Fuck.
Digging even more carefully, trying not to make anything else move around him, Rune managed to uncover the rest of his friend. With the last rock he pulled away, the big one on Deep’s chest, a groan of agony mewled from the red dragon’s dirt-crusted lips, though Deep’s eyes remained closed.
An invisible hand of grief wrapped around Rune’s heart and squeezed like a motherfucker at the sight of his friend, hell his adopted father for all intents and purposes. Deep was crushed almost beyond recognition. Absolutely beyond healing.
Then another sound hit Rune’s mind. A gasp that could only be described as a desperate kind of heartbreak. Calla. He had no doubt.
Not like this. Please not like this.
Deep’s head shot up, convulsively, blood bubbling out of his mouth as he tried to inhale. “Calla—”
Rune had to choke back vomit. Deep’s terror was like blood in his own mouth, bitter and metallic and vile.
Don’t let them die apart.
Deep started thrashing, going berserk as he tried to claw his way through the rubble. Digging at the rockfall until long streaks of blood trailed through the dirt and rock as he shredded his talons to get to his mate. Rune tried to stop him. Tried to help. But Deep was in a state where nothing penetrated beyond his need to get to his mate.
“Calla!” he bellowed, his voice turning desperate.
“Rune.” He swung around at Deep’s calling his name. Then suddenly the mirage-like waves appeared all around the red dragon.
“No.” Deep’s voice again, only Rune caught the despondency in the single thought.
Deep roared then coughed, body tensing so hard he quivered, as though trying to keep his dragon at the forefront. He wasn’t trying to shift back to human—the change was happening against his will, as though the creature part of him was withdrawing. Which could mean only one thing.
He was dying. And Calla was too.
Once bonded together, if one fated mate died, so did the other. But Deep and Calla were separated. On either side of the rocks. After centuries together.
They couldn’t go this way.
“Deep,” he whispered. “No.”
Rune did the only thing he could. He shifted to human as well. Only, maybe his bulk had been holding the ceiling up, because the second he did, the thunder of rocks filled the room, coming down on top of him. Pain shattered through his legs, and he yelled, even as he covered his head with his arms and waited for the collapse to stop.
The pain swirled with darkness, his body trying to pull him into unconsciousness, but he fought it. He wasn’t going to let Deep die alone, dammit. As soon as the sound turned to silence, he stoked fire from within to light the way again, his chest glowing.
Whatever landed on his legs had rolled away but left him in bad shape. He didn’t try to fix it. Instead, he searched for Deep. Round the edge of a boulder near his head, he could see the shock of the man’s white hair. Scratching and clawing, Rune dragged his body around and over the new fall of rocks, agony ripping through him with every move, his light growing dimmer as darkness tried to claw him under.
By the time he reached his friend, Deep was an old man again, lying against a boulder as though he no longer had the strength to move, his chest rising and falling so rapidly he was practically hyperventilating, though the air sounded more like sludge, a gurgling sound coming from inside him, blood dribbling out of the corners of his mouth, his nose, his ears.
Deep reached out blindly with his hand, as though grasping for his missing mate.
Rune collapsed beside him, gripping his bloodied hand, mostly bones with age. “Deep?”
Gods, was that his voice? He sounded like death. But he’d worry about his own wounds later. “Deep? Tell me what to do.” Open your eyes and give me an order the way you used to. I’ll make my body work. Walk on water for you if I have to.
A hand landed on the top of his hair. “It’s okay, son.”
Deep closed his eyes, his expression a study in agony and acceptance. “I’m here my love,” he whispered. Was he talking to Calla? The crags of his face relaxed, his expression turning oddly…peaceful.
“We’ve had a good life together.” Deep’s voice cracked over the last word. “Stay with me until I’m gone, and then I’ll find you in the afterlife.”
He was talking to Calla.
“Stay with me,” he whispered, voice threadbare. “Not much longer.”
Rune forced himself to stay awake as he lay there silently, holding his old friend’s hand, listening to him talk to his mate. And in his mind pictured the story Calla had told Hadyn about how they’d met. Pictured them both young and in love. Pictured the way Deep had waited for her, lived a human life for her. The way he looked at her all the time, as though she was his everything.
Because she was. That’s what love was, fate or no fate. Mated or not.
The depth of their connection went beyond any understanding. Mystical and elemental and perfect.
Finally Deep took one long, ragged breath and released it…and he was gone. He and Calla were both gone.
Rune, still holding his hand, felt him go. As though his spirit had left his body behind on that last exhale, to soar out of the ruined mountain and into the winds where he would wait for Calla’s spirit to join him from where she lay—on the other side of the fallen rocks, so close and yet apart from him in this last moment.
Deep was…gone. Just gone.
Almost as though he had his friend’s permission to follow, Rune succumbed to oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Are you hurt?”
Hadyn lifted her head, dried tears no doubt leaving streaks through the dirt covering her face in a fine layer of grit, to find Finn standing over where she sat beside Calla’s ashes.
Oh gods—
She opened her mouth to tell him, only the words lodged in her throat. “Calla’s gone.”
Finn’s face was a study of grim mourning, smoke banked in his eyes. “I know.”
Qara rushed out, Chaghan hot on her heels, to drop down in front of Hadyn. Where was Rune? He hadn’t talked to her. All night long while she’d waited for someone to come for her, he’d been silent.
She’d watched in horror as Calla had turned frenzied trying to get to Deep, then held her dying body after she’d shifted. And all Hadyn could think was that if Rune died, she’d want to go with him. That as heartrending as Calla’s death was, she was still with Deep. She wasn’t left alone and crushed.
Hadyn stared into the dark abyss, hoping he’d appear while Qara sort of babbled along as she checked over every part of her.