Rowan
My head was spinning. All the blood in my body felt like it had rushed to my hands and face. It felt like it’d been years since I’d been in the kitchen with Ma, and yet… I knew it’d only been a few moments.
Ten minutes, and my life had changed.
I couldn’t decide how I felt, numbness and heat making me feel fuzzy at the edges.
Bastian pulled me against him and held me tightly, the protective cage of his arms necessary.
I needed that pressure, that hard reminder that I wasn’t alone in the grass.
That I was safe. After a few silent moments, I wound my arms around him.
Had I killed Cyrus? I thought I had. The sight of him convulsing on the ground wasn’t one I was soon to forget, but when Bastian had torn his throat out—
God, he really did that.
That visceral scene played out behind my eyelids as I squeezed them closed. Still, he’d ended it.
When he’d turned to me with that small smile, an overwhelming sense of relief hit me. A burden had been taken off my shoulders, one I wasn’t prepared to carry. I could breathe easier.
Bastian had done that… for me.
The gravity of his actions hit me.
This dragon had killed his father just to stop me from feeling the burden of being the one to do it. Well, it wasn’t the only reason, but it’d certainly been the most pressing.
My hands fisted in his shirt as I buried my face in his neck. His hand—the one stained with his father’s blood—came up to cup the back of my head.
“Thank you,” I whispered in a small, broken voice.
Bastian exhaled, kissing the top of my head, the touch startlingly gentle after everything I had just witnessed.
“I would do anything for you, Rowan. We all would.” He sucked in a deep breath that trembled. “I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you,” I murmured, kissing his neck lightly.
We were still for a moment before I dropped my forehead to Bastian’s chest, intent on inspecting Cyrus’s body. I wanted to check, once again, that he really was gone.
Multiple emotions swirled around in my gut: guilt over what I had done, but also relief and vindication. This man had tried to kill me six years ago, tried to kill me just a few minutes ago. And now he was lying at my feet, dead, killed by his own son who despised him.
“We won,” I whispered.
Bastian chuckled. “Hell yes, we won. We will always win. You understand that?”
“I think I do now…” I admitted, turning to look at Cyrus.
“Don’t.” Bastian’s voice was firm, and the hand cupping the back of my head kept me in place. “You don’t need to see that. The bastard is gone. That’s all that matters.”
My arms wove around him, squeezing tightly. “I trust you.”
For some reason, that hit harder than saying I love you.
Trust.
It wasn’t something that came easily to me, but I trusted Bastian and every member of my clan wholeheartedly. Even more, I trusted myself. I’d handled an attack. I’d stood up for myself and fought. Now, I really knew I could.
We must have been standing there for at least ten minutes when a dragon landed in the clearing. Yellow-brown scales and wide eyes.
Nix.
He shifted back with ease, storming over to us, not a single care for the fact he was butt naked; his only concern was me.
“Rowan!” he shouted, rushing closer until he reached for me.
Bastian’s hands tightened around me, and a small growl escaped him as Nix tugged me out of his arms to check me over.
“I’m fine,” I insisted—it was probably hard to believe, given I was a sobbing mess.
“What the hell happened?”
Before I could open my mouth to answer, a large vehicle came crashing into the clearing, Orsen and Greylen jumping out of it and making their way over to us at a dead sprint.
Grey paused for a moment, looking at the body on the ground that was rapidly turning a sickly gray color as blood pooled around it.
The words just spilled out of me. “Craig came into the kitchen at the den and told me there was a medical emergency. I followed him out here. He vanished, and… Cyrus was here.” My chest heaved with the jagged sobs.
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Bastian said, tucking some of my loose hair behind my ear.
Was he going to tell the others what I had done, or was that going to remain between us? I knew I would tell them eventually, but in the moment, I was feeling raw and exposed.
“Craig?” Orsen asked. “I’ll fucking—”
“Don’t bother,” Greylen said, already typing away on his phone. “I just messaged Griffin. The idiot will be exiled from the horde before the sun comes up.”
“Griffin? I wanted to rip the fucker to shreds myself,” Orsen whined.
“Usually, I wouldn’t let anyone else do it, but Griffin is almost as protective of our mate as we are,” Bastian grumbled.
I almost giggled and told them Griffin was probably more protective, having seen me at my weakest, but I didn’t want to antagonize the pissed-off dragons any more than they already were. I also didn’t want them to leave me, any of them.
“Come on. Let’s get you home,” Nix said.
Orsen cocked a brow, gesturing with his head at him. “There’s not enough room for us in the car. Nix, you’ll have to fly back, seeing as you’re already naked.”
Nix preened. “It’s not my fault our mate likes me naked.”
I laughed, shaking my head. That was a bizarre leap of logic if I had ever heard one.
I slid into the back seat, and Bastian gently buckled me in. The moment I was secure, he stalked around the vehicle, sliding into the seat next to me. He didn’t bother with his own belt, instead sliding over until my side was pressed into his and wrapping an arm around my shoulder.
“Does this mean it’s over?” I asked in a small voice.
Bastian looked thoughtful for a moment. “It does.”
“Now what?” I whispered. Orsen and Grey slipped into the seats up front, and Nix shot me a look through the open window.
My three mates were quiet for several seconds that stretched on, the wind rustling through the long grass of the clearing.
What I’d been running from lay in that field, and it wasn’t coming to get me anymore.
I’d spent years fleeing from something invisible.
After I’d learned what it was, I had silently worried that the five of us would never be free from that pain.
But he was dead. Cyrus was well and truly dead.
“Now, we get to be happy?” Grey smiled, but it was more a question than a statement.
Still, maybe… we could at least try.