Feel the Burn (Dragon Kin #8)(10)

Yes. That was the problem. The gods-damn good nature of the Kolesovas. There wasn’t one of that tribe who didn’t find something to smile about. Laugh about. Rejoice about. Every day. All the time.

But, outsiders often asked, despite their good nature, with their strength and size and the number in their tribe, still at least one of them could have become the Anne Atli. So, why had they not?

Simply put . . . because they had no desire to be. They were just happy to battle occasionally. Drink a lot. And f*ck their many husbands. On a battlefield, they were a blessing. Any other time . . . a complete cheery pain in the ass.

Kachka fought her way out of Zoya’s smothering embrace and lied. “Glad to see you as well, old friend.”

Again, they had never been friends. But Kachka didn’t want Zoya to feel she had to prove how close friends they once were. That could be painful. Very, very painful.

“Why are you here?” Zoya asked, her voice still booming. “Returning to the Tribes, are you?”

“No, no. Just need a small team to help me on a—”

“I’ll come!” Zoya volunteered.

“No!” all five of them yelled.

“Ha-ha! You all make me laugh so! This will be such fun!”

That was another thing about the Kolesovas. They were never insulted. In more than a thousand years, they never once had a blood feud with anyone. Kachka didn’t know how that was possible. Even Glebovicha, who had had blood feuds with pretty much everyone, never had a blood feud with the Kolesovas. Because every insult she passed their way, they’d laughed about, slapping her on the back—and nearly shattering her spine in the process—and going on their merry way.

“What about your children, Zoya?” Kachka asked, desperate to keep her here.

“All one hundred and forty-seven of them,” Tatyana softly announced, eyebrows raised at Kachka.

“Yes,” Kachka said, trying not to show her shock at that number. Even for a Daughter of the Steppes who might easily live over a thousand years . . . that was gods-damn excessive! “What about all of them?”

“That’s what my husbands are for! They raise the girls while I am gone and the older girls will protect them all!”

“This is pretty much a suicide mission,” Ivan offered.

“Quiet, boy,” Zoya coldly snapped at Ivan. “No one speaks to you.”

And that’s what kept the Kolesovas in good standing with the other tribes despite their good-natured attitudes: their complete and utter lack of respect for anything with a penis.

Magdalina finally returned, her face . . . pale. And she suddenly refused to meet Kachka’s eyes.

“If you want what we have offered you here, there is . . . one other you must take.”

Must? Gods, what ineffectual loser were they trying to force on her?

“Really?” Kachka asked. “Who?”

Gaius forced his cousin to watch while his soldiers were slaughtered. It wasn’t a short fight—Egnatius’s soldiers were good—but it was still a battle they would not win.

As his soldiers finished off the last few, Gaius pushed the blade still rammed into Egnatius’s back deeper, and said against his cousin’s ear, “If you want me to end this quick, cousin, you’ll have to tell me what I want to know.”

“Know?”

“Where’s Vateria? I want Vateria. Your sister will never escape paying for what she did to Agrippina.”

“I’ll tell you nothing,” Egnatius shot back.

Gaius wasn’t shocked by this. Egnatius was one of the stronger of Thracius’s offspring. He would not go down easy.

Something he quickly proved when he rammed his elbow into Gaius’s face, forcing him back. Briefly free, Egnatius dropped to the ground, but quickly shifted from human to dragon. His legs might be dead, but not his wings.

He lifted himself up, hovering off the ground, and yanking his sword from its sheath.

“Come, cousin!” he ordered Gaius. “Let us see the good king fight.”

Gaius nodded. “As you wish.”

Kachka found the one to be forced upon her in one of the only wooden huts in tribal territory.

Wooden huts were not usually built because they took additional time to breakdown when the tribes went on the move. More important, they weren’t nearly as warm as the yurts.

But, every once in a while, there was a call for a wood hut. For it was to these dwellings that those who had wronged their own were sent. The Southlanders would call it a prison. The Riders called it, “The place for those who cannot be killed.”

This hut wasn’t filled with criminals the way the Southlanders’ prisons were. Instead, there was only one inhabitant. A woman. On her knees, her arms bound in chains. The chains were secured to the ceiling so that her arms were raised above her head and stretched wide apart. This was to keep her from using her hands for anything.

More chains were wrapped around her ankles, and the chains stretched across the floor and were staked to the ground by thick metal spikes.

There was no light in the hut. No fire to warm. Just the prisoner.

Nina Chechneva, the Unclaimed.

Unclaimed because no tribe would have her. The tribe she’d been born to had disowned her nearly two hundred years before. And no other would take her in. So she was nothing more than Nina Chechneva.