The Cursed King by Abigail Owen

Chapter Eight

Airk stood behind Angelika, who sat in one of the wing-backed chairs facing what was becoming a growing room of supposed allies. Hand resting on the back of her chair as a not-so-subtle signal to the others that she was under his protection, he surveyed the men and one woman who had agreed to join them. So far.

And they observed him.

He was dressed in a white suit with a black shirt that Belyy had supplied. Cut simply, the size was slightly small on his frame, making him feel constricted. If he did have to fight one of these fuckers, he’d split a seam with the first swing. But Angelika and Belyy both insisted he “look the part” of a dragon leader.

Lies, as far as he was concerned, because he was no leader, but he understood. So he kept his mouth shut and stared right back.

Meanwhile, more than one man in the room watched Angelika closely, the light in their white-blue eyes carnal. From who the hells knew where, Belyy had procured for her a dress of a gossamer white material that floated around her slim form. Demure at first glance, it had long billowing sleeves gathered at her wrists by a shinier material, and a sash of the same tied around her waist. But when she walked…

A slit parted revealing her long legs. Legs that had been on either side of him as she’d straddled him in this very chair, as she’d kissed him. Then she’d dropped to the floor and wrapped that pretty mouth around him. That image, that sensation, had burned into him like a brand and brought his dragon roaring to the fore in a way nothing, not even his anger toward Pytheios, had managed to do in all his years.

From a simple pleasure.

Granted, their pleasure had not been that simple. Layered, breath-stealing, cock-straining sensuality wrapped around him. The noises she’d made…

Gods.

But what had really gotten to him was what she’d said. I do not fear you, Airk Azdajah. Any part of you.

Combined with the way she’d also calmed his beast with a simple touch, breathing with them. Fuck, this woman.

Now she sat like the queen she was meant to be, had the fates not done to her what they’d done to him and stolen her potential.

Belyy had invited those he considered “influenceable” to the chamber one at a time to meet Angelika and Airk together and hear them out. Or to watch Airk warily while they listened to Angelika’s story.

None professed to be aware of how Pytheios had murdered Zilant Amon, though a few indicated that they’d suspected. All dragons had been led to believe their previous king had died in another way. Possibly in the mating with his phoenix, Angelika’s mother, Serefina Hanyu, or in a fight with another kind of shifter. Given Pytheios’s propaganda campaign, starting when he’d introduced Tisiphone to dragon-shifter kind, more than one took extra convincing.

So far, though, Airk had not needed to kill anyone.

Like his dragon had beneath Angelika’s hand last night, each shifter eventually softened to her. Airk could see it in their expressions, the way stark lines of aggression eased from their bodies. The words she used didn’t seem as important as the fact that with each she was entirely sincere and open. Something Airk couldn’t be. Not after centuries of holding everything about himself so close.

A knock sounded, and Angelika rose to her feet, turning to face the door. As he had the seven other times, Airk moved from behind the chair and took his place at her side. And, as she’d done each of those seven times, she reached for his arm, paused, and sent him a questioning look. He nodded. Again. Hating himself for making her question her every move around him. Every single touch. But they had to present a united front. Besides, her touch soothed his dragon with each new man who entered the room. More white dragons than he’d seen all together since he was a boy.

Belyy answered the door, warning the newcomer in low, calm tones that he had been summoned for a purpose and to enter only if he could keep an open mind.

Curiosity had pulled each previous person into the room, more so than an ability to remain open, Airk was sure. With the sound of footfall in the hall and foyer, Airk’s muscles tensed, readying to defend himself. Or, more accurately, defend his…this fragile human.

Only the moment the newcomer rounded the corner, the fight left Airk in a whoosh, shock rushing through him in its place.

“Tovar?” he questioned.

Memories flashed in his mind’s eye. Moments so old, they were like faded photographs torn at the edges. Some so hazy he wasn’t sure if they were his memories or things he’d been told by others through the years.

The man in front of him vaguely resembled the boy he’d once known—white hair and eyes striking against rich mink skin—though the familiarity only lingered around the seams. As if, if Airk squinted, the lines would shift into the places he remembered. Instead of a child’s face, still soft and rounded, and a child’s body, all bone and skinny with it, Tovar had become a man with a solid jaw covered in dark stubble and a tall, broad frame with muscles that the child version of his friend had always said he’d get. Like his father.

Tovar’s eyes widened, then sparked with flame as his steps slowed.

“It cannot be,” Tovar muttered more to himself than anything.

Then his lips curled into a snarl. With no warning, the man who’d once been the best of Airk’s friends lunged across the room at him, death promised in the blazing white flames of his eyes.

Airk shoved Angelika out of the way, putting himself bodily between her and a dragon shifter bent on killing. Doing so gave him barely enough time to get his arms up to ward off the first blow.

The second to his right kidney came equally as fast and hurt like a son of a bitch. Inside his head, his dragon roared a challenge, but Airk had him locked down tight. He’d spent most of his time in his cell training in his mind for just such a moment. Nathair, the only person to show him kindness in all that time, had smuggled him books on fighting techniques, and he’d practiced. Picturing each move and countermove and acting out the conflicts on his own.

His training since his escape, mostly with Ladon’s men and lately with Samael’s, had shown that his methods had been effective. None had yet to best him, though most didn’t try hard.

Tovar was definitely trying.

His old friend swung again for that kidney, and Airk step back and knelt, one arm up to block the punch. The other, he jabbed into Tovar’s stomach. That backed the man off, but only for a beat. As he had when they were kids, he came back swinging, and Airk absorbed the first punch with his palm, clamping down on Tovar’s fist, and used the momentum of the second punch to flip Tovar onto the couch.

He threw himself at the man, bringing his own fists to bear on his face. Blood sprayed from Tovar’s nose, satisfaction immediate and sharp inside Airk as he did it again. Only before he connected, the other man got a foot up between them and shoved him off.

“Stop,” Angelika demanded from somewhere off to the side, the worry in her voice scraping over his skin.

But out of the way enough that Airk didn’t focus on her.

He and Tovar went at it, moving through a series of punches, kicks, and blocks at a dizzying speed. Airk came as near to smiling as he ever did. This was what he’d trained for every day for hours in his solitary cell. This was what he was built for.

Airk miscalculated a punch, though, and Tovar had him by the hand, twisting his arm to an impossible angle, but the positioning of which also slowed all the other man’s momentum. They both sort of paused and took in the situation. But then Airk simply flipped sideways, kicking his legs over his head in a midair cartwheel maneuver that untwisted his arm and allowed him to use the motion to throw Tovar across the room, smashing into a glass-faced cabinet.

With a roar, he came charging back out, a brass candlestick in his hand, which he wielded like a club. The metal clunk as it hit first the wall when Airk dodged, then the marble countertop when he dodged again, told him just how heavy the thing was.

He needed a shield. The closest thing to hand was a book. Snapping it up off the coffee table, he parried another of Tovar’s swings, and another, then jumped in closer and rammed the book into his one-time friend’s throat.

Tovar heaved over, trying to suck in air through a collapsed windpipe. Airk raised the book like a worse weapon, prepared to slam it down into the man’s head, his dragon slashing his tail with lethal intent inside his mind. Except Angelika jumped between them, palms up, facing Airk, unacceptable danger at her front and back.

“Move.” He clamped his lips shut around the way his voice had gone rough, all dragon.

“Just…wait,” she said. Not complying, as usual.

“I do not wish to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she insisted. “Or you would’ve plowed through me by now.”

Airk straightened at that, head snapping back. Was she right?

…

Stepping between any kind of predatory shifter and his prey was a stupid idea. It didn’t take a course in Dealing With Shifters 101 to know that, even if her mother hadn't drilled that and other rules into her daughters. Having her back to the man who went after Airk, no questions asked, was also not the brightest move.

But she figured she was facing the bigger threat.

Airk stared at her, sparks flashing in his eyes every few seconds. No scales showing like before, but if his voice was anything to go by, he was at the threshold of his control. When he said nothing but also made no move toward her, she slowly turned so that she stood sideways to both him and the man he’d been fighting. At least he was smart enough not to get off the floor.

“My name is Angelika Amon,” she said slowly. “And the man you were trying to kill is Airk Azdajah.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped, wiping his sleeve under his nose and glaring at her.

Which part? She tipped her head, giving him a pleasantly questioning look. “Are you sure about that?”

“Airk Azdajah is dead.”

She gave a hard shake of her head. “Says who? Pytheios?”

That earned her a narrowed gaze glowing brighter. “If you are who you say, why would I trust you to speak the truth?”

“Why would you trust the supposed High King, who nominated himself for that title when no phoenix was available? Who seems to need to butt into the clan politics in the Blue, Black, and Gold Clans, where new kings have been accepted by their people?”

“Forced on their people,” he spat.

“Says Pytheios,” she pointed out again. “I’m waiting for any sign that you know how to look at facts for yourself.”

“You bitch—”

She stepped closer, and Airk twitched in her peripheral vision. “My sister, Skylar Ormarr, now the Queen of the Blue Clan, helped Airk escape from Everest, where Pytheios held him in a cell since the day that motherfucker killed my father and Airk’s parents. That is what the man you follow as High King did to him. Centuries of time in a cage.”

The man on the floor snapped his mouth shut so hard, she felt sorry for his poor teeth. Then his gaze moved slowly from her to a spot over her shoulder. “Prove it,” he demanded through clenched teeth, breathing harshly through his nose.

She turned her head in time to see Airk loosen the set of his stance and a look come into his eyes that she could only categorize as him trying to block out emotions yet again. “You hold a family secret,” he said with that careful deliberation. “Or you did when we were boys. I was there the day that secret became known.”

Vaguely Angelika was aware of every other person in the room shuffling or stiffening at the words, clearly all wondering what this secret was that Airk referred to.

But Tovar…he went granite still behind her, like a hole of nothing. “It can’t be.”

She turned his way to find him no longer glowing with anger but pale, horror reflected in the slack set of his jaw.

“We once made a vow that we would take our places together as warriors guarding the king. And when Zilant mated a phoenix, who would give birth to only one female, another phoenix…” Airk bent a look on the man that clearly expected him to finish the thought.

“You would be king one day, and I your Beta,” Tovar said.

With surprisingly gentle hands on her shoulders, Airk moved Angelika aside, and she went willingly, able to see that the violence had left them both. He leaned over and held out a hand. “It is I, Tovar. You may believe your eyes.”

“Fuck me,” Tovar said as he grasped his old friend by the hand and got to his feet.

Airk’s lips tipped up at one corner. “I would rather not.” Then grunted as Tovar wrapped him up in a hug that might’ve crushed a lesser man.

“I thought you were dead, all these years.”

“Close enough,” Airk muttered.

They pulled back, inspecting each other intently. “Damn,” Tovar said with a grin. “I think you’re taller than me.”

“You always were small for your age.”

Teasing? Airk was teasing now. A smile—that lip twitch totally counted—and now teasing. Not for her, which hurt, but she was too happy for him to mind.

Finally, Tovar seemed to take in the rest of the men in the room. “I suspect a happy reunion is not top of the list.”

Airk canted his head. “These men are switching sides.”

His friend didn’t seem surprised. “With loyalty to whom?”

Based on a grimace barely hidden, she suspected Airk hated admitting this next part. “To me and to Angelika, and our allegiance lies with her sisters and with the kings of the Black, Gold, and Blue Clans.”

“You ask us to go against our king.”

“Your king is dead, and whoever takes the throne will only show allegiance to Pytheios.”

“Our High King.”

“Actually,” Angelika offered sweetly, leaning around Airk. “The High King should be Brand Astarot of the Gold Clan. The first to mate a phoenix in five hundred years.”

Tovar shook his head slowly as though rejecting the thoughts in his head. “We don’t know who to believe at this point.”

“I’m sorry we have to push you for it now,” Angelika said, harder this time. “But the time has come to see the truth for what it is.”

That got her his full attention. “So you are one of the four phoenixes.”

“One of the four daughters of Zilant Amon and Serefina Hanyu. Yes.” She refused to claim to be a phoenix when she wasn’t.

“Pytheios’s phoenix showed her phoenix sign to the entire dragon-shifter population.”

Angelika nodded. “She is not a sister of mine. If she is a phoenix, she may need our help.”

“Help?”

“Getting her away from that monster.”

Every man in the room growled, and she held up her hands, trying to soften her stance, though not well. How could they not already see this? “I didn’t say dragon shifters were monsters. I said Pytheios is. His greed for position and power has turned him into one, and you know it. If you didn’t suspect, you wouldn’t be here.”

“So show us your phoenix sign,” Tovar demanded.

Airk stiffened, and she reached for his arm, only to stop herself before touching him without his permission. She’d promised.

They knew this moment would come sooner rather than later. “If you want a show of my integrity, let it be this… Something no one other than my sisters and their mates is aware of.”

The room seemed to lean in toward her as she took a deep breath. “I have not inherited my sisters’ powers.”

“Then how do we know you are who you say?”

“At least I am giving you the truth and the option to decide for yourself,” she pointed out, firmly but trying to be gentle. “Pytheios has never given dragon-shifter leadership that kind of respect.”

Anger still reflected back at her in faces full of betrayal. She could feel them slipping away, when she and Airk had been so close to gaining allies within this mountain.

I can’t lose them.

What could she say, though? “Let me tell you of my mother.”