“How is this even possible?” he said, dropping his forehead to hers.
Her laugh was full of wonder and joy and filled his heart to overflowing. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”
Odd things had happened with more and more mates lately. Just look at his team. Delaney had had no mark before Finn turned her. Sera had had more than one. Even the ones he’d rescued over time, a few more recent ones had been different. Inexplicable. Something was happening among his kind, but Hadyn was his, and he wasn’t going to question it.
She was right about that. He didn’t care either.
“My mate,” he whispered. Then grinned and laughed, the sound bursting from him, unable to hold it in any longer. He’d found his mate—his fated mate which was a miracle—and she was his for at least the next thousand years.
Hadyn laughed, the sound, a dance. “My mate,” she insisted. Then wrapped her arms tight around his neck and kissed him.
“I should have known,” he said, against her lips.
“How?”
He shrugged. “You smell of mint. Home.”
The green around her amazing eyes sparked at that, and he reached to roll her back under him.
But a sudden sizzling pain struck again, like a red-hot poker jammed into his skin. Only this time, he recognized it lancing through the back of his hand. His king’s mark of loyalty magically returning. A sensation he’d never thought to feel again.
Hadyn hissed, then her eyes went wide with realization. Together they both stared at their hands.
The spot on the fleshy part between his thumb and finger glowed white, then marks appeared and seemed to rearrange, almost as though the lines were a den of snakes, slithering and coiling to form a design until they locked in place.
The mark of king and clan. The symbol of the house of Samael Veles, the new King of the Black Clan. How had the ancient and mysterious magic that governed these marks known?
“Well would you look at that,” Hadyn quipped.
“Holy shit,” was all Rune could say.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hadyn had never known this kind of joy in her life. Her mate, solid and perfect in her arms, still buried, half-hard inside her, and her dragon finally there. As though she had been there all along, only separated by an invisible barrier hidden deep inside her. The animal side of her stretched and purred in utter contentment even as she impatiently asked to be released. Hadyn was just as eager. She wanted to see Rune’s dragon meet her own other half.
She wanted to fly.
It said a lot about her sudden obsession in reveling in the newness and wonder of what had happened that she didn’t hear the bedroom door open. They both caught the grunt of surprise at finding them naked and entwined.
“I guess you won’t be needing these?” a vaguely familiar voice asked.
They both glanced over to find Zeke with his back to them, the skin of his neck bright red, one hand out in the air holding needles, tubes, and other implements to do a blood transfusion.
“I took care of it,” Rune said. “Thanks.”
Hadyn rolled her eyes but couldn’t keep from chuckling.
“Uh-huh. In that case, you might want to come outside,” the kid said.
Hadyn stiffened. Oh gods…the fire, the fight, all those dragons. How could they have forgotten?
“Fuck,” Rune grunted, levering off her then helping her up. His face suddenly paled and she actually worried he might throw up.
“I executed Mathai,” he whispered. “They want my head. If they kill me, you’ll die.”
Hadyn swallowed back an anguished cry. To find each other only to lose each other so soon? “Can we get away?” she whispered.
“No,” Zeke said. “But…things have changed.”
Changed? What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
“You need to come outside. Your people are there,” he said. Followed by the click of closing the door behind him.
She and Rune looked at each other. “Do we trust him?” she asked.
He took a long breath, and she could feel his struggle—to protect his mate or to have faith in this team. Hadyn bit her lip and lifted her hand to cup his cheek, scruff rasping over her skin. “No more running,” she said.
After a long, hard stare, he gave a jerking nod. In a rush, they dressed, then ran out of the house only to stumble to a halt. Beside her mate, her heart in her throat at what they found waiting for them. Rune put an arm out, tucking her behind him.
“Oh my gods, her eyes.” This from Rivin.
Keighan, of course, kept going. “Holy hells, dude, you turned her.”
Shocked gasps—including dragon versions of them—passed through every creature around them.
“Quiet,” Finn’s softly growled word shut them all down.
Hadyn gripped her mate more tightly, and he squeezed back.
A line of men and women stood in the yard and among the pine trees, facing off in the darkness. All the Huracáns, Jiǎ, Lyndi’s boys and Vilsinn, Rune’s other men and their helpers, stood with their backs to the house as though putting themselves bodily between manifest danger and the mates inside.
And Rune, she realized.
The other line had to be the people who’d come after them. Only no one was moving…or speaking, like staring at a bunch of pissed off statues.
“What’s going on?” she whispered to Rune.
In the silence of the woods, only the breeze in the trees stirring, no doubt every shifter caught her words.
He took her hand, and the scrape of his nails had her looking down to find talons there. Which meant he was talking, probably with Finn. “They managed to put the fire out. We’re waiting on someone to arrive.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” The way his lips flattened, Rune didn’t like it.
“If I tell you to run,” he said in her mind. “Run.”
No way in the seven hells was she doing that. They’d only just found each other, and if she ran and he died, she was a goner, anyway. “No.”
He gave a small jerk of his head. “Hadyn—”
No shadow overhead or whisper of wind warned them before a massive black dragon swooped in only to stop directly above them, hover, then lightly touch down. Every shifter around them tensed, expressions dead serious, gazes glittering with fire. A few even shimmered with the beginning of a shift, their dragon’s pushing for release, probably.
The black dragon, whose left eye was swollen shut, didn’t shift immediately. Instead, he took his time looking around, taking in the scene with his one good eye.