Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,158
your accomplishments by talking about a boy, but… do you know where he is now? Is he okay?”
Willow studied me for a beat, unbuttoning her jumpsuit and then shimmying out of the too-big material, letting it pool around her feet like a navy mountain. “Uh, yes, I’d say he’s doing pretty good, actually.”
I nodded, pretending to not be fazed by the totally nude woman standing in front of me all of a sudden. “Oh. Great. Thank you so much…” Shoving the awkwardness aside, I grabbed her shoulder and squeezed, our eyes briefly locked. “Really, for everything… For your friendship and conversation, thank you.”
“Same to you,” the rabbit shifter murmured, gripping my forearm tight for a moment, then releasing me just as I did her. She stepped back, flipping off a nearby warlock gawking in his purple jumpsuit without even glancing his way. “If you’re ever in Brisbane, you’ve got a place to stay.”
“My place in Seattle always has a bed for you.”
“Yeah, but not for the fifteen of us,” Willow mused, grinning, “but I appreciate the sentiment. Ciao for now, doll.”
In a flash, she vanished, shrinking from delicate woman to tiny rabbit—who could really hoof it over the gravel. She zipped around wandering supers, just a blur of light brown in the darkness, then crossed a gap in the purple flames without looking back or breaking her stride—making her way home to her family, like she had always wanted.
Like she deserved.
Now, my family still wasn’t quite as whole as I would have liked. Nibbling my lower lip, I glanced back, hands on my hips, to find Rafe still chatting with Fintan and Rollo, Tully in his arms; my spoiled familiar had that vampire wrapped around his massive paw. All we were missing was—
The ground shuddered, gravel jittering around my feet, the cursed walls of Xargi trembling as a low, guttural rumble echoed from its depths. Conversations dimmed around the grounds, the fae flames flickering, shrinking, halved in size by the time the next roar thundered through the prison. Arms falling limp at my sides, I staggered toward the building while jumpsuits fled in every direction, then stilled with a gasp, eyes wide, heart in my throat, when the roof over our old cellblock exploded. Embers and ash and dust spewed everywhere as an enormous figure broke through the stone that had kept us caged, the shape rising like a monster from legend, a primordial being clawing out of the depths—a titan shattering the bars of Tartarus…
Elijah.
In his true form.
Oh.
My heart skipped a beat at the breathtaking dragon that scaled the ruins of the penitentiary, his bellow rattling in my bones as he roared into the night sky.
Backlit by stars and moonlight, he was exquisite—the sunrise against the darkness, illuminated by fae fire, his scales a russet red, coppery orange, and a lush, buttery yellow. Shaking off the dust, the stone bricks that must have weighed a hundred pounds each, he stretched his huge wings, each one tipped with a spike that had to be as tall as me. They carried on down his back, from the nape of his skull along his spine, right to the tip of his tail—protective thorns of pure obsidian, equally intimidating and beautiful. Powerful claws gripped the crumbling structure as he stalked along its rooftop, cracks skittering through the remnants of Xargi Penitentiary. Each huff of dragon’s breath carried like the west wind…
I had never been more impressed by anything in my life.
Never been more instantly infatuated with someone.
Never craved danger like I craved him.
Wings flared, the dragon reared back and unleashed a firestorm across the penitentiary. The fae fire paled in comparison to the crimson scorching across the building, dissolving thick and suffocating stone walls to ash in seconds. Distant cheers tickled my ears, but the entire world fell away in his presence. Nothing else existed outside of that dragon and his fire, his scales like sunshine and his wings the ultimate freedom.
As flames decimated the penitentiary, I swore I felt his gaze drift to me. Even in the dancing light, purple and orange colliding, fae flames and dragonfire turning the night to day, I knew those eyes. I had seen them before, desperate to break free, desperate to see me, trapped inside the body of a man—the man that I loved. The man fate had chosen for me.
Our bond solidified in that moment, fear of this ancient beast ebbing like the lowering tide. Steel stretched between us, forged in dragonfire—utterly unbreakable.