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

at the gate. Bored-looking soldiers in a mishmash of military garb, sweat clothes, and rags shiver behind them.
    It’s maybe fifteen degrees cooler in the mountains. I’ve started to shiver and goose bumps have raised up on my legs. Melissa is fine in her long dress. Brad doesn’t seem the worse for wear at all. She leans in under his arm and strokes his chest, forgetting herself as he toys with her hair.
    She looks really happy. I hope we don’t all get blown up over this.
    The truck rounds a bend, threading between big rocks. More fighters mill around above, walking obscured paths with slung rifles and cigarettes glowing in the dark. There’s a second gate and then the camp.
    It’s smaller than the village and aid-worker camp we left, more tightly packed, an assortment of tents of different colors and camouflage patterns under a huge ceiling of netting held up by poles and wires. The only thing poking out is the antenna on a radio shack nestled up against the rocks.
    As far as I can tell there’s some barracks tents, some metal prefabs that look to be Cold War vintage, and one big tent, probably the mess hall and whatnot. The truck pulls to a stop and five or six of the fighters walk up with their Kalashnikovs on their backs and and start unloading the boxes. Brad jumps down and offers Melissa a hand.
    I step down on my own, ignoring his offered help.
    “When they get it unloaded we’re going back to camp, right?”
    Brad eyes me. “Sure. This way first. Let’s warm up in the tent. I need to talk to some people. Stay close by me. You’ll be fine as long as they know you’re with me.”
    I frown. That sounds like a warning. Why wouldn’t we be fine if we weren’t with him?
    When I look around at the fighters, I get an inkling why. These guys are eyeing us both like pieces of meat, and I wish I’d worn something other than shorts. Their gaze on my legs makes my skin crawl, and Melissa whimpers when one of them passes close to her. She tucks up to Brad’s back as he walks toward a tent at the far end of the camp. I stay a couple steps behind, my head on a swivel.
    The pressure in my skull grows with every step. This isn’t right. We’re not supposed to be here. My instincts are screaming shrilly at me: run, run, you dumb bitch, run now , but there’s nowhere to go. Brad got us in and I have to trust him to get us out.
    That’s just great, Penny.
    A metallic taste twists my mouth when I remember how I got here: at gunpoint. I lost track of the guy who waved the rifle at me back at camp. Nervously rubbing my arms, I duck inside the tent, close behind Brad.
    It looks like the set of a cheesy eighties action movie. Faded map on the wall, cheap folding wooden tables and chairs, and some kind of officer in a more uniformy uniform seated behind the desk, poring over a different map with little pins stuck in it. He rises and offers Brad a hand but gruffly shouts at him in Kosztylan.
    It’s close to Solkovian, but it takes me a second or two to puzzle it out.
    He said something like, “Your ass is (late?), CIA.”
    The CIA part was in English, or at least he just recited the letters. They start talking too fast for me to follow and I hear something like Amerikaneesh , the Kosztylan word for “American.”
    CIA. Fucking CIA. Alarm bells start going off in my head. My knees buckle a little and I feel the blood drain from my face as my stomach drops. Melissa stands there with a blank look on her face. She’s checked out, just great. I do my best to pretend I didn’t understand, blinking and gazing blankly at the wall. I look away from the map as my heart pounds, hoping they don’t think I’m some kind of spy.
    Brad and Bearded General go back and forth for a few minutes, talking about supplies. I can’t understand every word but with context and some guesswork I can rough out what they’re saying.
    “ You did not tell me there would be extra merchandise .”
    “ It was a last-minute addition. These help