The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (online e book reading txt) 📗

dug deeper into the dog’s spiky fur for a moment before she stepped away.

“Now Maul,” she said, in a voice that he could tell she was trying to make firm, and adorably failing. “You can’t be here.”

The dog woofed, more of that smoke and rotting scent filling the air. Then Meira shook her head. Maul communicated in telepathic images. What was he showing her?

“I have Samael,” she said, with a nod in his direction. “He’ll keep me safe.”

Her faith set his protective instincts on high for all of two seconds before Maul looked directly at him. Then he showed him a series of images—first of Meira smiling and sweet, and then the tiniest scratch on skin drawing a single drop of blood, and then of Samael lying dead with a big dog bite in his chest.

Samael got the message. “I promise,” he said. “Not even a scratch.”

After a long, piercing stare, Maul turned his head to nudge Meira. She chuckled and then hugged him again. “I’ll be safe, but I’ll feel a lot better if I know you’re watching over my sisters while I’m gone.”

Another soft woof stirred her curls. Then Meira drew away and reignited. A second later, the mirror was showing the training room where Skylar was still working at Ladon’s side. Giving her one last nuzzle, the hellhound disappeared, only to show up back in Ben Nevis.

Meira took a deep breath and glanced his way, giving him an apologetic little shrug. “He must like you.”

After the image of his death by hellhound bite, Samael wasn’t so sure. “What makes you say that?”

“He wouldn’t have left me if he didn’t.”

Oh. The responsibility of her life, her safety, that already rested on his shoulders suddenly lightened in the strangest way. As though Maul’s faith in him only confirmed who he was supposed to be to this woman. Protecting her was not his duty. It was his right.

“Angelika?” Her soft voice broke into his thoughts. She seemed to be asking permission to resume what they’d been doing.

He nodded. What else was he supposed to do?

Immediately the mirror image changed, back to that shabby room. Two people were now inside. Immediately, Samael recognized the bright swath of Angelika’s white hair—no doubt inherited from their white dragon shifter father. Amazing how each of the sisters was so starkly different from the others. He also was familiar with the tall, military-looking fellow who dogged Angelika’s footsteps everywhere she went. Familiar in a way that one warrior sized up another, even if no immediate threat existed.

The man’s name was Jedd, if Samael remembered correctly. “Can he see us—”

Meira opened her mouth to speak but paused and closed it silently. No doubt she had also picked up on her sister’s distress. Angelika, her back to Jedd, pinched her eyes shut as if reaching for peace.

“I asked you a question,” Jedd said. He put a hand on her arm and turned her to face him. “Will you mate me?”

“Holy shit,” Meira exclaimed, then slapped both hands over her mouth.

Samael jerked his gaze from her to the two in the other room, but neither acted as though they’d heard. He wasn’t sure if he was more stunned about that or by the fact that Meira had used a swear word.

Angelika shook her head. “I can’t.” The two simple words were laden with emotion. Guilt or regret, Samael couldn’t tell which, since he didn’t know her beyond her name.

A muscle at the corner of the wolf shifter’s jaw twitched in a steady rhythm. “Because of some warped sense of belonging to those arrogant, asshole fire breathers?”

“To them?” Angelika shook her head, gaze earnest, her usual sunny smile missing. “No. To my sisters? Yes. To my family’s legacy? Yes. To my murdered mother and father? Even more, yes.”

“But you can’t—”

She put a hand out, stopping him, white-blue eyes suddenly sparkling with the kind of optimism he was starting to associate with Meira, though hers was different, more serious. “I can’t offer much, but I know I can make a difference. The gods blessed my mother with four daughters for a reason.”

Jedd grasped her by the shoulders, dark eyes intent and pathetically hopeful. “You can do that as effectively at my side. You feel something for me. I know you do.”

There was no mistaking the sadness in Angelika’s gaze as she lifted her hands to frame his face. “You have become one of the most important people in my life. My best friend.”

“Then why not—”

“Because that’s all I feel for you. Friendship.” Her words were quiet but firm.

Jedd’s hope visibly died a quick, agonizing death. The wolf shifter’s eyes darkened with pain even as his expression contorted with anger, turning ugly. “This isn’t about me. It’s about that dragon shifter. The white captive.”

A jolt of shock ricocheted through Samael. Only one man inside Ben Nevis fit that description. Airk Azdajah. The man who’d come back with Skylar from Everest after she’d escaped. Who’d been caged and held by Pytheios most of his life.

An aura hung about the man, a knife’s edge of danger. Granted, he’d been the son of Meira’s father’s beta, which meant royalty did run through his veins. In fact, other than the phoenix women themselves, he should be the one on the White Clan’s throne by right. That said, Samael didn’t think Airk could ever shift, not after so long without. His animal would go mad, was probably already there. No dragon shifter would follow a man who couldn’t lead them in the sky.

Angelika smiled, kindness and sadness both mingling there, seeming undaunted. “I don’t know what part he has to play yet.”

Jedd paced the room. “I’ve seen the way you watch him. Like you’re studying him. I guess it makes sense in a warped way. Another phoenix mated to another dragon shifter, and four out of six clans with one of the Amon sisters at the helm if you put him on the throne. No way will the other two clans stand against you after that.”

Angelika