That explained the pounding. A vague image of a man with flaming pale-green eyes standing over her hovered at the edges of memory. Warmth in her veins had her frowning. “Did you give me blood?”
Qara nodded. “You weren’t waking up.”
Yikes. She must’ve worried them sick. At least the headache wouldn’t stick around long.
Where was she, anyway? She glanced around the room, not recognizing it. And her parents were here…
Oh my gods. Her eyes flared wide as memories started to filter in around the blooms of pain. The plan. The breakout. Rune. They’d been successful? Got them out of the dungeon?
“Where are we?”
“Still in the mountain,” Chaghan said, turning grim. “But we’ve taken it. For now.”
Everything from the past year hit her all at once, and a sob of relief broke from her before she even knew it was bubbling up from inside. Heedless of the throbbing in her head, she sat up, throwing her arms around her parents.
“You’re okay,” she whispered. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Maybe if she said it enough times, held them long enough, she’d believe it.
“We’re okay.” Qara ran a soft hand over her hair. “Because of you. And Rune.”
Rune.
A whiff of his scent reached her. He’d been in here. She knew it. Oh hells. “Where is he?”
“He took care of the dragon that attacked you.” Chaghan nodded at a pile of ash in a pool of blood on the ground beside the bed.
Rune did that?
“I sent him to bleed off the anger by making this place safer while we’re here.”
Hadyn huffed a laugh. “Bet he loved that.”
Her father’s eyebrows lifted. “He said that you are his. Is that true?”
Qara bit her lip but said nothing.
Of course Rune told them that. Possessive dragon. She’d wanted to inform them gently, try not to break their hearts in the process or at least ease them into it. “He asked,” she said carefully, watching their expressions, trying to gauge their feelings.
“What did you say?” Qara asked.
Hadyn took a deep breath. “I haven’t answered yet.”
Even trying to put that as delicately as possible and leave it open-ended, both her parents still flinched. She knew they’d need to time to adjust to the idea. Hells, she needed time. She hadn’t given Rune her answer yet, and this was a conversation she preferred to have when her head wasn’t killing her.
She cleared her throat. “Putting aside”—she waved a hand at the door—“Rune. What are our options?”
One of those frequent shared-mates moments passed between them. Then her dragon mother moved off the bed to stand with her mate facing Hadyn, her long salt and pepper hair coiled up on her head in the old-fashioned chignon she insisted was still the most flattering hairstyle for her, her eyes, darker green than Chaghan’s, and more determined.
“We can run,” Qara said.
Despite the fact that running was how they’d spent all their lives together up till now, the way that idea sat, like fire ants crawling all over her skin, told her that wasn’t the right choice. “Or?” she asked.
“We stay and join this fight,” Qara said immediately.
This fight. Right.
The clans and kings were at war. The colonies, left to their own devices, seemed to be imploding. One entire team of enforcers, the Alaz, were gone. The Huracán team was now openly in rebellion against the Alliance, because of her. Because she’d brought them to help her get her dragon parents released from prison. Were Rune and his people going to fight? She had a feeling she knew the answer to that. There was no more running and hiding. There couldn’t be with so many involved. The time to bring this into the open had finally come. The fact that her parents even posed staying to join in as an option told her that much. The current dragon leadership rotted from the inside like a Halloween pumpkin.
They needed to be taken out of power.
“Is that what Rune…” She winced as they both tensed. “Is that what he’s going to do? Stay and fight?”
Chaghan’s gaze was both serious and kind, the way he’d always been as a father to her—determined to make her learn responsibility, learn to take care of herself, make sure she could survive if he wasn’t there to protect her. Always with kindness. “Yes. Do you want to stay because of him?”
She knew what they were asking. If she’d stay and fight with the man who wanted to claim her as his own. A man not their son.
She hesitated. Gods this was so hard. She wouldn’t ever hurt them for the world.
“I think we should stay,” she said, taking the cowardly way out. They all needed more time before they dug into her and Rune. “The reasons for going against the Alliance…they’re good ones.”
Chaghan drew himself up to his full, imposing height. “We think so.”
“Then I say we stay.” That settled that.
They didn’t ask about Rune again.
…
Rune deliberately kept his back to the living quarters. He stood in the largest space in the Alaz mountain, which, like almost every dragon shifter mountain, was essentially a hangar, reminding him of the bigger mountains the clans used as home bases in Europe and Asia. The kings used those spaces to train their warriors. Had the Alaz done the same?
Too late to ask, since they were dead.
Finn was using it as a meeting room. Now that they’d taken the mountain, they had decisions to make. Finn and Deep had first gathered everyone here to discuss what needed to happen next. He hadn’t heard anything from Chaghan or Qara beyond the fact that Hadyn was awake. Which of course came right at a moment when he couldn’t fucking leave to see her.
Nothing else.
Which meant, instead of listening to a damn word being said, he’d been checking the entrance every thirty seconds. Hoping to see her face. He was becoming obsessed.
With effort, he yanked his wandering thoughts to what was going on in front of him.
“You expect us to stay here now and try to hold off anyone trying to get in?” one of their volunteers was asking. “That’s not what we signed up for.”
He wasn’t wrong. Taking this mountain had been easier than it should have been, despite the trap set for them. That didn’t mean holding it would be.
“You knew the risk when you came,” Drake snarled. For once, Cami didn’t curl her hand into his or try to calm him, adding her own glare for good measure.