Chapter 10
KIEREN
Roark’s coming out of her room.
“Is she in there?” My voice vibrates with irritation.
“Yes.” He crosses his inked arms over his chest. He’s added designs around his thunder mark, to the infuriation of my mother.
Doesn’t even matter that the ink he puts on his skin in this realm doesn’t follow him to ours.
After Aisling’s last visit, she told our mother.
And I was called home for an earful. She might be the queen, but she’s leery of Roark’s temper.
“Have you touched her?” I ask.
“Yes. Have you? She—” He glares at me. “It’s been a fucking long night. I’ve just gotten in from the north. I didn’t touch her any more than to help her to her room.”
My eyes scan him. “I haven’t touched her. I waited.”
“How very proper of you, Prince Alder.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, thank you.” There’s a glint in Roark’s eyes. There’s never a glint. It vanishes the second he notices me taking it in.
“What did you do?” I ask, my focus shifting to Raine’s closed door.
“I’ve done nothing. Exactly what I said to start with. Firested, however . . .”
“Yes . . . as always. Evander said he would meet me in the office. Can you join me?” I ask.
He winces. “Sure.”
“Did you sleep last night?”
“No.”
“Find us later.”
“I can come now.”
“It’s good, Roark. I want to know what you found out, but if they are going to attack Crest Wing, we need you to be able to fly a straight line. Find me later.”
“Yes, Prince.” He cocks his head and military pivots toward his suite. Technically, being a thunder mate, he’s a prince too. But I don’t think anyone will ever address him that way. Sir or general, yes, but prince? No.
I follow him as if I’m going downstairs anyway. “Why were you in her room, though?”
“I helped her back to her room.”
“Did you show her the collection and vault?”
“No.”
Seven a.m. Evander’s not back yet. I could show them . . . Now I pivot—or try to pivot.
Roark grabs my arm. “She’s sleeping.”
“She went back to bed after breakfast?” I don’t know her, but that doesn’t seem like the woman who fell to her knees in front of the painting in my office. If she hadn’t been tired and slightly inebriated, I believe she would have worked straight through the night.
“Not exactly. Just give her some time. She’ll be up soon. Leopold said he would check on her.” Roark slips into his suite. And I’m left in the corridor.
I’ve got things to do. The Firested clan are rumbling again. But I still have regular work—the urge to grow our hoard is the call that never ends from my dragon.
I’m deep into the numbers when I hear Evander come in. “Have you seen Roark?” he asks.
I glance at my watch. “Damn, five hours ago, now. He ended up going all the way north last night.” Our allies to the north, Nordlyx, aren’t always the most forthcoming.
“Shit—”
“He hasn’t given me a full report yet. He’s sleeping.” I stand, and the painting that’s been in my office for over a decade catches my eye for the first time in years. The colors strike me. How have I never noticed that there are blue tones under the white before?
“Sleeping?”
“Right.”
“When has he ever gone to bed voluntarily?”
I shrug. It’s a long flight, and we’re not dragonets anymore. “What did you find out?”
“Elderglen has spotted some Firested scouts flying in the realm over their territory. But nothing out of the normal. I saw your sister before I came back.”
My eyebrow shoots up. “Aisling wasn’t at the academy?”
“No, she’s home. Your mother pulled her out of classes.”
“Why in the Nostrien would she do that?” I ask.
“The queen hasn’t told her. And won’t see her.”
I scrub my hand down my chin. There’s nothing I can do about it here. My mother is impossible. “I can’t go.”
“Why? Raine? There’s plenty of time to test. We’ve been through, what .
. . how many candidates? She’s lovely, but she can wait.
Unless you think she’s the one?” Evander sits on the corner of the desk.
We’re both staring at the Monet, talking to it instead of each other.
“She smells fucking delicious. My marking heated when I touched her lower back.”
“You touched her? Of course you fucking did.” I turn away to keep from saying something I shouldn’t.
“She’s attractive,” Evander says, not turning.
“She’s fucking stunning. Did you see her ass in the Crest Wing pants?” My cock’s getting hard at the memory.
“Why do you think I had to touch her?”
“Roark touched her, too.”
“Really?”
“I didn’t get the ‘how’ out of him. He was a scale away from falling onto the carpet in the corridor.”
“Tired like the third year at the academy when he decided he could fly home and back and still perform in flight training the next day tired?”
“Worse.” He slept for two days straight after that.
“Damn. So then you have time to go see your sister. He’s going to be out for a while. We can’t do anything here now.”
“Yeah. You’ll watch over Raine, and by ‘watch’ I mean don’t fucking touch her.”
“Or . . . we skip the ceremony and you go touch her now. It’s not the right way, but if she’s the one, what would it matter?”
“I’m aware. But we wait and do it right.
” When all the males of a flight have found each other—with their markings clear—and their fated mate appears, it causes her marking to emerge.
But unlike the shifters of Earth, it’s not instantaneous.
There’s a strong attraction—at least, that’s what I’ve been told.
But it could take weeks, months even. Hence the six-month contract for the candidates.
Though there have been plenty that we’ve known weren’t the one for sure in far less time.
Waiting to touch until during the ceremonial ritual has been known to speed up the mark appearing.
When it does, it’s known as the lightning.
“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What?” I’m anxious to get going now.
“About your sister.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
“She’s smart.”
“And?”
“And she would make a good queen.”
“I agree.” Relief spreads through me. My sister would make a good queen. Granted, she’s young and without a thunder of her own yet. They could be out there searching for her while she’s tucked away in a tower. “Do you want to clarify what you’re getting at?”
“You know what I’m getting at. I’ve had enough candidates.
I want this one, Raine, to be our last. I can’t take this anymore.
We’ve said it before, but I mean it this time.
I’d rather not have a mate than keep pulling these human women to the castle.
Fuck the prophecy. Hell, at this point, do we even care whether we find our fated mate?
It’s been too long. If you’re going back to Crest Wing to talk to the queen, tell her.
Tell her we’re ready to find a mate at home.
We need to be a proper thunder. None of this living as roommates.
My dragon grows more agitated every candidate that doesn’t turn out to be the one.
I’m done. I want Raine to be the last, no matter what happens. ”
“I . . . agree.”
“Thank fuck. And I know Roark will be on board. He’s never wanted—”
“You don’t need to tell me. I know him well.
He’s never wanted any of this. I’ll go talk to my mother.
Aisling belongs at the academy, especially if she’s going to be queen one day.
” I close my laptop and take off my shirt and shoes, leaving them on the hook by the door.
Leopold will have them removed and in my suite by the time I return.
We’ll do this the right way. I need to not touch her until we have a proper ceremony.
It might take a long time for the mark to appear, but the power of having the final touch at the ceremony will make up for it.
Evander walks with me to the curtain on the other side of the atrium. Stepping through the curtain, I take my pants off and put them on the hook next to the twelve-foot circular door. The Thessari.
“Ready?” Evander asks.
“Yes.”
He rolls the carved door away from the hooks until it thuds into the open position.
Behind it, the solid stone wall reminds us of the danger to those who don’t carry a blood connection to the queen who gave her dragon to make this portal if they try to open it.
Evander can move through this portal, but he can’t open it.
Not safely. He’s born of Elderglen. Roark and I open it for him when he needs to travel.
Through the lineage charts, I’m her great-great-grandson.
While Roark is her fifth-great-nephew and her tenth cousin, three times removed.
But enough of her stirs in him to open the portal.
I prick my thumb on the nail protruding from the stone. Two hands on it, I push, and it vanishes. In the same movement, I jump and shift while flying through space, coming out headfirst.