The Cursed King by Abigail Owen

Chapter Ten

Airk pulled himself out of a deep and remarkably dreamless slumber gradually. As though the darkness was trying to hold him back. Hold him under.

He pushed upward, swimming toward consciousness until finally his vision cleared. Only to reveal Angelika, curled into him, her white-blond hair spread over the pillow in the room where he’d moved them.

After.

Perhaps we should mate, in that case.That’s what he’d thought when she’d called their “experiment” a success. Only he’d swallowed back the words, not ready to give them to her, despite the way he’d already publicly claimed her. Those words had been gut instinct, half him and half his dragon, and a mistake even as he uttered them. He wouldn’t say yes until he was sure.

The hardest part was more and more of him wanted that. Wanted to give them both that. His dragon wanted it, too.

Maybe it could work.

Even now, contentment filled his chest. An emotion he hadn’t felt in he couldn’t remember how long. The sensation sat uncomfortably with him, though. A content man might be one slow to act. Slow to realize danger was near.

Like his father.

And Airk was the most dangerous thing in Angelika’s life except, perhaps, Pytheios.

Even so, he reached out to trail a finger over her cheek, savoring the softness of her, the perfect bow of her lips. She smiled at his touch, and his chest tightened at the sight. He’d made her smile. Him. Despite everything he was.

Maybe he could make her smile more. His cock, already half hard when he’d woken with her scent winding in his senses, throbbed and swelled at the images in his head. More things he wanted to do to her…with her. Airk levered up on an elbow and reached to shake her gently awake, then stopped, his hand midair, horror freezing every muscle in his body and every thought in his head.

Because wrapped around her middle, like a boa constrictor, was a dragon tail.

Hisfucking dragon tail.

The spikes hadn’t appeared yet, and it wasn’t as large as if he was in his full form. Only partially shifted, he realized. He’d heard of the most powerful dragon shifters being able to shift only a part of themselves, but those were men in control. And he was not. He’d never seen his body this way. Ever. The pure white scales glittered at him—mocking, threatening.

Airk swallowed, holding still, and reached for the creature inside him. Tried to force the shift, cage the animal that he couldn’t risk releasing.

Only, in direct response to the attempt, that tail, which was part of him but not, curled more tightly around Angelika.

She hummed, the sound of contentment lodging inside his heart like a shard of ice. This woman, whom he’d fooled himself into thinking maybe he could mate, had no idea what kind of danger she was in. None.

Don’t hurt her.

It did not escape him that he was talking to the darker side of himself. Gods, how could he have been so selfishly blind? So damned wrong in his thinking to believe he could have her. Have anyone. Even for a second.

Let her go. Please.Now he was reduced to begging.

The tail tightened again, and Angelika frowned a little in her sleep, a small murmur of protest passing her lips.

Fuck.

He couldn’t let himself panic. Panic would get him nowhere. Panic was when he lost even more control and the dragon took over. Exactly what the beast in him wanted.

Airk closed his eyes and took a deep breath, seeking that state between waking and sleeping where he and his dragon were one. Not a battle of wills but an agreement. Here, he was closest to his animal side—the closest he could allow himself to get without tumbling over.

Rather than demand or push or even coax, he waited. Waited for his animal to do the right thing. The only way he’d survived those cells was because his dragon hadn’t shifted. The bars of dragonsteel would have shredded them if they’d tried it. His creature side had recognized the danger. On his own.

You don’t want to hurt her, Airk attempted.

They both liked this woman. His dragon found her spunky and funny, and Airk…Airk found her a lot of things.

Slowly…so slowly Airk was almost ready to give up…his tail untensed and slowly unwound from Angelika, sort of turning her over as it did, turning her away from him. Then, the shimmers and waves of a shift appeared around him, and, with even more reluctance, his dragon voluntarily caged itself back inside his body and mind.

But Airk knew what this meant.

That had been too damn close. Taken too long and needed too much effort. His dragon couldn’t be trusted around Angelika. Ever.

Mating her was out. Fucking was out, too.

A growl rippled in his mind, but he had the beast locked down now that he was fully in control. He would never risk this again.

Careful not to disturb the precious, untouchable sleeping woman in the bed, Airk allowed himself one moment of harsh regret, one moment of weakness, a terrible ache taking up residence in his chest as he let his gaze trace the curve of her back exposed as the sheet had slipped aside.

He’d thought he needed strength and fire in a mate and briefly wondered if maybe he had found it in Skylar when she’d appeared in his prison. But he’d been wrong about that. So wrong.

He needed… Gods, Angelika.

Shattered—there was no other word for it—Airk shook his head and stepped away.

He didn’t need anything or anyone, because his life was doomed no matter what way he looked at it. All he could do was take that fucker Pytheios down with him when he went. He’d been out of his mind to consider, even for a millisecond, taking a mate into this living hell with him.

Letting her go, he gathered his clothes and left her sleeping. Then he went back to the mirror to wait for Meira to get in touch.

…

Angelika smiled and stretched like a contented tiger in the sun, her body languorous and still lushly replete after last night. Wow, had she drawn the lucky card in the deck. Being bound to Airk would be no hardship whatsoever. For a man who’d been locked up a hell of a long time, he sure knew how to use his tongue, among other things.

“Wake up.” His low rumble set her smiling wider.

That must’ve been what pulled her from sleep. She had a vague idea he’d been calling her name a while now.

Peeling her eyes open, she discovered an empty bed in front of her face and frowned. He had just spoken, hadn’t he? Levering up on an elbow, uncaring of the way the sheets slipped, she glanced over her shoulder to find him crouched beside the bed, fully dressed. Given the alert look in his eyes, he’d been awake for some time.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Meira’s here.”

Here? With a gasp, she flung back the sheets and hopped out of the bed.

“God’s teeth, Angelika,” Airk muttered, glancing away, jaw going tight.

She paused in a mad dash to find her clothes, which had been strewn haphazardly around last night, to frown at him again. “Nothing you haven’t seen and touched,” she pointed out, though a little warily. Something in his demeanor was off.

“All three of your sisters, plus their mates, are currently standing in the next room.”

That was why he was acting weird? She plopped her hands on her hips, torn between wanting to smack him in the head for being prissy about this and wanting to run out and make sure her sisters were unharmed. The fact that all of them were here was not a good sign, but at least she knew they were still alive.

“This better not be that you’re embarrassed you slept with me,” she warned.

Airk shook his head, which only mollified her slightly, because the next second he walked out of the room.

What just happened?

In a decent imitation of a tornado sucking stuff up, she got dressed in record time and was out the door.

Her sisters stood there, eyes so wide they looked like startled animals. Right. Because they probably heard that conversation and no doubt could smell last night’s activities on her. Their mates, on the other hand, appeared less than pleased.

Only she was too happy to see her sisters unharmed to be embarrassed or argue about it.

At Skylar’s not-so-subtle thumbs-up, she grinned and walked straight into their arms. “You’re okay?” she asked, her head buried in Meira’s hair while her arms stretched to wrap around Kasia and Skylar.

“We’re fine,” Meira assured her.

“Mostly,” Skylar muttered.

Angelika stepped back, casting a practiced nurse’s gaze down each of them, and they did appear unharmed. “What does mostly mean?”

The three glanced at each other, and Angelika braced herself for bad news. “Ararat and Store Skagastølstind have fallen.”

Disbelief clanged through her like a ringing gong, sending her ears buzzing and a wave of dizziness with the sound. Both the gold and black mountains? How was that even possible?

“The hells you say,” Airk snarled from where he stood off to the side.

All three kings bristled at that tone being directed at their queens. All three queens rolled their eyes.

“Slow your roll, Tarzan,” Skylar sniped at Ladon.

At the same time, Kasia addressed Brand. “I’m fine, you overblown firepit.”

Meira just quietly raised her eyebrows at Samael, who shrugged, unapologetic.

“How?” Airk asked—demanded, more like—ignoring the byplay between the mated pairs.

“A simultaneous hit,” Brand said. His golden eyes had gone a flat tawny yellow, a sure sign of his anger and a promise of retribution. He’d been a mercenary before taking the throne, and Angelika had no doubt the Rogue King’s next plan would involve blood. “The White Clan struck the gold mountain while the Green Clan struck the black.”

“We weren’t able to get everyone out,” Samael added, grim to the point that a shiver chased itself down her spine, raising the hairs on her neck.

Samael was a fighter. A warrior born and bred. Actually, all three of her brothers-by-blood were, one way or another. Only Brand was holding onto the Gold Clan by the tips of his dragon claws—this wouldn’t help. Samael at least had his clan’s loyalty and trust. His job, before he was crowned king, was as a warrior protecting the previous king. Still, if Pytheios’s allies had managed to force him out, especially after they’d failed before, it had to be bad.

“What’s the situation now?” Airk asked.

“We are all crammed into Ben Nevis,” Ladon supplied.

Angelika shook her head. “Well…they’d be stupid to attack us there. With those kinds of numbers gathered in one place, it’d be suicide to try it.”

“Pytheios won’t attack,” Airk said. “Not yet.”

All three of the other men frowned.

“You sound certain,” Samael said.

Airk crossed his arms, feet planted wide. “He knows your numbers and the size of the mountain. He’ll either wait for your people to starve because there’s not enough food for everyone”—a brutal, long process—“or for dragon-shifter nature to intervene.”

“Infighting,” Brand spat. He already dealt with that enough.

Airk gave a sharp nod. “Exactly. Let you implode, then come in when you’re at your weakest.”

Silence swept the room.

“How do you know this?” Ladon asked.

Airk shrugged. “I know Pytheios. His signature is to let others do the dirty work, use an enemy’s strength as a weakness, and strike only when it’s guaranteed to benefit him. This is not difficult to work out.”

“What do we do?” Angelika asked. They couldn’t let this bastard win. Not this way.

Brand glanced around the room. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Mönkh Saridag, the southernmost mountain of the White Clan,” another male voice said from the hallway.

The other man’s sudden appearance had three of the four men in the room crouched and glaring, along with Skylar and Kasia. Meira simply stepped closer to Samael.

Ignoring her sisters and their mates, Angelika crossed the room and slipped her hand through the crook of the older man’s elbow, turning to face the room calmly. “This is Belyy. We are in his mountain, and he is on our side.”