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

“You’re unharmed.”

He tucked one of her curls back from her eyes. “We met no resistance. Just a few clueless assholes who flew on by below us.” His mouth tightened, and she knew he was holding back.

“What?”

His eyebrows went up, then he sighed. “I should be annoyed that you read me so well.”

She didn’t follow the red herring. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Sam blew out a short breath. “Brock was leading the men I saw.”

Shock skittered through her. That was too fast. And how had he even known where to look?

“He’s tracking us somehow,” she whispered.

“I know.”

She lifted her gaze to his, knowing settling inside her. “We need to leave. Without the others.”

Sam’s eyes crinkled around the corners, even as the black depths remained serious. “I had a feeling you’d say that. I have a plan.”

Chapter Thirteen

As plans went, Samael had to admit his fell in the stupid bucket. However, using Meira and himself as bait before disappearing themselves was the only option he could come up with that he knew his mate would agree to. Despite her worth in their world, she didn’t assign much value to herself personally, more concerned about others.

He’d make sure she stayed safe.

“You want to what?” Rune snapped as soon as Samael explained the idea.

“There are already two mated phoenixes with plenty of power out there,” Meira said, expression earnest. “I’m a complication more than a help. Expendable, when it comes down to it. Definitely not worth your lives.” Almost word for word how Samael had imagined this conversation going.

“Sisters who would be devastated to lose you,” Sera said.

Meira winced, but the resolve in her eyes didn’t waver. “I brought this down on you—”

“We did this to ourselves,” Jiǎ muttered from his corner, earning a warning glance from Rune.

“With a little help from the regime of kings and clans,” Rune added. Arms crossed, the man was black dragon still, though from previous experience Samael knew a mass of angry energy lurked beneath that stoic surface. Much of it aimed at the woman now blithely agreeing to sacrifice herself for them.

“If you didn’t trust Meira before,” Samael didn’t hesitate to point out, “you should now. She’s putting her life on the line. For you.” He left asshole unsaid, but it hung in the air regardless.

Rune’s gaze slid to Meira and, Samael would’ve sworn, softened slightly. Then the other man drew himself up. “Do you know why I was happy to take the role of enforcer?” Rune asked, almost casually.

Which had Samael pausing to look closer. “I assumed because Gorgon asked you, as one of our clan’s greatest fighters.” To be an enforcer was considered an honor.

“He was going to send you, actually. I asked to go instead.”

Truth. Samael had no doubt. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t like how things with the clans were being handled, and I couldn’t stand by and watch my king, my friend, do nothing but insulate our clan and allow each small change, each subtle new shift in policy, each suspicious disappearance or death, happen. I didn’t know things would eventually get this bad”—he waved a hand around the room—“or I would’ve stayed and made sure we fought. The matings are one of many systems that have broken down since that red fuck took power. But to watch Gorgon, a man who’d been a giant, reduced to…something lesser—” Rune shook his head. “So, I came here.”

With each word, Samael’s muscles bunched and shifted, the burn of resentment rising up inside him like a tide of acid. “Gorgon kept our clan safer from Pytheios than any other king managed to do.”

“Through appeasement.”

Samael jerked his head, but not with as much conviction.

Rune must’ve seen it, his lips stretching in a proximation of a smile, but with no amusement in his eyes. “I heard a quote once that said an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

“Winston Churchill,” Meira supplied.

Samael would’ve laughed if he wasn’t in full rejection mode. He drew his lips back, baring his teeth. “Rune—”

“What?” his old mentor demanded. “Are you angry? You should be. I’m goddamn furious.”

The loyalty in Samael refused to budge. “Better what Gorgon chose to do than end up dead, leaving Pytheios to put a puppet on the throne like Thanatos or Uther. The Blue and Gold Clans suffered more than we did. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Ben Nevis has become a sad ghost of its former glory, their numbers reduced, their wealth disappeared.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“That could have been the Black Clan. You weren’t there. I was. Every fucking day. I witnessed the decisions Gorgon was forced to make.”

“I know the decisions he had to make,” Rune growled. “And I wouldn’t have been able to keep my mouth shut. So I helped him the best way I knew how and came here, until the effects rippled their way to those I was—”

Rune bit off the rest of what he was going to say, and silence dropped over the room.

Meira’s hand snuck into Samael’s, cold and small in his, her trust, whether she realized it or not, total. And humbling. Something about that touch got to him, opened him up and ripped out his heart. Had his life been that wrong? Everything he’d been protecting been the wrong way? The weight of the implications hit Samael hard enough that he bowed his head, staring blankly at a spot on the uneven stone floor of the cavern.

Had keeping his clan safe been the wrong move? Isolation meant that black dragons hadn’t suffered, or that was how the thinking had gone. Had their people been impacted anyway? In the colonies. In lives lost that could have been prevented. In mates they didn’t even know were gone.

Rune stepped into him. “If you’re going to take the throne—”

Samael jerked his head up. “I can’t—”

Rune cut him off with a pointed look at Meira. Based on the way her eyes tightened, Meira caught it, and she understood the implication but said nothing.

“If