Read His Princess (A Royal Romance) for Free Online Page B

but I pick up enough words. Three of the six of them want to kill Brad, take us with them, and fuck us before they kill us.
    The other three want to kill us now, because we’ll make too much noise.
    I scream at the top of my lungs. They all just stare at me before one shoves the butt of his rifle into my stomach again. He points his gun at me.
    I’m lucky. He’s one of the ones who wants to use me before they kill me. Instead of shooting me he just sticks his bayonet against my cheek. One move and he’ll slice open my cheek from eye to chin.
    The world goes eerily quiet.
    Then, footsteps.
    Each step is a dull, plodding thud . The blade pulls away from my cheek. I draw back, huddled up against Melissa.
    Brad looks down the path.
    “We’re all going to die,” he says, with the casual conviction of absolute certainty.
    I blink. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It looks like a man wearing a suit of armor. Not Kevlar and ceramic, black lacquered steel polished to a high mirror shine. He must be seven feet tall from the soles of his feet to the top of the heavy helmet he wears over his face.
    The black-clad soldiers follow behind him. He raises a closed fist and they stop, falling back to the path.
    All six resistance fighters raise their guns and open fire. The sound is deafening. The response is nothing. The man in the armor just walks forward, ignoring the bullets pinging off his suit.
    The fighters turn and bolt.
    Something that big shouldn’t be able to move that fast. He breaks into a run and crosses the distance in a blink, heavy metal feet thudding on the dusty ground. The fingers on his gleaming, segmented gauntlets end in sharp steel points, and they bite into one of the fighter’s back like claws. He screams as the armored man heaves him bodily from the ground and throws him like he weighs nothing. He hits the rock hard and falls, leaving a bloody smear.
    I stop watching halfway through. When it’s over there are five bodies at the giant’s feet with broken limbs and crushed heads. I can hear him breathing, the sound amplified into a growl as though through some kind of microphone. He barks orders in Kosztylan and his men come rushing forward.
    Brad stands up.
    “Listen, I’m an American. I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency. I was planning an op against these men to rescue these women…”
    The armored man backhands him across the face, casually, like he’s flicking away a bothersome insect. Brad topples to the ground and spits out a mouthful of blood and teeth.
    “Fuck,” he snarls.
    “He’s lying,” I say calmly. “He was selling us to them.”
    “You dumb bitch,” Brad snarls through his bloody mouth. “Don’t you know who this is? He’s the crown prince. He’ll kill us all.”
    The armored giant turns and looks down at Brad. When he moves, the armor makes little whirring noises, like it’s some kind of machine.
    “You will be silent or I will tear your still-living heart from your chest and feed it to you.”
    Brad’s mouth clamps shut.
    The giant steps closer. I press against the rock. The clawed tip of his armored finger almost touches my cheek, but he pulls it away as if he just noticed the blood coating the steel up to his elbows.
    “See to her wounds. Bring them back to the camp.”
    “There’s another girl,” I say. “Her name is Danielle. They shot her in the chest.”
    “We found her.”
    He switches to Kosztylan to order his men. They remove the short shoulder capes they wear and wrap one around me and one around Melissa, and cut the bonds on our wrists. I clutch the garment around my body and hold on to it like a blanket. I start to hobble back down the path. I twisted my ankle and I don’t even remember when it happened.
    “I will carry you,” the armored giant booms.
    I stumble back when he takes a step closer, looming over me. I feel like I’m looking up at a mountain, shivering and clutching blankets and cloth to my naked body. Somehow he slips his arms