Page 1 of The Seducer
PROLOGUE
Hostage
The Northlands, May 2437
Finn
I consider myself an easy-going person, but if there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s people disturbing my sleep.
Being a doctor means that I have taken my share of night duty, and that every night I get to have a full night’s sleep is sacred to me. On the night when I first met Athena, I was uncommonly grumpy and I blame it on sleep deprivation.
“Wake up, Finn!” My friend and our country’s ruler, Khan, slammed my door open and turned on the light.
“Is someone hurt?” I asked drowsily, opening one eye only.
“Not yet, but if you don’t get out of that bed and help me clean up the mess that my idiot brother has created, then we might have a war on our hands.”
I held on to my covers when Khan tried jerking them off me. “Don’t, I sleep naked,” I warned him with another yawn. “What did Magni do now?”
“The fucker kidnapped a Momsi,” Khan sputtered and paced my room.
It sounded too crazy to be true so I pulled my warm covers back over my head. Obviously, this was just a nightmare and all I had to do was think happy thoughts and it would all go away.
But Khan didn’t disappear. Instead he went to the bottom of my bed and tore off my covers.
“Heeyyy!!” I complained.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he shouted. “Magnikidnappeda Momsi!”
Finally, I opened both my eyes, sat up, and rubbed my face. “Okay, you can stop now. I might be tired but I know it’s not April the first, and where would Magni even find a Momsi?”
“In the Motherlands,” Khan hissed as if that was fucking obvious. “Get dressed, I need you to protect her.”
Shaking my head and using the heels of my hands to rub my eyes some more, I wondered how the hell Magni had found a way into the mysterious Motherlands.
“All right,” I said. “Give me a second to get dressed.”
Khan was still pacing my room. “How the hell am I supposed to rule this country when my brother is the biggest fucking idiot in the whole world? First he loses his wife, then he loses his fucking mind, and now he’s jeopardizing our century-old peace treaty with the Motherlands.”
A minute later we took the back stairs down to his study, where Magni sat brooding. Except for each one’s tall figure and broad shoulders, the two brothers were opposites in physical appearance. Much like the chess pieces in front of Magni, one brother was dark and the other blond.
“Okay, this is what’s going to happen,” Khan commanded. “Finn is going to protect the Momsi until I can clean up this mess.”
Magni rose to his full height, his fists placed solidly on the table in front of him. “I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t give back the hostage until I have Laura returned to me.”
The two brothers discussed it intensely while I waited with a pang of sympathy for Magni. He was my closest friend, and I had witnessed his distress when his wife Laura left him last week. But I never imagined he would do something as desperate as this to get her back.
Khan finished their heated discussion. “Let’s go.” But then he stalled at the door, turning to look at me with a stern expression. “Finn, this isn’t a time to be fun and brotherly; you’d better command respect with that woman or she’ll be dominating you like a weak Momsiboy.”
Resenting being compared to one of the feminine men of the Motherlands, I wrinkled my nose and followed Khan out to the entrance area where our friend Alexander Boulder stood with a small woman.
“Athena,” Khan walked up to a small woman. “This is Finn MacCumhail. He’s a good friend of mine and I’ve appointed him to be your personal bodyguard while you’re in my house. Given the circumstances you arrived under, I doubt you would feel safe with my brother.”
“Hello,” I said and stepped closer. My eyes resting on the fascinating tattoo that started between the woman’s eyebrows and moved up her forehead in an intricate design. Her eyes were guarded, her shoulders tensed up, and the she didn’t speak. With her apple cheeks and fair skin, she couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty, and compared to us men, her small frame made her look like a child. It immediately ignited my natural instincts to protect the weak, and since I imagined that she was terrified, I flashed a comforting smile to signal that she had nothing to fear from me.
Khan spoke up again. “I’ll let the Motherlands Council know that you’re here and that you’re safe. Hopefully, Laura will be returned to us quickly so you can go home.” His face softened a little. “You might be pleased to hear that we have another woman here from the Motherlands. She’s an archeologist who is helping us excavate an old library. It’s late now, but tomorrow, I’ll let you meet her and hopefully she can testify that we’re not as horrible as you might think right now.”
Athena remained stoic.
