What was going on? Was his head a jumble because of the pain that gripped his shoulder? Was the stress of the uprising and the Embassy finally driving him mad? He should have been hunting down Raphael and throwing his white scaled ass back into the holding cell while Gareth’s GOE agents took care of the invaders.
But, he’d followed this dark-skinned woman into chaos.
Farida lurched toward the door, her breathing heavy. She worked to override the emergency code that had locked Karim and the other Egyptian dragons in the garage. Rhys felt a small amount of satisfaction when he thought of the other dragon being helpless. Even if only for a small while. The other dragon clearly thought too much of himself.
Then, Farida’s words returned to him. They wormed his way back into his ears, hearing her voice all over again.
“Hold it,” Rhys said as he swayed on his feet. He reached out and put a heavy hand on Farida’s shoulder to spin her around. She turned wide eyes up at him. “You called me your mate. What was that about? Tell me you didn’t say that to confuse your friend back there. Are we… are we really mates.”
Her face warmed, the golden brown of her skin darkening. She turned her gaze away from his.
“I only said it to protect you.” He eyes travelled up his chest to where blood had blossomed around the hole in his shirt. “Or, at least, I thought it would protect you.”
His hand fell away from her shoulder. Something that had felt similar to hope, a feeling that had soundlessly wormed its way into his chest, fled and it confused him. What had he been hoping for? For this golden skinned woman to be his mate? She was a princess, not a low ranking red dragon’s mate. Without his own beast’s urge to take this woman, he knew their lives for what they were.
Separate.
Still, she watched him with an odd expression on her face. Was it odd, Rhys wondered. He hadn’t known her long enough. He, truly, knew so little about the woman he’d been shot for. A small laugh trickled out of his lips. Was it hysteria from the blood loss? Was it exhaustion from the stress that had been riding him for weeks now?
Who knew.
All Rhys knew at that moment was that his feet followed Farida when the metal bars slipped away from the door. They emerged into a dimly lit room in the Embassy’s basement. Memory hit Rhys like a freight train. His heart raced and he surged past Farida.
She called out, a stage whispered for him to stop. When she caught up to him, she spared no strength to wrestle him to a stop. She pulled his face down to hers with a strength that seemed strong for a woman. Then again, he was only half himself. His beast, his strength was trapped behind the aura that silver cast over his kind. He growled at her in response.
Farida didn’t take it. “You need to see a doctor. Where do you think you’re running off to?”
“Because your people caused a diversion,” Rhys said through clenched teeth, “Raphael, the white dragon we detained after the uprising, was able to escape his holding cell.”
Her hands fell away from him. “How? Aren’t the bars supposed to be lined with silver?”
“You tell me,” he snapped. “Your company runs the security here. Tell me why Raphael was able to escape.”
Her hands went to her hips as she stood her ground. In fact, she leaned into his snarls, not at all cowed by his presence. How could she be? He was half a man. Rhys had half a mind to dig the damned silver out of his chest right then and there. Now was not the time to be caged by it.
“Secur IT deals with technology. The door locks were already there when we installed the code to activate them. We don’t forge holding cells.”
The wind was taken out of Rhys’s sails. He wanted to be mad at someone. He wanted to rage against everything the world was throwing at him. He couldn’t help his sister. He couldn’t stop the white dragon from escaping. Now, he wanted a woman that would never be his.
He wondered when life would stop screwing him.
Farida chewed her lip as her eyes became distant. Rhys wanted to pull her face up to his and nibble that lip for her. He wanted to lift her in his arms and feel her legs wrap around his waist. What sound would she make if he slammed her against this wall? If he took her mouth, her body for his own?
She’s a princess, he reminded himself. Certainly not meant for you.
“He couldn’t have gotten far. Everything happened so fast. When I called the Emergency Level, he was probably still inside the building.”
Rhys felt himself let out a sigh. So, all he had to do was go room by room to figure out where Raphael had been locked. It released the knot in his chest. One of the knots, at least. Still, he continued down the hall, hand pressing against the scar on his chest, trying to feel the ball of silver beneath it.
Farida followed behind him. He wished she would go away, if only so that he would stop thinking about her. But, she remained and the need for her, the one that made his pants more than slightly unbearable, stayed with him, too. She unlocked each door they passed with her security code, no longer taking a moment to lock them behind her because Rhys kept moving.
“What is your problem?”
Rhys came to a sudden halt. He spun on her.
“I need to do something. The Embassy is in chaos because of you. An enemy of my family has escaped and could be bloody anywhere right about now. I need to fix this. All of this.”
“Rhys,” she breathed. Her voice was soft, so much unspoken in a single word. He couldn’t take on the world alone. He couldn’t fix everything by himself. It was too much for a single person, even a dragon.
Those were the thoughts that rocketed through his mind. Those were the truths. His shoulders fell. He wished he could be strong enough to fix all those things. He wished he had the secret key to every problem in his hands.
Farida closed the space between them. Her hands gently touched either side of his face and pulled him into her. He found himself leaning into her touch, closing his eyes and trusting her. This woman he’d met only a day before. While he was effectively human.
Her thumb brushed his cheekbone and he felt a bit of stress melt away from his bones. When his forehead touched hers, she whispered.
“I know this is all my fault. Let me help fix it. We can do it together.”
Rhys couldn’t stop himself. His hand snaked around her back and yanked her into his body. His lips descended upon hers. He wanted her in a way he’d never wanted a woman before, burning with such a ferocious need. Farida nipped his lower lip and her fingers dug into his waist, an echo of the need he felt.
Tangled in their passionate kiss, they stumbled and crashed into the wall. Her body was pinned beneath him. Without the beast’s urges in his head, his own desires sang loud and clear. His pants tightened, pressing into her so hard that he wished he could rip away the tight fabric that wrapped around her wide hips and take her then and there.
Then realization hit Rhys like a bucket of cold water. He fumbled away from Farida.
She stayed pressed against the wall, her own breathing haggard. Her now empty hands turned into fists. As if she wanted to reach out and grasp something, but couldn’t.
“You lied,” he whispered.
She turned wide, panicked eyes up at him.
“You lied to me a moment ago. We’re…”
“Mates.” The words left her in a breath, barely a sound but enough to feel like a punch to Rhys’s gut.
He waited for the fire to churn inside of him, but without his beast, it felt far away. That didn’t mean the anger felt far away, though. It felt like a kind of pressure all around him, pushing him into something small.
“What was the lie about? Was it because a red dragon wasn’t good enough for you, Princess? Was it because I couldn’t protect you back there?” His throat became tight. His eyes burned.
His own mate didn’t even want him.
The roar was caught in his throat, behind the pressure that cinched it closed. He spun around, fist flying. It connected with the plaster wall. Bits of the wall sprayed t
hrough the air and pain stung through his knuckles, reminding him just how weak he really was in that moment.
“I lied,” Farida began behind him, “because I’m ruining your world. I lied so that you could walk away from me and your life could go back to normal.”
Rhys didn’t stay. He walked away from her, heading in the direction he thought the holding cells were until he hit a barred door and remembered he couldn’t get far without her. The urge to rip the bars from the door was overwhelming. But, in his state, he couldn’t put a dent in them.
“Shit,” he breathed.
His head shot up and he looked behind them. It was probably only a matter of time before the Egyptian dragons managed to pry the bars from the door locking them in the garage. There had to have been at least fifteen of the Egyptian dragons in the garage. A handful of them could have ripped the bars free in a matter of moments and they hadn’t locked many of the doors behind them as they moved in search of Raphael.
He could have turned back the way they came, handed her over to her people, and been done with her. It would have been a simple task, one that could have been dealt with in a press conference that could rescue the reputation of their newly formed Embassy. But, he knew the truth now. He knew why his body drew him to her. Mates were supposed to be a dragon’s one chance at happiness. Rhys looked at the golden skinned woman and wondered if they could be happy, someday.
She chewed her lips, something like true regret on her face. Without shoes, in ripped stockings and oil stains across her tight skirt, she looked less like a princess and more like a woman he could love. She looked fierce. If she’d showed him anything, she was. But, she was also soft and tender.
“My life was a damned mess before you arrived,” Rhys informed her. “Adding or subtracting you isn’t going to put a dent in that mess.”
Rhys watched as relief flashed across her face. It loosened her muscles and made her take a single step toward him. He wanted to pause, to imagine the life they might have, but there was too much going on. There were the Egyptian dragons and her unbearable fiancé to deal with, not to mention Raphael’s disappearance.
He didn’t know where to start.
Didn’t know who to kill first.
Thankfully, Farida made the choice for him. She rushed toward the nearest computer screen, finding one in an adjacent office that only took her a moment to enter. Once she slid into the seat, she was able to pull up the camera feed once more. The screen flashed between images of empty rooms, rooms full of confused humans, and the halls that the Egyptian dragons were now storming through.
In a flash, Rhys caught the young assistant. She was indeed in Lobby B, like he told her. But, this woman wasn’t cowering like the politicians and reporters hiding in the lobby with her. She stood with her back against the wall, arms crossed over her chest while she stared at the camera.
Daisy was something else, something that no one would see coming. He just hoped that it didn’t come at him after this. He cursed himself for giving her what she wanted, a promise to be upheld. Especially now that his mate stood by his side. Neither of them were going to like the deal he’d made.
“Why can’t I find him?” she muttered. Her fingers clicked away at the keys, flashing past a screen where Karim glared at the camera above him like he could see Farida watching him on the other side.
Rhys owed him. And it would not be pleasant for either dragon. But, first, he needed to get this damned silver out of his body. Then he would show Karim what it meant to be Farida’s mate. He would show him what it meant to hurt.
“There!” Farida’s voice shook him from his thoughts of violence.
On the screen, Raphael was slinking through a window. They caught him just as his form slipped outside and into freedom. Rhys wondered why the doors had bars, but the windows had no security. Then again, a dragon at full strength could break through the meager human security, as Raphael had already proven.
Rhys had to stop him. But, he also wanted to put Karim where he should be. In the ground. He also felt responsible for the madness that had taken over the Embassy. It was, in part, his job to keep things like this from happening.
“Go,” Farida said, spinning in the desk chair to face him. “I will turn myself over to Karim and shut off the emergency lock down. You go and take care of the white dragon. You don’t have much time if he’s outside the Embassy already.”
Rhys’s heart leapt in his throat. Panic was real and cut like a knife. He shook his head, closing the space between them to pull her out of her chair and feel the press of her body against hers.
“I will not give you over to him,” Rhys growled.
Farida gently disengaged from her mate and held her hands up. “That isn’t going to work. Not today when there is so much at stake. You have no idea what the white dragon could be up to. You and I both know they’ve been causing a lot of trouble as of late.”
Rhys let out a breath, haggard and choked as it was.
He was not powerless. Not like he thought he was.
“Let me go with you,” he said. He took her hands in his own and held on like she might drift away from him at any moment. “Then, as soon as they are outside and the Embassy is safe again, I am taking you back. They can follow me back to the Territory for all I care. I will unleash Elgar upon them if I have to.”
“He’s still alive?” Farida said with a hint of surprise in her tone.
“Confined to his home in the mountain as we speak. He’s taken a shining to collecting chalices as if they were the holy grail,” he confessed. Then, just to lighten the mood, he added: “I heard our leader has started to hoard things as well. Old maps. I guess he misses the outside world just as much as the rest of us.”
“From the rumors I’ve heard, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was his wife hoarding the maps.”
Rhys laughed, hearty and happy. He could definitely see a happy life with this woman. Once they got through this.
Farida held her breath while she thought. Rhys’s hands migrated to her waist, unable to let her go while he could still hold her. He wished he never had to let her go. He wished there was a chance for them to be together, to feel what it would be like to be inside of her. He feared that their new relationship would end before either of them got the chance to know one another in any way.
“Let me see if we can negotiate with Karim and the gold dragons. They are my people. If I beg them to help in exchange for my quiet return, they could be on our side for a small while.”
His fingers tightened, but not bruisingly so. She was made out of tougher stuff than a human. He was not quite human, not quite dragon right then, caught in between and unable to reach his full strength.
“I’ll kill him if he lays a hand on you,” Rhys growled.
“Deal.” Her gaze was flat and somber. She meant her word. She would watch Rhys tear Karim limb from limb.
Maybe he was getting ahead of himself.
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Chapter Seven
Farida didn’t like what she was about to do. It was stupid and the very last thing she wanted to do. But, her time was up. She’d had a good run. She’d gotten to live a good portion of her life as she wanted.
And, it had been good.
She’d discovered the things that made her happy, a thing she might not have been able to do back home. Farida discovered computers and video games, a way to reach out into the wide world and connect with others through stories. She discovered that she liked pistachio ice-cream and that Paris was highly overrated in comparison to her home.
She only wished she’d come to Wales sooner, met Rhys before all this happened.
But, none of that could be changed. Her eyes fell back on the computer screen and she pinpointed which halls Karim and his gang of dragons were prowling through. The security system hadn’t held them off for too long, she noted. When this was all over, she would have to remind the red dragons to implement anti-dragon measures beca
use the ones currently installed were woefully obsolete when it came to dragons.
Perhaps an electrical current in the bars would have slowed them down. The current could be engaged once the bars snapped into place. She would have to submit a proposal after this was all said and done.
Trying to straighten her spine and feel confident about what she was about to do, Farida led the way through the halls toward Karim. Behind her, Rhys practically sulked. It wasn’t a pouty sulking, but one full of fire and rage and defiance. He promised to hurt Karim.
She wanted to tell him no, to tell him that was not the way things should be done, but she had a feeling that the boy her heart held out for was long gone. The promise of a crown had twisted that boy into something just short of a monster and there was no getting back the Karim of her childhood. This was her parents fault. Whatever they’d whispered in his ears over the last thirty years had done this to him, because he’d been part of her initial escape.
They could both hear the gold dragons approaching around the corner, their steps syncopated into a kind of war drum that made Farida’s chest tight with anticipation. Together, they paused. The lobby they stalled in was wide. It had windows that looked out over the city, glass panes as tall as Rhys. Farida glanced out at the city below.
“I want to love you,” Farida said, her voice low, knowing that she could not already claim to hold feelings for him. Only the potential to.
“I want to love you, too,” Rhys replied in kind.
Could she hope, that when all this was said and done, that they could have the chance? Of course, she could hope. But, logic told her to hold off on clinging too tightly to it. Chances were, she would quickly be on her way back to Egypt, where she would have to beg for her family’s forgiveness and convince them that in the thirty years she’d had she had not laid with a man and sullied herself.
Which, she hadn’t. Farida had been too caught up in the joys of living her own life that she hadn’t seen a reason for bringing another man into it. She could have the whole pint of pistachio ice-cream to herself. She could have entire days dedicated to her every whim, which often led to days filled with elves and orcs and late-night raids.
Fated Dragons Complete Series: Books 1 - 5 Page 35