Book Description
A Bride ordered to kill her Husband
Marries a Kindred Warrior who loves her.
Will she fulfill her mission to kill him?
Or lose her heart instead?
All her life, Allara Ke'ta'nu has been raised and trained with one purpose in mind--to kill a member of the Kindred High Council and avenge the Blood Feud which has raged between her people, the Q'ess, and the Kindred for generations. But in order to do that, she must first get close enough to kill. And what better way to get close than to marry the enemy?
Brand is a Beast Kindred who has just become a provisional member of the High Council. When the Q'ess announce they will end the Blood Feud with a marriage of one of their maidens to a Kindred warrior, he agrees to take her as a wife, since he is the only unmated member of the Council. What he doesn't expect is to fall in love...
Can Allara hold on to her sense of purpose and do her duty as mandated by her people? Or will she lose her heart to the gentle touch of her new husband?
You'll have to read Raised to Kill to find out...
My Review
Allara has known all her life that she was to marry one of the Kindred, the one she was to marry. Now the time has come and her new husband is nothing like the cruel, evil man that her aunt told her he would be. In fact, none of the people in her new life are as she thought they would be. She was supposed to avenge her ancestor who supposedly was kidnapped by the Kindred and never seen again. But things have a way of ending in a way that you didn't expect.
Her aunt and her father raised her but it was mostly her aunt since raising kids is a woman's job in her society. Her aunt was not nice, not loving so Allara wasn't brought up knowing what a loving relationship looked like. But her new husband and his friends and family are completely different than she is used to.
Brand is a beast Kindred and he is going into this marriage hoping that they will be happy together and will be able to meet in the middle about their differences. Brand doesn't know that Allara took an oath to kill him after they're married and have their wedding night. So when he sees how scared she is to have their wedding night, he assures her that he's not going to make her do anything for at least a month so they can do the courtship rituals and get to know each other better. This plan of his really throws a dagger in her plans to be intimate with him and kill him on their wedding night. But as they slowly get to know each other, Allara starts to feel things for him that she didn't think possible.
In her society, women are not treated well. Daughters are sold on an auction block when they are marriage age and are taught to do as their husband's tell them to. She's not used to Brand at all and each week a new way of getting to know each other is brought about by him. The more she gets to know Brand, the less she wants to fulfill her oath to her people. She starts to think that they'll never be the wiser if she doesn't kill Brand and she's starts to be ok with that.
Of course things get really rocky for them and I wasn't sure how they were going to work things out but they do and I loved the ending of this one. The world building was great. We really get to know both cultures while each of their stories unfold.
The only thing that really bothered me about this story was how Brand would call Allara, "Baby, and Babe" all the time. So many times. That was a little irritating and could have been left out.
I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.
