what looked like a sword from his back; the next, another woman, this one had one arm dangling in front of her, her hand loosely opened at her pubis, her other arm lifted and resting on the side of her neck, a weird smile playing at her lips on her slightly downturned face; the next, a man with legs planted, arms crossed; and the last, a woman standing with her hands loosely cupped together, fingertips touching each other, head slightly bowed, lips to her hands.
Weird.
In front of this display stood a man wearing white robes with a long, wide satin band around his neck and dangling down his front bearing stripes starting with dark blue then light blue, red, deep violet, gold then bright green.
Okay, interesting. It seemed in this world they had more than one god. It was going to be cool learning more about that.
I sucked in breath to say something to my Dad, anything, and to get him to say something in return then it caught in my throat as a man moved to stand in front of and to the side of the man in white robes then that man looked down the aisle at me.
My step faltered when I took in all that was him and there was a lot that was him to take in.
“Sjofn,” Dad growled, his hand over mine in the crook of his arm tensing. He felt my step falter and he thought I was going to bolt. With effort, I pulled my shit together and kept walking.
But I was thinking, oh no.
And that would be a big, oh no, no, no, no.
No.
Was that…? Was he…?
Oh shit. He was. He had to be. He was standing at the front of the church.
It was The Dragon.
It was my groom.
And I got his name. I totally got it with the way he was glowering at me like he most assuredly did not like me, he also did not want to be there and further, what he did want to be doing was slaughtering entire villages either with weapons or, perhaps, breathing fire at them and setting them alight.
He was massive. I was five six. He had to be six three or six four. His hair was very dark, very thick with bit of wave and it curled around the turtleneck of his sweater that was a dark brown so dark it was nearly black. He did not wear weird leather shorts but wool breeches that fit him snug and did not come near to hiding the power of his massive, muscular thighs. The same could be said for his sweater which did not hide the breadth and brawn of his shoulders. He had on boots that went to just below his knees and I saw that he didn’t bother shining them for his nuptials. They were smudged and even had dirt and mud on them. There was a leather band slanting across his chest, under his ribs at one side, over his shoulder at the other but there were no gold, rubies or anything on his. I saw the fall of a cloak, this one not a lustrous fur pelt like Dad’s but a simple hide.
I could also see the hilt of a sword over his shoulder behind where the band was and knives on either side of a leather belt at his waist.
His features were tan, sharp, strong and prominent. Heavy brow, jutting square jaw, carved cheekbones, full lips with tons of ridges in them. If his look wasn’t so dark and extremely pissed off, he’d be hot.
He was not.
He was freaking scary. The bulk of him, the intensity of angry energy he exuded which I could feel pressing against my skin, the murderous look in his eyes.
Scary.
No, terrifying from top-to-toe.
And this was saying something, coming from me, Seoafin Wilde, a woman who did not get scared easily.
But no matter how frightening he was, I could not tear my gaze from him so as we cleared the front of the church, I didn’t.
And I saw his eyes were a weird shade of light olive green, not green or brown or hazel but light olive green surrounded by a mass of dark, curling lashes.
As I got closer and then we stopped a few feet from him, I noticed instantly he dwarfed me not only in height but in build. He was two of me, at least.
Oh God.
This was not good.
The man in white robes said something I didn’t understand not because I was freaking out but because it was in a weird language and the man known as The Dragon tore his furious, brown-green gaze from me and looked at him then he lifted a fist.
My torso swayed back as the massive thing sliced through the air.
Dad clutched me tighter then forced me forward so I was standing beside The Dragon as he pried my fingers from his elbow and lifted my hand, curling my frozen fingers over The Dragon’s fist and holding them there.
God, my fingers got nowhere near covering his mighty fist.
The music stopped.
Oh shit.
The man in robes said something and my Dad replied with a loud, authoritative, “Yes!” his fingers squeezed mine then he was gone.
Gone!
Just like that.
Oh shit!
Without any ado, the man in robes tipped his head to the ceiling and started babbling in a foreign language that was nothing like anything I’d ever heard before. And I’d heard a lot of foreign tongues and knew my way around a few of them.
Crap.
This went on for awhile as I stood next to my scary giant groom. Then it went on for another while.
Then it went on.
All the time it went on, I stood with my hand on The Dragon’s fist and, well… that was that.
Strange.
So strange and it went on for so long, I started to relax. Then I tensed when the robed guy turned abruptly and moved to stand in front the statue of the dude with his hands on his hips. The robed guy lifted his arms to the statue and started droning again.
Then he droned more. Then more. Then some more.
About fifteen minutes later, he moved to the statue of the woman with her hands on her belly and started droning again.
Hells bells, if he prayed to all of them for fifteen minutes, we’d be standing there, hands raised, for over an hour.
The packed church was silent behind us and the robed guy seemed like he was in trance of ecstasy, chatting it up in prayer with the lady statue so I figured maybe I should take that moment to get to know the scary guy whose hand I was kind of holding and who would be (maybe if this wedding didn’t last a decade) my husband for a year.
Shit.
I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye.
Okay, slightly less scary. He didn’t look pissed anymore. His eyes were aimed at the robed guy and he looked bored out of his skull.
I could dig that. I was getting bored too. Maybe I could work with this.
So I pulled my shit together and shuffled my body a little closer to his.
I stopped when his head tipped down, his green-brown eyes captured mine and they went from bored to mildly annoyed which was still super-freaking-scary.
I stared up at him.
But what could I do? Really, I had no choice.
