The Flame King’s Queen (Fire and Desire #3)

Epilogue

Zabriel

Down on the dragongrounds, Esmeral is shrieking alarm calls that are carrying across the city. I run over the bridge to her, my heart pumping in apprehension. Isavelle is nowhere to be seen, which makes no sense when she would be the first to feel her dragon’s distress.

The rest of the flare is milling about in confusion, searching the skies and the cliffs for danger. Strikes from the wild flare. Attacks by enemy mages. None of the other dragons are joining in the calls. Scourge is standing over his mate, and he snorts in confusion.

When Esmeral sees me, she shrieks even more urgently. She’s close to the ground and her wings are lowered like she’s covering something. I lift the edge of a wing, and what I see surprises me.

“Isavelle?”

My mate is cowering beneath her dragon’s wing. Her cheeks are flushed, and she cringes away from the light. There’s sweat on her brow, and she whimpers.

“I got caught outside, Alpha,” she sniffles. “I didn’t realize I was going into heat.”

A pungent wave of her scent washes over me. I smell a tang of fear and distress because she’s been caught in the open, but most of all, there’s an overwhelming sweetness that makes my head swim with pleasure and my knot ache with need.

The restlessness and irritability that I’ve been feeling all day suddenly makes sense. I’ve been going into a rut, and the scent of Isavelle’s heat has pushed me over the edge.

“Come here to me, sha’lenla ,” I groan as I reach for her. “Alpha’s got you.”

I scoop her up in my arms, tuck her under my chin, and wrap my cloak around both of us to hide her from the daylight. There were things I was meant to do today. People to see, plans to put into action. That’s all been swept aside by my need for my mate.

I glance back and I see that Scourge is sheltering Esmeral with his wings and nipping the back of her neck with his teeth. They’ll fly somewhere beautiful for their own heat and rut, like the hot pools to the south.

As always, I take my mate to her nest in the castle. It’s been furnished with a canopied bed enclosed with heavy curtains and piles and piles of blankets and cushions. Isavelle’s face melts with relief as I place her on the bed and draw the curtain around us.

For several long moments we’re kissing and holding each other tightly, groaning in relief that we’re alone together in a small, dark space. Her sweetness and the richness of my rutting scent grow stronger and stronger. I bite down on her shoulder, her arms, her breasts, her thighs through her clothes while she finds my knot through my breeches and squeezes it. Our garments are in the way, but we’re too drunk on each other to remember to move them until I want to get at her slick and I can’t.

With a growl of frustration, I rend her garments with my bare hands, tearing them open from her throat to her sex. As soon as I get the tangled shreds off her, I wrap her thighs around my head and taste her thoroughly. I push my tongue into her sex and moan at the sweetness on my tongue and the firm grip of her muscles.

When I sit up, Isavelle takes one look at my cock and swollen knot and rolls onto her belly, lifting up her hips, inviting me. It’s an invitation I can’t resist.

“Alpha, please,” Isavelle moans as I thrust into her.

“I want my baby inside you. I need you with child again, sha’lenla .”

Lately I haven’t been able to get the memory of my mate pregnant out of my mind. Every time she picks Sylvi up in her arms, I want to see her with another baby. I want our family to be growing.

“Yes, make me pregnant again. Knot me, Alpha,” she cries.

The scars I bit into the nape of her are glowing red from her heat, tantalizing me. My dragines ache to pierce her flesh once more.

Isavelle’s cries are growing louder and more desperate. Her heat makes her so sensitive to my touch that her first climax slams into her swiftly and without warning. I feel it when she clamps down on me rhythmically, and she drives me headlong into my own orgasm. With a roar of pleasure, I grip her hair hard and bury my teeth in her nape, biting down until I taste blood. At the same time, I thrust so hard that my knot pushes inside her.

In the aftermath, we’re both panting with exertion. My jaw relaxes, and I lick her wounds tenderly, and they start to heal from my saliva. I hold my queen close with both my arms wrapped around her.

“That was incredible,” she gasps. “I need you so much.”

I’m lodged deep inside her, and it’s my favorite place to me. She’s full of me and my cum, and I lay with my body curled around hers, resting for a moment until we’re both ready to go again.

My knot deflates enough that I’m able to pull out, but that first climax was barely enough to satisfy either of us. I thrust into Isavelle again, and we both cry out in pleasure.

Four days later, I emerge from Isavelle’s nest a sated and happy Alpha, ready to stretch my legs and find out what’s been going on in my kingdom.

The first thing I see when I step outside the castle is Scourge’s mighty black wings spread against the sky as he and Esmeral return.

Two more figures shoot past me on my way down to the dragongrounds, moving in a silver blur. Esmeral trills happily and pushes her head into my hand while her fledglings scamper around us. The wingrunners approach, one dressed in full regalia, the other wearing a trainee uniform.

“ Ma’len ,” Fiala greets me respectfully. She’s been a little subdued since Dusan’s death, but she’s taken Anise under her wing, something that seems to suit them both. “I hope that you and the queen enjoyed your time together.”

“Oh, we did. I’m sure Isavelle will want to get out and about again very soon and require your escort.”

“That’s something we were hoping to talk with you about, Ma’len ,” Fiala says, and glances at Anise.

The girl steps forward, back straight, chin lifted. “ Ma’len , I should like to apply for the position of being Queen Isavelle’s second bodyguard.”

I eye her curiously. I wasn’t expecting this from Anise. “A little dragon told me that you don’t enjoy being in your sister’s shadow, but that is often what a bodyguard does all day.”

“The way I see it, Isavelle gets out and about in Maledin more often than most wingrunners do, and insists on going to all the most interesting and dangerous places. That’s what I want as well.”

“Even if that means long months of staying close to home when Isavelle is giving birth and recovering?”

“There are other wingrunner duties I can attend to during those times.”

“Even if it means sacrificing yourself to save her life or our children’s lives?”

Anise’s expression sobers, and she answers, “I love my sister. I love my niece. I do not fear dying for them, Ma’len . As long as I am given dragon rites, even though I have no Maledinni blood. I would want to meet my wyvern in the afterlife so we can fly together there.”

“Of course, you have more than earned that right.” I glance at Fiala. “What do you think?”

“As long as we have a third wingrunner with us while Anise finishes her training, I have no objection. I think it’s a very good idea, in fact.”

“Then I am satisfied, and I’ll leave the final decision to the queen.”

“Leave what to the queen?” asks a voice behind me.

I turn and see Isavelle making her way toward us, a dreamy, satisfied expression on her face. The first thing she does is go up on her toes and kiss me.

“Whether I can become your next bodyguard,” Anise asks eagerly.

Isavelle looks at her in surprise. Then she smiles. “I’d love that. You can start right away, because I’d like to visit Amriste and check on Biddy’s cottage.”

Anise beams with happiness.

“There’s no need to fetch another wingrunner this time,” I tell them. “I’ll come as well.”

I’m reluctant to let my mate out of my sight for the moment, and I wonder if it’s possible that I’ve sensed she’s pregnant. Or maybe I’m merely hopeful she is.

Either way, we all climb atop our mounts and head for western Maledin.

Amriste is beautiful in the fall. All the trees in the surrounding woods have turned red and gold, and the sun shines brightly in a sky with scudding clouds. There’s the first bite of winter in the air as we stand in front of Biddy Hawthorne’s empty cottage with Isavelle’s father.

“We cleaned up the inside,” he says quietly, and I take that to mean they mopped up all of poor Biddy’s blood. “Though it’s been standing empty for a while, and it might be a bit dusty now.”

“I don’t mind dust. I would like to prepare the cottage for its next witch.”

He eyes her curiously. “Do you have a witch in mind?”

Isavelle sighs. “Sadly not yet, but I hope that I hear of one soon. I know she’ll be welcomed here by you all.”

“That we will. We miss our Mistress Hawthorne watching over us with all her crows’ eyes. It hasn’t been the same without her.”

While Isavelle cleans and tidies the interior of the cottage, Fiala and Anise patrol with their wyverns, and I tend to the garden, pulling up weeds and cutting back the dead and overgrown plants. I get a bonfire going at the bottom of the garden and burn all the cuttings and garden refuse.

After a few hours, Isavelle comes out with an armload of things to add to the fire. “Moths got into a lot of the blankets and bedding, but I’ve packed what’s still good away with some herbs that will repel the insects. The crockery is all clean and put away, and the chimneys and floors are swept. The next witch will find the place very cozy, I hope.”

We turn to look at the cottage together, and it does look like a cozy place for a witch to live. I was concerned that Isavelle might find this work upsetting, but she seems contented. “Your cheeks are glowing, sha’lenla .”

She smiles up at me. “Mistress Hawthorne always said that it does a witch good to get her hands dirty.”

“It does a king good as well.”

Isavelle takes an appreciative look around the garden. I know she misses her crone. “You’ve done a good job out here. The place is ready. Now all it needs is a witch.”

A few weeks later, Isavelle suggests a family outing for the two of us, Sylvi, our dragons, and their fledglings. Esmeral and Scourge’s offspring are big enough to keep up with their parents on a short flight, and so we don’t go far. We land in a meadow lush with feathery grasses, and settle down to share fruit or morsels of raw chicken, depending on whether the picnicker has scales or not.

I admire the fledglings as they swallow their treats and play with each other. There’s Attar, the black and gold male. Mairal, the black and turquoise male. Nissa, the dainty gold dragon who has been winning hearts wherever she goes. And Taissa, a black and red female who is the spitting image of her father at that age, and similarly fierce.

Not long ago, I would have been too worried about Emmeric or the lich to risk taking all our vulnerable young ones out of the city without a guard, so this feels like a luxury.

I cast a long look around at the dragons, and at Isavelle feeding Sylvi. For all that I am King of Maledin, this is what I need to be happy. A meadow outside the city walls. My mate, our baby, our dragons, the fledglings, and a view of the castle in the sunshine.

My family, and our home.

“You’re smiling so beautifully, my love,” Isavelle says, tucking herself under my arm and stroking my cheek.

“I am. I have a lot to smile about.”

“Would you like something else to smile about?” she asks. She takes my hand and presses it against her stomach.

“You’re pregnant?” I exclaim. I bury my face in her hair. There it is, the telltale scent of a baby growing inside her.

She nods, smiling from ear to ear. “This time, I knew the scent and felt the change in my body.”

“I knew it,” I say, kissing Isavelle. “I felt it after your heat. I was even more reluctant than ever to be parted from you.”

“Zabriel, I’m so excited. May this little one be as strong and healthy as Sylvi, and may they be happy for all their days.”

Attar sees how I’m caressing Isavelle’s belly, and he presses his front legs over her stomach as well and sniffs curiously.

Isavelle laughs. “And may both our children find their dragons among these beautiful fledglings.”

I take Isavelle’s face in my hands. My chest feels so tight with emotion and all the feelings I want to express. The peace we’ve found feels so tenuous, but I am going to do everything in my power to make it last. “I want to leave Maledin in safer hands than I found it. For our daughter, the future queen, for our second child and all who follow, and for the people of this country who have been through so much.”

Isavelle smiles up at me. “Sylvi will be the queen even if she is an Omega?”

I press my brow against hers and close my eyes, giving thanks for my mate and all she has done for me and our country. “I think we’ve all learned that Omegas are tougher than they look and know how to inspire thousands. Sylvi will have her beautiful mother as a role model. She will never doubt what an Omega is capable of.”

Thank you for reading The Flame King’s Queen .