The Warrior King (Inferno Rising #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,6

shimmered, almost like an optical illusion, with a rainbow of colors that reminded him of dragon scales in the sunlight.

She’d worn black for her mating day. His colors.

Not your colors, asshole. Her new clan’s colors.

Her bouncy curls were hidden from view, and he could just discern her face behind a sheer black veil. A minor break with tradition. Most veils were not sheer, hiding a mate’s face from the man pledging himself to her until the ceremony concluded with him removing the veil. Why had Meira chosen to show her face?

So that Gorgon would be sure he was mating the right woman. Samael had no idea how he knew that to be true, but he was sure of it.

That kind of thoughtfulness seemed so…misplaced…in the dragon shifter world. He hated the idea of watching her harden through the years, or worse, be broken by the cruelness of their world.

“Are you sure?” Kasia asked her.

The same question had plagued Samael for months. The logical side of him knew exactly why she was taking this step, appreciated her bravery, even. And Gorgon was a good man who would care for her. But the way she seemed to float through life with a baffling kind of unresisting nature, like a leaf blown haphazardly by the wind, had him grinding his teeth with frustration any time he came near her. He’d swear she didn’t really want this.

Meira nodded at her sister, her natural grace and long neck making the mundane action regal. Her vibrant reddish-gold curls at odds with her quiet nature, and those ever-changing eyes fascinated him. Her hands were slim and graceful with long, tapered fingers. The growing obsession to see their paleness against his bronzed skin gnawed at him. She was taller than her sisters, willowy, and would fit just under his chin if he held her.

And she smelled of jasmine and smoke. His personal weakness.

His dragon prodded him to go to her, but Samael gritted his teeth against the urge, like razors scraping the inside of his skin, and shut down that instinctive response. Instead, he stood to post at the side of the doors.

No one would harm the two people he was now sworn to protect to his dying breath. Not on his watch.

On an unseen signal, the doors opened just enough for Kasia and Skylar to enter ahead of Meira.

Facing the door, she glanced neither to her right nor her left, keeping her gaze straight ahead, eyes blank, and suddenly she appeared almost small, as alone and afraid as the last memory he held of his young sister, only ten years of age the day she died.

“My queen.” The words passed his lips before he had the conscious thought to speak.

Gods, she was beautiful…and terrified. Holding herself together by a thread, he’d bet. The tidal wave of need to wrap himself around her and shield her from anything that could put that look in her eyes was impossible to deny and still unwanted. She was not his.

Samael had to stop himself from doubling over to keep his dragon inside.

If you can’t have her, you can still help her.

Chapter Two

“My queen.”

With a gasp she couldn’t quite contain, Meira turned to face Samael, who was standing to the side of the door. A man she should not be so painfully aware of when she was about to mate another.

How had she not felt him there?

Too locked in her own fears, and his emotional walls were impenetrable, that’s how. Now, in his eyes she found compassion. She swallowed, and suddenly a jolt of desperate protectiveness hit her. As though those walls of his had wavered, just for an instant.

Meira tightened her grip around the small gold chest she held. But she couldn’t force her gaze away from the man before her. Samael was acting as security today, not part of the ceremony. As captain, perhaps he found it more effective to project a stomach churn–inducing kind of intimidation.

Forceful.

She’d thought so the first day she’d seen him in that damn reflection. Almost painfully handsome with a strong jaw covered by dark scruff. She could see why such a man would earn a high position. The Captain of the King’s Guard, and it fit. The man had hardened warrior stamped all over him—from the wide military stance to a body honed for battle and a hard light in those eyes, as black as night, that never stopped checking the corners of the room. But she suspected there was more to him, walled away