| |
“T’MAR?” HELENA CROAKED, her throat raw from screaming his name. “You came.” She shifted in the bed and winced. Her arms, legs, torso, and face hurt.
“Almost not soon enough,” he said grimly.
“A’riel attacked me.”
“I know. She will pay.”
“She already has.” The words popped out of her mouth, and she frowned. No, she’d dreamed she’d seen A’riel’s body crumple to the floor, watched as a dragon hauled the body away.
T’mar cocked his head as if confused, but then he focused on her. “I am so sorry. What happened to you was my fault. I didn’t make your position clear to A’riel and the others. In fact, I gave them the wrong impression.”
“What was that?”
Shame rolled off him in a cloud of scent. Is he really here? Or is this another dream? Her mind fuzzy, she wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. She’d had some weird hallucinations...
“That you meant nothing to me—”
She flinched.
“When you’re my mate. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for.”
Oh, yeah, he waited all right—waited for me in his harem! But warmth kindled and spread from the inside out.
“I heard you scream. You almost died, and I wanted to die, too.”
“How could you hear me scream? You weren’t here—were you?” Had he been in the compound?
“No. I was at my father’s palace.” He tapped his head over his ear. “I heard you in my mind. My dragon heard you first and made me shut up so I could listen. We flew here as fast as we could. You’d lost a lot of blood; you were on the brink of death until Princess Rhianna gave you some of hers.”
“Rhianna came back? I sensed her presence, but I thought I’d imagined that part.” Her dreams had been bizarre. A’riel’s death still felt real. A woman in a white wedding dress with unbelievably long hair had reached into a big fire, pulled out a little flame, and then blown it out and killed A’riel. Weird. She felt so disoriented.
She plucked at the sleeve of her robe and frowned. This wasn’t what she’d been wearing.
“I bathed you and changed your clothes,” T’mar said. “Why did you enter A’riel’s section? Didn’t B’kah warn you not to venture into another dragon’s territory?”
“B’kah sent me there!”
He spewed a cacophonous string of syllables her implant couldn’t translate. Swear words, she surmised.
“I asked her the way to the servants’ section, and she pointed to A’riel’s area.”
An intense sour odor flooded the room, and his yellow eyes flashed red for a moment. B’kah would regret her role in the attack. She didn’t feel sorry for her at all. She almost got me killed.
“Why were you looking for the servants’ area?”
“You said there was an exit. I wanted to visit Patsy and Henry. I’d asked the donatta to take me, and she kept putting it off. I was getting concerned about them, and I knew they would worry about me.”
“B’kah has a lot to answer for. And she will,” he said.
Some “guardian” the donatta had turned out to be. She’d set her up, deliberately sent her into A’riel’s area, knowing she would likely be attacked.
As soon as Helena realized she’d ventured into the wrong area, she’d tried to leave, but A’riel had cornered her. She didn’t know why the other concubine hated her so much, but she hadn’t needed a dragon’s olfaction to sense the rage. The concubine had grown fangs and claws. With her talons, she kept slashing and slashing.
In terror, she’d screamed for the one person who mattered the most to her. She truly had believed she was going to die. In that moment, she regretted she’d never admitted her feelings for T’mar—to him or to herself. She swallowed and sought his gaze. “I love you.”
A smile spread over his face, and a fragrance of cloves and spice scented the air. “I love you, too, mate.”
“You do?” A barrier had fallen away, revealing love and light and all things good and wonderful.
He nodded, but his smile faded a bit. “When you cried out for me, when I realized you were in danger, nothing could have kept me from you, but I feared I wouldn’t be in time. That I’d contributed to the attack by refusing to acknowledge you will haunt me for the rest of my days. I promise it will never happen again. I will always be there for you.”
Tears welled in eyes. She couldn’t believe how ridiculously happy she felt, but one thing, no small matter, still bothered her. “What about your harem?”
“As soon as you’re well enough to travel, I’m moving you to the palace. You won’t be returning here.”
But would he? “I don’t share,” she said. “I can’t be your mate if you’re still going to keep concubines.”
“I have not been with any of them since I met you, nor for some time before. The dragon sensed you would be coming and forsook all others. I have no need of or desire for a concubine when I have you.” Yellow eyes glowed. “They will be released from service.”
The way he phrased it, it sounded like they were being fired. “Do they at least get a severance package?” she quipped.
“They will receive a goodly amount of treasure—except for A’riel. She’ll be in the dungeon for a long, long time.”
She still had the strong feeling A’riel was dead. Her gaze shifted to their joined hands. They’d put something on her wounds to close the skin, but the lacerations were red and ugly. Her arms had taken the brunt of it—along with a deep gash to her abdomen—but A’riel had slashed her face, too—had seemed to be aiming for it. “Can you get me a mirror?”
He hesitated. “There isn’t one available here.”
She started to sit up. “There’s a big one in the bathroom.”
“No, mate. If you are not well enough to fly, you are not well enough to move around. Besides, there is something more important we need to attend to.”
“What’s that?”
“I must claim you, mark you, so everyone will see you belong to me, and no one will dare to hurt you again.”
“Mark me, how?”
“I must bite you. It will leave a permanent mark identifying you as my mate. No two dragon bites are alike.”
“The dragon is going to bite me?” No, no. Oh no. That huge creature with fangs as long as her forearm? Deal breaker!
