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  BRIDES WITH BLADES

  Four Medieval Romances

  By Kathryn Le Veque

  Copyright © 2001, 2014, 2016, 2017 by Kathryn Le Veque

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Printed by Kathryn Le Veque Novels in the United States of America

  Text copyright 2001, 2014, 2016, 2017 by Kathryn Le Veque

  Cover copyright 2001, 2014, 2016, 2017 by Kathryn Le Veque

  Kathryn Le Veque Novels

  Medieval Romance:

  The de Russe Legacy:

  The White Lord of Wellesbourne

  The Dark One: Dark Knight

  Beast

  Lord of War: Black Angel

  The Iron Knight

  The de Lohr Dynasty:

  While Angels Slept (Lords of East Anglia)

  Rise of the Defender

  Steelheart

  Spectre of the Sword

  Archangel

  Unending Love

  Shadowmoor

  Silversword

  Great Lords of le Bec:

  Great Protector

  To the Lady Born (House of de Royans)

  Lord of Winter (Lords of de Royans)

  Lords of Eire:

  The Darkland (Master Knights of Connaught)

  Black Sword

  Echoes of Ancient Dreams (time travel)

  De Wolfe Pack Series:

  The Wolfe

  Serpent

  Scorpion (Saxon Lords of Hage – Also related to The Questing)

  The Lion of the North

  Walls of Babylon

  Dark Destroyer

  Nighthawk

  Warwolfe

  ShadowWolfe

  DarkWolfe

  A Joyous de Wolfe Christmas

  Ancient Kings of Anglecynn:

  The Whispering Night

  Netherworld

  Battle Lords of de Velt:

  The Dark Lord

  Devil’s Dominion

  Reign of the House of de Winter:

  Lespada

  Swords and Shields (also related to The Questing, While Angels Slept)

  De Reyne Domination:

  Guardian of Darkness

  The Fallen One (part of Dragonblade Series)

  With Dreams Only of You

  House of d’Vant:

  Tender is the Knight (House of d’Vant)

  The Red Fury (House of d’Vant)

  The Dragonblade Series: (Great Marcher Lords of de Lara)

  Dragonblade

  Island of Glass (House of St. Hever)

  The Savage Curtain (Lords of Pembury)

  The Fallen One (De Reyne Domination)

  Fragments of Grace (House of St. Hever)

  Lord of the Shadows

  Queen of Lost Stars (House of St. Hever)

  Lords of Thunder: The de Shera Brotherhood Trilogy

  The Thunder Lord

  The Thunder Warrior

  The Thunder Knight

  The Great Knights of de Moray:

  Shield of Kronos

  The Gorgon

  Highland Warriors of Munro:

  The Red Lion

  Deep Into Darkness

  The House of Ashbourne:

  Upon a Midnight Dream

  The House of D’Aurilliac:

  Valiant Chaos

  The House of De Nerra:

  The Falls of Erith

  Vestiges of Valor

  Realm of Angels

  The House of De Dere:

  Of Love and Legend

  St. John and de Gare Clans:

  The Warrior Poet

  The House of de Garr:

  Lord of Light

  Realm of Angels

  The House of de Bretagne:

  The Questing (also related to Swords and Shields)

  The House of Summerlin:

  The Legend

  The Kingdom of Hendocia:

  Kingdom by the Sea

  Time Travel Romance: (Saxon Lords of Hage)

  The Crusader

  Kingdom Come

  Contemporary Romance:

  Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Series:

  Valley of the Shadow

  The Eden Factor

  Canyon of the Sphinx

  The American Heroes Series:

  The Lucius Robe

  Fires of Autumn

  Evenshade

  Sea of Dreams

  Purgatory

  Other Contemporary Romance:

  Lady of Heaven

  Darkling, I Listen

  In the Dreaming Hour

  Sons of Poseidon:

  The Immortal Sea

  Pirates of Britannia Series (with Eliza Knight):

  Savage of the Sea by Eliza Knight

  Leader of Titans by Kathryn Le Veque

  The Sea Devil by Eliza Knight

  Sea Wolfe by Kathryn Le Veque

  Kindle Worlds (Kathryn Le Veque World of de Wolfe Pack):

  River’s End

  The Wedding Fountain (Bella Andre’s Kindle World)

  Note: All Kathryn’s novels are designed to be read as stand-alones, although many have cross-over characters or cross-over family groups. Novels that are grouped together have related characters or family groups.

  Series are clearly marked. All series contain the same characters or family groups except the American Heroes Series, which is an anthology with unrelated characters.

  There is NO particular chronological order for any of the novels because they can all be read as stand-alones, even the series.

  For more information, find it in A Reader’s Guide to the Medieval World of Le Veque.

  Contents

  Serpent

  Lady of the Moon

  Tender is the Knight

  Deep Into Darkness

  Excerpt from Red Fury

  SERPENT

  A Medieval Romance

  Sequel to THE WOLFE

  By Kathryn Le Veque

  Anglesey, 1293 A.D.

  Family Trees for the de Wolfe, Hage, and de Norville Families

  The next generation Wolfe Pack

  William and Jordan Scott de Wolfe

  Scott (Wife #1 Lady Athena de Norville, issue. Wife #2, Lady Avrielle Huntley du Rennic, issue.)

  Troy (Wife #1 Lady Helene de Norville, has issue. Wife #2 Lady Rhoswyn Johnstone, issue.)

  Patrick (married to Lady Brighton de Favereux, has issue)

  James – Killed in Wales June 1282 (married to Lady Rose Hage, has issue)

  Katheryn (James’ twin) Married Sir Alec Hage, has issue

  Evelyn (married to Sir Hector de Norville, has issue)

  Baby de Wolfe – died same day. Christened Madeleine.

  Edward (married to Lady Cassiopeia de Norville, has issue)

  Thomas

  Penelope (married to Bhrodi de Shera, hereditary King of Anglesey and Earl of Coventry, has issue)

  Kieran and Jemma Scott Hage

  Mary Alys (adopted) married, with issue

  Baby Hage, died same day. Christened Bridget.

  Alec (married to Lady Katheryn de Wolfe, has issue)

  Christian (died Holy Land 1269 A.D.) no issue

  Moira (married to Sir Apollo de Norville, has issue)

  Kevin (married to Lady Annavieve de Ferrers, has issue)

  Rose (widow of Sir James de Wolfe, has issue)

  Nathaniel

  Paris and Caladora Scott de Norville

  Hector (married to Lady Evelyn de Wolfe, has issue)

  Apollo (married to Lady Moira Hage, has issue)

  Helene (married to Sir Troy de Wolfe, has issue)

  Athena (married to Sir Scott de Wolfe, has issue)

  Adonis

  Cassiopeia (married to Sir Edward de Wolfe, has issue)

  PROLOGUE

  Present day, May

  Pendraeth Forest, Anglesey, Wales

  Archaeological Dig for the University of California at San Marcos in conjunction with the University of Aberystwyth

  The forest was thick with foliage, moist in the mid-summer heat. Even this far north, the weather could grow very warm and the humidity could get nasty.

  The Pendraeth Forest was one of the dwindling sections of heavily forested land in the United Kingdom. Most of the great forests were gone due to a myriad of reasons; pollution, human encroachment, and other factors had shrunk even the greatest of forests. The most legendary forest of all, Sherwood, was nothing more than a grove of trees these days. Certainly it was no place for great outlaws to hide out in. Times had changed, indeed.

  On this bright day in mid-August, a group of students from the University of California at San Marcos was working on a dig deep in the forest near Llyn Llwydiarth, or Lake Llwydiarth. There used to be a great marsh surrounding it but it had been drained around the turn of the last century to produce rich farmlands. However, a section of it closer to the lake had remained undisturbed until last spring when the farmer who owned the land drained it off to expand his grass crop for hay. However, when the water was drained off and the man began to prepare the section, he’d come across something that had put an immediate stop to his agricultural plans. He’d discovered human bones.

  The farmer had called the police who had shown up and determined that the bones were very old; in fact, they suspected they were Dark Age burials and called upon the University of Aberystwyth b
ecause they had an ancient studies department. The university had sent people to check it out and after some carbon dating samples, determined that it was, in fact, a Medieval burial site. Archaeologists were called in and the farmer lost a good portion of his agricultural site to the scholars.

  Dr. Bud Becker, the senior field archaeologist in Medieval Studies at the University of California at San Marcos had been on-site since June, when he had been called in by a colleague at Aberystwyth. Everyone in the field of archaeology knew Dr. Becker’s reputation, as the foremost expert in Medieval field archaeology, so the University of Aberystwyth was very glad to have him.

  Dr. Becker had brought in twenty-one archaeology students for a summer session along with him so they had plenty of help as they excavated the farmer’s field. But more and more as of late, Dr. Becker was convinced this wasn’t a burial. Bodies were in pieces, missing heads, missing limbs, and generally scattered all over about a quarter of a mile radius. It didn’t look like any battle he’d ever seen; it looked like a massacre. He had been genuinely baffled until they had come across bones that didn’t match anything he’d ever seen before. Buried deep in the muck of the field, in the low-acidic soil, had been pieces of a skeleton that wasn’t man or animal. He didn’t know what it was, which is why Aberystwyth had brought in a paleontologist, also from the University of California at San Marcos. They had no idea what they had, and the mystery deepened.

  The paleontologist had created her own sub-dig within Dr. Becker’s dig. Dr. Cynthia Paz was a pretty woman with deep blue eyes, small and quick, and very diligent about her work. There were times during the dig when they had to literally pull her out of her hole so they could shut down for the night. The woman put in eighteen hour days and had for about three weeks, ever since they had called her in. The very first thing she had done upon her first inspection of the bones was send samples to a lab in London for analysis. Whatever she was dealing with, it wasn’t petrified as a dinosaur skeleton would have been, and it didn’t look like anything from the early age of man. The low acidic soil had preserved the bones so much that they were nearly pliable. Brand-new as far as old skeletons went. She was as confused as anyone else.

  So, she continued her dig while Becker worked around her. There was quite a killing field surrounding whatever the massive skeleton was, and the age of the human bones had already come back from the lab circa 1200 A.D. to 1338 A.D. was the closest the carbon dating could come up with, which clearly made them Medieval. Therefore, Becker and his crew continued to excavate the human remains and, as of this morning, had uncovered five hundred and eleven pieces of bodies. There wasn’t one complete corpse in the entire group. Becker, having just finished exposing a skull that had been smashed to bits, took a brief break and headed over to the tent where they had water and other consumables. He was in the process of downing a bottle of Gatorade when Dr. Paz came up behind him.

  “Hey, Bud,” she said, pulling off her baseball cap and wiping the sweat off her forehead. “Anything exciting today?”

  Becker swallowed the last gulp of orange sports drink. “More crushed bones,” he said. “I swear, I have never seen anything like this in all my years of archaeology. It’s almost like this was a dumping ground for dismembered bodies.”

  “Sounds like quite a mess.”

  “You’d better believe it,” Becker concurred. “And it doesn’t look like ritualistic killing, either. It’s too disorganized, which makes me go back to the body dumping grounds theory. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  Dr. Paz shook her head but the entire time she was eyeing a long table that had a variety of excavated human bones on it. Students were cleaning and cataloging them. She seemed rather ill at ease, edgy even, but Becker hadn’t noticed. He was too busy contemplating the dismembered body burial ground.

  “No,” Dr. Paz said, clearing her throat softly. “But, then again, this kind of thing isn’t my area of expertise. In fact, I have to tell you that… uh, can we go somewhere private and talk?”

  Becker nodded, following her out of the tent and out into the trees. When Dr. Paz thought they were isolated enough, she dug into her pocket and produced a piece of paper.

  “I received this email this morning from the lab in London,” she said quietly. “You know that I sent some bone samples from that skeleton you found down there. I also sent them samples of the dirt surrounding the bones just in case anything organic remained. God, I don’t even know where to begin with this.”

  Bud was all ears; he could see that she was acting nervously. It concerned him. “Why?” he asked. “What did the lab say?”

  Dr. Paz looked at the paper in her hand. Then, she sighed heavily. “The results from the carbon dating test puts the skeleton between 1248 A.D. to 1300 A.D.,” she said. “They’re clearly Medieval. The lab also found DNA in the soil surrounding the bones from organic decomposition, but more than that, they were able to extract DNA from the bones themselves. This is what they came back with as to the origins of the skeleton.”

  She handed the paper over to Bud, who read it closely. When he came to the bottom portion of the results where the lab determined the DNA makeup, his eyes widened.

  “What in the hell?” he breathed, reading the results over again. “A… a…?”

  “Sauropod,” Dr. Paz said quietly. “They’ve classified it as a Sauropod.”

  Becker looked at her, confusion rampant in his expression. “What does that mean?”

  Dr. Paz sighed heavily. “It means that they’ve classified it as a dinosaur, but that doesn’t make any sense since the bones themselves have been carbon dated to the High Middle Ages.” She shook her head, obviously baffled. “What the lab is basically telling us is that there was a dinosaur living as late as the Medieval period. I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life.”

  Becker’s jaw was hanging open. “A dinosaur?” he repeated. “In Medieval Wales?”

  Dr. Paz lifted her shoulders. “Stranger things have happened,” she said. “Maybe it was a mutated creature that had somehow survived into modern times. You know, legends like dragons and sea serpents have existed for thousands of years and who’s to say there isn’t any real basis for that? It’s quite possible a lone branch of the sauropod family somehow survived into the High Middle Ages but eventually died off. Maybe nature decided it had no place in the modern world; who knows? There are always the legends like the Loch Ness Monster and other lake beasts. You hear that kind of thing all the time.”

  Becker wasn’t convinced; he was stricken with the information in his hand and lifted the paper up as if to emphasize his point. “The Loch Ness Monster is bullshit and everyone knows it,” he said. “But right here – in this paper – an independent lab is telling us that we’ve got some kind of… Medieval dinosaur right here in Wales!”

  Dr. Paz nodded her head in resignation. “I know,” she said. “My main goal now is to uncover that entire skeleton and reconstruct it. I really want to see what that thing looks like.”

  Becker lowered the paper in his hand, struggling to collect his wits. He was genuinely blown away by the information. “Me, too,” he agreed, taking a deep breath as he labored for calm. His gaze moved to the tent where the students were diligently working. “But this really puts an entirely new spin to evolution if this information is accurate.”

  Dr. Paz was thoughtful, trying to be clinical about such outlandish news. “There are lots of descendants of dinosaurs that have lived into modern times, so this isn’t completely crazy,” she said. “Alligators, for instance. They have dinosaur ancestors. So do birds. Remember the movie ‘Jurassic Park’? There are lots of creatures that survived the Jurassic and Triassic periods, evolving into creatures we know today.”

  Becker knew that and he, too, was trying to be clinical about the information. He was a scientist, after all, so in his mind there had to be a logical explanation. “So something like this really isn’t out of the realm of possibility?”

  Dr. Paz nodded seriously. “It’s entirely possible, as strange as it sounds.”

  Becker pondered that for a moment. “I’ve got some students researching local legends simply because I’m trying to get to the bottom of all of these bodies,” he said. “I’ll see if they can find something about monsters or beasts roaming around out here. There has got to be some kind of local legend. A creature like this wouldn’t have gone unseen.”