The Warrior King (Inferno Rising #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,48

to me. You’re starting to scare me.”

“Shit.”

He came back to kneel at the bedside, taking one of her hands in both of his, face as serious as the first time he’d seen her in that mirror, and somehow with that physical connection, her nerves settled, despite the swirl of emotions coming from behind that wall of his, contained chaos surging over the top.

“I think we have a big problem,” he said.

No more problems. Didn’t they have enough? “Bigger than Gorgon being missing and Pytheios having another phoenix?”

His jaw twitched as though he’d clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I—” He gave his head a shake. “Fuck.”

Meira waited, trying not to let his tension feed her own.

“I…think we’re mates.” He dropped the bald statement like a live grenade between them.

Meira’s mind short-circuited, his words clanging around in her head like bats in a belfry, drowning out everything else and temporarily erasing all her words. He’d actually said it. Voiced the question in her own mind.

Gods, it explained a lot—his pain and the need focused on her any time she came near. His stark rejection the day of her mating ceremony. The way he’d stayed away from her until he couldn’t. The same way she’d avoided him. How he seemed to understand her, get her. How he saw her in mirrors when no one else could—other than Maul, apparently.

Sam leaned in closer, eyeing her, worry setting his jaw hard. “Meira?”

Words still weren’t coming, her mind a total disaster.

“Mir?” He waved a hand in front of her face.

She focused on his eyes, so close to hers and full of emotions she couldn’t identify, not while her own drowned out what she could receive from him. He’d said those words with no intonation. None. Like it didn’t matter. His face, however, told a different story. What did he feel about it?

“Meira?” he begged now, rubbing her hand between his. “Say something. Please.”

Only she couldn’t.

“Talk to me.” He resorted to teasing her with her own phrase. One her mother had spoken to her often as a child when emotions would overwhelm her.

“I…don’t believe in fated mates.” Ah, there were the words she was searching for.

A small muscle twitched at the side of his mouth, and that invisible wall slammed up between them, impenetrable and telling her exactly how much she’d hurt him with those words. “Why not?” he demanded.

“Because I can’t.” The idea had never made sense to her. Seeming almost…cruel. “This world is too big for there to only be one perfect match. When I was younger, I wrote an algorithm to predict the chances of finding that one person in all the world.” She grimaced. “The odds were terrible. And look at my sisters. What are the chances Kasia and Skylar would both find their mates here and now, among kings? Isn’t it more likely that we end up with the mate who is perfect in that time and place?”

Sam’s hands clamped down on hers. “Don’t be so sure.”

“Of course I don’t know for sure.” This was not going well.

“What about the dragons who die unmated, their bodies riddled with disease, as opposed to those who find a mate and live twice as long?”

“I assume the mating bond is what affects the life span, fated or not. Most creatures deal with disease in old age.” Couldn’t he see beyond tradition and what all dragon shifters had been told?

Sam jerked his head in what had to be a rejection of her arguments. “What are the odds that the red dragon pretending to be Gorgon would die in your fire, if not for fated mates?”

“Bewitched or not, I didn’t choose him. I chose Gorgon.”

Sam flinched at that. Not visibly, but she felt it in a twitch of his hands, and that wall holding back his feelings rippled. “You don’t know that,” he said. “These are all just guesses.”

“That may be true, but I have to believe it.”

“Why?”

Because all the choices I’ve made are wrong if it’s not true. And what about the people I’m trying to fight? The ones I need to help?

Sam grunted when she didn’t answer. “And the dragons who’ve had to watch the devastation of a woman burning in their fire when they choose the wrong mate?”

Meira looked away. Mostly because she’d always hated the idea of those poor women. Also, because her reasoning around that was difficult to swallow, let alone put into words. What if mating was simply a matter of faith? Of a belief strong enough, or a choice solid