Bile nearly choked her. “Three of you managed to kill over fifty armed guards?”

The white-haired man regarded her, all did the bride hit her head on the way out? “Wasn’t like it was a big deal. They were only human.” He smiled and walked away.

Only human. She couldn’t stop her gaze from seeking Baden’s, despite her warning to the contrary. He still watched her with that air of challenge, and she gulped. “You don’t consider yourself human? So what are you, the boogeyman?”

“Yes.”

What!

He stepped aside and motioned toward the sanctuary, the muscles in his arm flexing. “You will return. Now.”

Leave the crazy man? No need to tell her twice. She raced down the hall and burst through the doors. She would stand guard over Alek if necessary and—

She skidded to a halt. Blood covered the walls and pews and pooled on the floor. Bodies, body parts and other things she couldn’t name were flung here, there and everywhere.

Alek was nailed to the podium, unconscious, his head slumped forward. The bile returned, and waves of nausea crashed through her once again; she closed the distance. Her hand trembled as she felt for a pulse...it was barely perceptible, but it was there.

“Happy now?” Baden came up behind her, his shadow completely engulfing her.

“No! You tortured—”

“Rapists and killers. Yes. They got what they deserved.”

“What gives you the right to be judge, jury and executioner?” And...and...the amount of death...the level of destruction...the trial of the day... “I think I’m going to—”

Too late. She hunched over and retched.

Baden had dragged her brother alongside him, but neither male did the gentlemanly thing and held her veil out of the danger zone.

She almost snorted as she straightened and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A brutal savage and a callous heroin addict hadn’t come to her aid? What madness!

“Mater ti je kurva,” Dominik snapped at Baden as he struggled for freedom. Your mother is a whore. “You will pay for the travesty done this day.”

Unconcerned by the outburst, Baden looked Katarina over. A spark of something lit his eyes, making her shiver. With dread. Had to be dread. “Aleksander will be the one to pay, and in a most unexpected manner. I’ve decided to take—his bride.”

4

“Only one thing should be infectious. Your smile.”

—Torin, keeper of Disease

“YOU CAN’T JUST...take me,” the bride said, obviously alarmed.

What was her name?

“I can, and I will. Don’t fight me.” The blood in Baden’s veins sang, Destruction purring in harmony. Tides of pleasure rolled through him. Hate the beast, but love this. Nothing in his life—this one or the one before—had ever compared. And all it had taken? The total annihilation of another man’s army.

So sure the annihilation is the cause? What about the girl?

One look at her and he’d been overcome with the urge to rut, long and hard and often—and oddly enough, to protect.

It was insanity. She meant nothing to him.

William and Torin were busy searching the slain for the coin. Just in case. Baden watched them, and the bride watched Baden, the heat of her gaze scalding him.

She cursed at him. “You’re smiling right now.”

Was he?

“Violence delights you? That’s sick. Sick!” She unleashed a stream of Slovakian profanity, calling him terrible names and accusing him of sleeping with everything from a rat to a goat. Her anger clearly freed her of all fear.

Destruction paid her no heed. She was puny, harmless.

She actually amused Baden. So much rage in such a tiny body.

If ever her passion was redirected...

He swallowed a rumble of need—to hurt, only to hurt, surely—no longer amused.

Her brother reached out to slap a hand over her mouth, but she batted him away and continued shouting, saving the male from a blade through the heart. Baden had claimed the girl as a war prize. For one night, she would belong to him. He would safeguard what was his.

“Do not touch her again,” he said with undeniable hostility.

The color drained from the brother’s cheeks.

The bride moved in front of Baden, demanding his attention. A clear attempt to shelter the male who should have done everything in his power to shelter her.

Her concern for the men in her life—the scum—irritated him. Delighting in violence was sick, she’d said, and yet she had bound herself to a human who’d left the bodies of both the guilty and the innocent in his wake.

“There’s a better way,” she announced. “Killing a defenseless man is unnecessary and cowardly.”

“No man is defenseless. Not while he has his wits.”

“If wits are a weapon, some men are better armed than others. Some, like yourself, are actually unarm—”

“Katarina,” the brother snapped. “Enough.”

Katarina. A delicate name for a delicate (looking) woman.

She pressed her lips into a thin line.

She was far, faaar from Baden’s type. He preferred strong warrior-women. Someone able to back up her boasts with her body. Like Pandora. Once or twice he’d even considered pausing their war. In the end, the desire to defeat her had always proved stronger than the desire to pleasure her.

He studied Katarina more intently. Her dark brown hair was wound in an intricate knot at the crown of her head, not a single tendril free to frame her arresting face. Arresting, even despite its delicacy. Big gray-green eyes possessed a catlike slant, sensually complemented by thick, straight brows and a fan of black lashes. A light smattering of freckles dotted an elegant nose and blade-sharp cheekbones. Plump lips dared a man to taste...

Resist.

Her jaw was her boldest feature, the one he wanted to trace with his fingertips; it was almost triangular, coming to a blunt point at her chin.

Her skin was as smooth and flawless as a freshly polished onyx stone—except for her arms. Multiple scars stretched from the inside of her elbows all the way to her wrists, each in the shape of teeth. She’d been bitten. But by what?

On her right arm, she had a tattoo. Once upon a time...

It was the beginning of more than one fairy tale, and an interesting choice for a gold digger. And she was a gold digger. He could think of no other reason a woman with such an indomitable spirit would pledge to love, honor and obey a man like Aleksander.