by Abigail Owen
Her brows drew down in a frown that reminded him of an angry kitten. “There are always options.”
“Not always. Trust me.” He should know. How had she survived this long when she was this naive?
Kasia’s stare shifted subtly from snapping with anger to speculative, and Brand held it, refusing to give away any more of himself than he’d already revealed. After another moment, she dropped her gaze. He tried not to notice how she pursed those lush lips.
“Will you promise to stick around until I make up my mind if I’m staying with the dragons?” she asked.
Brand blinked. He hadn’t considered that she had a choice to stay or not. “If you don’t stay, where will you go?”
The corners of her mouth turned down. “I’ll cross that bridge later, if I have to.”
“You’ll burn that bridge.”
He meant to caution her, but Kasia appeared unimpressed. And stubborn. That darn chin was a blatant challenge where he was concerned, a dare he had trouble turning down, making him want to shake her—or kiss her into submission.
“This strikes me as a life-changing decision,” she pointed out. “I’m not making it on the assumption there are zero other options.”
“What if there are zero options?” he pushed.
“Then I’ll make new options. If a phoenix is in such demand, I’m guessing all sorts of people or creatures…or whatever…would be interested in helping me.”
“More would be interested in using you.” Hurting her. Taking her. Enslaving her.
“I get that.”
“Do you?” She was too flippant for his peace of mind.
“Yes, Brand. I’m not an idiot, nor do I own a pair of rose-colored glasses.” And now she was talking to him like an infant. “But I was also raised to stand apart and make my own way in this world.”
She looked away, lips pressed together in a flat line, eyes going vague like she was suddenly somewhere else. “I refuse to end up just like my mother,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Alone. Scared all the time. Missing her mate. A piece on the board of someone else’s game.” She took a deep breath. “So maybe I have a different perspective, one you’ve never considered.”
He crossed his arms and tried not to notice how her eyes followed the movement. He’d caught her gaze on his tattoo a couple of times over the last thirty-six hours. “Like other options?” he asked.
She seemed to drag her gaze back up to his face with effort. “Exactly.”
They shared a long look, one filled with unspoken things, things he wasn’t even sure she was communicating to him, or he to her. Things that tightened his body and made him ache in an unfulfilled kind of way.
Time to put some distance between them. Metaphorically speaking. He got up and offered her a hand. “We should get back to the car.”
The second they walked out the door, Brand froze. “Kasia,” he said slowly. “Can you light on fire without the pain?”
She turned her face up to him, frowning, but he ignored her, his senses tuned to the area around them.
“Can you?” he prodded when she didn’t answer.
“Yes.”
He nodded. “When I tell you to run, head straight down the beach.”
“Shit,” she muttered. But that was it. That fast, she was ready to go.
“And if something gets to you before I do,” he said, “light the bastard up.”
IV
Pytheios leaned back in his chair as he considered the people gathered around the table at which he sat and waited on the last arrival in silence. Near silence, except for Nathair. His brother’s incessant need to keep his hands occupied resulted in a rhythmic clicking sound as he solved a human-made cube puzzle, a toy he carried everywhere.
Pytheios barely heard the sound after so many years as his constant companion. Instead, he considered with satisfaction their current location.
The Alps. One of the Blue Clan’s last outposts. Now his.
He’d sacrificed many red and green dragons—more green really—in order to wrest this stronghold from Ladon Ormarr, driving the Blue Clan to their only remaining home deep inside Ben Nevis mountain in Scotland. Gaining this location also gave Pytheios a base from which he could both blockade and attack that bloody bastard currently on the blue throne.
He couldn’t say he particularly cared for this room, which was essentially a cave located deep within the mountain. From the opening to this system of caverns, which looked out to the west, he could see Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in the range, but not from this windowless room with its solid gray rock walls smoothed by time and dragon fire.
Not remotely like his ancestral home in the Himalayas.
His home was almost entirely forged from a glass as hard and durable as diamonds, allowing light to penetrate even the most interior of rooms. The origin of all dragon-kind, his people had been living among those peaks for tens of thousands of years, long before humans evolved from apes.
Pytheios held in a derisive snort at that thought.
Other than as a source of female mates, humans were worse than useless. Though tell that to the dragon shifters in the colonies. In America, still the Wild West as far as dragons were concerned, they lived among the humans, worked beside them. Still, the number of suitable mates found there had supplied Europe and Asia steadily since the colonies had been established. Human women who showed dragon signs were hard to find. He’d let those lawless slaves over there continue to interact with humans and continue to supply his dragons in Europe and Asia with mates.
Mates.
Smoke coiled around him as fury rose to the surface. The others in the room shifted nervously. Even his brother stopped that clacking sound, but Pytheios ignored them.
Five hundred years and he was still dealing with that bitch phoenix—Serefina.
Serefina’s mother had ruled beside the previous King of the Red Clan for centuries and had decided to pass the power on to their daughter—the only way for a phoenix to claim her powers was for her mother to die or to choose to give them up to her daughter. Serefina was meant to be Pytheios’s mate, making him the next High King of all dragon shifters.
But Serefina defied her parents’ wishes, generations of tradition, and her unspoken promise to Pytheios. She had chosen another—Zilant Amon the White King—denying Pytheios the title that was rightfully his.
Worse, succession would have made Zilant the king of both his White Clan and Pytheios’s Red Clan—because mating Serefina made him both the phoenix’s mate as well as the mate of the former Red King’s daughter.
No white dragon was going to rule his clan. Pytheios had made sure of that.
He’d gone after her parents. Killing the king and his phoenix had been easy, since the mother had already chosen to pass her powers to her daughter. Then he’d made Serefina’s new mate pay. Killing Zilant Amon had been a pleasure. He’d never liked that arrogant ass of a leader—someone who thought the clans should live in equality, that the colonies should govern themselves, and that mates should find each other without being overseen by a Mating Council. Pathetic. How Zilant became King of the White Clan was something Pytheios never understood.
Serefina, that traitorous bitch, disappeared before he could do anything to her.
Fuck her. He was the High King of the dragon clans and didn’t need some pathetic flaming bird to prove it.
He’d spread lies through the clans explaining the deaths as a result of her mating the wrong man, and then he’d taken over as King of the Red Clan. And he damn well hadn’t needed a phoenix then. Look at how he’d put men loyal to him on the throne of each of the other clans. Look at how he, and he alone, decided the laws and fates of his people.
Until this Ladon Ormarr had stolen the blue throne, Pytheios had managed
without the magical creature at his side.
Dragons didn’t need a phoenix, shouldn’t need her. He just needed one, and not as a mate. Not anymore. He had other plans for those pitiful creatures.
Hopefully, Jaakobah had good news for him today. Time was running out.
He glanced around the faces at the table. The only piece of furniture in the dark space was an oblong table hewn from pine, the chairs built to match. Primitive, but functional. Three of the five people he trusted most, which wasn’t saying a whole hell of a lot, stared back at him. Correction, two stared back at him, while one stood off to the side and clicked away at his game.
No one spoke, though Merikh, the youngest of this inner circle, glanced away as their gazes crossed paths and adjusted the purple silk tie at his neck.
Irritation spiked. Pytheios had been told once that he possessed an intimidating stare. Didn’t all kings? The members of his Curia Regis—his King’s Council—should be able to hold his fucking gaze, though. Especially his son.
“I apologize for my tardiness, my king.” A tall man, skinny to the point of appearing emaciated, with his cheekbones jutting out from under his skin and pale red hair pulled back in a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck, entered the room. He was dressed in his typical attire of a collarless suit with intricate detail—this one white with blue embroidered birds and flowers—and not appearing at all hurried. “I received important news that delayed me.”
Pytheios vibrated with the effort of containing his impatience when after that, the man called the Stoat, though never to his face, proceeded to take his sweet time in selecting one of the two remaining chairs and seating himself, the protesting squeal of the wood against the stone floor a particularly painful accompaniment.
Jaakobah always had loved to play to a crowd.
“And what is this news?” Pytheios finally asked, knowing the man would never get to it without prompting.
Jaakobah laced his perfectly manicured hands and leaned against the table as he faced Pytheios as though his king weren’t waiting for him. “The woman we believe to be one of the phoenixes that you witnessed last year left the medical facility where she’s been staying.”
Pytheios leaned forward. “With Uther?” They had her?
“I’m afraid not.”
“Wait,” Merikh interrupted. “You sent Uther?”
Pytheios ignored him. “They let her go?” He controlled the scowl that wanted to pull at his face, his skin too painful to allow the expression.
Dammit. Jaakobah had received news of the woman’s existence only two days ago. Uther should have retrieved her if she proved to be whom they thought. How could she already be gone?
I should have gone myself. Why the hell did I entrust something so important to someone else?
But he already knew the answer. Because the energy it took to fly drained his waning powers, and Uther would remain loyal for once—bring the phoenix back untouched. Pytheios had ensured that with a promise of immortality that had nothing to do with mating a phoenix. Not only that, but he’d agreed to remove Volos from the white throne and give Uther reign over both the Gold and White Clans.
Pytheios had no intention of keeping that promise, but for now he needed Uther to stay in line.
However, for the chance of capturing a phoenix, he should’ve weighed the pros more heavily against the cons.
“No. She left on her own.” Jaakobah pulled out his cell phone and messed with it for a moment, swiping until he reached the desired screen.
“She left a note.” He then turned the phone to show Pytheios.
A handwritten note lay on white sheets and read, “I have not been taken, but have left on my own. Do not share my information with anyone who asks.”
They’d missed her? Pytheios stood, leaning his hands on the table and working to control his rage. Beneath his hands, the stone table started to bubble and melt under the heat he generated. “She knows she’s being followed.”
A statement, not a question, but Jaakobah dipped his chin anyway. “I believe so.”
“And Uther?”
“Had not made contact with her yet as far as I know. He arrived after she disappeared,” Jaakobah hastened to confirm in his nasal tones.
Which meant she wasn’t running from them. So who or what had scared her off?
“There’s more,” Jaakobah murmured.
Pytheios gritted his teeth. “Yes?”
“She’s relocated to this continent. I managed to get word that a pack of wolf shifters is on her trail. Uther is tracking them now. They thought they’d caught up to her somewhere in France.”
Dead silence settled over the room as Pytheios absorbed those words. He rubbed the fingertips of his left hand together, wiping away the stone from the table now cooling on his fingertips, as he considered the news.
Wolf shifters. Useless creatures, but still, the Federation of Packs might pull together against him if it meant keeping a phoenix for themselves. He’d need to take them out of the equation.
To his right, Jaakobah’s expression revealed nothing more than a calm patience. Despite his habit of grandstanding, the man never showed any other fucking emotion than calm patience, which just added to his off-putting oddness.
While that unchanging expression came in handy for a person privy to many of Pytheios’s own secrets, every so often, Pytheios had the urge to force those angular features into a different alignment. Fear, shock, pain, pleasure. All would be acceptable over nothing.
Like now, for instance. News such as what Jaakobah had just shared should include some sort of emotion—a cringe, maybe, or a frown, even trembling fear at what Pytheios’s reaction might be would be better than nothing.
Slowly, he said, “You’re telling me a pack of mutts reached the phoenix before I could?”
Jaakobah gazed back steadily with those pale reddish-brown eyes. “Not exactly.”
Pytheios narrowed his eyes to slits, and even Jaakobah stiffened. “You know I hate playing your little guessing games. Spit it out.”
Again, no change in expression. The man merely bobbed his head in acknowledgment in that birdlike way of his. “According to my sources, she disappeared before the wolves could get to her.”
“Disappeared?” The others in the room shifted in their seats at his tone. Pytheios ignored their discomfort. At least the wolves hadn’t gotten to her first. “How?” he demanded.
Jaakobah shrugged. “Undetermined. All I know is she was able to evade them at a motel in France.”
“I suggest you determine it.”
Another dipping head nod.
Could Serefina’s daughter teleport like her mother? Pytheios’s own experience with phoenixes, though limited to only two in his lifetime, suggested each new generation developed her own gifts, unique to her and specific to helping the dragon clans under her care and rule. A teleporting phoenix would make this damn tricky. Serefina couldn’t have hidden from him as long as she had without that ability.
“And find out if she has help,” he added. Because if teleporting wasn’t her gift, then no way was she doing this on her own.
“Understood,” Jaakobah murmured.
Pytheios flicked a hand. “Step outside and wait for my summons.”
The pale man’s eye twitched, the most emotion he’d shown yet. “Of course.”
Once the door closed behind Jaakobah, Pytheios shifted his gaze to the woman at the far end of the table who had yet to speak. Rhiamon, his witch. She was critical to his plans for Serefina’s daughters. “What about the other three?”
He’d seen more than one woman in that field the night he killed Serefina. Even now, the shock of that discovery reverberated through him.
A phoenix giving birth to more than one child was unheard of. Were they all phoenixes? Or had she gone and slept with human men over the years? Hard to tell
, since phoenixes were immortal, achieving adulthood at about the same rate as dragons, but their aging stopped around the human equivalent of twenty-five years.
He hadn’t had much time to determine how old they were, as they had disappeared from that field one by one, Serefina’s powers having grown over the years to allow her to teleport others, even without touching them.
No matter what, he had to find them before anyone else got their grubby hands on them. All he needed was the power inside them, then they could die.
He’d hunted down Serefina and killed her too quickly, before he’d had a chance to take those powers from her. He’d let his rage get ahold of him. He’d intended to keep her alive until Rhiamon could work the spell that would siphon Serefina’s powers, giving them to Pytheios. The strike of his blade in her back had been intended to kill her slowly, giving him time, but she’d died too fast, before the spell had been completed.
However, discovering her daughters had given him hope. He just needed one. One to suck dry. One to reverse time and claim immortality to continue his reign. The flesh falling from his bones would heal, and he would possess the power a phoenix bestowed on the clans. Then he, Pytheios, the High King, could be the one to bring his people peace, without a phoenix at his side.
“I have not located the other phoenix,” Rhiamon murmured.
Unlike the Stoat, Rhiamon’s frustration with her lack of progress over the last year practically screamed across the table. At least to Pytheios.
After centuries with the witch at his side, Pytheios knew the signs. Her curls, lustrous though they’d faded from blond to white, almost vibrated with her ire, and her still-vibrant green eyes snapped. Plus, her habit of tapping a single long fingernail against the table in a slow cadence was a dead giveaway.
Pytheios allowed himself to soften, probably imperceptibly to everyone but her, as he addressed her frustration. “You are already overburdened, my pet. Your efforts in the tower drain you.”
Plus her efforts keeping him alive well past when his body should’ve collapsed. “Not to mention keeping yourself alive, Mother,” Merikh added.