Claiming the Prince: Book One Read Free Page A

want children. I can barely afford to feed myself. And if I had any, they too would become targets. It’s better this way. And also, I promised my mother that I would not claim a Prince until after I became Radiant. And obviously, that’s never going to happen, so . . .” She shrugged.
    “You allow him to sleep with . . . humans?” Damion said, as if she’d told him that Riker was sleeping with dead squids.
    “I don’t allow him anything. He does as he likes and so do I. I have no intention of returning home or fighting to be Radiant.”
    “Unless another Rae discovers there’s a Prince here,” he said.
    “And how would that happen?” she asked.
    “I found out. That troll truck driver who brought me here told me as much. What’s to keep him from telling someone else? Does he realize what could happen?”
    She ground her teeth. “I told you. Riker doesn’t understand the way it is back home. He only knows what his parents and I have told him. They don’t want him to go back.”
    “And they have not told you to claim him? For his own safety?”
    “Claiming him wouldn’t make him safer,” she said. “It would only get him killed if anyone came after me. He doesn’t know how to fight. He was born here. He was raised here, as a human. His parents left everything behind. They weren’t happy when he found me. But they know there’s nothing they can do to stop it. He’s a Prince and I’m a Rae. We’re drawn to each other, even in this world, but that doesn’t mean—”
    “The disrespect—”
    “Mags?” Riker appeared with his arm wrapped tight around the blonde’s straight and narrow waist. “I thought I smelled . . . saw you. Who’s your friend?”
    “Who’s yours?” Damion asked, emanating tension.
    Riker stepped back. He, like so many of their Princes, was achingly beautiful. Lean and broad in the shoulders, he was tall, with a messy swath of dark hair, a fine square jaw, and full lips. He modeled, when he remembered to show up for the shoots. Magda did her best to remind him and get him there, because they needed the money. Working as a lifeguard didn’t earn her very much. All the gold and silver she’d brought with her had been put towards buying the house and paying off the conductors who had escorted her safely from Alfheim to this world.
    “Why don’t you take off, Sophia?” Riker said, extricating himself from her.
    The girl shot Magda a dirty look and then wrapped her arms around Riker’s neck, murmuring in his ear and pressing her barely-clothed-in-a-bikini tanned-golden-brown body against his.
    “I hate this world,” Damion snarled, turning away as Riker half-heartedly attempted to coax Sophia to leave.
    Riker was giving Magda a pleading look over the girl’s slight shoulder. The girl’s hair cascaded all the way down to the dimples of her lower back. Magda brushed the black sweep of her side-bangs off her brow. The back was shaved close. She was taller and heavier and broader than this little sprite of a human, who was giving her threatening looks when she wasn’t begging Riker to stay.
    Back in the old world, Magda would’ve killed any woman, no matter her race, for deigning to touch her Prince. Not that her Prince would’ve allowed such a thing, had he been claimed.
    For a brief instant, Magda could feel the ghost weight of gild-silver on her fingers, metal sheaths that had been especially designed for her by the dwarves. How easily a human body would peel under the wicked blades of the finger-knives, into pretty gold-and-red ribbons.
    Magda swallowed back this uprising of her old self. She hadn’t realized how dangerous it was for her to have a true Pixie back in her life. Damion was awakening thoughts and feelings in her that she’d believed long dead.
    She wanted to resist them. She tried. She succeeded, in a way, because she didn’t call her finger-knives to her and peel the California girl out of her flawless skin.
    Instead, she said, “Riker,