Mail-Order Bride [Taos Wolven Mates] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

Taos Wolven Mates

Mail-Order Bride

Sent from their home world in search of viable mates for their people, Lorcan Teb and Tarin Harunis come to nineteenth-century Earth hoping to find that humans are genetically compatible with their kind. They get their wish in one Dana Worely, mail-order bride. Can they convince their mate she’s bound not for one man, but two?

When Dana answers a plea for a mail-order-bride, hoping to escape her uncle’s clutches, she boards a train bound for the Dakota Territory. Accepting the marriage proposal of a man she’s never met seems infinitely better than living the rest of her life in her uncle’s house of ill repute. Kidnapped on her way to meet the man she agreed to marry, Dana finds she must accept two unexpected men into her life. On a strange sky ship, Dana finds that she must rely on her own resourcefulness to survive.

Genre:
Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Science Fiction, Shape-shifter

Length:
44,447 words
 

Taos Wolven Mates

Tianna Xander

MENAGE AMOUR

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

MAIL-ORDER BRIDE

E-book ISBN:
978-1-62241-017-0

First E-book Publication: August 2012

Cover design by Harris Channing

All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

Letter to Readers

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Mail-Order Bride
 by Tianna Xander from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

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To everyone who has ever wondered where our legends of werewolves, vampires, and everything else that goes bump in the night originated.

MAIL-ORDER BRIDE

Taos Wolven Mates

TIANNA XANDER

Copyright © 2012

Dana looked around at the people filling the station and wondered just how many of them were late for the next train. All of them were in a hurry. Their agendas were just as unknown to her as she hoped hers was to them. The mixed scents of lye soap, perfume, and unwashed bodies assaulted her nose and made her gag. Slowly, she took shallow breaths through her open mouth. She didn’t need to draw attention to herself by being ill right here on the platform.

Dana had never taken a train anywhere before. But, as her father had always said, there was a first time for everything. She stared down at the letter she held gripped tightly in her hand, inviting her to a town a good two weeks and hundreds of miles away. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but anything was better than her options here—even marrying a man she had never met.

The letter, and the train ticket accompanying it, came from a small town in the Dakota Territory. The bold and neat penmanship told her that Matthew Harker was educated at least, even if the man
was
some lonely miner or ranch owner in Indian country. The thought of Indian raids made her shiver with fear, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade her from her trip west. Again, anywhere was better than here.

People bustled about, carrying parcels, loading and unloading wagons, generally ignoring her. Reaching up, she pulled her black, net-covered hat lower over her face, just in case. It wouldn’t do to have one of her uncle’s men see her. She needed to get away from here, fast.

Her mother had brought her up to be a lady, not a soiled dove. If her father’s stepbrother had anything to say about it, she would be on her back with her legs spread sixteen hours a day for the rest of her life.

Butterflies tumbled around inside her belly as she awaited the conductor’s direction to board.
What is taking so long?
Dana looked around, wondering if her uncle’s men had found her and that was what caused the delay.

Uncle John didn’t even hide the fact that he wanted to make her a doxie. With her golden-blonde hair and green eyes, she heard him say he would fetch a king’s ransom for her virginity alone. Dana couldn’t have that. She saved her virginity for one man, and one man only. Her future husband, whoever he may be.

She fought the urge to scratch at her disguise. The padded dress made her appear three sizes larger. With the black walnut rinse she’d doused over her head the night before, she looked a sight. She only hoped dressing in this costume worked and she managed to board the train before her uncle or his men wised up to her tricks.

The thick wool itched and made her sweat. She dabbed at her forehead and frowned when her kerchief came away stained with brown. Twisting the small square of lace-trimmed linen, she stuffed it back into her cuff and up her sleeve. She hoped no one noticed her hair color bleeding out in the rivulets of sweat she couldn’t stop from running out from under the bonnet.

The smell from the old dress was horrendous and almost as bad as the unwashed masses around her. Who wore black wool in the middle of summer, and who wore a wool dress padded with quilt batting? No one did but Dana Worley, fugitive from Miss Agatha’s Home for Young Ladies. She’d hoped to look like an old, widowed woman heading west to live with her children. The conductor finally stepped from one of the middle cars and bellowed, “All aboard!”

Remember your self-control, Dana,
she said to herself as she barely managed to stop from running to the train when the conductor made his announcement.

Slowly, looking as though she were in no hurry at all, Dana gripped her small satchel and reticule in one hand and hiked her skirts just high enough to climb up onto the stool to the first step of the boarding ladder with the other. The conductor leaned down to take her elbow, but she shied away.

“No thank you, sir. I can manage.” The last thing Dana wanted or needed was for the man to realize she wasn’t as large as she looked.

Turning back, she surreptitiously cast her gaze around the bustling station one last time as though saying good-bye. Any one of these men could be in her uncle’s employ. If they discovered her, they would stop all pretences of decency and drag her to her uncle’s house of ill repute where she would remain servicing filthy-minded men for the rest of her life.

It didn’t matter that she was an innocent. According to the law here, having never been married, her uncle was her next of kin and legal guardian even though she was over the age of twenty.
Perhaps things will be different in the West.

Dana sighed with relief when she didn’t see anyone paying her undue attention and made her way into the train car where she found a seat near the window on the opposite side from the mud-caked, wooden sidewalk.

It was strange how the promise of hardship as a farmer or rancher’s wife in the wilds of the West didn’t scare her at all when the thought of going back to her uncle’s, the home of a man who should have cared for her, or at least found her a decent husband, terrified her to no end.

With her heart pounding and sweat running down her scalp into the neck of the dress she wore beneath the black, woolen opera jacket piped in gold, Dana sat perfectly still. She sat with her back straight, her reticule in her lap, and her gloved fingers twisting together painfully. She couldn’t wait to get out of Philadelphia. In fact, if the train had left an hour ago with her on it, it wouldn’t have been soon enough.

Two couples boarded the train. They were followed by a few men who appeared as though they’d be more comfortable on the back of a horse. It took a few minutes, but eventually, they all made their way to their seats. Dana drew a sharp breath when a very tall and handsome man entered the coach. He tipped his hat toward her then sat down a few seats forward and to her left on the other side of the car.

Dana couldn’t help but stare at the back of his broad shoulders as he filled the seat. His straight, dark hair still held the line from his hat, though it gleamed blue-black in the mid-afternoon light. While she was in no hurry to fill a bed at her uncle’s place of business, Dana wasn’t blind. She knew a handsome man when she saw one.

Leaning to her right, she pushed the window open for some fresh air. She needed to feel the cool breeze on her burning cheeks. Dana stole another glance at the dark-haired man. What was it about him that made her feel so strange inside? It was as though her stomach churned yet had butterflies flitting about. Frowning, she flattened her hand over her protesting belly. Maybe her instincts were telling her he was one of her uncle’s men.

Closing her eyes, Dana prayed her uncle wouldn’t have noticed her missing this early. With just a little more luck, she would finally be away, free to go to the Dakotas and marry the man who had paid for the train ticket for her.