Chapter 7
Vallie would be the death of him.
Was this woman afraid of nothing? She was leading him back into the bowels of her captors and laughing the entire time. He knew what the dragons did to these women. Hell, Vallie had been in the hospital for over two months healing from her time there.
She was either the bravest person he’d ever met, or she was batshit crazy.
Lambda’s cock caught against his pants on his next step. He grimaced then tried to discretely arrange himself in a more comfortable position. He’d expected to be uncomfortable for a while after meeting his mate, but he hadn’t thought they would immediately leave on a days-long hike while his cock bounced around like a weapon in his pants.
“Do you need to rest?” Vallie asked.
“What? No.” He was a wolf. He could run close to one hundred miles without needing a break. A slow walk was nothing to him.
“Let me rephrase that. Do you want me to turn around so you can have a proper go at readjusting yourself to make walking easier?” Vallie raised her eyebrow.
Lambda blushed and looked down. “Uh,” he stammered.
“Hey.” Vallie stopped walking and grabbed his arm so he looked at her. “We’re mates, right? No secrets, all that shit? I know about the whole situation with you being hard until we fuck. Tella told all of us what to expect if we had mates. It’s cool. You don’t have to be embarrassed about it. Hell, I’m pretty flattered.”
“You are?”
“Of course! First of all, you are really hot. Like, even if we weren’t fated to be together and all that nonsense, I would totally want to take you for a ride.” Lambda reached for her waist, then pulled her a little closer to him. She put a hand on his chest to keep a little space between them. “But not until Verona is safe. Once Verona is safe, I am game for as many orgasms as you want to give me every day. I’m looking forward to it! But not yet. So, if you need to stop and move things around so you aren’t in pain, do it. I’m not judging. But do it and get a move on. I want to cross the wall before the sun goes down so we get a clear view before we need to stop for the night. It’s been two months since I was in Balaur. We can’t waste any more time.”
Vallie took a few steps ahead of him and kept her eyes forward while Lambda rearranged his cock, and they were moving again.
*
It wasn’t quite dusk when the wall loomed in front of them. Lambda was used to the imposing sight of it, spending his days patrolling this area, but Vallie clearly didn’t remember it.
“Holy shit! That’s the wall? Good god, I don’t remember it being that tall. It goes on forever! What the hell is on this side? Fuck, this is insane!” She stood with her hands on her hips and craned her neck to look up at it. The wall was around twenty feet high with no help anywhere in terms of getting over it—just a solid bronze surface on their side, and silver on the other. “There are no walls around human territory. Are we just puny, insignificant beings so no one feels the need to have a boundary from us? How the hell are we going to get over it?” She finally took a break from talking and sighed. “Fuck.”
“Ok,” Lambda exhaled, “It travels the length of the border between wolf and dragon territory. There’s no wall between wolf and human territory because we have no issue with humans coming here. There’s also no wall between the wolves and the murky area of no man’s land in the southeast. That”—he pointed at the wall—“is bronze. It does to dragons what silver does to us. And we’re going to climb a tree. I’ll lower you down slowly and then jump beside you. That way you won’t break an ankle getting over it.”
“How are we going to get back over?” she continued. “Especially if we are being pursued. We won’t have time to find a tree and climb over it.”
“I can see very far. If we’re running, I’ll keep my eye on a tree and get us there. I’ll lift you and Verona up to a branch and then jump up myself.” Would any of that work? Lambda hoped so. He also hoped they survived getting Verona out of Balaur, then getting back to the wall.
He hoped he plain survived getting over the wall. He’d never met a wolf who’d done it before.
Cade, Vallie’s captor, had crossed the wall. But he’d done it a hundred feet in the air. Lambda was going to be much closer.
“I guess it’s a good thing I brought you. There weren’t a lot of rope ladders lying around pack housing or the hospital.”
“Imagine that.” Lambda suddenly understood the weight of what they were about to do. He was taking his brand-new mate into dragon territory. The place she had just escaped. The place that had starved her so thoroughly she needed to be hospitalized. He was breaking the covenant between wolves and dragons, something punishable by immediate execution if caught. Something Vallie did not need to know.
But what then? If the dragons killed him, what would happen to Vallie? He seriously doubted they’d drop her off unharmed in Luven.
“Maybe I should take you back to Luven,” Lambda said slowly. “I can get a bunch of wolves to come with me instead. Or Alpha can petition for Verona’s release. There’s been a lot of talk in starting an actual war with the dragons over their treatment of humans, breaking our treaty until they are freed. It might be safer to keep you in Luven, away from the dragons where you can’t get hurt.”
Vallie raised her eyebrow at him. “Absolutely not.”
“None of it?” Lambda answered, deflated.
“First of all, if I went back and sent you with a bunch of wolves, you have no idea what Verona looks like. And running around the keep shouting, ‘which one of you is Verona’, wouldn’t work. You don’t know where Bedek lives or where he keeps his pets, you don’t know how to get in and out of Balaur. You don’t even know which dragon keep is Balaur. There are six at least nearby. You could get lost and end up in an entirely different part of dragon territory.” She ticked off her reasons on her fingers. “A group of weird men might terrify the other human women who could sound the alarm, alerting the dragons to your presence. And I’m not waiting for a war or a peace treaty. If there’s a war, Verona could die in it. We could all die if there’s a war. A peace treaty could take years. Bedek is old. If he dies, his pets will all be moved, either to other dragons in Balaur or south. It has to be now, when I still have a pretty good idea of where to find her.”
“I just found you. I don’t want you to get hurt. Or killed,” he countered.
“Me neither! But I kind of don’t care? I know you’re my mate and all that, but I don’t know you. I know my sister. Right now, she’s the person in the world who I love most. I need to save her. If I die trying, well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. If you want to go back to Luven and wait for me, that’s cool, too. I don’t expect you to follow me into danger after knowing me for a couple hours.”
“I would never abandon you,” he growled. “If something happened to you and I could have prevented it, I’d never forgive myself. It would kill me.” Lambda wondered how long it would take Vallie to realize that he’d never leave her. He’d walk beside her into the depths of hell. But he really wished she didn’t insist upon walking into the depths of hell.
Vallie regarded him suspiciously. “Ok. Then, you’re coming with me?”
“I am. Even though I want you to go back to our house, have a big meal, maybe take a warm bath and sleep in our big, warm bed. I could even get you off if you wanted.” He tried to sound as convincing as possible.
“Nice try, Lambda. But the next time I’m going to sleep in a bed, I’m going to be freshly fucked and Verona is going to be safe in the hospital.” She winked and turned back to the wall.
Lambda’s cock jumped and his jaw clenched.
Thinking of Vallie freshly fucked…by him.
He could wait until her sister was safe if that was the outcome.
“Now. We’ve got a wall to conquer before the sun goes down. Let’s find a tree.”