The Warrior King (Inferno Rising #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,43

mother trusted him.”

The fact that she dared to hit him, even just that tiny tap, made him pause, but it was her words that pulled him up sharply. “Trusted him?”

Meira’s eyes narrowed, turning icy white. “Why the disbelief?” she asked, voice uncharacteristically cool.

“Because I know this man better than you do.” Once a reliable member of his clan, a respected warrior, Rune had gone rogue and had been stealing mates for a decade, at least.

“Obviously not anymore,” Rune said drily.

Rather than question him, though, Meira shot Rune a glance filling quickly with doubts. “How do you know him?” she asked Samael slowly.

A show of faith. In him. Despite her mother’s trust and her sister’s situation, whatever that had been.

“Rune was captain of the guard when I first joined. Before he left to become an enforcer, upholding the laws of the clans in the Americas colonies.”

“He was a scrawny rookie with more brains than brawn last time I saw him,” Rune commented, his calculating gaze turning wryly amused.

Samael cursed his luck. Of all the dragon shifters in the world, she brought them to this one.

Meira’s white-blue eyes darkened, her brows drawing down in a slight frown as she gave the man an unimpressed stare that would give his old mentor a run for his surly money. “Clearly you don’t know him now, either,” she pointed out, about as irritated as Samael had ever heard her get.

Then her eyes flared wide and she flicked a quick glance at Samael, and he had to tamp down on a ridiculous grin because he could easily read her thoughts. Where had that outspoken side of her come from? The woman he’d been around the last three months would never have spoken back to Rune that way.

For him.

His phoenix was changing, finding her own voice, almost before his very eyes.

Meanwhile, Rune, whom he remembered as being an emotionless bastard, shifted on his feet. Only slightly, but Samael caught it and struggled between shock at her defense of him and another arrow of ill-timed amusement at Rune’s discomfort.

Given how hard Rune had pushed Samael those few years they’d worked together, their relationship had been contentious to say the least. An odd combination of respect and dread on Samael’s part. Seeing his old mentor put on the back foot by Meira was worth all the mishaps that had brought them here.

“Why do you have a kitten?” Rune asked, almost idly.

Samael ignored the red herring and skipped to the bad part. “Rune steals mates.”

Meira shook her head, cuddling the tiny cat closer to her breast, as though worried the black dragon shifter would rip it away from her and kick the thing out. “There I know you’re wrong. He protects them. Skylar told me.”

Samael swung his gaze to the man, watching with narrowed eyes. Rune gave a lazy shrug, basically saying they could believe it or not. He didn’t care.

“Why are you here?” Rune drawled, clearly having run out of patience with the conversation.

Meira visibly paused at the question, then turned to Samael as though he’d been the one to ask it. “I guess I was thinking of safe places my mother sent us. Maul’s no longer in Alaska, and the wolves are with Angelika in Ben Nevis. But my uncle is…”

Realization parted her lips in a silent gasp before she jerked her gaze to Rune. “Is my uncle here? Can I see him?”

The traitor who apparently might not be a traitor glanced between them, then shook his head. “Why me?” he said, more to himself. Then turned and walked away. “Follow me.”

Hell. They had no choice.

Meira raised her eyebrows in question to Samael, who waved her ahead. They followed Rune down a long, dark corridor. Everywhere around him was the sound of water, a constant drip, drip, drip, like the snow and ice on the towering peaks outside seeped inside the mountains to melt and weep through the walls.

Apparently here they used old-fashioned torches set into sconces to light the main corridors. They passed several corridors that weren’t lit, the scents of darkness, decay and fallen rock telling Samael that those sections hadn’t been used in a long time and were no longer safe, prone to cave-ins.

Which was Samael’s first clue as to which mountain they’d landed in.

No one, not even Gorgon, had known where the mate stealer hid himself and the women he took. Though, to be honest, the king had been focused on problems closer to home. Maybe they should have been giving the colonies a