by Abigail Owen
His pupils narrowed to slits and the blue irises expanded, consuming the whites—dragon’s eyes. Like a predator stalking its prey, he moved closer, crowding her. He backed her into the wall, then stopped, staring down into her eyes. With the softest touch, he trailed the back of his hand down the side of her face, like he had on the top of the mountain, and just now in his suite, leaving a trail of heated, tingling nerves in his wake.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Setting the stage.” The fire in his eyes glittered back at her. “Don’t push me into another room for this.”
She opened her mouth to answer only to have him claim her lips. Her heart stopped, so did her mind as her body took over, responding with sheer carnal hunger. Damn, the man could kiss—demanding yet sinfully soft in stark contrast to the man he presented to the world—possessing her lips in a way that had her hot and needy in record time. Or maybe she’d already been on the edge of this precipice and that kiss simply pushed her into free fall.
Ladon was so large and so damn hard against her, the rod of his cock pushing into the softness of her belly through their clothing. He wanted her, and that knowledge only spurred her own desire. Skylar nipped at his lower lip and barely kept herself from rubbing against him to increase the friction. With a low grunt, almost as though it pained him to do it, Ladon pulled back, slapping a hand on the wall beside her head to push away.
“Damn.”
Damn? What? He didn’t want her now? “Hey, you started it.”
He scowled. “I didn’t mean…” He stopped himself and ran a hand through his hair. “I just didn’t expect…” He blew out a long, low breath then held out a hand. “I don’t think chemistry is going to be our problem.”
…
Usually Ladon preferred to conduct his business in the large open main hall, not wanting secrets like his predecessor. But until he secured Skylar as his mate, he had no choice. Her hand in his, he led her into the bigger room where Brand had assembled his warriors.
Demonstrative was not an adjective most would apply to Ladon, but the question was, how did a destined mate act when he’d found his match? Like his parents who apparently couldn’t keep their hands off each other? Or something else?
Pulse-pounding attraction to the woman holding his hand as they entered the conference room would help convince his guards. Would a mate be super touchy with her in front of his men? Ladon had no fucking clue.
Brand and Kasia hadn’t been that way. But who the hell knew?
At least Skylar looked well kissed. Though he had to ignore the possessive satisfaction snaking through him at the sight of her pink lips swollen from his touch.
Ladon stopped in front of his personal guard and pulled Skylar in close to his side. After stiffening slightly, she deliberately relaxed and snuggled into him, her small hand resting against his chest.
Given the scowls descending over his men’s faces, this was going to be interesting.
“Skylar Amon, allow me to officially present my personal guard and closest friends. I trust these men with my soul.”
“Howdy, fellas.”
Arden cleared her throat.
Skylar grinned. “My bad. Howdy, all.”
Yeah. Interesting didn’t begin to cover it.
Going around the room, he introduced them in quick succession, though he got the feeling Skylar already had a good idea who each were. “As you’ve probably guessed, Arden is my sister.”
“Yeah. I picked that up.” Skylar nodded at Arden, who stared back with narrowed eyes.
He turned to the two men standing off to the side, one with dark hair, the other a dirty blond, but with the same bone structure to their faces along with identical grins and bright blue eyes. “Ivar and Rainier are brothers.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I dubbed them Sleepy and Sneezy, then,” Skylar murmured.
The seven dwarves? Ladon closed his eyes to hide a wince. That was going to go down like a balloon built of bricks.
“You named us after a damn fairy tale?” That was no doubt Asher’s dark tone.
Ladon opened his eyes in time to see Skylar shrug. “I had to label you something until I figured out your names.”
She turned to blink up at him with an angelic smile saints would be jealous of. “In fact, you don’t need to continue the intros. I think I’ve got it.”
“Ho, ho,” Duncan boomed in his rough burr. “Káthor, no way could she have gotten that close.”
“Want to bet?” Skylar smirked.
A growing dark anger took root in his gut. She’d gotten close enough to figure details of who they were without at least one of them discovering her? He hadn’t even told his men the plan yet. This was not going well. He waved a hand. “By all means.”
She patted his arm. “Well, after Sleepy and Sneezy over there—”
Ivar, the youngest and prettiest of the group, sporting a slightly fussy goatee, grinned even as Rainier crossed his arms with a glare.
Skylar ignored them. “The gentle giant over there I called Bashful for a while, because he’s the quietest.” Actually, more like the steadiest. “Wyot, right?”
Wyot flicked Ladon a glance, then gave her a nod.
“The bloke in the corner with an American edge to his accent has to be Fallon. I know of your brother and his Enforcer team.”
Fallon had been with Ladon’s guard only a short while. He came off the wall he was propping up. “You know Finn?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Just of him through a…friend.”
“I see.” Though, based on the confusion tugging his lips down, Fallon clearly didn’t.
“What’d you call him?” Duncan demanded.
“Doc of course,” Skylar said. “Because he’s a Healer. And you were Dopey.”
Ivar snorted, and Duncan smacked the back of the man’s head. Ladon, meanwhile, held in a snort of his own, because Duncan was a bald, brash brute of a man, who happened to be missing a tooth, which made the nickname pretty damn hilarious.
“Mostly because I’d run out of dwarves.” Skylar bent enough in her needling of his guard to own up. “But, since your name is Duncan, and they both start with D, I guess it works.”
She turned to Reid, who’d watched all this with a fairly neutral expression, though he continuously flipped a butterfly knife in one hand, a sure sign he didn’t like what was happening. His blue eyes sparked with the beginnings of cerulean blue flames, made even more blue against his ebony skin. “You, handsome, I dubbed Happy, since you smile a lot. I know better than to not take you seriously, though. A badass fighter. Captain of this guard, and Ladon’s Viceroy of Security. Right?”
The knife stopped its movement. “Got it in one,” Reid acknowledged. “You’ll have to share with me how you got in and where you hid. Looks like someone should kick my ass for not doing my job right.”
He wasn’t wrong. Ladon and Reid would be having a serious talk about this soon.
Skylar waved that away. “Don’t beat yourself up too hard. I got in while the mountain was under attack, and you’ve been dealing with all that since.”
“She’s also been practicing for years,” Kasia commented. Based on the put-upon tone in her voice, Ladon would bet her practice had been against her own family.
Skylar merely chuckled. “And finally, we have Grumpy, which is self-explanatory.” She tipped her chin at Asher’s grim countenance, and Ivar had to hold in another laugh or get smacked again.
“Asher. Beta and serves as Viceroy of Defense on the council,” Skylar said. “Correct?”
“Yes,” Asher acknowledged through clenched teeth.
As if determined to poke deeper, Skylar canted her head to regard his Beta more closely. “And the best friend?”
Damn, she had them pegged. Brand and Asher were his closest friends, the only men h
e allowed remotely into his head. He’d better get this over with before she could antagonize them further.
“Skylar is my mate,” he announced. “And we’ll be consummating our union immediately.”
Beside him, his soon-to-be mate practically cackled. “Wow. Way to ease into it.”
“The hell you say,” Asher hissed. His Beta flung a hand at her. “She tried to take off with Kasia, hates dragon shifters, and now you want to trust her enough not to kill you?”
“I don’t hate all dragon shifters, Grumps,” Skylar pointed out sweetly.
“Not helping,” Ladon whispered.
Zero remorse stared back at him, then a devilish grin lit her face. “So sorry, my love.” Skylar went up on her toes and proceeded to trail her tongue up his neck, practically purring as she tasted his skin, to nibble at his earlobe.
Ladon’s cock, already on high alert, jerked to rigid attention and he grunted, which pulled a chuckle from the woman at his side, who lowered to her feet, batting those big, unusual eyes at him in what he was sure was entirely fake innocence. The minx had done that on purpose, just to fuck with him. He should not have admitted his attraction.
Still, two could play at that game. He slid his hand, which had been innocently resting against her hip, up to cup her ribs, brushing his fingertips against the side of her breast. She sucked in a breath, but he focused on his men. “The Blue Clan is more than their king. You’ll survive without me if this goes wrong.”
Skylar stiffened under his touch and tipped her head back, studying him closely, her brows furrowed. What about that statement bothered her?
Asher’s scowl only deepened, his navy eyes turning almost black. He crossed the room to stand directly in front of Ladon. “Who will lead if you go? They won’t follow a gold dragon. Especially one who doesn’t even have his own clan under control. No offense, Brand.” He tossed the last comment over his shoulder.
Brand remained passive beside Kasia. “None taken, dickhead.”
Kasia rolled her eyes.
Ladon clapped a hand on Asher’s shoulder. “They’ll follow you.”
“Fuck,” Asher muttered, looking away. Tension vibrated from him. “Most see me as a man who could betray his king.”
Grim anger settled over Ladon like a cloak of death. Every single day, something would happen that rammed the weight of his past, present, and future down his damn throat. Apparently, today, this was that moment. “I asked you to infiltrate Thanatos’s inner circle. Everyone knows you did that for the clan.”
“Do they?” Asher scoffed. “I’d rather not test the theory.”
“What’d you do?” Skylar asked. “Help kill the king?” Only the tone of her voice had gone softer, easier. She wasn’t poking, merely curious.
Rather than snap at her, Asher canted his head. “I became one of his most trusted guards and reported everything I could back to Ladon. He killed the king. But yes, I helped.”
Skylar’s lips twisted as she thought that through. “Why?”
No one ever questioned his Beta so directly. His mate apparently had no instinct for self-preservation. That might be a problem.
Asher stepped forward, and pure, protective instinct ripped a growl from Ladon’s throat.
Immediately, Skylar smacked him on the chest. “Quit that. Asher understands why I’m asking.”
Ladon looked up to find his Beta staring with eyebrows practically in his hairline. After a small shake of his head, Asher looked directly at Skylar. “I did what I did because Thanatos was killing our clan—fewer mates granted to us than other clans, our wealth gone, starvation creeping in—all for his own power.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay. You and I will be fine then, Grumps, as soon as you get over yourself.”
Asher glowered at her before shooting a glare at Ladon. “You’d better be right. I don’t want to be king.”
Ladon had felt exactly the same when his men had come to him and asked him to take the throne. To be their king. Still did most days. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, my friend.”
“Yeah.” Asher glanced from Ladon back to Skylar, and his jaw clenched. “Still, what if she’s playing you? What if she only intends to kill you?”
“Brand was right about that dickhead label.” Skylar glared at Asher. “I thought we understood each other, then you had to go and ruin it.” She shook her head with a tsk. “Not that killing a dragon shifter didn’t cross my mind. Even better, a king.”
Seriously? His mate was worse at politics than he was.
Before he could intervene, she tipped up her chin, suddenly serious. “I gave Ladon my word. I choose him as my mate.”
Her words punched through him like an iron fist to the gut. He had no doubt she’d meant them completely. She had chosen him, in the space of hours. Why, he had no idea, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, either. If the horse ended up containing the entire Trojan army, then so be it.
Ladon pulled her closer and kissed her, hard but swift. He lifted his head to gaze down into those eyes—ice and fire. Kasia had the same eyes, but the way Skylar watched him… Without meaning to, he got tangled up in her gaze and a low sound he couldn’t control poured from him.
His dragon was close to the surface, which had him tensing in shock. Usually the animal side of his nature remained under his steely control, coming out only when Ladon demanded it.
“Maybe you two should go take care of things right now,” Reid suggested with a wink.
Arden, who stood beside Reid, punched him in the arm. “Gross. That’s my brother.”
Then she crossed to Ladon, going up on tiptoe—despite being tall herself—to wrap her arms around his neck. “I hope you know what you’re doing, big brother.”
“Reid will take care of you if something happens,” he said into her hair.
Arden pulled back and aimed a scowl at Skylar. “You better be worth it, or you’ll have me to deal with.”
Skylar eyed his sister up and down. “I believe you.”
Arden drew her shoulders back and gave a sharp nod. “I’ll welcome you to the family after it works.”
That brought a slow blink from Skylar before she wrinkled her nose. “I always wanted a littler sister.”
While he didn’t know their birth order, Ladon suspected Skylar wasn’t the youngest of the quadruplets. Her tone indicated that she had plans to mess with said little sister. Ladon silently wished his mate good luck with that. Arden and his soon-to-be mate were similar in more ways than one, both having ride-or-die attitudes, and being well trained in hand-to-hand combat.
“This is the right thing to do,” Wyot said in his quiet way. He crossed his arms, an indication that he’d say no more.
“Two phoenixes on our side may be worth the risk,” Rainier added.
The others in the room shifted on their feet. Brand and Kasia hadn’t been the only ones wondering about all that luck that was supposed to be raining down around them.
Ivar, more sober now, ran a hand over his goatee, visibly less inclined to agree. “Even if it kills our king?”
“I don’t think it will,” Duncan commented in his thick brogue. “Destined mates would explain his odd behavior earlier.”
Ladon frowned. Had he acted oddly? No. The discovery of a phoenix would do that to any dragon king who needed every advantage he could find. And yet, Ladon couldn’t rip his gaze from his soon-to-be mate as he battled the raging need to bend her over a chair and claim her here and now. In front of his guard and friends. That would definitely count as odd behavior for him.
It would also get him fried by the woman.
Skylar raised her eyebrows, dark amusement dancing in her gaze, and indicated the room full of people watching with a tip of her chin as though reminding him of their audience.
Lifting his head with more effort than he cared t
o admit, even to himself, Ladon addressed the group. “Much as your support is appreciated, in this instance I didn’t fucking ask for it.”
Silence crackled among his men and they all straightened.
“You wanted a king, you got one. This is my decision.”
“Is that why the rest of your Curia Regis aren’t here?” Arden asked, though the serious light in her eyes belied her casual tone.
“As my Beta and Viceroy of War, Asher will inform the rest of the council for me. Before that, though, I want a promise from my guard. If this goes wrong, I want Skylar protected.”
“Fuck,” Asher spat.
But Ladon bent a glare on him that left no doubt as to choices. That was an order, and his Beta knew it.
“We’ll protect her with our lives, either way it goes,” Asher agreed, reluctant obedience in every syllable.
Ladon directed that hard gaze to every man in the room.
“Aye,” Duncan added.
One by one, each of his men voiced their agreement. Leaving only his sister. Ladon raised his eyebrows.
Arden crossed her arms. “No way. Don’t expect me to help the woman who killed my only remaining family.”
Reid gave her a shove in the arm. “What are we, duchess? Chopped liver?”
Arden didn’t let up. “You’re not blood.”
Reid’s skin pulled tight over his cheekbones at that, any teasing dying a swift death as his eyes went dark and serious. Not that Arden caught it. She was too busy glaring at Ladon.
“You would hurt my sister?” Kasia questioned.
Arden glanced at the redhead who’d been silent until now and grimaced. In the short time Kasia had been here, the two had grown close. “I won’t hurt her,” Arden finally conceded. “But I’m not protecting her, either. That’s the best I can offer.”
“Good enough for me.” Skylar held out a hand to shake.
After staring at each other a long, silent moment, Arden shook.
“Good,” Ladon said.
Business handled, he took Skylar by the hand and left the room without another word. Thankfully, Skylar remained quiet as she walked beside him. Hell, practically glued to him, because he didn’t let go of her.
