The mating shouldn’t have worked if that was true. He should be a pile of ash.
Except for a phoenix, mating isn’t about fate, it’s about choice, a voice whispered in his head. Not his dragon, but a voice of doubt. The same voice told him he’d never been worthy. That reaching for her had turned him into Icarus, flying too close to the sun.
A soft hand landed on his arm, yanking him out of his thoughts. Shock zapped up his spine to find she’d crossed the room to his side without his being aware. “Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll wait here, but I’ll be watching when I can.”
A grunt of pain ripped from his throat, and he leaned forward, placing his lips over hers, claiming her, tasting her. The sweetness of jasmine and smoke, and something a little bit him—earthier, like sun-warmed sand—wrapped around him. Not enough for others to notice. Yet. The longer they were mated, the more that would become obvious. Samael pulled her closer with one arm around her waist, lashing her body to his, trying to absorb her softness, her delicate beauty.
Not even Kasia’s visions could predict how this was going to end.
He released her abruptly and simply stared. Taking in the sight of her lips, swollen and pink from his kisses, her vibrant curls, the small dip where dimples would show when she smiled.
Meira.
“Sam…” She searched his gaze. “You’re starting to scare me.”
Again, his dragon unleashed hell inside him, thrashing and demanding release, his roar threatening to blow out Samael’s eardrums. Meira’s eyes widened slightly. “What was that?” she barely got out through lips gone chalky.
She’d heard? Fuck. This couldn’t be happening.
Bottom line. He was scaring the shit out of the woman he loved enough to give his life for, and that went against everything a dragon shifter was wired to do for his mate. “I’m scared.”
Panicked. Terrified. Ready to do violence.
Because he knew, without a doubt because they were the same this way, he was going to have to make the hard decisions here. Otherwise, his tenderhearted mate would be torn apart trying to do what was right for everyone. Including him.
“Me too,” she whispered.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” He cradled her cheek in one hand, absorbing her warmth, her softness. “But I need you to trust me to do what’s right. What’s…best for you. Okay?”
Despite the way the spot between her brows gathered in a small frown, Meira leaned into his touch. “I trust you.”
“Good.” His dragon settled, but only slightly. At least she wasn’t watching them as though Samael was a grenade with the pin pulled and tossed away.
That was precisely what he was, but she didn’t need to know that. “Give me time, then search for me. Don’t come out unless I tell you to.”
She nodded, but he didn’t believe her eyes, which had turned navy in her distress.
“Promise me, Mir.”
Her lips pinched, and she shook her head. “I can’t promise that, but I’ll try.”
The best he was going to get, and he knew it. “Try really, really hard.”
That earned him a small smile. Gods, had he lost the right to her smiles?
Samael turned his back on her and forced himself to walk away, every step heavier, harder. He made his way out onto the ledge protruding over a drop that had never scared him, not even when he’d been a boy and couldn’t yet access his dragon. His parents would find him out here sitting with his legs dangling over the side and just watching.
But something about staring into a void of blackness—lights glittering from occupied homes around the conical circumference of the hollowed-out atrium, and more lights below, the only indication of a full city at the bottom, swallowed by the size of the cavern, carved out from the center of the mountain ages before—struck him as wrong.
I see my own death in that darkness.
He shook off the thought. He needed to find out if the message traveling through his clan like wildfire was true. Was Gorgon alive? Was the man he’d sworn his life to alive?
Was Meira’s true king here?
He hardly had to touch the thought to release his dragon, and the creature was bursting from his skin, faster than might be safe. In shimmering waves of light, he shifted, his new form absorbing everything human about him and swallowing him whole to become the beast, though still entirely Samael. They were one and the same, not separate.
Still…a dangerous move to shift when his animal side was this wild, ready to rip into anything that came between him and his mate. Samael shook with the effort of controlling himself, of keeping from the edge of the abyss where the animal took control and the man vanished, no longer part of the whole. His dragon fought back, desperate to take his mate and fly away from here. Hide out the rest of this war with the gargoyles and guarantee her safety.
Guarantee that he got to keep her.
Samael’s control slipped, just a tad, and the dragon slid closer to the doorway, zeroing in on Meira, who stood back, obscured by the curtains, her jasmine and smoke scent drifting out the door he’d left open behind him.
Did she sense his animal’s fear?
Fear. They hadn’t succumbed to it in centuries. Not since the day he’d forced his way into the still-burning shell of a home to find his sister’s form charred in her bed. Not since. Until now.
Fear. The acrid, metallic taste of it filled his mouth.
“It’s going to be okay,” his mate murmured from inside the room.
His dragon must’ve believed her, because he breathed, the tension trembling his muscles easing as the animal ceded control to the human side. Except the human side was painfully aware that Meira couldn’t know that. Not for certain.
Too many variables were in play.
Including a biological, bond-driven need to make sure Meira was safe and happy. No matter the cost to
