The Bride Hunt Box Set Books 1 - 3

by Hartnady, Charlene

  It was a delectable scent. One that had his mouth watering, his blood rushing to his loins. It happened completely against his will. It was a purely instinctual reaction, one he was helpless to control.

  Blaze gritted his teeth and tried to breathe through his mouth. The scent also brought back some memories, memories he preferred to keep buried. Despite his best efforts, his gaze was drawn to the females.

  They were talking amongst themselves. Every so often one of the females would look up and scan the busy hall.

  “Wow!” one of the females giggled, she was very tall for a human female. She had her back to him, making it impossible for him to see her facial features. Not that he was interested. “These dragon shifters sure are something.” she chuckled, eliciting laughter from one or two of the others.

  “I can’t wait to have one of them get his paws on me.” This female had curly hair; she also sat with her back to Blaze.

  “There are a ton of them with golden chests,” the tall one said.

  “Yeah, it’s really exciting!” the curly-haired one piped up.

  “Royalty,” a very pale female with light colored hair spoke next. “I really want to nab myself one of those. What do you say, Roxy?”

  Four females turned towards a dark-haired beauty. He immediately regretted thinking of her in those terms. She was a human. The female was of average height which made her very small by dragon standards. She shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter to me either way.”

  The curly-haired female gasped. “You can’t be serious. Don’t you want a king? Or at the least, a prince?”

  “This is going to sound really corny but all I want is a really nice guy. One who cares for me. That and…” She lifted her eyes in thought for a moment before shrugging again. “Nope, that’s it. The royalty thing doesn’t matter to me.”

  “What about you?” The curly-haired one asked the fifth female.

  Once again all eyes turned to this female. “I guess royalty would be nice, but I’m with Roxy, I don’t really mind as long as there’s a spark there between us.”

  “A spark is important.” It was the beauty. Fuck! He needed to stop thinking of that one in those terms. It didn’t matter that she was beautiful. All that mattered was that it irritated the fuck out of him. One thing was for sure, he would stay away from her during the hunt. He wished once again that he could stay away from all of them but it was not to be.

  * * *

  Thankfully, Roxy was used to being on her feet all day. She was also used to running up and down and making plenty of trips to the back. She lived on the first floor of an apartment with no elevator, so having to run up and down a flight of stairs and sometimes with bags of groceries was all too common as well. Having said that, they were four hours into the hunt and her back was killing her. All she wanted to do was to take a break. Her brow was sweaty and her T-shirt clung to her body.

  They had followed Julie’s advice and had broken into two groups. It was difficult to decide who would go with who, so in the end, they had drawn sticks. The people who drew the two short sticks would go off in one direction while the remaining three would go off in another. Darcy and Emma had drawn the short sticks and headed northeast and the rest of them had headed northwest. Her roommate’s name was Emma and she’d turned out to be extremely sweet. She was a little concerned that this wasn’t for her while the rest of the ladies couldn’t wait to meet their future shifter. They’d gushed about how sexy the dragon shifters were and ogled them non-stop.

  Roxy had to agree, the dragon shifter men were extremely good-looking. They were ridiculously tall, ridiculously built and most of them had the most amazing eyes: bright blues and greens and even the most amazing bluish purple color. Some of them had really dark eyes, almost black. They had a very intense way of looking at you. They all walked around in loose-fitting pants and nothing else. No shoes and no shirts. Serious eye candy like she’d never seen before. Although it was important to be attracted to someone you were going to spend the rest of your life with, looks were not the most important thing to her.

  “Come on,” Sue kept marching on ahead. “We need to keep moving. At this rate they are going to catch up with us too quickly.” She heard Lily suck in a deep breath and the other woman picked up the pace, scrambling over uneven ground, making her way through the tall grass. Lily and Sue had both decided that they wanted royalty and were therefore hoping to get as far away as possible to ensure that it happened. Julie had told them more than once that the higher a dragon shifter’s rank, the more stamina he had and the faster he was. She said if they got far enough ahead, they were almost assured a royal mate.

  Roxy had a different motivation. She didn’t like the idea of hordes of those big burly guys going head-to-head with one another. She could certainly imagine how a person could get hurt in amongst all of that. That was pretty much her only motivation for putting one foot in front of the other at the moment, self-preservation. Roxy sighed in relief as they hit a forest of trees. Walking in the blazing sun during the hottest time of day had been grueling. She immediately felt herself cool in the shade. It would also be easier going with less vegetation and they wouldn’t be as easy to spot.

  All three of them picked up the pace with renewed vigor and they carried on in silence for at least another half hour until Lily bent over grabbing her side. “I’ve got a stitch!” She raised her head, her mouth was contorted in a grimace, a sheen of sweat covered her face. Roxy rubbed her own forehead with the back of her arm. She could feel how escapee tendrils of hair stuck to her face.

  “Okay,” by the frown Sue was sporting, she didn’t look happy. “We’ll take a five-minute breather.”

  “I might need more than that,” Lily grit out between her teeth. “It really hurts and I’m exhausted. I know I’m quite petite, but I don’t work out, as in, not at all.” She was breathing hard. “I have a desk job and I’m really, really unfit.”

  “Don’t you want a king?” Sue widened her eyes.

  Lily nodded. “Yes.” She tried to pull herself upright but ended up buckling back over with a loud groan.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Roxy said, smiling at the other woman. “I needed a breather myself. We’ll take a few minutes. You can’t go on like that.”

  Lily gave a nod and collapsed into a heap on the ground. “I feel better already. I think I was getting ready to faint.” She was still breathing hard.

  Sue remained standing, hands on hips. She glanced at her watch. “Four minutes, ladies, and then we’re out of here.”

  “You heard Lily, she needs a bit more time.”

  “If you guys don’t mind, I think I’ll carry on, on my own” said Sue. That wasn’t very nice.

  Roxy didn’t say anything though, she just nodded. “Sure, if that’s what you want.”

  “Thanks for understanding,” Sue whispered.

  Julie had told them that the dragon shifters had excellent hearing, hence all the whispering.

  “It’s fine. We’ll manage,” Roxy said.

  Lily gave a nod. “I’m too pooped to carry on. I need a little while,” Lily’s voice was muffled because her head was between her knees.

  “Please be sure to send the royalty my way,” Sue grinned, looking far too chipper for Roxy’s liking. She had mentioned that she jogged every single morning, it was obviously helping her now.

  Note to self, start jogging, thought Roxy. Lily lifted her head for half a second, locking eyes with Sue, before dropping her head back down between her knees. “I’ll keep him for myself,” she mumbled.

  “Don’t you dare!” Sue responded as she turned in the direction they had been moving.

  Roxy watched Sue as she moved quickly between the trees. The woman was a machine. She continued to watch her for a couple of minutes until she disappeared altogether.

  Roxy removed her backpack and sat down next to Lily before unzipping her pack. She withdrew a bottle of water and unscrewed the lid. She gave Lily a nudge on the arm with t
he bottle. “Here.”

  It seemed to take some effort for Lily to raise her head. She glanced first at Roxy and then at the bottle of water in her hand. “Thanks.” She gave Roxy an exhausted smile and took the bottle before taking a tentative sip and then trying to hand the bottle back.

  “You should drink more,” Roxy said, not taking the bottle.

  Lily nodded, she put her mouth to the bottle once again, this time taking a decent slug before handing the bottle back to Roxy.

  Roxy drank deeply.

  “Thanks for staying with me.”

  “Yeah, no worries.”

  Lily sighed. “I’m sure if you left now you’d still be able to catch up with Sue. It’s just that I needed more than five minutes. I’m sorry for dragging you down.” Aside from looking really tired, she also looked concerned.

  “Hey, don’t worry. I meant it, I also needed a bit of a break. I don’t blame Sue for carrying on, on her own but at the same time it was a bit of a dick move.”

  Lily smiled. “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “Definitely. We’re in this together and therefore we should stick together.” Roxy meant every word.

  One second they were sitting there whispering softly, sharing their water and the next they were no longer alone. The freaky thing was that Roxy hadn’t even heard the dragon shifter males approach. There was no cracking of twigs, no rustling of leaves, there was no crunching of dirt even. Then again, the forest had become eerily silent. If she’d been paying attention she would have realized that something was up.

  Roxy had just been offering Lily another sip of water when a voice sounded behind them. “I’ll take the dark one.” It was deep and gruff. Definitely not human.

  Roxy dropped the water bottle, which landed between the two of them with a dull thud. It fell onto its side and water spilled out. Neither one of them made any attempt to right the plastic container. Their focus was on the men. The huge, larger-than-life shifters. They seemed bigger somehow in this setting.

  Roxy jumped to her feet. Lilly remained where she was but her whole body tensed up.

  There were two of them. One of the guys growled in response to the other one’s statement. Her father had once owned a Rottweiler. A big, pedigreed bitch. She was extremely affectionate and loving. Roxy remembered spending hours playing fetch. She loved it when you scratched her stomach and would lie on her back, all four paws in the air. Roxy couldn’t have been older than six or seven at the time, and had insisted on calling the animal Sharkey. This on account of her mouth being full of sharp teeth. Thing was, as much as she loved the dog, and as sweet to Sharkey was, she was also a little afraid of her. Sharkey was extremely protective of the family. That meant barking and on occasion even a growl or two. Now Sharkey had a growl on her that never failed to elicit goosebumps all over Roxy’s body. It didn’t matter that the aggression was never towards her. The sound was still terrifying.

  This guy’s growl was ten times as menacing and infinitely lower and deeper. Roxy’s first instinct was to hide behind a tree but thankfully she managed to suppress the desire because that would have just been stupid. There was nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. One of them was going to hone in on her and then it would be game on. She puffed out a breath, thinking that maybe this hadn’t been one of her brightest ideas to date.

  Roxy looked over the shifter’s shoulders and as far as the forest would allow, which granted, wasn’t that far. The trees were pretty tightly packed. It didn’t look like anyone else was coming. It didn’t sound like it either but then again these two had managed to sneak up on them very easily. For now, there were only two of them. Two was more than enough.

  The one guy was looking at her, the guy with the deep growl. No, he wasn’t just looking, he was all-out staring. His eyes were an emerald green. They were bright and beautiful. He had a wildness about him, from his unruly mop of hair to the hair on his jaw. She couldn’t help but to notice that both of them had golden chests. The guy with the green eyes had golden markings and the other one had blue flecks mixed within the gold. The guy with the flecks of blue had the most beautiful amethyst colored eyes—more purple than blue. He was the better-looking of the two and yet she couldn’t take her eyes off of the other one. The dark, wild one. The intense, dangerous-looking one. The one that was no good. He was too menacing, too serious. So uptight that she felt like telling a stupid joke just to break the mood. She had a feeling that he wouldn’t laugh even though she would, hysterically and then he would think she was mad. Her internal dialogue with herself was getting out of hand. It was her nerves getting the better of her. She sucked in a deep breath and willed her mind to be silent so that she could pay attention. Something told her that she needed to keep her wits about her.

  “Why all the growling? You said you didn’t care either way,” Amethyst Eyes said; there was a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Choose quickly, the others will be here soon.” It looked like Amethyst Eyes was giving the other guy first dibs. Really? That didn’t seem right. A gentleman would ask the lady who she preferred. Roxy quickly reminded herself that these were no gentlemen, they weren’t even men and there was nothing remotely gentle about them. Green Eyes was still looking at her… staring.

  Pick me. It was a ridiculous thought. She didn’t even know this guy. His eyes held a haunted look. Every muscle on his ridiculously large body pumped, primed and ready. He may not be the better-looking of the two, but he was definitely the more attractive one. Roxy could sense enormous strength rolling off of him but she could also sense an underlying vulnerability.

  Pick me.

  His gaze moved to Lily who was hugging her legs. No! Not her. I can see that you want me. The moment the thought entered her mind, she struggled to shake it. The green-eyed, intense one wanted her. She had seen it burning in those amazing eyes of his, yet he seemed to be ignoring it. Then again, she was probably just reading too much into it.

  He shrugged. “Whatever! A female is a female.” It was an asshole thing to say. Once again though, she couldn’t help but sense a tiredness… no it went beyond tired… a weariness and still that vulnerability.

  The amethyst-eyed guy smiled broadly, it made him even more handsome. His good looks had no effect on her. She felt infinitely drawn to the other one. Why though? It was just like he had stated, it shouldn’t matter either way. They didn’t know one another at all. Her heart was beating wildly and she still struggled to take her eyes off of him. Green Eyes might be acting indifferent but he wanted her. She knew it. Moreover, she felt a strange connection to him even if they had never met before.

  On some fundamental level, maybe this was her soul telling her that the green-eyed guy was the one for her. Call it a gut feeling, call it a sixth sense. The more she thought about it, the more she felt that it was true.

  The amethyst-eyed shifter advanced on her while the other one remained motionless. His muscles bunched and his jaw tightened. It was like he didn’t really want his buddy to claim her. Maybe he felt it too. No, she was sure he felt it too when his stunning green eyes drifted over to her once again. Something flared in their depths. Something that she couldn’t quite decipher, she only knew that she didn’t want Amethyst Eyes to claim her. Then again, maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part.

  “You females were briefed.” It was only when the amethyst-eyed one spoke that she realized how close he was to her. Only a few feet separated them. Thankfully he stopped moving. “I’m going to claim you now, please do not be concerned. I will hold you and kiss you. The more of my scent I can get on you, the better.” He grinned and out popped a couple of dimples. He sure was a charmer. Totally not for her. Ben had been a charmer, full of stories… full of shit more like since nothing ever panned out. All those promises had amounted to exactly nothing. Eight lost years, maybe, but that was it.

  “I don’t think—” She began but was cut short.

  “I’m sorry, female, but there’s no time for small talk. A group of males is close behind us; th
ey will be here soon. There is plenty of time for talking later. Then again”—he chuckled— “maybe not.”

  Oh shit! Was he referring to sex? She sure as hell hoped not. It felt like her insides were in knots. Her eyes flashed back to the other guy who still stood riveted to the spot. Their gazes locked and his jaw tensed. His whole frame turned rigid. If she thought that every muscle was ripped before she was wrong. They all came out to play right now. Oh lord! Her mouth turned dry.

  The other guy gripped her by the waist and pulled her against him. Roxy gasped. What the hell! She tried to break free but the big oaf wouldn’t let her go. “Hey! No!”

  Roxy wasn’t afraid but she was pissed. Sure they had signed up for being hunted and to get to know the dragon shifters but surely they had some say in who they ended up with.

  Pretty boy over here didn’t seem to think so. His gaze was zeroed in on her lips. He wasn’t listening to her protests. He was closing the distance between them and fast.

  “No!” She groaned, squirming some more but he didn’t slow his roll.

  It wasn’t her fault he was deaf.

  It was an accident.

  A total mistake.

  It just kind of happened on its own. It was like her leg acted before her brain could intervene. One second she was trying to get free and the next she nailed pretty boy square in the nuts with her knee, which shot up without her consent. It served him right. She wasn’t sorry.

  His eyes widened with surprise before clenching shut. His face reddened and turned sweaty in an instant. A loud, drawn-out moan was pulled from him as he hunched over. The poor guy even fell to one knee.

  Roxy felt guilty for a second or two before reminding herself that it was his own fault for not listening. “Oh God!” she whimpered. “I’m sorry, but you should listen when a girl says no,” she added, before locking eyes with her shifter. Thankfully, he was still standing in the same spot. His mouth hung open in a gape. It was like he couldn’t believe that a girl could take down a big shifter.