. 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. Elder Eddard 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.

She’s a little thing, probably not even eighteen, with large oval eyes and full lips.

Her hair is long and plaited. It falls down her back and I have a moment of envy.

I didn’t think to braid mine, and it’s currently like a lion’s mane around my head from the rain and the general lack of hygiene of the past week on the road.

The blonde shrugs. ‘They take you.’

‘Who’s they?’ another asks.

She rolls her eyes.

‘Where the hell are you guys from, the ass end of nowhere? The dragons.’

At our blank looks, her incredulous eyes sweep over us. ‘We’re Tributes for a dragon faction. Don’t you guys know anything?’

The youngest of us quails. ‘Dragons? They... They’re a myth. Aren’t they?’

The blonde leans her head back against the wall with a sigh. ‘They’re not a myth. I ain’t never seen one, but I’ve heard stories. We’re for them. Well, one of us is.’

‘For what?’ I ask. ‘What do they want us for?’

She seems surprised that I’ve spoken, and her eyes find me again.

‘Food? Sex? Money? No clue. But a girl like us is given to them every ten to twenty years or so. That’s what I heard.

My town elders were fucking ecstatic when they found out our town was picked to contribute this time.

It means trade agreements and prosperity for blah blah blah. ’ She rolls her eyes.

‘And what if we aren’t chosen?’ I ask. ‘What happens to us then?’

The Blonde’s lips thin. ‘I don’t know, but we’ve been traveling north for over a week. We’ve gotta be close to the Barelands. I’m guessing we get sold.’

We all shudder. Tribes of savages. Radiation sickness. Dead land. Slave markets and dangerous towns. Those are the bedtime stories we grew up on. Be good, or you’ll be taken north where bad things happen to little children, and they never return.

After those bombshells, we all fall silent. A little while later, the younger guard comes back in. He has an armful of dresses and a brush which he throws to the floor.

‘Make yourselves look presentable.’ His grin is nasty as he sits back in his chair to watch us. ‘The ones who aren’t picked are coming with us and, good news, we get to have fun with you along the way.’

He throws back his head and guffaws as some of the girls fall on the clothes, trying to choose the best for themselves.

The blonde gives me an apologetic glance before she wades into the fray and grabs a cornflower blue dress. Another girl grabs it as well, and the blonde doesn’t hesitate. She hits the other girl hard in her face.

‘Let go!’

The girl’s scream is shrill. ‘That one was mine!’

The blonde shrugs. ‘It’s mine now. Sorry, sweetheart, but it’s every girl for herself.’

But even as she says it, she glances back at me. I haven’t moved. The truth is, I know I’m nothing special. Men at home wanted me, but only because I said no. People want things when they can’t have them, I’ve noticed.

Anyway, I won’t get chosen, so there’s no point in fighting the other girls for anything. Most of them are prettier than I am.

The blonde pulls a dark green shirt out of the pile and throws it at me with a wink. ‘You’re welcome, Red.’

I hold it up and realize it’s meant to be a dress–a very, very short dress. It’s cleaner than my ripped trousers and unraveling knit sweater though, so I take them off, ignoring the guard who’s drooling over us.

I eye his weapons in case he tries to grab me once the dragons are gone, so I know what to aim for. I’ll die for fighting back, probably, but at least I’ll take that sonofabitch with me. And death is better than getting sold in the Barelands.

I throw the ‘dress’ over my head. It’s tight and fits me like a glove, and no matter how much I try to pull it down, it ends just under my ass.

My mom let me wear one of her floaty dresses to a barn dance once, but Judge Mearcroft stared at me all night, and, very late, when everyone was wasted, he pulled me into a dark corner.

He told me while he was trying to kick my legs apart that he bought the dress for my mom because he had a bet with the sheriff that she’d give it to me to wear and I would be in it the first time he got to fuck me.

I kicked him in the ’nads and ran. Luckily, he was so drunk that night, he didn’t remember a thing about it the next day or I would have probably found myself in the sheriff’s cells.

The blonde is the first one to grab the brush and tell the others that she has hair skill. She pulls it through her own long locks and the other girls form a line. They grumble a little, but Blondie showed her mettle, so she’s in charge now. I don’t make the rules.

She brushes everyone’s hair until it shines as well as it can. When everyone else is done, she looks at me and I shake my head.

‘There isn’t time.’

Blondie rolls her eyes and beckons me. I look at the guard, but he’s showing no signs that anything’s going to be happening imminently, so I sigh and plonk myself down in front of her.

She whistles low when the brush gets stuck. ‘Never seen hair thick as yours,’ she mutters.

‘Yeah,’ I mutter. ‘Good luck making it look better than this.’

She snorts. ‘I told you I have skill.’