The Warrior King (Inferno Rising #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,62
to being a dormant compound volcano, sometimes the sulfur scent would give the impression of rotting eggs.
Here, the air was crisper, thinner, like the mountains themselves that spiked into the sky all around him, a solid four thousand feet higher than his home. Samael stayed low to the ground, skirting the treeless boulders and jagged peaks as he flew the border in ever-widening concentric circles.
Rune would be out here somewhere as well, just as silent, just as deadly if anyone or anything were to attack. Samael didn’t bother to reach out to his old clan mate.
He needed the silence.
The blink of lights on the far horizon, the city of Mendoza, Argentina, over a hundred miles away apparently, meant he’d hit the edge of the dragons’ territory. Tipping slightly, he shrank the circles to return to the mountain.
As he flew, Samael focused outward, away from himself. He tuned his senses, reaching with them. Below a vicuña dropped to its knees under an outcropping of rock to find rest for the night. To the west, and at a lower elevation, a royal condor dived off a rock, its heavy body dropping, most likely having sighted carrion in the open spaces below. Lower and farther out still, winds gently stirred the leaves of the trees, and a pine cone dropped from its branch to the forest floor. However, no threat came near that he could detect.
A wail of sirens, coming from inside the mountain, pierced the calm like a needle popping a balloon.
Samael bobbled in the air as his dragon’s first instinct was to protect his mate, jerking them around to return as quickly as possible. The human side, the trained warrior in him, had to course correct, staying where he was, senses tuned to any possible hint of danger from outside.
“What the fuck is that?” He directed the telepathic thought to Rune, whom he hadn’t seen but knew was out here.
“Fire,” came the grim response. “That’s the alarm for dragon fire big enough to hit our sensors.”
He didn’t need to explain more. Samael already knew. Rune was an enforcer, whether or not he still acted as one. As the policing arm of the clans in the colonies, one of the enforcers’ main duties was to put out dragon-caused fires. Dragon fire burned hotter, longer, spread faster, and was yet another way for humans to discover supernatural creatures existed in the world. No doubt Rune tracked them for different reasons. He wouldn’t want unknown dragons anywhere near his base.
Dragon fire on his sensors had to mean dragons were close.
Urgency held Samael taut as a drawn bow, ready for what came next, but he held his course. “I assume we remain at our posts.”
“They’ll contact us if the threat is in the immediate area or if we have to send out a team.”
“To investigate or put out?”
Rune was silent long enough that Samael assumed he wouldn’t answer. The guy never had been big on explaining. The fact that Rune had trained him might explain why Meira was always telling him to use more words.
“A small band of dragon shifters, unaware of us as far as I know, have moved into the area,” Rune came back.
But the tone in his voice didn’t sound angry. More focused. An enforcer never stopped enforcing, it seemed. After everything Samael had been told tonight—about Rune leaving his team and risking his own death to protect mates who weren’t even his—he believed that was true. But not the only truth. “You still protect the shifters in your region, from the Alliance now, whether they are aware or not. Am I right?”
Silence did greet that statement.
“Yeah. I’m right.”
“You always were a smug asshole,” Rune growled. “Keep your senses tuned. The fire could be a diversion.”
“No shit.” As if Samael would make a rookie mistake like that. Through this entire conversation, he’d been sweeping the area, attuned to any possible threat. He didn’t bother to point out that he outranked Rune these days.
Especially if they didn’t find Gorgon.
King Samael Veles. What the seven hells?
Though, if they didn’t find Gorgon, king or not, there was a high chance he wouldn’t be accepted back into the fold of the clan. The truth of that moved like a wrecking ball through him. His entire identity was wrapped up in who he was, the rank he’d fought with everything he had to rise to. To return to being…nobody.
The earth suddenly hushed, the sirens going silent, but so did every creature in the area.