The Warrior King (Inferno Rising #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,61

return for keeping us safe.”

She shook her head, her curls brushing his face, her jasmine and smoke scent rising up around him, curling into him, making his body clench. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.

“It’s either that or mate you,” he growled, at the end of his endurance, his dragon leaning into him with those words.

The more danger they found themselves in, the more he needed to make her his. A compulsion that beat at him from the inside, thanks to the animal side of him. He wasn’t kidding about the mating. The more they’d talked with Rune and the others, the more tension had crept and coiled inside him, the more he needed to claim and protect and…

Fuck.

Without another word, he shoved away from her and stalked out of the room.

Leaving Meira in her uncle’s capable hands, trusting him above all the others—many more others than Samael had anticipated—in this place to watch over her, Samael prowled down a tunnel Rune had pointed him to. The back entrance to the mountain base.

Despite the ongoing situation with the Alliance, and how many were after him, not to mention the fact that more people knew about his location these days, Rune had determined that a fortress was better than being caught in the open. He and his people had dug in like ticks. Though Samael had yet to see more than the four in the room, Rune apparently had plans in place on the likely event of an attack.

Hopefully one involving escape. A large number of those protected by the stone walls were unmated women. Human still, though they showed dragon sign. Mates Rune had found and protected from a system Samael had no idea had broken down horribly.

Rune’s decision to go rogue hadn’t been a whim or a sudden turn to evil. He hadn’t been joking when he’d said that mates, or more precisely the mating system, had driven his own traitorous actions.

Mates disappearing or dying in greater numbers. It seemed Pytheios had his greedy hands in everything, including controlling the Mating Council. That body of already mated dragons was supposed to welcome and care for newly found mates. They were supposed to help those women understand who they were, ease into the culture, find their fated mate out of all the male dragons waiting, many desperately. Only that’s not what had been happening, apparently. The system was rigged, mates going to those more loyal to the High King, or more instrumental in his plans.

Had Gorgon known?

Had the king fucking known? Was that why he’d secretly sanctioned Rune’s actions?

Samael’s dragon was pushing hard to get into the sky. He needed release, having been pent up too long and given the situation with their own mate, who was driving him to madness.

After skirting several sections that had collapsed, with human-size portions cleared, Samael reached the area Rune had assured him was clear to the outside. The second he hit the part of the tunnel large enough to accommodate a full-size dragon, Samael unleashed the beast inside him, willing the shift to happen.

Starting with his skin that turned black and shiny with scales, overtaking even his clothes as everything human about him pivoted around the anchor of his soul, absorbing that form to mold and change into the dragon. Broad shoulders grew broader, his spine realigning and his form pitching forward to all fours. Wicked spikes of razor-sharp bone protruded from his spine and around the crest of his skull. At the same time, wings formed on either side of his shoulder blades, the membrane attached at his armpit, a variation for black dragons, allowing them to fly near silent.

Rune, also on patrol now, had been more than happy to have another stealthy motherfucker out there flying patrol and keeping them all safe. Now that trust had been reestablished.

Pushing off, Samael didn’t even wince at the screech of his talons on rock as he gouged deep gashes into the floor of the tunnel. No doubt the dragons who’d come before him had done the same over time. The bigger concern was how his dragon wanted to go back. To Meira. Turning their headlong plummet down the tunnel into an internal wrestling match.

Until they burst away from the mountain into the moonless, starlit sky.

Only then did the dragon side of him ease up. The world here smelled different than their home in Ararat, or Argi Dahg, as it had once been called. There the smells were sharper, sweeter, and, thanks