The tips turned white, then consumed the red before the flames suddenly disappeared, leaving the spectral figure a pure glowing white. Another smile at his daughters and he held out a hand, as though beckoning them.
Meira stepped forward, but Samael shot out a hand, stopping her. She turned to face him, gaze earnest and untroubled, despite the tears staining her cheeks. “He would never hurt me. He’s my father.”
Skylar and Kasia also calmed their mates before all three women stepped forward. Zilant Amon’s figure turned back into the glowing, twisting ropes that writhed and slithered around them, lifting their hair and setting them awash in ethereal white light. The ribbons linked the sisters’ hands.
Suddenly, Meira’s eyes turned bright white, glowing in her face as though she were possessed. Kasia’s and Skylar’s, too. Almost as though in a trance, they spoke.
“We are the daughters of Zilant Amon and Serefina Hanyu,” they said. Samael shivered at the power emanating from the three. It crackled around him like electricity, raising the hairs on his arms. “Let us show you.”
Suddenly Samael’s vision changed, as though someone had taken over his mind. He watched as though a movie played out against his eyelids. Memories, perhaps, or the way Kasia saw visions. Was the ghost of Zilant Amon using his daughters’ powers to protect them now?
Images, clips of memories flooded his mind. Zilant Amon, speared on Pytheios’s shifted tail and Serefina’s scream before she disappeared from the room. Serefina pregnant and alone. Then with four babies.
He’s showing them Angelika. No more secrets now.
Four little girls learning and loving at their mother’s feet. Four young women, playing with a hellhound puppy in the snow, laughing as he melted it around them, forming puddles to splash in. Four fully grown women, each as beautiful and unique as the other. Each so clearly a reflection of their white dragon shifter father and phoenix mother, the resemblance could no longer be denied. Then Serefina’s last moments as she sent her daughters away to safety before turning to ash. The last act of a desperate mother.
A bright flash of light blinded Samael, followed by the electric crack of lightning sizzling the air around it. The blast knocked Samael off his feet. His vision cleared to find everyone on the ground around him, including Meira and her sisters, who looked around, dazed and confused. Zilant Amon’s presence was gone.
Samael jerked his head around to see the white dragons disappearing one by one. All the green dragons were already gone.
The lone leader hung in the air the longest, staring at the three phoenixes slowly getting to their feet.
“Lies,” he hissed before he too disappeared.
Several gasps, Meira’s striking him hardest, brought him back around to find Maul’s body burning away, tiny flames creeping across his black fur in a steady line of fire, bright-red embers lifting into the sky in their wake, eating at his body until nothing remained.
“Sam,” Meira called, her voice broken and small.
She swayed on her feet. Ignoring his own pain, and willing his leg to hold him, he jumped closer and caught her as her eyes rolled back in her head, her body going limp in his arms.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Meira slowly drifted her way out of sleep, trying hard to stay under, not wanting to let go of the dream that had been so real to her, she had a vague idea she’d cried out her protest at leaving it.
Blinking away the last vestiges of the dream, she couldn’t shake the pressing certainty that it had been more than that. A vision.
“Meira? Are you okay?” Warm hands enveloped one of hers where it lay on the bed.
Samael.
Memories rushed in on a swell of heartbreak, and she sucked in a sharp breath, but at the same time, the vision she’d had cocooned the pain, making it more…bearable. She turned her head to find her mate watching her with shadowed eyes. He looked as though he’d aged a decade or two, face pinched and haggard. But the emotions radiating at her reflected her own. Grief cushioned by sheer relief and…happiness.
“Sam,” she croaked, throat dry and sore.
“I’m here.”
“I just saw—” She paused and shook her head. How could she explain it? He’d think it was a reaction to the trauma she’d been through.
But she knew, that knowledge settling into her heart like a balm and yet pinning her with an urgency that was undeniable.
He lifted a hand, tracing a finger over her cheek, gaze so tender it made her ache. “What did you see?”
Rather than answer, she leaned over in the bed and placed her lips on his. The need inside her clamored, the ache growing to need at the simple touch, at the sand and fire scent of him in her lungs. The mark on the back of her neck heated and burned, but in a good way.
Samael groaned against her lips, but he took her face in his hands, pulling back gently. “Do you remember anything?”
He thought she’d had the pain of those memories knocked from her? “I remember.” The tidal wave threatened to rush back in. “Make me forget, Sam. Just for a little while.”
She moved to kiss him again, but he held back, though he swallowed hard. “I want to, Mir. You have no idea how much. But…”
“But?” She searched his face, waited for emotions to pelt her.
Except that wall was up. “We have too much to discuss.”
She knew he was right, could feel his need to unburden himself of the emotions he’d been struggling with while she slept. He’d lost a man who’d been as close to him as a father, watched her lose hers all over again, and so much more.
Meira licked her lips. “Tell me.”
“The Black Clan has voted to accept me as king and you as queen. They are aware of our mating.”
She couldn’t get a reading on how he felt about that. “Were they
