God.
She loved him. Wanted to be his so badly. Wanted it all—to stand inside the ancient circle with him, to listen as he said his vows, to repeat hers back to him. More than anything, though, she longed for his mating mark, to see his tattooed across the backs of her knuckles and hers drawn across his.
Tears pooled in her eyes.
“Can I take that as an aye?”
“Yes.” Her breath hitched as she bucked in his arms. “I love you. I want you, the ceremony, your mark…every little piece of you.”
“Every little piece, Fergie. You want it, you got it.”
A sob caught at the back of her throat.
Kruger held her through it, tucking her closer, letting her cry, uncaring he stood in the middle of a hotel lobby with werelions, water nymphs, Cuthbert and Hendrix looking on.
EPILOGUE
The end of Marlborough Street — Edinburgh, Scotland, 4:32 a.m.
Standing on the back terrace under a ripped black-and-white awning, Callas ignored the pain and planted his palm on the tabletop. His elbow protested the pressure, reminding him of the firefight between the Danes and the Scottish pack. Unbelievably brutal, and enlivening as hell, even though he’d been hit in the crossfire.
Embracing the pain of his still-healing wounds, he leaned in and put more pressure on the joint, punishing himself for his stupidity. Frayed nerve endings squawked. He ignored the strain and reached out, changing the angle of the computer screen.
As he tilted it back, a harmless-looking website loaded—a private forum for serious online gamers. The perfect entry point, a back door into the dark web, one many Dragonkind packs used to relay important information.
A necessary evil, but he hated it anyway, disliking the social aspect along with the idea of using a human invention. His kind weren’t meant to communicate with machines. Mind-speak was better, encouraging more meaningful connection. Fewer chances for misunderstanding…or reading a male wrong.
He reread his message, frowned, made a few corrections, added another line of text, then nodded and hit the enter key.
Message sent.
Now came the waiting.
Struggling to be patient, he drew a deep breath. The smell of salt water came to him. He closed his eyes, listening to waves roll onto shore at the end of the street. The ebb and flow drained his tension. He’d already been in tonight, shifting into dragon form to swim the English Channel. His dragon urged him to go back. Walking the half a block to the shoreline and diving in would be easy. Getting past his brothers-in-arms, not so much.
Beauregard and Rune didn’t approve of his midnight swims. Neither wanted him out alone, given the dangerous turn their mission had taken, but…a water dragon needed to swim. And he preferred open water to salt baths and swimming pools.
Rechecking his work, he clicked through a couple more forums. Nothing yet. No answer from the pack he needed to meet next. Months of searching had brought him to Scotland. He’d been all over Europe, spending most of his time in Prague, hobnobbing with Dragonkind elite, searching for answers, hunting his quarry, trying get the lay of the land. So far, he hadn’t come up with much more than the firm understanding the Archguard—the five dynastic families that ruled Dragonkind—were assholes. Greedy, selfish pricks out for themselves, uncaring of anyone else.
Not that it mattered. His mission didn’t include making friends with the aristocracy. He needed to find one male, and one only.
Done scrolling, he snapped the laptop shut. Bare feet whispering over the cracked pavers, Callas limped down the crumbling stone steps.
Silver gaze flickering in the low light, Rune looked up from his book. The frayed camping chair he sat in creaked, threatening to dump him on the ground. Unconcerned, he raised a dark brow. “All set?”
“We’ll see.” His gaze roamed the setup in the backyard. A snowdrift took up half of the space, covering up an ocean of green grass. Beauregard was sitting in the middle of it, his ass planted in a chair sculpted out of ice, bottles of Windswept Ale sticking out of the snowbank beside him. Callas raised a brow. “Comfortable?”
“Could be better,” Beauregard said before taking a long pull from his bottle.
Callas snorted. “The females just went home.”
A gleam sparked in his friend’s ice-blue eyes. “Could use a couple more to tide me over till tonight.”
Stepping over the lip of the outdoor tub, Callas sank into salt water. A sigh of relief escaped him.
“You should’ve spent more time with the blonde, Cal,” Rune said. “You’re not healing right.”
“Empty feedings. Insufficient bioenergy for my needs.” Leaning his head back against the steel rim, Callas gazed up at the night sky. Wispy clouds. Lots of stars. Pretty place, Scotland. “Fucking unsatisfying.”
“You’re chasing a dream, brother.”
Maybe.
Rune might be right, but Callas didn’t care. He needed to know the truth. And whether the intel he’d already gathered pointed in the right direction. Years in prison—locked away for crimes he hadn’t committed—had taught him not to fuck around. His deal with the Dragon God and subsequent release into the world had provided the chance he needed to right a wrong, to make amends, and maybe, if he got lucky, build a relationship with the male he’d sired but never met.
Thirty-five years was a long time.
He clenched his teeth. Was his son still alive? Had he died without Callas there to protect him? Silfer kept assuring him the infant had survived, but refused to give him any more details. Callas didn’t even have a name. No place or date of birth. Nothing but a fucked-up deal with the cruel deity currently pulling his strings.
“Silfer’s an asshole,” Beauregard said, echoing Callas’s thoughts and Rune’s sentiment. “He wants what he wants. You give it to him, he’ll fuck you over, Cal, and not think twice about it.”
No doubt true, but…hope sprang eternal.
He shrugged, brushing aside his wingmate’s concern. “He wants his son as much as I want mine.”
“Poor bastard,” Beauregard muttered. “He won’t want Silfer to find him.”
“I don’t give a shit. The male’s a means to an end, nothing more.”
After folding the corner of a page over, Rune tossed his novel onto a rusty table. “You don’t think he’s with the Danes?”
“Didn’t get that feeling.” Closing his eyes, Callas relaxed deeper into the water. “Time to look at the Scottish pack.”
“Suicide,” Rune grumbled.
“Probably,” Callas said, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Such was life. A male took his chances with the hand he’d been dealt. Good cards? Bad shuffle in a rigged deck? One way or the other, it didn’t matter in the end.
The Dragon’s Horn — Old Town, Aberdeen
His phone rang.
Boots thumping through the quiet of the empty tavern, Levin rounded the end of the bar. Gaze on the bottles sitting on glass shelves lining the mirrored wall, he did a mental inventory. The assorted vodka bottles were topped up. Gin levels were acceptable. Jägermeister untouched, per usual. More Dragon’s Breath, the brand of scotch he and his brothers-in-arms owned, needed to be brought out and shelved.