“They need your leadership, the peace you can create with the other clans, and yes, your money and need for their services to support their livelihoods. No society can exist with only one status. Nor can it function with any one group ostracized, oppressed, or shoved aside. Humans have proven that. Let us learn from their mistakes, and ours. Let us do better.”
“Captain.” A sharp voice came over the loudspeaker system.
Samael jerked his head to the side, eyeballing the two men manning the security booth. “What?”
“Dragons have been sighted to the northwest.”
“Ours?”
Bero shook his head. “Green and white. They appeared out of nowhere, sir.”
“The traitors were a distraction,” several voices called out. Immediately, those behind him started protesting their innocence loudly.
“Silence,” Samael boomed.
And the clan obeyed.
He turned his head to his king, who had stood quietly by. “Your orders?”
“Take our forces and prepare the mountain for a fight. The rest of us will batten down inside Ararat.”
Samael didn’t miss the “us,” and neither did the others around them. “Us, my lord?” Amun questioned.
Gorgon shrugged, speculative gaze remaining on Samael. “I am too weak to battle and will only be in the way.”
For the king to admit his weakness so publicly was tantamount to giving up the throne. Ambitious dragons who thought they were stronger would rise to challenge the king as soon as this fight was over.
At least I won’t be here as witness.
“Samael is my beta. You will follow him without question.” The king issued the order.
Samael acted.
“Call the men to assemble,” he commanded. “On me.”
Chapter Twenty
The next five minutes turned into organized chaos nearing panic, but not quite tipping over.
The blare of an alarm pierced the air, blasting throughout the mountain. At the sound, every dragon shifter in the place, all gathered there, jumped into action. Those who couldn’t fight, or who would stay behind as a last line of defense, ran into the mountain proper, the cold shards of fear going with them.
From within the city at the base of the atrium, visible through the large doorway connecting the rooms, shadows and flashes indicated most headed inside while others shifted and flew to wherever they stayed when the mountain locked down.
At the same time, warriors poured forward, the pulse of their purpose and courage a tattoo against her skin. One by one, each found space to shift as more bodies vacated the massive room. The entire room appeared to shimmer and writhe like a pit of snakes as more and more dragons replaced the smaller forms of the men they had been.
A horrible, beautiful sight—all glittering scales in hues ranging from the deepest of blacks, like Samael, to silver so pale they could pass as white.
“Help me to my chambers?” Gorgon gripped her arm in order to be able to walk.
Meira wanted to protest. Wanted to shake off the unsteady king to go to her mate. Samael was flying out, likely to battle alongside forces not entirely under his control, against two clans, and she was certain he had every intention of dying out there. With so many in the room and emotions high she was fully blocking her empathic ability now or she’d drown in it. That meant she couldn’t feel him, even if he didn’t have his walls up.
“Samael.”
She turned her head, even as Gorgon stepped away, taking her with him.
The obsidian dragon, in full command at the front of the room, didn’t so much as cant his head in her direction.
“Samael.” She had no idea if he could hear her, but she had to tell him. “Don’t do this. Don’t do what I can see is in your head.”
Another glance back, and she blinked at how swiftly the dragons had organized. They shifted in waves before they’d leap into the sky, clearing space for the next wave. All the while, Samael stood to the side. Probably directing and giving orders.
“Sam.” No visible response. “Fight for your people, fight for your king. But I need you to fight for me, too. For us.”
Gorgon’s weight on her tugged her back around toward the smaller human-size tunnels, and she pulled up. “Let’s take the faster way.”
She directed them both toward the glassed-in room on the opposite side of the chamber from where her mate prepared to go to war. With each plodding step, she continued to talk to Sam in her head, though hope that he heard suffocated more with each unanswered sentence. As though the words were using up all the air that light needed to stay aflame.
“If you think I could go on without you, even if I survive, you’re wrong.”
The guards operating the room watched her with wary curiosity as she and Gorgon faced them. With a whisper of her will, she redirected the magic of the flame already cupped in her hand. The guards’ eyes went wide a split second before she changed the reflection, Gorgon’s chambers reflecting back at her. With Maul, his back to them, sitting at the massive window, no doubt roused by the flurry of dragons and the blasting of the alarm.
“I chose you.” She kept talking to Samael as they passed through the reflection. Desperation lashed chains around her, squeezing her while at the same time dragging her down. “I will always choose you. Even if you leave me. So I am begging you, don’t leave me.”
If only he would talk to her, she could make him see—
“I love you, Meira.” With a gasp she whirled, seeing him now framed by the gilded mirror she’d walked the king through.
Sam stood, the only dragon remaining in the chamber, his head turned, watching her. Only she couldn’t access his emotions through the mirror.
She stepped toward him, hand raised. “Sam—”
He drew out his wings and dropped off the edge of the platform, like a high-dive platform, then, a second later, shot straight up.
Was that good-bye?
Meira closed her hand into a fist
