“Done,” she smiled, happy with herself.
I yanked her up by her arms out of the blood saturated grass, and crushed her body against mine.
The adrenaline was still coursing through my veins, and I couldn’t get it to stop.
“I think it would be better if I leave,” Jean Luc’s rough voice filled the air around us. “It’s not going to end. At least, if I’m not here, then we might find a way to circumvent this before it gets out of hand.”
No one said a word to disagree with him, and my stomach turned.
I was closest to Jean Luc. He’d been the one and only person to actively try to incorporate me into the daily life of the Dragon Riders.
Without him here, I wouldn’t have that any longer.
“No,” Keifer said after a while of contemplation. “We’re stronger with you. You stay.”
A grin found its way to my mouth, and I felt like shit for smiling when tragedy surrounded us.
Luckily, mine wasn’t the only smile amongst us.***“That’s why they kept the dragons for so long,” Wink’s devastated eyes lifted to mine hours later. “They kept her for her skin. If we’d been only a day longer, they would’ve skinned her and used her skin to come after us.”
We were all clean. Dragons were bedded down in the grass surrounding the sanctuary, their bellies full for the first time in a long time.
The most wonderful thing, however, was seeing Mace and Daya together.
I’d yet to see them for more than five or ten minutes at a time while they were either eating or drinking, but it was enough to ensure that I knew they were both healing.
Daya, when we’d first seen her, had been terribly emaciated. She’d likely been only days away from death, if not hours.
Now, with the heart so close by, and her mate at her side, as well as a belly full of food and drink, she looked like a completely different dragon.
Although, there was no hiding the haunted shadows in her eyes.
Keifer’s sharp inhalation had me turning to him, and the grim look in his eyes matched my own.
“It’s likely that there are more than just this,” I told him. “We need to actively start searching for them.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Keifer growled.
“Me,” Farrow stepped forward. “I can do this. I already did do this.” He pointed at Mace and Daya who were together, their heads touching. “I found them. I can find the others.”
“And how, exactly, do you expect me to trust you after today?” Keifer asked. “You’ve ruined what little faith I had in you.”
Farrow swallowed. “What would you do for Blythe?”
Keifer’s eyes narrowed.
“Exactly,” Farrow snapped. “All this time, and you’d do the same goddamned thing that I did. You know you would.”
“You don’t know shit,” Keifer denied.
“I know that I’ve been in love with her since I was sixteen years old. I may only be twenty-one and a half, but I know my heart. She’s mine. And you continuously took her away from me. I can’t begin to count the number of times you dragged me away from her. You tried to tell me to stay away, but I can’t. Not with the love that Macy and I have.” Farrow stood up straighter. “We…”
“Aren’t mated,” Keifer snapped. “You have no fucking clue about anything. You’ve been so far entranced in your own shit that you’ve never stopped to think about other things. Like, what if you find your mate?” he snapped. “I realize you love her. But your mate, when she comes, won’t care that you love another woman. You’ll literally kill her and you if you stay away from her. What are you going to do then?”
Farrow’s mouth snapped shut.
“I don’t do the things I do to keep you from having what you want. I do it because I know what’s best. I’m older. I am the king. My word is law.”
Farrow bared his teeth.
“I won’t accept you separating us,” Farrow stood, fists clenched.
“I won’t separate you.” Keifer said. “Your mate will do that when the time comes.” He hesitated. “And when that time comes, when your mate comes, I won’t stop you. But until that time comes, you may keep your pet.”
Farrow growled.
“That’s what she is, is it not?” Keifer challenged Farrow.
“She’s going to be my wife.”
That dropped like a fucking bomb in the room.
“Farrow,” Nikolai stepped in. “Find the dragons. Help us. Keep your nose clean. Stay with your woman. But for yours and her sake, don’t marry her. Don’t make any hasty decisions, and for God’s sake don’t think with your cock.”
Farrow gritted his teeth to keep the retort from passing through his lips, and I had to give it to him. For once, he was showing that he knew when to shut up.
That was new.
A few hours ago, he’d have given it just as good as he got it, and damned the consequences.