Chapter Fourteen

Those three words flayed Samael from the inside. His dragon loosed a terrible roar in his head, and he flinched.

His king was dead.

The man who’d given him a chance no other royal would have, let alone a king. In a time when Gorgon precariously held his clan together already, he had given a poor, lowborn, orphaned nobody a place of honor.

He can’t be dead…

Samael tipped his hand. The brand, the mark of his clan, had disappeared as quietly as his king apparently had. Without his knowledge. That or he’d missed the loss in the rush of everything else going on. From all accounts, losing a brand was supposed to be painful, a burn. But what if his loyalty to his king had been tried and found wanting? Why hadn’t the mark been replaced with the new king’s mark? His mark, in theory. By technical right. Shouldn’t that have happened immediately, or was he rogue now?

Meira squeezed his hand, and he realized he’d been squeezing hers hard with his other one. Damn. He loosened up.

“How do you know? What happened?” He didn’t mean to sound accusing, but he didn’t take it back, either.

Ladon crossed his arms. “A man named Amun has been in touch and told us the king’s mark had disappeared. You know him?”

“My second in command, and the Viceroy of Defense. He’s been running Ararat with Gorgon’s beta while we’ve been in Ben Nevis these last months—”

“Gorgon’s beta, who is also dead,” Ladon pointed out.

“I know.” Fuck. If anyone knew what came next, it was him. Because there was one easy solution standing right beside him. But his king—his friend—had just died. What kind of man did that make him that he was already thinking of filling his shoes? In every sense?

“Without Gorgon, your clan is falling apart, Samael. I’m getting reports of black dragons flying east and north to the Red, Green, and White Clans.”

“By the gods,” Samael snarled.

“I’m pretty sure the gods abandoned us eons ago,” Ladon replied drily.

“We have to get me there,” Meira said. “Let me try to unite—”

“No,” Samael snapped, turning a glare on her, and her cringe ricocheted up his arm. But he wasn’t going to soften that any. “Not you.”

“But I’m the queen Gorgon chose for the clan.”

“You go there now, and they tear you apart. You’re just some woman who can hop through mirrors who they think killed their king. Even your role as a phoenix is disputable.”

Something in Meira’s expression changed. He couldn’t say what, exactly, but suddenly an entire ocean separated them. A distance no dragon could cross. She turned away, facing her sister. “I know what to do, but first I have to rest. I won’t make a move until I’ve talked to you first. Be in your chamber at two in the morning in two days.”

Skylar tried to answer, but the sound of her voice cut off as Meira jerked her hand out of Samael’s grasp and shut down her power, the mirror returning to normal.

As though nothing had happened, she moved to the bed and lay down facing the fire with her back to him.

“You are not going to Ararat,” he snarled. “I forbid it.”

“You can’t stop me.” The determination in her eyes was lined with a sadness that told him she was going to make this move with or without him.

Cold surety settled into him as he walled off everything else. “You may be the queen, but I am the new king.” Though his clan was as likely to rip into him as into her at this point. Meira’s entire body went rigid, but she didn’t turn his way. She wasn’t getting this, dammit. “If I have to tie you down, I will. Don’t test me.”

“I’ll burn the ropes,” she said as quietly as before. He had a decent guess an eye roll went along with the words, though he couldn’t see her face.

Frustration erupted from a place where his worst fear was realized and she ended up dead. Samael dropped to his knees on the edge of the mattress and, with a hand on her shoulder, forced her to roll over to face him. “Without Gorgon at your side, you’re dead.”

She didn’t even blink at the word. “I understand perfectly. I still have to try.”

“Dammit, Meira. They won’t listen to you or me—”

“But if you mate me, maybe they’ll listen to us.”

Shock held Samael as still as a pond on a windless day. Gods save him from this woman. He thought he had a protective side, but she had a heart that overruled even her sense of self-preservation.

“That’s not fair,” he said, struggling around a voice that wanted to choke him. “You know what I believe. What I want.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“Are you fucking kidding me with this? I just found out Gorgon is dead.”

Meira’s eyes darkened with what he instinctively knew was her own sorrow for that fact. Then she crawled to her knees to face him. “I’m sorry. Truly. I know what he meant to you. Anyone could see your loyalty, but also your affection for him. I thought to mate him, but, more than that, I genuinely liked Gorgon. I think you know that. But even he would want us to do what’s right here.”

Seven hells. Did she not understand the position she was putting him in? Gorgon had been a second father to him. At the same time, a dragon shifter waited for ages to find his mate, a day they lived, breathed, dreamed, and fought for. Stole for, too, apparently, based on Rune’s stories.

Meira was his.

He had absolutely no doubt of that. But to ask him to simply forget that and take her in such a clinical manner? “How can you sit here and propose—”

She put her hand on his forearm, the physical connection cutting off his words. “We don’t have time, Sam,” she said quietly. “You know this.”

That she used the nickname only she dared sent a few more arrows into his heart. Because, gods forgive him, he wanted her with the force of a thousand suns.

He shook his head.

“I wish we could take the time to mourn Gorgon together, to honor him first and figure things out later, but the clan is falling apart. If we lose them, the war is lost and that monster who killed my mother wins. Is that what you want?”

Sam dragged a hand over his face, because part of him reached for her with everything he had inside him. She could be his. Except the hole in him left by the death of his king might be too deep in this moment. This was too soon. Too hasty.

Meira held her blanket around her body with one hand and cupped his face with the other. “To be a king is a terrible honor. Gorgon knew that. I think…” She took a deep breath. “I think by placing you in the position he did, he believed you could be a man worthy.”

“I’m as common as dirt.”

“Not to the king, you weren’t. I saw that. You know that.” She moved her hand over his heart.

Sam closed his eyes, trying not to lean into her touch—or the dangerous, seductive answering thoughts swirling inside him.

“Your people need an anchor, Samael,” she said, low and soft, her voice a seduction by itself. “Together, we can be that for them. Together, we’re both harder to deny. A king with a phoenix at his side, and a queen mated to a king from the clan, a leader chosen by the previous king. Together we’re stronger.”

Politically, she was talking about. But what about…

She searched his face, her expression almost willing him, compelling him, to buckle to this new possibility.

Only…

Another shake of his head, and he opened his eyes. “This isn’t choosing me, Meira. Dammit.”

A confusing mix of sorrow and surety swirled in eyes gone navy.

“Just because circumstance has put us here doesn’t mean I don’t want to be here,” she said softly.

His control slipped a notch. “What are you saying?”

She tipped her head. “I’m saying that you’re right. You’ve been right all along.”

Was she saying what he thought she was? “Right about what?”

“We are mates.”

His shock must’ve shown in his face, because her eyes widened, her face paled, and she jerked her suddenly trembling hand from his cheek. “Oh gods. You were testing me? You didn’t mean it—”

He snatched that hand in both of his, flattening her palm against his chest so she could feel the tattoo of his heart against his ribs. “I meant it.”

Through that connection, he felt the shudder that rippled through her body—her emotions like his, like an underground river, so deep and strong they had to bury them. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

She huffed a bitter-sounding laugh. “How could I? I’ve been fighting it with everything I have because I promised…” Her voice broke, and she shook her head. “We weren’t possible when Gorgon was alive. A human woman is fated, but a phoenix gets to choose. That’s what I was taught. I had made my choice, made a promise, one that potentially affects not only a clan, but all dragon shifters.”

The pain in her voice was like dragging sharp blades over his own skin.

“Turning my back on you was killing me a little at a time. You spoke to me in that mirror, and that was it. I looked for you in every reflection I saw after that, until the day I proposed to Gorgon, and there you were…”

Samael could only shake his head in wonder. “I never would have guessed. Still waters run deep with you, Mir.”

She gave a small shrug that about knocked him out, because she so obviously didn’t expect his understanding, her dark-blue eyes full of worry. “The same as with you, Samael Veles.”

She couldn’t be playing on his emotions to ensure their mating? His dragon gave a small growl in his head that he even considered that to be her motivation.

“We should sleep,” he forced himself to reason. “Rest and make decisions tomorrow.”

Meira’s chin wobbled, and he groaned a protest as he kept himself from pulling her into his arms. “You’re not sure if you can believe that I’ve chosen you. Are you?”

He wouldn’t lie to her. “This is happening too fast.”

“I know.”

“I won’t use you to buy my clan’s loyalty.”

Her lips twitched. “I’m the one propositioning you.” A blush bloomed in her cheeks, spreading down her neck. “I’ve been pulled in a thousand directions and torn to shreds trying to do what’s right.” She swallowed hard, a plea in her eyes. “What if what’s right is also what we both want?”

How could he walk away from a world with her in his life? Even with everything that it brought.

“Sam.” She whispered his name. Almost like a vow.

Then shock speared through his heart as she, with a boldness to rival her sisters’, opened the blanket, arms wide, before dropping it, baring herself to him, her skin aglow in the firelight, beckoning, turning deliciously pink as her blush spread to every part of her skin. But she also refused to look away, chin tilted proudly.

Samael’s dragon lunged for her, and he barely held back from doing the same. “Meira—” He clenched his eyes shut, but the image was burned into his mind’s eye.

Earlier, when he’d undressed them both, it had been clinical, all about making sure they didn’t die of exposure. But now… This. What she was offering…

“I want you,” she murmured. “I always have.”

He opened his eyes to find her watching him with eyes swirling with pure white consuming the blue, such open longing that his soul cried out for her. Unbidden, he released her hand and ran the backs of his fingers softly over her breast, tracing the shape.

She moved restively beneath his touch, and he continued to lightly trace the contour of that heavy breast, feathering under the bottom before traveling back up.

“This isn’t a snap decision,” she said. “We couldn’t. Now we can, and I don’t want to let the chance pass us by. Not again. We don’t know how Brock is tracking us, but what if he finds us here? Takes me away? Or we make it to Ararat and we wait until you’re established as the king, only they don’t want me, too? There are so many things against us. I couldn’t handle—” She broke off. “I can’t lose you…”

She gasped as he brushed her nipple. Then swallowed and took his hand by the wrist, first raising it to kiss the puckered, scarred skin, an action that swelled his heart, before lowering that same hand until he cupped the soft, damp curls at the juncture of her thighs.

The gesture was bold, the real Meira emerging from the flames, tested by fire and forged into something amazing. His phoenix. He knew she meant everything she was saying. Her heart was there in her eyes for him to see. No more distance. No more denying.

“I want to be your mate, Samael Veles,” she said, her gaze steady on his. “Forever. Yours.”

On a groan, Samael leaned forward and captured her lips, his hand at the back of her head, winding in her curls and holding her to him. “Mine,” he growled against her softness.

She smiled against him. “And you’ll be mine.”

A claim and a promise dropping from her lips like rain from heaven.

“Do we dare claim each other?”

After all her bravado, her insistence and logic, she still asked?

“I don’t think we dare go against the fates,” he said against her lips.

…

Could this be happening?

Meira was afraid to search for a true answer to that question, lest she wake to find this was all a dream.

Except Samael’s emotions bound tightly around her—need and desire, yes, but also a profound understanding and connection. As though they were two parts of the same. Like a circuit and signal, both not working without the other. At the same time, his lips were real against hers—hot and urgent and demanding. Each press, each kiss, the stroke of his tongue against hers led her deeper into a haze of wanting. Needing his touch like shelter from a storm.

In his arms, the world became…perfect.

His hand, still cupping her mound, heated her, turning her molten in his arms. Then he moved one finger, brushing in just the right spot, and she widened her legs, wanting more.

Samael buried his face in the curve of her neck and inhaled deeply. “Jasmine,” he whispered, and she smiled.

“In some cultures, jasmine is thought of as the scent of sex, a true aphrodisiac.” Then she grimaced. Way to ruin the mood with facts.

Only Samael chuckled against her. Then left her gasping as he sucked on her earlobe. “I’m definitely aroused.”

Then he pressed a hand to her back, moving her into his touch. Slowly he trailed those tantalizing fingers lower, teasing her with the barest of touches, stroking through her rapidly dampening folds until, finally, he slipped one finger inside her in an agonizing, slow slide that had Meira panting by the time he was done.

He paused there, and her breathing hitched as she waited for his next move. Using his thumb, he pressed into her clit, pressure and sensation stealing all her reason. At the same time, he ran his other hand up her thigh, over the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, brushing the underside of her breast, and the barest flick over her nipple before moving higher to cup her neck.

Through the pulsing desire buffeting her from him came another emotion that set her own desire to screaming pitch. Pure alpha control.

“I’m going to love you slowly,” he murmured, low and rough, his dragon hovering at the surface. “I want to memorize every part of your body. Learn what makes you catch your breath.”

Meira closed her eyes and gave up all her control, willing to follow wherever her mate wanted to lead.

That thumb pressing steadily against her, moving in the slightest of circles, held most of her attention. “You’re doing a good job so far,” she choked.

His smile tickled against her neck. “I’ve been thinking about this since I saw you in that mirror.”

She had, too, if she was honest. In dark corners of the nights when she shut down her own guilt by assuring herself that fantasies were only that.

Keeping that torturous hand in place as she knelt, legs spread wide for him, open to him, he claimed her lips, possessing her in such a way, with the softest kisses that reached into her soul, that her brain went fuzzy. She hardly noticed how he ran his other hand down her arm, then brought her own hand up to his mouth.

He released her lips so that he could press kisses to the pads of each of her fingers, and one in the center of her palm. He blew a stream of fire, caressing her skin with heat as he drew away, then placed that palm on his chest directly over his heart.

“Soon now, we’ll share our fire and our bodies…and we’ll belong to each other.”

The heat in her hand seeped into her skin and traveled her veins to her core. She was already wet, but he grinned as he felt her reaction to his words. “Tell me where you like to be touched.”

Meira shook her head. “I don’t—”

He pressed into her and derailed her brain.

“Tell me, Meira.” Both humor and intensity gleamed at her from eyes turning to liquid black flame.

“I don’t know. I’ve never—”

Shock reverberated out from him, followed swiftly by a primal kind of satisfaction that buzzed through her like fine wine. “Fuck. Woman, are you trying to kill me?” His voice came out strangled, and she chuckled, but that only made her rub against that steady hand, which made her gasp.

“You can’t tell me what you want, huh? How about you tell me what feels good?”

He left her hand over his heart and trailed his fingers down the oversensitized skin of her arm.

“Why?” she managed to ask.

He leaned forward and planted a kiss on her lips. “Because the mind is as much a part of sex as the body,” he growled against her mouth. “And I want you here with me, feeling every moment, every touch, to the fullest.”

She blinked up at him, her body already on fire. “I don’t see how—”

He dragged his hand over her, between her breasts to swirl a finger around her navel. “Do you like this?”

Her stomach muscles jumped beneath the featherlight touch. “Mmm-hmm.”

“And this?” He brought that wandering hand up to cup her full breast, brushing over the nipple.

“Yes.”

“What does it feel like?”

Meira licked her lips. “Tingling, and, um…warm.”

“Warm where?”

She forced the gears in her mind to engage. “Where your other hand is…”

“Your clit.”

She nodded.

“And what about this?” He rolled the tight bead of her nipple between his fingers, and she arched up into his touch.

“Oh, yes. Zapping and heat.”

“And here?” He pressed into her clit then eased off and she chased the touch, her hip tipping forward.

“Different.”

“Describe it.”

“Like an urgent ache.” Gods in hell, he was right. Getting her mind in on the action was only turning her on more. The way the skin tightened over his cheekbones, he was enjoying this as much as she.

“What about here?” He rolled her nipple again and this time swirled the finger embedded inside her.

Meira could only moan. Samael smiled, the flames in his eyes giving the expression a dark edge that sent excitement fizzing through her.

“What if I use my mouth?” He left her still kneeling but scooted back so he could lean down and swirl his tongue over her nipple, and Meira threaded her fingers through his hair, not to pull him away. More to hold on for the ride.

“Meira?” He pulled back only enough to blow on her nipple, sending shivers through her.

“It feels good.”

“Want more?”

“Yes.”

“Harder?”

Oh, hell yes. “Suck me.”

The order felt both shy on her lips and full of power, liberating in the strangest way.

He smiled against her breast as he licked and sucked everywhere but the nipple. Meira clenched her hands in his hair harder. “Suck my nipple.”

Immediately he obeyed, drawing her into his mouth, but he only teased as he flicked his tongue over the sensitive tip.

She pulled his hair. “Harder, dammit.”

“My pleasure.” And he sucked so hard she came up off the bed, her body pulsing to the rhythm of his mouth on her breast.

“Sam—” She moaned his name. “I don’t think I can wait for slow.”

He released her only to move to her other breast and suck as hard, and her climax hovered just out of reach, the ache building. “You can wait,” he whispered.

Only desire came from him now, filling the room, winding around her own and driving them both. He moved up her body gradually, one hand and his mouth worshipping her, the other hand staying as her anchor and her torment, pressing, and enticing, and building. Meira clung to him, riding that hand, reveling in the solid planes and muscles of his body, hanging on for the sheer pleasure he built inside her.

“Did you know wolves bite here to mate?” He nipped at the curve where her neck and shoulder met, then soothed the small hurt with his tongue.

“Are you going to bite me?”

He must’ve caught the excited edge to her voice, because he bit down harder. Not breaking skin, but that edge of pain to the pleasure shot straight through her.

“No. I’m going to fill you with fire.” He shuddered against her. Then rose up. He removed that pressing hand, slipping his finger out of her and taking that thumb from her clit, and Meira cried out with the loss.

A low growl vibrated against her, coming from his dragon. “I thought I could wait, take our time to explore each other, but you liked that too much, and—” He moved to kneel in front of her. Almost rough now, when he’d been so gentle and in control, he lifted her up to straddle him, pausing with his cock pressing at her slick entrance.

“I want you to claim me,” she said when he paused.

Words she never thought she’d ever say became right on her tongue. The ache in her body spread at the sight, at the feel of him doing exactly what he wanted with her, to her, out of control and yet hers to command.

“Tell me if you need to stop.”

Gripping her hips hard, he surged and lowered her at the same time, sinking into her, the stretch of him a burn inside her. At her small gasp of pain, he paused, then pushed forward, breaking through, not stopping until he was balls-deep. There he paused, letting her adjust, holding her body as she breathed.

Gradually the pain disappeared, and the pleasure spilled back in, swamping her. Meira reached out and ran her hands down the ridges of his stomach.

“You smell like smoke, and jasmine, and sex.” His eyes glittered with fire and possession.

He lifted her by the hips, agonizingly slowly, only to pause again, breathing hard, before he guided her forcefully down his shaft, only to hold there, filling her, and Meira whimpered.

“Light on fire, Meira,” he growled. “Now.”

Her flames were already there, waiting at the surface, ready to be unleashed. Red and gold spread over her skin, only adding to the heat. Her fire traveled over Samael only to be consumed by his own power, turning black.

Her lover threw his head back and roared his claim to the gods and all who could hear, then pistoned his hips, moving her hips with his hands, fucking her hard and fast. Meira’s body spiraled in an overload of sensation, slamming through nerve endings in time to his thrusts, and she gloried in the sight of him claiming her for his own, even as she did the same, clenching around his cock with each slide in her body, arms wrapped around his neck as she held on for the ride.

“Yes,” he hissed.

Then he lifted her and flipped them so that she landed on her back. He fell with her, dropped forward to his elbows, his weight pinning her to the mattress, his chest grazing her nipples with every move of his hips. His eyes level with hers, smiling and yet almost terrifying, consumed by black flames.

“Now to make you mine,” he declared.

“Please,” she begged.

A sound that reminded her of an old-fashioned forge, fire being stoked inside him, rumbled all around her.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I’m yours.”

With a groan, Samael sank into the kiss, even as his body pounded into hers. Then heat passed from him into her as he blew a stream of fire down her throat, filling and engulfing her from the inside out. That heat joined the inferno already raging inside her, traveling along nerve endings to the juncture of her thighs.

Samael pulled back and watched her carefully, though he didn’t stop moving. He threaded his hands in her hair, but Meira wasn’t worried. This was right. She’d chosen this man not just with her mind, but with her whole heart.

The fire didn’t burn to kill; it burned to transform. To bond. To meld them together until they were one.

She smiled, and his muscles bunched under her hands, a breath of relief punching from him, followed by a long, purring growl.

He sped up, fucking her harder, faster, building the sensations, layering them inside her.

“Meira. Now.”

His command shoved her right over the cliff into oblivion as sensation exploded outward from her core. Samael swelled inside her as he thundered a shout. A new heat joined the rest, from inside her, tumbling her into a second orgasm, the waves of it smashing her on the only solid thing in her world—the man inside her and over her and around her.

Her mate.

Gradually, they slowed, the waves of sensation turning softer, gentler, lapping at her. Meira was vaguely aware of Samael turning to his side and pulling her into his arms. His finger traced her face and wound through a lock of hair.

He didn’t stop touching her as her body, replete and sated, drifted away for the gods knew how long, before returning to him. A soft brush over the nape of her neck and her eyes fluttered open. She found him watching her with a smile both tender and possessive that stirred an answering knowledge inside her.

He was hers. Forever. No matter what came next.

She sucked in and lifted her hand to his face. “You’re content,” she whispered. “I haven’t felt that from you before.”

His eyebrows shot straight up. “Felt?”

Meira bit her lip. Oh, shoot. She should have told him. “I…might be a bit of an empath.”

Samael gazed back at her, his reaction a rash of emotions that he shuffled through faster than she could keep up. “Did you know we were mates?”

She shook her head. “Only that you wanted me, and that you hurt to be around me.”

“I bet that was damn confusing.”

“I should’ve known, though.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted you, too. I just couldn’t let myself.”

“An impossible situation,” he muttered.

She said nothing. Mostly because he was right.

“So, you feel everything or—”

Meira shook her head. “It comes and goes. Some people more than others. With you, it tends to be what you feel strongest, but sometimes, if it’s too strong, you shut it down, like bricking it behind an invisible wall.”

“And I’m content right now.” Not a question.

Meira grinned at him. “A little irritated, too, probably with me for not telling you until now. But yes. Content. Like I am.”

Samael blew out a sharp breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Yes.”

“Is it there yet?”

“What?” He didn’t follow her change of topic.

“The brand?” Once the mating bond solidified, they’d be tied together for life. If one died, the other would follow to the grave. However, the process was unpredictable. It could happen immediately or take months, even years.

Some made the argument that love had to be present, but her own parents had loved each other. The depth of her mother’s grief over half a millennium was proof enough, and yet, their bond had not yet formed before Pytheios had taken her mate’s life.

That was the only reason Serefina had survived and Meira and her sisters had been born into the world at all.

“No,” Samael said quietly.

Meira sighed. “Disappointed?” If she was honest, her heart had dropped a tiny bit with his answer.

Samael shook his head slowly as he traced an absentminded pattern of whorls over her shoulder, then lower, to the sensitive side of her breast, lower still to the dip of her waist and down her thigh, bent up and over his legs. “We’re through the worst of it. Neither of us died in the fire.”

That wandering finger came back up her thigh and over the curve of her backside.

Meira swallowed as he left a sparkling trail of heat in his wake. “I’m curious to see what design shows.”

Human women showed their mate’s family crest, but phoenixes blended the crest her mother carried with that of her mate to create a new design. Except her mother hadn’t carried a crest.

His touch crept lower, closer to her most intimate parts, but not yet touching. “Maybe we should keep trying. Just in case,” he murmured.

That ache they had assuaged once already bloomed between her legs at the words. “Already?”

“You told your sisters two days, right?” He slipped that errant finger between her legs, teasing her with it, parting her only to feather across her slick entrance.

“To rest,” she pointed out with a smile. Not that she wanted him to stop.

Contentment remained, but now hot need swamped the feeling, drawing an answering need from her, heat searing her veins.

“You can rest all you need,” he murmured.

She gasped as he slid that finger inside her.

“I’ll do all the work.”