Chapter 730: Two Storms And A Free Refill

While one king was in a coma, watching his past life unfold in the Moon Kingdom, the woman standing in for him in his present day kingdom was making history in his name.

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DRAKENFELL — WAR ROOM

Serena sat at the long table with her hands flat on the cold wood and two furious men refusing to look at her.

Dexmon had claimed the chair to her left and bolted his gaze to the far wall. Gavriel sat across from him with his arms crossed, glaring at a stretch of stone that had done nothing to earn it. Both of them were pushing enough heat through their matebonds to cure meat. Neither had offered a single word since she walked in. The quiet they were serving had a flavor, and the flavor was you are in tremendous trouble and we will bill you when we are ready.

Then the magic arrived.

Gold came first. Dexmon’s, sliding toward her low and insistent, the output of a wolf whose rage and whose instincts had stopped speaking and moved into separate wings of the same castle. Green followed close behind. Gavriel’s, curling around her ribs from the opposite side, warm and stubborn and uninterested in its owner’s mood.

She let both of them in.

The gold and the green flooded her at once, and it hit like cool water poured over something that had been searing. Her reserves had been running on fumes since the siege. Her insides had been a slow burn. The two signatures smothered it together, gold settling beneath green, green lacing through gold, and the relief was total enough that keeping it off her face took real work.

The comedy of it registered even through the cool. Both men were emptying their magic into her with everything they had while staring at opposite corners of the room furious.

Tiberon occupied the head of the table with Hyran at his right. Hale filled a chair that was losing the structural debate. Elara had settled beside Serena with the ease of a woman who assumed every seat in every room had been reserved for her since birth. Aeron held the wall, hands clasped behind his back, wearing the look of a mage whose night had graduated from long into folklore.

Tiberon laced his fingers together on the table.

"Explain."

The word left him at the volume of a vault sealing.

Serena met his eyes. "Shadowclaw is in a coma."

Hyran swung his attention to Aeron and delivered a look sharp enough to etch stone.

Aeron absorbed it with the calm of a mage who had been expecting it since the portal closed. "Shadowclaw protocol is clean. When the Alpha is incapacitated, authority passes to the Luna or the Beta. Serena has yet to be crowned. Finnick, however, named her his future Luna and Beta Sharpe made the call to default to her. Authority went to Serena. And on Sharpe’s orders, we kept the coma quiet."

Dexmon’s attention turned to Serena. "So you’ve been running a kingdom alone. And the plan to inform anyone was scheduled for roughly never."

She let that one pass through her like weather.

"She’s been very busy, to her credit," Aeron offered, with the generosity of a witness who had been paid up front.

Serena kept her hands where they were. "I returned to Drakenfell the moment I sensed the dragons. Drakenfell was already under attack when I arrived."

She left out the part where the men she loved had agreed to lie to her. The omission was fully deliberate, and she knew it. The hypocrisy of withholding the coma while being livid about being kept in the dark herself had occurred to her more times than she cared to count, and she had decided, with the moral flexibility of a woman running two kingdoms on empty, that she would examine it later.

"Requesting dragons from Drakenfell while Drakenfell itself was under siege was not something I was willing to do. Neither was hiding in a tunnel, since I happen to be the only dragon rider alive who has taken down Dark Fae."

The room recalibrated around the sentence. It had been on Drakenfell’s order to put Serena in a tunnel if Shadowclaw was under attack. Serena kept the emotion out of her voice, but paused long enough for the implication to land.

"I called upon the army of Aevamorra Vyracarum. They answered with a full fleet of dragons. I took a single one for myself, cleared the corruption with my arrows. I am well aware of what the shadow tether does so I flew dark and did not over extend my magic."

Silence.

"Where are the dragons?" Tiberon asked after a long moment.

"They are cleansed in Shadowclaw. The smaller ones are housed in the old cavalry stables. The mid-sized are in the Old Coliseum out in our forest. The large fire and ice dragons roam open fields, and the water dragons have taken to our largest lakes. Aeron laid enchantments around all of it."

Tiberon raised an eyebrow.

"Shadowclaw doesn’t have a dragon army. But our forces are already pledged to Drakenfell’s. Drakenfell, meanwhile, has no second kingdom to call on if it falls. There are already more dragons than riders here. And I have an army of volunteers who want to train with the Draken Forces and earn their wings. I propose a second division of the Draken Forces under Dexmon’s command. This one would be based in Shadowclaw."

Dexmon’s gold surged into her hard enough that the cool water briefly became a wave, and the hand resting on the table curled until the knuckles went white.

His head turned slowly towards her. She met his gaze without emotion then returned to Tiberon, because Tiberon was the one holding the final decision and at the moment, she was representing Shadowclaw.

Elara chose that moment to lean in toward her, voice pitched for mischief. "You borrowed a whole dragon army off another kingdom this week, and now you want this one to raise you a standing division. I’ve watched people ask for less at their own weddings."

"Technically it’s a second division of the same Draken Forces," Hale pointed out, counting it off on his fingers with the earnest focus of a man determined to get the inventory right. "So really it’s the same army. More of it. In a different kingdom. With extra dragons." He paused as the thought outgrew him. "It’s a lot of army."

Hyran set two fingers against the bridge of his nose. "Before we go further, Serena, do you have the approval of Shadowclaw’s elders for this venture?"

"She does," Aeron confirmed.

"Are they aware of the cost?" Hyran pressed.

The fact that Hyran had moved to cost rather than ending the conversation was the most encouraging thing to happen since she walked in.

Before she could answer, Tiberon lifted one hand, and the room went still.

"I don’t care what the elders approved." His attention settled on Serena like a weight. "What did you promise Aevamorra Vyracarum to secure that fleet?"