Cupping her hand over her neck to hide the evidence of what every dragon shifter considered to be her tragedy, Hadyn turned to face Rune.
“Believe me now?” she asked.
If the black dragon shifter truly knew her adopted dad, he’d have to. The symbol on her neck was Chaghan’s family crest. Kip had been his son.
Rune said nothing for a long second. “What happened?”
Hadyn hid a groan. She’d gone through this story so many times—every time they ran across other shifters, not always dragons either. Telling it was getting old. Putting off the inevitable, she glanced around. She’d give her left pinkie finger for a chair. Even a bean bag would work. A prayer pallet. Anything more than the hard, cold rock. Getting up here had been no easy feat, taking her days. Now that she was off the mountain and able to relax, exhaustion was moving in fast. Or maybe that was the shock that the man she’d approached for help didn’t believe her.
Which probably accounted for her unusual reaction to Rune’s fire. Made sense. Fatigue. A puff of relief escaped her as the realization struck. If she hadn’t been so tired, she would have seen that sooner. At least she had an answer to that riddle.
“Mind if we go someplace more…comfortable?” she asked.
He lifted a single eyebrow. Something about the arrogant, uncompromising gesture got under her skin. Or maybe he was already there, and that expression finally poked deep enough.
“Really?” she snorted a laugh. “The eyebrow lift? Don’t be a cliché.”
His expression wiped of all emotion, but she sensed that she’d irritated him. Good. She was irritated herself. Tired, frustrated, desperate, and…ready to cry if she had two seconds to allow herself a decent wallow.
“I can’t take any chances,” he said. “A lot of people would love to kill me.”
“Now that I’ve met you, I don’t blame them.”
He crossed his arms, watching her through hard eyes. “If what you say is true—”
“I let you blow fire on my neck. What else do you need?” She flung out an arm.
“Magic could imitate a mate’s mark,” he said.
Not any magic that she knew of, but who was she to contradict him? “Are you going to help me, or not?”
He stared at her hard.
Like she was supposed to be intimidated into revealing her nefarious plan.
Forget this.
Her parents were rotting in a dungeon in Colorado, if she was lucky. The alternative was that she’d taken too long, and they were either gone or dead. She’d taken the risk that they’d be moved while she was gone, because no way could she possibly get them out on her own.
Hadyn shook her head, then leaned over and picked up her pack, already mentally preparing to go back the way she’d come. At least going down a mountain was faster than up. “You know what? Forget it. I clearly wasted my time coming here.”
Hefting and strapping herself in as she moved, Hadyn stalked toward the open maw of the cavern. Why had Chaghan sent her all this way, wasting almost two weeks of time she could have been getting help elsewhere, if Rune was going to be a dead end?
A hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her to a stop with a surprisingly gentle tug.
She turned to face him, hands on her hips. “What?”
“You give up easily, don’t you?”
Hadyn lifted her gaze heavenward and spun away. “I don’t have time to sit around jabbering. There’s a difference.”
This time the hand on her arm wasn’t quite as gentle. “Stop, dammit.”
…
Apparently, the gods—fickle fucks that they were—had decided to have a little fun at his expense and make his life more convoluted by sending him a little spitfire asking for his help.
A dragon mate spitfire.
He still wasn’t entirely convinced she was what she claimed, despite the evidence he’d seen with his own eyes. He’d never—not in almost five hundred years—seen a mark do that. Fade like hers had. When dragon fire was applied, the symbol was supposed to glow true and bright with the family crest and color of the female’s mate. Once she was mated and turned successfully, it would show permanently, like a tattoo.
A mark didn’t fade.
Two mates he knew of recently had had unusual markings, though. One woman hadn’t shown any mark whatsoever, but still showed other dragon sign and mated successfully. The other woman had sported three different marks, a cluster fuck of complication that had eventually brought her and her mate to his mountain seeking asylum.
Hadyn’s mark, though…
The green crest had appeared under his fire, but only after a prolonged exposure, rather than immediately. Even then, it had been a faint trace of what it should have been. Like the mark faded along with the ghost of her mate. Green, the scrollwork of the Buqa family, surprisingly simple and identifiable. He’d seen the same mark on the back of Chaghan’s neck when he’d met the man both when he and Qara had relocated to the colonies and again about ten years ago when he’d tried to recruit the rogue dragons.
At the time, he hadn’t been able to understand why Chaghan—openly against Pytheios and those in leadership—wouldn’t join, but now he got it. A daughter. A human daughter who would never be anything but.
Her adopted father, she’d said.
Her dead mate’s parents had taken her in? Raised her. What had happened to Hadyn’s human family, though?
Or was this all a ruse?
Since leaving the Huracán team and going rogue, Rune had survived for one reason only. He didn’t trust a fucking soul.
Even if that soul came with the face of an angel and the moxie of a demon. Not usually his cup of tea, but he’d also sensed her arousal at the lick of his flames against her skin, the heady scent wafting up toward him.
Not real arousal and not her fault. That could happen with women mates when performing that test. He didn’t take it personally. What had sent a bolt of shock streaking under skin was the way he had, for the beat of a massively idiotic minute, pictured what her green eyes might do in the throes of true passion. Would they change color? Show flame?
An aberration, his response.
Not a single mate under his admittedly dubious care had inspired a response in him like that before. Maybe it had been too long since he’d had a good, hard fuck. Rune made a mental note to take care of that when he got to where he was going.
With Hadyn in tow, apparently.
She glared mutinously at him, ready to walk out if he kept jerking her around. Too damn bad. He wasn’t risking his life for an unknown entity.