by Abigail Owen
Brand collapsed over her, chest heaving, and she relished the weight of his body on hers, his still semi-hard length inside her.
He gazed down at her, looking freer and somehow younger than he ever had since she’d met him. “So glad I invested in fireproof bedding.”
Kasia could feel herself sinking into oblivion, her body completely wrung out. But she didn’t want to think about reality yet. After a few beats without getting a response, he kissed his way up her shoulder and neck to her mouth where he lingered.
She was more than happy to oblige, forgetting the outside world and worries about what had just happened as they exchanged sated, sweet kisses until he finally raised his head.
With a shaking hand, she pushed back his hair, damp with sweat. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
He shook his head. “Yes, we should have.”
Kasia rolled her eyes. His cocky confidence was a part of him—be that good or bad. Mostly good, she decided sleepily, as the lethargy crept over her body, stealing her thoughts as well as her ability to keep her eyes open.
Even through her struggle, she felt the press of his lips against the back of her neck. “You’re mine now.”
Kasia snuggled into his warm body, content that she was in his arms. Later they could figure out what would happen next.
…
As soon as Kasia’s breathing evened out, Brand pulled the covers up over her and slipped into the bed beside her.
He stared down at her face—devastatingly lovely, so soft in repose, her hair spread out over his arm and pillow like a slash of flame.
My mate.
He hadn’t meant to mate her when they started. He knew doing so would end in death, and if it didn’t, it certainly cocked up their plans and put them both in several crosshairs. But he’d wanted her so much. When she’d loosed her own fire without burning him up, a total sense of destiny had settled over him—an odd peace in the middle of the storm of sensation.
He would have stopped if she’d said no, though the gods knew how, he’d been so far gone. But no hadn’t come from her lips. She’d said yes, and everything inside him had eased and escalated at the same time. He’d completed the process, experiencing only a moment of terror as he’d poured his flame into her.
He frowned and brushed a finger over the nape of her neck. No brand had shown up on her yet, the delicate skin still a blank slate. The mating process was inevitable now. It had begun. He’d wait for that, for the day he’d see his brand on the back of her neck.
They’d mated. No one else could have her now.
He should be calling himself all kinds of fool. With that one action, he’d killed his place among the Blue Clan. Hell, he’d burned that chance at the stake. Worse, he’d taken away Kasia’s chance at safety. Mating Ladon would have guaranteed her not only a king with the strength to protect her, but an entire clan to surround her.
Although, given today’s attack, perhaps not.
Still, Brand was just one man.
I’m not enough. Not to protect her.
He had to set this right. He’d mated her and survived her fire. Fate had chosen him, not the king. Brand couldn’t be angry about that, but he had to figure out how to fix this. Now.
As he lay there memorizing every curve of her face, the sweet campfire and chocolate scent of her skin, the vivid coloring that made her glow with heart-stopping vitality, he mentally sorted through and discarded every possible scenario for how they should move forward in such a way that wouldn’t end up with her dead.
Enlist Hershel’s help?
See if Maul could surround them with other loyal hellhounds?
Ask Kasia what that wolf said to her?
But none of the options he considered were truly viable. They needed the support of a clan of dragon shifters.
Or…was another option open to him? An option he’d never let himself consider, revenge being the only future he focused on. What he was thinking now might be the only way to protect Kasia and keep her at his side.
Brand tensed enough that Kasia frowned in her sleep. Dropping a kiss on her forehead, he eased away from her body to sit at the edge of the bed, head in his hands.
What he was contemplating could blow up in his face. Ladon would smell Kasia on Brand’s skin, recognize how their scents mingled. The guy could summarily execute him without a hearing, regardless of their long history. Friendship covered only so many sins.
But of all the bad choices available to them, this was the only one he could see working.
Two outcomes were possible. Either Ladon agreed with Brand’s suggestion and they took the next steps together—fuck the whole “High King” thing—or…the king executed him. Since the mating bond wasn’t solidified yet, Kasia wouldn’t die along with him, leaving her free to be with Ladon. Not that they could mate, but he could still make her his Queen, force her to stay with him, give the illusion of mating a phoenix. If that happened, at least she’d still be protected, although she’d be miserable.
A searing pain stabbed through his hand. As he watched in silence, the Ormarr mark, linking him to the Blue Clan, disappeared from his skin, leaving it blank for the second time in Brand’s life. No shock there. Disloyalty to the king and the decisions he’d made tonight were enough to cut those magical ties, technically unmarking him as a traitor. He was a rogue again, but hopefully not for long.
Would Ladon feel Brand disconnect from the Blue Clan? Some kings claimed they could feel their people like that, but who knew if that was just a way to keep people loyal.
It didn’t matter. His decision was made.
A future he’d never allowed himself to contemplate, let alone envision, lay just out of his grasp. One that involved taking back his birthright, rather than destroying the people who stole it in the first place. If he reached out to take it, would he lose everything?
He wasn’t risking Kasia’s neck to find out. He’d have to leave her here. She had Maul to keep her safe.
Careful not to jostle the bed, Brand jumped to his feet and hastily pulled on his clothes. In the living area, he grabbed paper out of a kitchen drawer and scrawled a quick note. Across the room, Maul lumbered to his feet from where he’d been sleeping on the floor. Brand had no idea when the hellhound had returned to them, but was grateful to be able to leave Kasia with protection now.
“I have to go talk to Ladon. Keep her safe, Maul.”
The hound gave a soft huff of agreement.
Kasia’s safety taken care of, he returned to the bedroom and left the note on the pillow beside her. If he woke her to explain, she’d only insist on coming with him.
He curled his hand into a fist at his side, resisting the urge to touch her, kiss her, one last time. He had no idea if he’d return, if they’d ever get a chance to work through what they’d just done. Hell, she might kill him herself when she had a chance to think through the consequences.
Too late now. He’d known in his soul that she was meant to be his.
With a grunt at the tightness in his chest, he forced himself to turn away, leave his mate sleeping in his bed, and go present the king with a plan.
…
Brand didn’t return to the canyon. The king and clan would no longer be there. The last installation of the Blue Clan had fallen. Most would have scattered. Ladon would gather his advisors at one of the several emergency points and decide where to go from there. Thankfully, Brand had been given a list of places to memorize and then burn. He just hoped he wasn’t too late and the clan hadn’t already scattered to the four winds.
The first location south of the mountain was a total bust. A small contingency of the clan gathered there, but not the king, so Brand tipped his wings east to Cairngorms National Park and another mountain. Ben Macdui.
No sign of dragon shifters had him thinking through his path to the third location in France lon
g before he got to the mountain. He’d have to go back for Kasia, because France would involve days of travel.
But before he could formulate a plan, the hint of a smoky scent reached him. Dragons.
He’d found them. Now how to approach without getting torched?
They might not be able to differentiate him from the gold dragons who’d attacked earlier despite fighting side by side with him, so he started broadcasting his identity.
After a moment, two blue dragons dropped from above, flanking him. The light blue dragon with a darker stripe down his back was immediately recognizable, as was the slightly smaller turquoise female. Reid and Arden.
“Follow us,” Reid said.
The two dragons guided him around the back side of the mountain to land near a copse of evergreen trees. When they shifted, he shifted. From there, they made their way to a human-sized cave. Arden placed her palm against a seemingly innocuous rock that lit up as it scanned her palm. With a soft click, another rock slid back noiselessly, revealing it to be a door with a corridor beyond.
Another three layers of security, and at least two stories underground later, they entered what appeared to be a standard conference room—boring table and chairs in the center, TV projection unit on the wall at one end of the long, skinny space.
Ladon looked up from his computer, deadly serious. “Is she safe?”
Brand nodded. “For now.”
“Where?”
“You know where. Maul is with her.”
Ladon sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Thank the gods for that.” He paused, took a moment, then angled a shrewd glance at Brand, and his nostrils flared.
Damn. The king had just scented the difference.
“May I have a second alone? Please?” Brand asked.
Not usually one for begging, he had zero problem with the word now. Finding a way to protect his new mate was too important for pride.
Impossible to tell Ladon’s reaction behind those hard blue eyes. “What did you do?”
The others in the room must’ve taken that as a signal and quietly vacated the space. Ladon stood slowly, coming around the table to face him directly. Brand braced himself.
After a long hard stare, Ladon snaked out a hand to grab Brand’s wrist and flipped his hand over, finding the marking gone.
“She’s my mate.” Brand winced. He hadn’t meant to lead off with the bald statement, but he knew Ladon already suspected.
Ladon looked down at the floor, still giving no hint as to his reaction. “Why’d you do it?”
“Fate.”
Ladon shook his head. “Not good enough.” He didn’t yell. If anything he got quiet. A bad fucking sign.
“It should be,” Brand said.
A bitter smile twisted Ladon’s mouth, the scar through his eye twitching. “Yes. It should.”
Shock at the agreement had Brand pausing. What did Ladon mean by that?
“But I have bigger considerations than fate and your dick.” He didn’t say the words. He didn’t need to. High King. A chance to take out Pytheios by removing the illusion of his power.
Shit. This was going sideways fast, and Brand had never been a smooth talker. “I know she’s important to your cause,” he tried.
“Our cause.” Ladon’s voice snapped as he slammed a fist down on the table, his rage finally visible, reflecting in eyes glowing iridescent blue. “Our cause, Brand. You are one of my warriors. You were the one who convinced me to fight, to kill my king and take his place. Did you forget that? Did I accept you, confide in you, trust you, only to have you stab me in the back?”
No apology would settle Ladon or make this go away, so Brand didn’t even try. “There’s a way to make this right.”
“I’m not interested.” Ladon stalked around him to the door.
“You have to listen to me.”
Ladon swung the door open, then turned toward Brand; under his skin dragon’s scales shone through, moving as though a serpent lived inside him. Fuck, the man was as furious as Brand had ever seen a shifter. “I don’t listen to traitors.”
The king turned to Ivar and Rainier standing outside the door. “Lock him up. Before I kill him.”
At least Ladon hadn’t taken his fucking head off. Maybe there was still time. Every instinct inside Brand screamed at him to fight, but doing so would seal his path to death, so, despite vibrating with the need to shift, he walked calmly to the guards.
“There’s a way to fix this,” he repeated.
“You mated her,” Ladon spat. “There’s no way to fix that. You’ve condemned your people to fight without the one element that could have turned this riptide in our favor.”
The guards grabbed Brand by the arms, but he jerked out of their grips. “Touch me again and I’ll rip your arms out of the sockets and beat you to death with them. I’m coming peacefully.” Brand stalked off down the hallway, forcing the guards to scurry to keep up.
Brand tried one last-ditch effort, pausing where the tunnel turned to look back at the man watching him with cold, dead eyes from the doorway to a mundane conference room.
“My given name is Branek Astarot Dagrun.”
Ladon stared at him for a long beat, absorbing that information. “The sentence for treason is death.”
The king, a man Brand had thought a friend, turned back into the room, closing the door with a soft click, his judgment final.
The brothers didn’t touch him. Brand turned to them and nodded. They exchanged a glance, then continued on in silence, leading him to his prison until Ladon could carry out his execution.
Kasia. I’ve failed us both.
XV
Kasia groped her way out of a dead sleep slowly and groggily. It took her a moment to focus her gaze on the panting, drooling snout in front of her, blowing her hair into her face with muggy dog breath.
“Maul,” she groaned, her voice all crackly. “Back up.”
The hellhound gave a pathetic whine but did as she asked, removing the sauna from her face. But he still sat beside the bed panting.
“If you need to go pee, just teleport,” she mumbled into her pillow.
Maul made a noise—the doggy version of “What the hell are you talking about?” Then he pawed at her back, which, given his size, felt more like being whacked by a two-by-four. A two-by-four with sandpaper.
She knew he wouldn’t quit, so she peeled her eyelids—which seemed to have taken on the consistency of flypaper—off her eyeballs.
“Fine. Fine. I’m getting up.” She rolled to sitting and clasped the white sheet that had been covering her to her chest as she realized she was naked.
Wait. I’m naked.
Naked and sitting in the middle of an unfamiliar bed—
The night came rushing back with the force of a tsunami—the attack, their escape, and what had happened in this very cave. Kasia squeezed her eyes shut.
Oh shit. Oh shit.
What had she done to Brand? They’d…mated. She’d been so consumed with need, and how they fit, and the sensation of sheer completeness in his arms. She’d wanted it. Said yes.
At least she hadn’t killed him. Thank the gods.
Still, they’d mated, which royally fucked up his place with his new clan. He’d waited so long.
Kasia dropped her head into her hands with a groan. What have I done?
She rubbed a hand around the back of her neck. No brand raised the skin there, but that was only a matter of time. A small spark of excitement ignited in her chest at the thought of wearing his mark. Only reality was something she couldn’t ignore in the cold light of… She glanced around. Was it day or night?
Didn’t matter. She groaned again. I’ve ruined everything for him.
Not to mention for herself. She didn’t spark to life under Ladon’s touch like she did with Brand, but there were oth
er, more important factors to consider. Like Pytheios. Like her sisters. Like the fate of dragon shifters, though she still had her doubts a phoenix would have much impact on that disaster.
Still, Brand seemed to have faith, and given his general sourpuss attitude, that was saying something.
Speaking of which, where was he?
“Brand?” she called out, then listened. Silence. Maybe a blind cave cricket or two chirped, but no sound of him.
Maul gave a soft rumble, then flashed her an image of Brand dropping a note on the pillow beside her and walking away, disappearing into the darkness of the tunnel leading up and outside.
“Oh,” she murmured, trying to keep her heart where it belonged in her chest rather than allowing it to sink to her feet.
She glanced down at the pillow, but saw no note, so she flopped to her stomach to check the floor. There it was. Hastily scrawled in nearly illegible handwriting, she still managed to make out the words.
I’ve gone to ask Ladon’s forgiveness and try to fix this. Stay here with Maul until I return.
–Brand
He’d left to go try to fix things with Ladon? How? Did he regret what they’d done? Dread plunked through her. Had he gone to sacrifice himself? The second Ladon knew, he’d kill Brand on the spot. Was Brand trying to get that out of the way before the connection solidified so that she could still go on?
Kasia expected her heart to protest with pain, but an odd numbness settled over her. The same way she’d felt right after her mother had died. For weeks, Kasia had walked around her tiny cabin like a zombie, Maul watching over her. The pain hadn’t come right away.
Was that what this was?
A strange heat had her opening her eyes. Kasia gasped. She was on fire.
Before she could decide what to do, the vision tumbled through her, soft, like bubbles, but beautiful nonetheless, and with it came images she’d never seen before. Uther—though younger—executing a family of dragons inside a gleaming golden throne room. Slitting the throats of the three children before taking the lives of both mother and father. Their blood staining the golden floor crimson.
