Chapter Nine

Meira blinked herself awake to a pitch-black room. No window. No source of light. Nothing.

The all-too-familiar sensation of having no idea where she was kicked her heart rate up. Meira jackknifed to sitting and frantically felt around her to figure out her situation. A bed. She was in a bed with sheets, pillows, and a soft blanket. That couldn’t be bad, right?

A soft click sounded an instant before a light turned on to her right. Meira blinked then forced her eyes to focus on the man sitting on the floor in the corner of what appeared to be a cave bedroom.

“Sam?”

As soon as the name left her lips, protectiveness gathered around her like another blanket. His protectiveness toward her, she realized. Like he’d taken the walls he put around himself and built them up around her instead. He got up and sat on the bed beside her, dark eyes searching. “It’s me. You’re safe.”

She blew out a low breath as her body relaxed into the knowledge that he was here. Watching over her.

He supported me. Without question. About going to Everest to rescue that other phoenix. He hadn’t been happy, more resigned. But also…accepting. She’d felt it, even as she’d been focused on keeping her powers running. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Not giving you more warning that I was running out of juice—”

He shook his head at her. A gentle remonstration for him. She’d expected flat-lipped irritation. “You don’t have to be brave and do everything yourself all the time, you know.”

Meira wrinkled her nose. “I’m not brave. My sisters are, but I have to fake it.”

Samael leaned closer. “I’ll tell you a secret.”

She waited, casting her gaze over his harsh features, trying to make sense of the emotions surrounding her.

“We all have to fake being brave,” he said.

Meira gave an indelicate snort. “Some more than others.”

Rather than laugh at her, though his lips twitched, Samael reached out and tweaked a curl. “I think you’re brave.”

“You think I’m reckless.”

He shrugged. “Maybe if more people were your kind of reckless, the world would be a…kinder…place.”

Whoa. Where was this coming from?

He grinned, his face lighting up and stealing the air from her lungs. “Even if it gives me a daily heart attack.”

Meira chuckled, relaxing into the way his emotions cossetted her. No longer screaming, though a tension rode the edges. Worry. Fear. Something else.

“Would it help to know that I won’t leave you?”

Until this was all over, he must’ve meant. Except her heart took off at the thought of him watching over her always.

She gazed into his dark eyes—not fathomless or cold, but warm, reaching inside her.

Except Samael didn’t get to be that person for her. She’d made promises. Plans that affected many more than herself. And Samael was loyal to his king.

“Meira?” he asked, voice turning low and rumbly.

Oh gods. Had her longing reflected in her eyes? Had she given away her secret wishes, dreams she’d held close, tucked into dark spaces inside her where they couldn’t make her ache for things? Impossible things.

She cleared her throat. “What time is it?”

He gave her a narrow-eyed, searching look, then sat back, pulling his emotions back inside himself, leaving her cold. “Evening. Back to using up all your…juice. In case it happens again, how does that work? I didn’t even know it was a possibility.”

She plucked at the blanket. A patchwork quilt, she could now see in the dim light. “It’s a bit like dragon fire. I mean, I think of my power like a tank that I use up, so I knew I didn’t have an unlimited supply. Unfortunately, it turns out my powers cutting out on me is a lot like the way alcohol affects me. I skip the getting-drunk feeling and go straight from nicely buzzed to puking. I honestly didn’t know I was that drained until I started swaying.”

“Good to know.” He shook his head again. “Remind me to keep you away from alcohol.”

She smiled and he stilled, suddenly intent, and a ribbon of desire threaded through a hole in the wall. Meira did her best to mute the emotions. Her own well-guarded frustration surging to meet his didn’t help.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked. Apparently, they were going to act like nothing was going on between them.

“Better. Still tired. Hungry.”

He nodded slowly. “Hopefully it won’t take you long to recharge?”

She flopped back against her pillows. “We’ll both have to find that out the hard way. I’ve never used it so fast or so long before.” Or teleported quite so far, come to think on it. There was a big difference between jumping from western Russia to England versus western Russia to the U.S. followed by South America right after.

“Meira.”

His voice shook her out of her head, and she pushed back up to sitting only to frown at the expression in his eyes. “Yes, Samael?”

He paused a beat. “You called me Sam earlier.”

“I hope you weren’t offended—”

He shook his head. “I don’t mind when you say it.”

Oh. Dang. There went her heart again, wishing impossible wishes.

He sobered. “I need to tell you something.” A new emotion hit her, though she could tell he was trying to claw it back inside him only to have it slip from his fingers. Like he was trying to find the right way, the right direction. Like he was lost.

Apprehension had her gathering the blanket to her chin. “I really hate it when people start out a conversation that way. It only means bad things.”

“Sorry.” He stared at her, seeming to search for words. Then jumped to his feet. In the months she’d known him, Samael Veles had only once shown his emotions outwardly, always in perfect control. Solid. Unshakable.

Until this moment.

“Sam?” His intensity built, like a presence in the room with them, pressing into her. “Talk to me. You’re starting to scare me.”

“Shit.”

He came back to kneel at the bedside, taking one of her hands in both of his, face as serious as the first time he’d seen her in that mirror, and somehow with that physical connection, her nerves settled, despite the swirl of emotions coming from behind that wall of his, contained chaos surging over the top.

“I think we have a big problem,” he said.

No more problems. Didn’t they have enough? “Bigger than Gorgon being missing and Pytheios having another phoenix?”

His jaw twitched as though he’d clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I—” He gave his head a shake. “Fuck.”

Meira waited, trying not to let his tension feed her own.

“I…think we’re mates.” He dropped the bald statement like a live grenade between them.

Meira’s mind short-circuited, his words clanging around in her head like bats in a belfry, drowning out everything else and temporarily erasing all her words. He’d actually said it. Voiced the question in her own mind.

Gods, it explained a lot—his pain and the need focused on her any time she came near. His stark rejection the day of her mating ceremony. The way he’d stayed away from her until he couldn’t. The same way she’d avoided him. How he seemed to understand her, get her. How he saw her in mirrors when no one else could—other than Maul, apparently.

Sam leaned in closer, eyeing her, worry setting his jaw hard. “Meira?”

Words still weren’t coming, her mind a total disaster.

“Mir?” He waved a hand in front of her face.

She focused on his eyes, so close to hers and full of emotions she couldn’t identify, not while her own drowned out what she could receive from him. He’d said those words with no intonation. None. Like it didn’t matter. His face, however, told a different story. What did he feel about it?

“Meira?” he begged now, rubbing her hand between his. “Say something. Please.”

Only she couldn’t.

“Talk to me.” He resorted to teasing her with her own phrase. One her mother had spoken to her often as a child when emotions would overwhelm her.

“I…don’t believe in fated mates.” Ah, there were the words she was searching for.

A small muscle twitched at the side of his mouth, and that invisible wall slammed up between them, impenetrable and telling her exactly how much she’d hurt him with those words. “Why not?” he demanded.

“Because I can’t.” The idea had never made sense to her. Seeming almost…cruel. “This world is too big for there to only be one perfect match. When I was younger, I wrote an algorithm to predict the chances of finding that one person in all the world.” She grimaced. “The odds were terrible. And look at my sisters. What are the chances Kasia and Skylar would both find their mates here and now, among kings? Isn’t it more likely that we end up with the mate who is perfect in that time and place?”

Sam’s hands clamped down on hers. “Don’t be so sure.”

“Of course I don’t know for sure.” This was not going well.

“What about the dragons who die unmated, their bodies riddled with disease, as opposed to those who find a mate and live twice as long?”

“I assume the mating bond is what affects the life span, fated or not. Most creatures deal with disease in old age.” Couldn’t he see beyond tradition and what all dragon shifters had been told?

Sam jerked his head in what had to be a rejection of her arguments. “What are the odds that the red dragon pretending to be Gorgon would die in your fire, if not for fated mates?”

“Bewitched or not, I didn’t choose him. I chose Gorgon.”

Sam flinched at that. Not visibly, but she felt it in a twitch of his hands, and that wall holding back his feelings rippled. “You don’t know that,” he said. “These are all just guesses.”

“That may be true, but I have to believe it.”

“Why?”

Because all the choices I’ve made are wrong if it’s not true. And what about the people I’m trying to fight? The ones I need to help?

Sam grunted when she didn’t answer. “And the dragons who’ve had to watch the devastation of a woman burning in their fire when they choose the wrong mate?”

Meira looked away. Mostly because she’d always hated the idea of those poor women. Also, because her reasoning around that was difficult to swallow, let alone put into words. What if mating was simply a matter of faith? Of a belief strong enough, or a choice solid enough, to stand the test of flame?

“Kasia fell in love with Brand and chose him. Skylar chose Ladon for specific reasons. Choice is the key.”

“For a phoenix.”

She didn’t have enough evidence to refute him. “Why do you think we’re…” She trailed off, not wanting to voice the word. It gave too much power to the seductive idea. An idea that aligned too closely with secret wishes she should never have allowed to remain within her, no matter the dark corners she’d stuffed them into. Now those wishes were turning dangerous.

Instead of answering, he reached out and traced her lips with his fingertip, leaving a trail of tingling nerves in his wake. “Don’t you feel it?”

My own response to your emotions. It’s not real. “Pheromones. A biological response.” Except her voice came out all husky.

Sam’s lips quirked in a tilted smile more frustrated than amused. “So, you do feel it.”

Dammit.

She must’ve given away her emotions by a flicker in her expression, because his smile turned predatory. “I need to protect you.”

“You’re meant to. It’s your job.”

He shook his head, trailing that finger over her skin, tracing her jaw. “No. This isn’t duty. It’s a compulsion. I have to make sure you are safe…and happy.”

He frowned over the last word.

Meira frowned, too. “Not adding more complication to my life would make me happy. I’m bound to your king.”

Sam closed his eyes. “I know. I’ve stayed away—not let myself believe—because of that, because of loyalty to Gorgon, who is almost a father to me, and because I don’t deserve you.” He snapped his eyes open, black flames consuming the orbs, scales framing the sockets, his dragon closer to the surface than she’d ever seen. The burn of his desire reached for her in the night.

An answering heat ignited inside her, flowing through her veins and coalescing in her belly. A reaction she desperately tried to ignore. This couldn’t be happening. She’d made her choices. “Why now? What changed?”

“I couldn’t ignore the signs anymore.” His voice had dropped to a deep growl, the sound rumbling over her skin, stoking the fire. Was she glowing yet? “And…”

Meira held her breath. And what? She should be stopping him.

“And this.” He slid a hand up under the fall of her hair and claimed her lips with the softest of kisses.

…

Meira whimpered against him, the response uncontrollable. Undeniable.

And a tiny balm to the panic rioting inside him. He’d told her they were mates, and all she could do was deny it. Even the pain that had privately taken him to his knees the day she’d promised herself to his king didn’t come close to this.

The small sound she made set him off. With a groan that welled up from deep inside his chest, he pressed into her. Claimed her with mouth, body, hands. Kisses that he used to try to reach into her, through her, speaking to her soul. He coaxed and demanded at the same time, asking for her submission. Asking her to admit the truth of what he’d said. Because while her mind could deny, could make other plans, could know that this thing had no future, mates or not, her body and her heart couldn’t say no to him.

Samael lost himself in her.

With a shuddering breath, she opened to him, skating her tongue over his, twining with his, the first time she’d taken the initiative between them. He recognized how big a moment that was for her.

Fuck.

He hauled her across his lap so she sat straddling him. Meira was so far gone, she followed where he led, wrapping her arms around his neck. He smoothed a hand up her back, pressing her into his hardness, and she shuddered and let loose another whimper.

At the sound, Samael jerked his mouth away and they stared at each other, both panting, the tips of her breasts pushing into him.

He let out a sharp breath and put his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry.”

Meira stiffened.

Almost in a convulsive spasm, he tightened his arms around her. “No. Whatever you’re thinking, no. I just…didn’t mean to go that far.”

Though she relaxed against him, closing her eyes, he could still feel her pulling away. Feel her mentally reaching for what was right, just as he’d been doing for months. The right thing. Helping her family, helping take down Pytheios, her promises to Gorgon. His promises to Gorgon.

Fuck.

“Don’t do that, either.” He released her to take her face in his hands and Meira opened her eyes to stare at his, the flicker of the flames he knew reflected there illuminating her face.

“I’m not doing anything,” she said.

“You’re pulling away from me.”

She started under his hands, eyes going wide.

He pressed a quick, soft kiss to her lips. “Don’t deny us.”

Meira pursed her lips in the way she did when she was thinking hard. “I hardly know you. This is…” Her hand fluttered then landed on his chest. “Lust combined with a fraught situation.”

His dragon snarled in his head. How could she deny this connection? What about every other indication? Seeing her in the mirror. His dragon’s instinct to claim. His need to make her happy. None of those things happened with just anyone. Not for dragon shifters, at least. Realization lined his heart with a thick layer of lead. He couldn’t force her to see. She had to get there on her own.

The dragon inside him wound tighter and strained outward, already not liking where Samael’s thoughts were headed. He willed himself to loosen his hold, dropping his hands to his sides, though he couldn’t make himself lift Meira off his lap. If he touched her again, he’d be lost.

Quietly she climbed off and stepped back.

“If you truly believe in the fates, then you should have faith that things will work out as they should,” she said, her husky voice scraping over raw nerves.

Even Samael had difficulty putting that much faith in the universe. He knew deep in the marrow of his bones that he was right, even though circumstance had laid waste to plenty of mates who’d made the wrong choice. Perhaps that was what scared him most.

However, if he was anything, he was a fighter. Now that he’d found her, had allowed himself to admit what she was to him, no way was he letting her go without trying.

“You’re right.” Samael lifted his head, and she stepped back again, eyes wide. No doubt she was seeing his dragon. “But sometimes the fates need a little help.”

Meira stilled. “What do you mean by that?”

Samael did smile then. “I mean I’m just going to have to prove it to you.”

Her lips clamped tight, and an emotion flashed in her eyes that looked painfully like fear. At the same time, though, her eyes remained more white than blue, and his enhanced hearing picked up the increased flutter of her heartbeat.

She wanted this…even if she didn’t want to want it.

Good. That was something. A start.

Meira’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and he could see her sister Skylar in the expression. Stubbornness was apparently a trait all the Amon women shared. “Let’s concentrate on all the other problems that need our focus.”

His mate might be the most mild-mannered of the four sisters, but damned if she might not be the toughest nut to crack. If anxiousness wasn’t clawing at his insides at the thought of losing her now that he’d found her, Samael might have enjoyed the challenge she’d set in front of him. “I’m an excellent multitasker.”

That earned him a glare this side of adorable.

A knock at the door to the suite where they’d put them interrupted anything she might’ve responded with.

Shooting him a look that clearly said this conversation is over, Meira went to the door and opened it to find Rune standing there, expression his usual brand of dark. “Kasia Astarot would like a word.”

Meira blinked and glanced over her shoulder to Samael then back. “She’s here?”

Rune shook his head. “No. She’s teleconferenced in.”

“How did she find me?”

Rune watched Samael closely, expression dripping in suspicion, eyes narrowed but not yet ablaze. “I’d love to know that myself.”