Fire Rising

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Somewhere in Ireland …

Taraeth stared at his missing arm and could still feel his fingers moving. Humans had always been used as entertainment. He had neither hated nor cared about them. Now, he loathed one mortal with all the viciousness in his black heart.

Denae.

She had not just been immune to his seduction, but she had dared to use a blade forged by the Light Fae that had taken his arm.

But the punches didn’t stop there. He had used a blast of magic with enough force to kill two humans, and somehow Denae had survived.

He had yet to figure out how she had managed to do what no other mortal had been able to. None of his spies had been successful in learning her new location either. Kellan, damn his dragon heart, was being cautious with his mate.

“As well he should be,” Taraeth muttered to himself.

Because when he found Denae, there was going to be nothing left of her for Kellan to mourn.

Taraeth looked up when he heard someone outside his chamber. The twenty-foot iron double doors slowly opened as Balladyn strode toward him.

Balladyn was once a high-ranking warrior in the Light Fae army. He had been good of heart and pure of soul. His exploits as the Queen’s Guard were legendary, even among the Fae.

Taraeth had wanted him on his side from the very beginning. It had taken a great amount of bribery at first, and when that hadn’t worked, Taraeth had tried another tactic. During one of the battles in the Fae Wars Taraeth had sent an entire battalion to find and wound Balladyn.

After that, Balladyn was in his clutches. It hadn’t taken nearly as long to break him as Taraeth had expected, but then again, the pure of soul rarely were, because somewhere deep down inside was a grain of evil waiting to take root.

“What have you learned?” Taraeth demanded.

Balladyn stopped before him and lowered his head in a bow. “Samantha Miller has evaded me once more.”

“Humans aren’t that adept, Balladyn,” Taraeth growled. “She had to have had help.”

“I suspect she did. There was a mist about her that was anything but normal.”

Taraeth tried to scratch his face only to realize it was with his missing hand. “The Light don’t yet know what we’re about. They couldn’t have helped her. Do the Kings have an ally in the Light?”

“They have a truce with the Light just as they did with us,” Balladyn said. “The Kings hate all Fae.”

“That might be the case, but I saw a Light while Kellan attacked with the other Dragon Kings. The Light Fae stood near Denae. She looked familiar.”

Balladyn clasped his hands behind his back, his glossy black and silver hair hanging straight down his back. “As you say, my lord.”

“I doubt the Kings would sully themselves to align with a Light, but let’s be sure anyway,” Taraeth said. “Find out who the female was who helped them. I’d like to have a word with her.”

“Is this before or after I capture Samantha Miller?”

Taraeth stared at Balladyn, wondering if that was sarcasm he’d heard or a simple question. “After. We need the human to get to Banan.”

“Samantha is related to Banan only by marriage. The Dragon King won’t put Dreagan in danger for her.”

“You know so little of humans,” Taraeth said as he stood and walked around his spacious king’s chamber with its vaulted ceiling. “Banan wants his mate happy. Samantha is Jane’s sister, so Jane will do anything for her sister. Thereby, Banan will give himself up in exchange for Samantha.”

“We couldn’t hold Kellan, and he was not yet mated. Banan will be even more difficult to hold.”

Taraeth chuckled as he walked around his lieutenant. “Banan will be even easier to hold. As long as he believes we will leave Jane alone, he’ll do whatever we want.”

“A brilliant plan.”

“It’s why I’m leading and you aren’t.” Taraeth glanced at the door. “You’re dismissed. Don’t come back until you have Samantha Miller.”

He waited until the doors closed behind Balladyn before he grasped the shoulder of his missing arm. Whispers moved through the corridors of his kingdom. He felt their eyes on him when he walked among them.

They questioned his leadership since being maimed by a human, but he would show each and every one of them why he was the only one fit to lead.

The alliance with MI5 served its purpose. It was the union with Maitland that he had yet to figure out. He and the Dark got a great deal, but Maitland wasn’t stupid. Maitland claimed to want nothing more than to expose the Dragon Kings and take them down.

Taraeth knew there was much more to it. It might take him awhile, but he would learn just what it was Maitland was keeping from him, just as he would eventually learn Maitland’s real name.

It would take patience. That he had in spades. After all, he had waited thousands of years to have Balladyn as one of his own.

The sky was clear but for a few clouds drifting lazily by. The half moon shed only meager light upon the ground, but Tristan didn’t need it to see as he scoured the area from the air.

He circled back around the cottage and made a wider arc as he thought of Sammi and her kisses. They had rocked him to his very foundation and created a craving for her he knew would never lessen.

That was why he was in dragon form patrolling. It was a coward’s way out, but he wasn’t strong enough to resist Sammi and her appeal.

He had left her after their silent meal to take a shower. The mere thought of her naked beneath the water had sent him running into the night not even bothering to shed his jeans before he shifted.

Tristan glanced at the cottage to see the last light turn off. Had she gone to bed? He groaned as he imagined her lying back with her sandy waves around her.

A black blur whizzed past, knocking into him. Tristan roared his irritation, only to hear Laith’s laugh in his head through their mental link.

“Your mind was elsewhere. Or should I say it’s on Sammi,” Laith said.

“Sod off.”

Laith laughed louder. “I’m no’ sure why you’re up here when you obviously want to be with her.”

Tristan swung around and went the other direction, hoping it would let Laith know he didn’t want to be in the conversation.

Laith wasn’t deterred however. “Tristan. Why are you no’ with her?”

“Leave it.”

“Nay. No’ when I know something is wrong.”

Tristan swung around when he saw Laith flying toward him. “How can you know anything about me? I doona even know myself!”

Laith was silent for a moment before he said, “I wondered when this would come up. For two years you settled into your role as Dragon King as if it had been yours for thousands of years.”

It was true. Tristan had done exactly that. Not even when he learned he had a twin who was an immortal Warrior did it bother him.

Then he met Sammi.

He touched her and saw flashes of his past, a past when he had been Duncan Kerr.

It was those memories that showed Tristan he had been deluding himself when he thought his life was just how it should be. He had a past he wasn’t sure he wanted to know because he didn’t know how it would affect his future.

“I’m a Dragon King,” he stated.

Laith moved next to him and looked at him with vivid purple eyes. “No one disputes that. The fact you are in dragon form is enough for me.”

“Is it? Why was I made into a King? Why was I brought here now? What am I meant to do?”

“None of us have those answers, mate. I doona care why you were brought to us. Frankly, I’m just glad to have another Dragon King. We lost so verra many in the wars with both humans and Fae.”

“I need to know why I was chosen to be a King.”

Laith hit his wing against Tristan’s. “Is that what’s stopping you from going to Sammi?”

“She’s no’ just some woman, Laith. She’s Jane’s sister.”

“Aye. Sammi shouldna be trifled with, and if you were anyone else I’d be telling you to stay away.”

Tristan blew out a breath and saw flames erupt from his nostrils. “Why am I different?”

“Because of the way you look at her, jackass. Doona think we didna all see it.”

He glanced at the cottage to see the glass doors leading from the bedroom to the garden were thrown wide. Sammi reclined on one of the lounge chairs in a white robe with the edges falling open to reveal her lean legs with one slightly bent and the other stretched in front of her.

“Tell me you doona crave her, hunger for her,” Laith urged. “Tell me she isna in your thoughts every hour of every day.”

“Aye, I want her. After kissing her, I doona know how I can keep my hands from her.”

Laith circled away. “For once, Tristan, do something that you want to do. Forget about what’s expected of you. And for God’s sake, stop thinking!”

Tristan couldn’t take his eyes off Sammi. The glimpse of her legs was enough to make his blood heat. Maybe Laith was right. Maybe he did overthink things.

He certainly always tried to do what was expected of him. It seemed the natural thing to do when he’d arrived and learned just who he was.

The others had been around for hundreds of thousands of millennia. He was still trying to learn the history of the Dragon Kings.

Why he had become a King and hadn’t just died began to plague him when Phelan had told him he had a twin—Ian. Tristan hadn’t wanted to believe it. He had all but pushed it from his mind until the images began to flash in his head.

They came at the oddest times, but always when he was touching Sammi somehow. There was no magic in her bloodline of ancestors, so she wasn’t a Druid.

He stopped thinking as he circled tighter over the cottage and found Sammi watching him. There was a small smile on her face, and even from a distance he smelled the clean scent of her soap.

With Laith and the others patrolling, there was no reason for him to stay away. He did as Laith suggested and didn’t just stop thinking, he forgot everything but what he wanted—Sammi.

He landed and immediately shifted into human form. Sammi’s smile grew as she cocked her head to the side. “That never gets old.”

Tristan slowly began to close the distance between them. The night was suddenly full of sounds as the scent of flowers from the garden filled the air.

“I was beginning to wonder if you would ever come down,” she said as she swung her legs over the side of the chaise and sat up. “I love watching you, but I’m glad you’re here.”

“Where else would I be?”

She lifted a shoulder casually and slowly blinked. “Where do you want to be?”

“With you,” he answered without hesitation. It was the one thing he did know, the one certainty that hadn’t faded since he first saw her.

She rose and walked around the chaise to the bedroom. Just as she reached the doorway, the robe opened before it slid down her arms and floated to the floor.

He drank in the sight of her naked backside as his cock hardened.

“Then what are you waiting for?” she asked as she looked at him over her shoulder, her powder blue eyes passion filled.