The Warrior King (Inferno Rising #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,82

Pytheios had taken her mate’s life.

That was the only reason Serefina had survived and Meira and her sisters had been born into the world at all.

“No,” Samael said quietly.

Meira sighed. “Disappointed?” If she was honest, her heart had dropped a tiny bit with his answer.

Samael shook his head slowly as he traced an absentminded pattern of whorls over her shoulder, then lower, to the sensitive side of her breast, lower still to the dip of her waist and down her thigh, bent up and over his legs. “We’re through the worst of it. Neither of us died in the fire.”

That wandering finger came back up her thigh and over the curve of her backside.

Meira swallowed as he left a sparkling trail of heat in his wake. “I’m curious to see what design shows.”

Human women showed their mate’s family crest, but phoenixes blended the crest her mother carried with that of her mate to create a new design. Except her mother hadn’t carried a crest.

His touch crept lower, closer to her most intimate parts, but not yet touching. “Maybe we should keep trying. Just in case,” he murmured.

That ache they had assuaged once already bloomed between her legs at the words. “Already?”

“You told your sisters two days, right?” He slipped that errant finger between her legs, teasing her with it, parting her only to feather across her slick entrance.

“To rest,” she pointed out with a smile. Not that she wanted him to stop.

Contentment remained, but now hot need swamped the feeling, drawing an answering need from her, heat searing her veins.

“You can rest all you need,” he murmured.

She gasped as he slid that finger inside her.

“I’ll do all the work.”

Chapter Fifteen

Pytheios stood with Tisiphone’s hand on his arm facing the door to his bedchamber. At their back, the bed had been prepared especially for this occasion, sheer crimson panels draped over the massive, ornately carved canopy. This bed had once belonged to a human monarch of some renown. Flower petals, also red, had been strewn across red silk sheets, filling the air with a sickly-sweet scent he could have done without, but they might help his mate stomach the stench of his rotting flesh.

“What are we waiting for?” the woman at his side asked, impatience—or perhaps nerves—rife in her voice.

Though he’d yet to see Tisiphone nervous. The female-born dragon shifter was cunning, a quiet watcher. While his methods of getting what he wanted were more overt, hers were sly. A whispered word of poison in an ear. Effective. Together they would be unstoppable.

“Witnesses,” he said.

Though she didn’t make a sound or move, the flutter of her pulse sped up, tapping through the thin skin of her wrist against his arm. “For the ceremony?”

“For everything.”

He waited for her to protest, but none came. A glance revealed a coolly assured expression in her white-blue eyes. If anything, a tiny smile curled the corners of her mouth.

“This pleases you?” he demanded. “To have others watch me fuck you?”

She lifted a negligent shoulder. “To have them watch me become the mate of the High King? Indisputable proof. I don’t mind an audience for that.”

Satisfaction thrummed through him. Had this been Rhiamon, he doubted the response would have been the same. His brother’s plan to create a phoenix from a female-born dragon shifter had been beyond brilliant. Not even Nathair, however, had thought to have Pytheios mate the Trojan horse they’d created.

Pytheios had reasoned through that one on his own. He’d declared her his phoenix—of course he would mate her. All dragon shifters would expect that. The question was, how would it work? A dragon shifter didn’t have to be turned, already a creature of fire, but Tisiphone was something else now, something different thanks to Rhiamon. Still fire, but new.

Surprisingly, it had not taken long to find the right candidate. A female-born dragon, sterile and unable to provide children, didn’t have much of a future to look forward to. To be offered a position as mate to the High King had been an incentive none would pass up. Still, he’d been lucky to find one who fit in so beautifully with his plans.

I have chosen well.

The chamber door opened to admit Jakkobah, his black-and-red suit appropriate for the occasion but somehow only making him appear sickly. Behind him, Pytheios’s younger brother, Nathair, entered, his jet-black hair a mess and clothing rumpled. He’d traded in the Rubik’s Cube he used to keep with him at all times, a tool to keep his mind and hands busy,