Chapter 1
"Bree. Bree! Dang, I think Laurie Torben leveled up over the winter. Lookit him!" Briana Gilson's best friend, Dahlia (better known as Doll), elbowed Bree until she looked up from where she wastrying, thank you very much, to keep an eye on the temperature of a forge.
Being elbowed when she was doing that was bad enough. Being elbowed so she could finally glance up and see a six foot something blond white guy with a Dorito-shaped shoulder-to-hip ratio and an exceptionally fine butt clad in snugly-fitted breeches made Briana roll her eyes. "Yeah, he's gorgeous, but you know he's a total dudebro. Very into himself."
Doll, who was brown and buxom and had the best hair Bree had ever seen, leered and waggled her eyebrows. "I wouldn't hate him being into me, if you know what I mean."
"Go for it," Briana muttered. "You'd be doing me a favor."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Bree sighed and stepped back from the forge and leaned in toward her friend. "Laurie frickin' Torben is my fated mate."
"What? What? How do you know? How long have you known? Why isn't he over here charming you, then?" Dahlia,who was a snow leopard shifter herself, looked back and forth between Bree and Laurie like she was watching a ping-pong match. That was fine with Briana, as long as Doll stayed between her and Laurie's line of sight.
"Because I've been avoiding him seeing me for the past two years? I don't want him to find me. I mean, look, I know, I get it, heishot, and yeah, okay, fated mates are supposed to be your perfect match and everything, but Laurie Torben's world revolves around himself and himself alone."
Briana's goat made a dismissive, almostbaa-ing sound in her head.Young billies are bad mates. He may grow up to be worth mating, but for now he's only a silly kid.
The goat had been saying that for years now, and so far, Briana was in full agreement with her nanny. There were a hundred better things she could do with her time than convincing a self-centered young man it was time to grow up and be worthy of her. He'd either manage it on his own, or he wouldn't. In the meantime, all Briana had to do was stay out of his line of sight sohedidn't realize their bond. Since they were only ever in the same place during the Renaissance Faire, and ran in different circles during that time, so far, it hadn't been a problem.
And Briana intended to keep it that way.
Dahlia, who was an excellent friend, nobly made sure shewasbetween Bree and Laurie, though she kept looking toward him and then back at Bree. "I thought you weren't supposed to, like,recognizeyour fated mate until the moment was right!"
"I don't know, Doll." Bree reached for her tools as the forge hit temperature. Everyone liked stopping at the faire's smithy, though for safety reasons the audience members had to stay a solid six feet away from the forge itself. The smithy was split in two: one half with the forge in it, and the other half a shop. Doll was leaning on the shop side of the safety fence, taking amomentary break from selling the various wares Bree and the other smiths forged. She had her arms folded against the top of the fence, giving her considerable bosom a considerable boost, which it didn't really need, given that she was already in a corset that did the job for her. "Maybe it means if he laid eyes on me he'd get his act together."
"Oooorrrrrrrmaybeit means you'd learn to loosen up a bit if you got with him."
Briana, with feeling, said, "Ugh," and Doll laughed at her.
"All work and no chill makes Bree a dull girl," she chided as she'd been doing since they were kids, and Bree said, "'Chill' and 'girl' don't even rhyme," asshe'dbeen saying since they were kids. "And I do chill. I just don't dick around all the time the way Laurie Torben does."
"'Play' and 'boy' don't rhyme either, so what's your point," Doll said, completing their age-old ritual. "Yeah, but if he's your mate, he must have hidden depths, right?"
"I assume so, yes. I just don't want to be the one to plumb for them. Look, I've got to work on the horseshoes now, okay? We can talk about this later." Horseshoes were one of the most popular items they sold at the forge shop, mostly because swords, which everybody liked more, were far more expensive. The horseshoes, though, were not only good luck symbols, but stamped with the faire's own fleur-de-lise symbol, making them nice souvenirs. There were a bunch of other trinkets the smiths made, too, although quite a few of them were poured metal, not forged. Briana liked doing either, but preferred forging: the rhythmic sounds and actions were almost trance-inducing, and she loved falling into the pattern of it all.
She had also learned to talk about what she was doing so automatically she didn't have to think about it anymore. Sometimes she even talked through the work when there wasn't an audience, which was moderately embarrassing whensomebody showed up and found her explaining to the empty air what process she was going through now. But it was good practice, and it meant she never faltered as she hit metal against metal, shaping shoes and swords alike, being careful while still answering questions.
Right now there were a handful of little kids leaning over the safety fence, stretching their necks and gawking as their parents held them around the waists to make sure they didn't accidentally fall in. Questions peppered her in their high, excited voices: "How hot is it? Do you get ALL BURNED UP? Are GIRLS really allowed to be BLACKSMITHS? Can you make me a SWORD? Have you ever put a shoe ON A HORSE? Have you ever RIDDEN A HORSE? ARE YOU A HORSE?"
Most of those were pretty common questions, although the last one wasn't, and made all of the kids dissolve into giggles. Her goat, which was not a placid creature to begin with, gave the child who'd asked that question a baleful look.What a baa-aad kid.We are not a foolish skitteryhorse. Could a horse dothis?It showed her an image of itself climbing a nearly-sheer rock face, and then, for good measure, made it a snowy, blowy day.
Briana chuckled quietly.No, it couldn't, but the kids are only being silly. They don't think we're a horse.Ora goat, for that matter.Aloud, she said, "I do get burned a lot, yeah. That's why we wear these big heavy leather gloves and aprons, to protect ourselves from the fire and the heat." As the kids all gasped with awed horror, she added, "But I'm very careful, so I've never been badly burned. And Ihaveshoed a horse! That's how I got into blacksmithing!"
Then she was off on a short, familiar lecture about skills that were being lost, and the importance of finding people to learn them. The smithy usually picked up twenty or so new students every year, thanks to its annual spot in the Renaissance faire, and about one in a hundred stuck it out. It wasn't exactly abooming recruitment drive, but it kept the skill alive, which was something.
She went through several more lectures and a couple more horseshoes before Damien, Doll's brother and the owner of the forge, came to take over with a new project. He wasn't tall, but he was burly the way a smith should be, and kept hair almost as good as Dahlia's clipped short for practical reasons. Bree shared a smile with him before stepping away from the forge.
Stripping off her leather apron and gloves left her stunned, as always, at howcoolthe ninety-degree air felt after working the forge for a while. Her tanned arms were flushed bright pink from the heat, making it look like she was sunburned, and sweat made rivulets through grime that stuck to her skin.
Doll appeared like magic, looking one part like she was dying for a good spate of gossip and another part like Briana badly needed a shower. Her nose wrinkled delicately, then much less delicately as Bree lifted her arms to loosen and then re-tie her ponytail. "Bree. Oh my God. Arms down, babe."
"I'm wearing deodorant!"
"Deodorant cannot stand up to mid-June forge work."
Briana grimaced. "Okay, fair. Arms down." They were down by then anyway, although she badly wanted to fluff her hair and try to let her scalp cool a bit. Or maybe to dunk herself in a trough, except there wasn't one handy. "Drink?"
