The Cursed King by Abigail Owen

Chapter Four

Angelika stared at the string of one-sided texts on her phone. The unanswered words were a beacon to how she’d failed in one of her closest friendships. She’d texted Jedd every day since he’d left with the rest of the pack, but he never replied. Never even read the texts, as far as she could tell.

The problem was he’d fallen in love with her. Only, she hadn’t seen it until it was too late…the day he’d proposed to mate her.

That day, he’d escorted her back to her room after lunch. As soon as the door closed behind them, he had blurted out, “Will you mate me, Angelika?”

She’d had her back to him, and the shock that had coursed through her was just as sharp now as it had been then. She knew now just as she’d known then that it was her fault. That she should have seen his feelings sooner. Maybe she could have spared him pain.

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

Had there been anything she might have said to let him down easily? She’d thought about it countless times since that night. “I can’t.”

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

“To them? 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’d put a hand out, stopping him. “I can’t offer much, but I know I can make a difference. The gods blessed my mother with four daughters for a reason.”

His dark eyes had been intent and achingly hopeful when he grabbed her by the shoulders. “You can do that as effectively at my side. You feel something for me. I know you do.”

She’d cupped his face. Even now, she remembered the sadness that squeezed her heart. “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.”

Jedd’s hope had visibly died a quick, agonizing death, and her faithful wolf shifter’s eyes darkened with pain even as his expression contorted with anger, turning ugly. He’d accused her of having a fascination with Airk.

Had it been that obvious? She hadn’t even known at the time.

“I don’t know what part he has to play yet,” she’d answered.

Jedd jerked from her touch and 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.”

Jedd had been hurting, and, because he was her friend, she’d hoped he would understand. “It’s not about our family ruling all the clans, Jedd. It’s about taking out the man who destroyed things in the first place.”

He hadn’t understood. Not at all.

Instead, Jedd had whirled on her, urgency in the taut line of his shoulders. “That’s not fate. It’s politics and strategy.”

He was talking about fated mates, but she wasn’t a dragon mate. Phoenixes were the ones who did the choosing, which was why she could never mate him.

Whatever he’d seen in her face that night must’ve convinced him, because his head dropped forward, a sign of total defeat. If he’d been in his wolf form, he might’ve dropped to his belly, nosing at her ankles, which broke her heart just thinking about it now.

But then he’d pulled his lips back, baring his teeth. “If you think I’m going to stand by and watch you make the biggest mistake of both our lives, then you aren’t the woman I thought you were.”

That had been the last time they’d spoken alone.

Gods, what a mess she’d made. In her selfish need to have a friend, she’d hurt him. Badly. Their relationship had remained strained after that, and when his pack left the dragon stronghold, Jedd had left without a word to her.

She stared at her phone, disappointment and regret turning heavier by the second.

Unanswered texts, almost a hundred of them, stared back at her from the screen as she waited, hoping he might reply to this one.

But no reply came.

A knock on the door had her jerking her head up, pulling herself out of her own thoughts. “Yes?”

A familiar dark head, one of Samael’s men, popped in. “Urgent video call for you.”

She was on her feet and out the door almost before he’d finished delivering the message. Angelika ran through the halls as quickly as she could. Each time she had to slow down as she passed another person—granted, that didn’t happen often—she gritted her teeth at the need to present an unhurried, calm demeanor. Now that the dragon shifters knew who she was, all eyes were on her and her sisters and their king mates for guidance.

Urgency could be misconstrued as panic, and that would cause its own problems.

Not a situation she’d ever found herself in. Their life in hiding with their mother had been conducted as simply and quietly as possible among humans. Nothing to draw attention. Ever.

Angelika nodded at an older gentleman—or she assumed older, given the gray peppering his jet-black hair, though that wasn’t always an indication—and received a suspicion-lined stare in return. One she’d repaid with a deliberate smile, hiding the flare of hurt.

How would he look at her if he knew she was useless?

Still, addressing suspicion or even hatred with the same clearly hadn’t made anything better for dragon shifters over the centuries. Maybe it was time to fight fire with kindness. She didn’t see that as weakness or letting the hatred stand. She saw it as addressing the true heart of the situation.

Knowing a person, being treated well by that person, would make it harder to doubt or hate that person.

See? Women really should rule the world.

She slipped around the corner and into a room with an entire wall of monitors. This room was for communications only—unlike the war room, dedicated to tracking dragon fires, which burned hotter than human-made flames, with the screens showing heat maps of the local regions. There were also cameras on the mountain itself in the event of an attack. Currently, most of the wall showed Kasia’s and Skylar’s faces, along with their mates, in blown-up high-def.

Ladon stood out the most, his black hair and the grim slash to his mouth, when added to the scar that ran down the left side of his face, making him look scary as shit. But his remarkably blue eyes were kind, and Angelika had never feared him. He might be the Blood King, but he would never harm Skylar or her sisters. His expression right now was probably more about bad news than anything.

Meira and Samael already stood in the room waiting for her. In addition, in the room with her, two representatives from the Gold Clan and two others, Reid and Arden, sent by Ladon to represent the Blue Clan, had gathered. Likewise, representatives of the Black Clan, among others, reflected in the monitors standing behind her sisters. A new addition to help with clan-to-clan relations as well as witnesses there to be part of all decisions made as allies.

Airk, surprisingly, stood with those in the room. She glanced at him, then at Meira, who wasn’t looking back. He must be needed for a specific reason to be included on such a call.

She closed the door behind her, trying to breathe a little less heavily after hurrying so hard. “Sorry it took me so long—”

“Pytheios is coming for you,” Skylar stated baldly.

It took Angelika a second to get out of her own head, because that had been the furthest thing from what she’d expected to hear. An attack, maybe, or an uncovered plot to take down the kings standing against Pytheios. But…

“Me?” She nearly looked around for a different “you” her sister could be referring to, but logic settled in before she embarrassed herself that way. Of course he’d be coming for her. She was the last unmated phoenix, and he didn’t know about her being dormant. They were still keeping that bugaboo a secret.

She blew out through her nose. “I wondered when that would be coming.”

A cough from Airk had her glancing in his direction. Not that he showed any emotion to go with the sound. Probably disapproval.

“This is bad, Angelika,” Skylar snapped.

She pursed her lips, swallowing back a sarcastic retort. “I’m well aware,” she answered quietly instead. “How do we know this is true?”

Skylar and Kasia both hesitated.

“One of my early visions was of a man—tall and wearing an ornately embroidered collarless suit. Skinny to the point of appearing emaciated, with his cheekbones and bones jutting out from under his skin, and pale almost to the point of being albino, though his hair was reddish.”

To her right, out of the corner of her eye, Angelika caught how Airk stiffened at the description, but he didn’t question Kasia, who continued.

“He was speaking. He said, ‘I can save your sister, my queen, but you must act fast.’”

She paused.

“You describe the Stoat,” Airk said. No inflection, as usual, and yet Angelika got the sense that his personal feelings about the man were anything but steady.

“Stoat?” Kasia asked.

“For the weasel he is,” Airk stated. “The man is one of Pytheios’s closest advisors. I saw little of him where I was held. Usually only when he was bringing in one of Pytheios’s latest prisoners.”

“His name is Jakkobah,” Ladon supplied in his gravel-and-smoke voice. Most supernaturals didn’t have discernable accents. They lived too long and spoke too many languages to hang on to them. But Ladon still had a trace of the British Isles in his.

Why was this important? “Why are you bringing up this old vision now?” Angelika asked.

“Because I heard those words from Jakkobah’s lips myself,” Skylar said. “Verbatim. Just now.”

“She was with me when I received the call,” Ladon said. “Jakkobah asked to speak to her directly.”

Silence settled over the room, thick and uncomfortable. A dragon high in Pytheios’s leadership wanted to help Skylar save one of her sisters?

“We cannot trust this man,” Airk stated. Still controlled, and yet she felt his anger like a lash.

No one else appeared to notice that anger, though, given that no one was giving him extra space or watching him like a grenade with the pin pulled. How did they not see the roil of emotions behind the mask?

“He is my spy within Pytheios’s organization,” Ladon dropped into the conversation.

Airk may as well have been carved of ice he went so cold. “He is your spy?” he asked slowly. “How do you know he is not playing you into Pytheios’s traps?”

“I don’t,” Ladon admitted. “But he has yet to steer me false.”

“What else did he say?” Angelika pressed. There had to be more. How did they know she was the sister he referenced?

Through the screen, Skylar’s gaze landed smack on her. “He said Pytheios has set his eyes on you, little sister, and that he already has several dragons loyal to him placed within Ararat. They are positioned to come for you in days, a week at most. He wasn’t sure exactly when.”

“Do we trust him?” Angelika asked.

“About this?” Ladon flicked Airk a quick glance. “My experience with Jakkobah’s information in the past has always been proven true. Combined with Kasia’s vision, I don’t think we have a choice.”

“So do I come back to you?” Angelika asked.

She refused, this time, to look at the man beside her. Returning to Ben Nevis meant leaving Airk.

“No.” Skylar shook her head. “According to Jakkobah, Pytheios has men positioned with all three of our clans in case you disappear from one and show up in another.”

Well…damn.

“Let me contact the gargoyles,” Meira offered. “They are probably the best option to keep you safe.”

Keep her cloistered was what they meant. An option that would exclude her from everything. Out of the war. Out of avenging their parents’ deaths. Out of helping her sisters, though she was limited in the ways she could.

“You want to keep me from the fight?” She’d already missed so much, hiding among the wolves, dammit. Angelika closed her eyes, thinking of her father. “Those were my parents he killed, too, you know,” she whispered.

None of her sisters said anything, though beside her Meira flinched. They didn’t need to speak, though. When she opened her eyes again, their expressions told her everything. They would do whatever it took to keep one another safe, and she, of all of them, needed the most protecting. As she was youngest of the quadruplets by only minutes, they’d always underestimated her. Now the fates had heaped coals onto the fire and betrayed her by giving her nothing. Not a smidgeon of power, no way to defend herself or be helpful or act as anything but a problem.

A problem they now wanted to hide.

The hells with this.

She’d find a different way. One that would be difficult for Pytheios to pin down but still allow her to be involved, even if in a small way. She slid a glance in Airk’s direction, an idea stirring.

He was really going to hate it.

…

Angelika had to time approaching Meira with her plan exactly right, because she couldn’t even get started without her sister on her side.

Almost two days she’d had to wait, because Airk had disappeared the first night after they’d received Jakkobah’s message. Two days that Angelika had held her breath through every agonizingly slow second, worried that the gargoyles would finally respond to Meira reaching out to them. Her sister had promised the notoriously private and secretive creatures that she would no longer come to them via reflection, which meant a slower form of communication.

Angelika had no idea where Airk had gone during that time. Meira hadn’t had more information beyond another smaller settlement within the White Clan’s boundaries. But she’d managed to winnow out information of his return, which had been late last night. Not only that, she’d learned he was leaving again today…and she intended to be part of that plan.

Which meant getting Meira to agree.

This conversation would take privacy and major begging. Knees on the floor might be involved, maybe tears and hand-wringing as well. The timing was the critical part because she’d also need to get to her sister before Meira was in front of her computers. Once her focus involved a screen, Meira didn’t tend to absorb anything else. She also got pissy about interruptions.

Like a cave troll.

Which was why Angelika was lurking in the damp stone hallway outside her sister’s chambers, just around the bend with a massive vase as her cover. She was not an expert on antiquities, but this one was no doubt priceless.

She shifted, trying to keep her foot out of a puddle. The constant dripping in this area of the mountain was due to the fact that a natural cavern, versus dragon-made, formed a small pool nearby. If one followed the water all the way down the natural flow of the mountain, eventually you ended up in a thermally heated lake at the bottom. The dragons here used that as a source for hot water for their showers, which meant most of the time her hair smelled of sulfur. Not her favorite thing.

Angelika peeked around the vase, then slowly withdrew and leaned against the wall. Nothing. Samael usually left about now. What was keeping them?

Actually…strike that question. The fact that she didn’t have shifter hearing was probably a good thing right this moment, given the way Meira and Samael could hardly keep from touching each other. All her sisters and their mates were like that, actually. Still…without having the proof shoved down her ears, she could pretend that Meira and Samael were sleeping, or brushing their teeth, or something equally mundane.

Then the sound she’d been waiting for reached her ears—the soft click of a lock followed by the handle turning and the swoosh of the door opening.

“Airk won’t need you until tonight,” Samael was saying. Which meant Meira wasn’t working yet if he was talking to her at all.

Angelika took advantage of her opening and scooted around the vase, casually strolling down the hall toward her brother-by-blood. Although, given how mating worked, calling him her brother-by-fire would probably be more accurate. “Hi, Sam.”

He cocked his head—only Meira was allowed to call him that—and she chuckled. “Sorry. King Samael Veles.” She executed an overly frilly bow with lots of toe pointing and hand twirling.

He snorted a laugh, dark eyes amused and the white of his teeth stark against his bronzed skin. “That’s worse.”

She grinned, and he shook his head.

“Do you need Meira?” he asked.

“Just coming by for a chat.” She tossed in a shrug for good measure. No big deal happening here. Only escaping being cloistered with a bunch of stone people and a goat. That’s all.

He nodded, but his gaze was directed over her shoulder, searching the passageway behind her. “Where’s Alim?”

The bodyguard they’d assigned to “keep her safe” until she went to the gargoyles? She’d hoped Samael would miss the fact that she’d given the man the slip. Skylar wasn’t the only sneaky phoenix in the family who could make herself difficult to follow or find when she wished.

When Angelika merely stared back with wide eyes, Samael’s lips flattened. “I see.”

A smidge of guilt at getting Alim in trouble with his king pricked. But this conversation was important.

“I’ll be fine with Meira in your room,” she insisted. “No one can get in there, and she can always get us out. Send Alim up, and I won’t leave the room without him. Promise.”

“Gods save us from the Amon sisters,” Samael muttered, then opened the door wider to usher her inside.

She didn’t miss the fact that he locked it from the outside when he left. Untrusting ass. But that didn’t matter as far as plans went. “Mir?” she called out.

“Back here.”

Uh-oh. Her sister was already in her office. Angelika hurried across the sunken living area—decorated more casually than one would expect for royalty, if you discounted the massive royal seal in the floor made of onyx stone—to the open door leading into the office. “Have you already gotten started?”

Meira was sitting at a wall of monitors, not unlike the war rooms in all the dragon shifter mountains Angelika had seen so far. Only way fancier. A mating present from King Gorgon, Samael’s predecessor, before his death.

“Not yet. I was about to.” Her sister smiled even as her gaze drifted toward the monitors on her setup.

Angelika silently gave herself a pat on the back for timing this so well. Did she know her sibling or what?

“Oh good.” She scooted the deep leather desk chair, squeaky wheel protesting loudly all the way, around Samael’s big oak desk and across the room to where Meira sat, then plopped herself down.

“So…what do you need?” Meira asked.

“Can’t a girl just want to spend time with her sister?”

Meira shot a glance at the clock in the corner of the center screen. “At six in the morning? Nope.”

“Maybe I had trouble sleeping and knew you’d be up,” Angelika pointed out.

Only Meira frowned, concern lining the pucker between her brows. “Is that true?”

Half true. “I can’t go stay with the gargoyles, Mir.”

Her sister, curls escaping the loose bun she’d shoved her hair up into, only frowned harder, her eyes darkening to a deeper blue with her concern by the second. “I wondered when you’d say something.”

Because of her empathic abilities? Or because she knew Angelika?

Of the four of them, Angelika had always been closest to Meira. Though they were quadruplets, born over the course of roughly an hour, according to Mama, they acted more like sisters born years apart. As the oldest, Kasia and Skylar were close, leaving Meira and Angelika to form their own unique bond. She adored all her sisters and would do anything for them. But Meira…they understood each other.

Just because Angelika went through life with a smile and could find the silver lining in the darkest of thunderstorms didn’t mean she was naive or always happy. What tended to upset her the most was being left out. Being coddled or overprotected or shut away “for her own sake.”

Ironic, given her current situation. The fates had a terrible sense of humor.

Mama had done it to all of them—secreting them away from the world. Skylar, who acted bound and determined to take Mama’s place now that she was gone, would try to do the same if Angelika let her. Kasia, too. But Meira would understand. She had to.

“Where will you go instead?” Meira asked slowly, and relief soothed Angelika’s wrought nerves because her sister didn’t say no or try to block her from this. “The colonies, maybe?” Meira mused. “I don’t think you’ll be any safer there. The wolves?”

Angelika had debated that option but discarded it just as rapidly. The problem was Jedd.

She couldn’t do that to him. Not the way he felt and the way she…didn’t feel. It would be cruel. Angelika shook her head. “No. I don’t want to put other communities at risk. I also think it’s a bad idea to stay in one place where it would be easier to find me after enough time passed.”

“So, what—”

“I intend to go with Airk.” The words came out in a tumble.

Meira’s eyes shot wide, and she stared and stared as she digested that information. “He said he’d let you?”

“Not exactly.”

Meira frowned. “Then what?”

“I don’t think he’d agree initially, but I would be terrific at helping convince others to join us. I know I would. Better than him probably. Plus, it would keep me on the move and in unlikely places.”

“I suppose that’s true. But if he doesn’t agree, then—”

“Help me show up where he’s going next. He won’t be able to say no until it’s too late. I’ll get a chance to prove myself, and if he still doesn’t want me along after that, I’ll go to the gargoyles.”

Meira let out a low whistle. “And I thought Skylar could be reckless.”

“It’s not that bad.” Angelika pulled a face. Yes, it was. “I could pass as a white dragon if I need to. We don’t have to tell people who I really am unless it’s necessary.”

“I mean about Airk.” Meira gave an exaggerated shiver. “He’s not a shifter I would want to cross…or tempt his dragon, for that matter.”

“He won’t hurt me.” How did no one else see that about him? His iron control was entirely about leashing the beast within. Sure, he was an unusual case, but someone had to have faith in the man.

“You know him well enough to say that for certain?” Meira pressed.

Maybe not, but gut instinct told her she was right, and she was rarely wrong about people. Besides, she had to do this. Going back to hiding wasn’t an option.

“Please, Mir.” She reached out and took both her sister’s hands in hers, needing her to understand how important this was. “I have to do something to help. I can do this.”

Meira’s troubled expression didn’t ease, though. “And if you’re caught? He can’t shift, so he can’t protect you that way.”

Angelika stood up and showed her sister the gun holstered at her hip, hidden by a fleece jacket. She’d always been a better shot than anything else to do with weapons. As arrogant as dragons could be, they wouldn’t expect her to be armed. That would give her an advantage.

“I’m not defenseless. None of us ever truly was, thanks to Mama.”

Meira’s smile turned small and sad, but she still shook her head. “How can you ask me to do this? Kasia and Skylar will be furious.”

“They’ll understand when you explain it to them.”

Meira scoffed.

“Please.” Begging was not beneath Angelika. “How can you ask me to hide away? Like I’m not strong enough to face this with you or Kas or Sky.”

“But—”

“How is this any different than you disappearing with Samael a few months ago?”

Meira raised an eyebrow. “I can escape easily through any reflective surface.”

Angelika threw her hands in the air. “Assuming there’s something shiny around. Come on, Mir. Powers don’t make you invincible, and all of you have risked yourselves in some way or another. Skylar broke into Ladon’s mountain to rescue Kasia with no way to get herself out. And Kasia went to that two-faced doctor when she kept going up in flames and couldn’t control anything about her powers. Even you decided not to stay hidden with the gargoyles where you’d be safe.”

Meira twisted her lips, gaze skittering off the to the side. A sure sign she was about to cave. Angelika tried not to sit forward and made sure to arrange her expression in a worried pinch. Or she hoped that’s what her face was doing.

“Don’t sideline me,” she pleaded when her sister still held back. What she was about to say would hurt her sister, but it would also help her understand. “I never got to see our father. You did—”

She choked off the words as unaccustomed tears clogged her throat.

“What do you need from me?” Meira finally asked.

Angelika shot out of her chair and flung her arms around her sister’s neck. “Thank you.”

Meira clutched her tightly. “Don’t make me regret it,” she whispered. “Losing you would break me.”