Chapter 332: The Great Rune Outbreak

The hot water hit Kael’s chest and ran down his body in streams that found every bruise, every ache he had been ignoring since that river.

His head dropped forward, both hands braced on the marble that used to be stone. His ribs expanded for what felt like the first time in days. Each breath pulled steam into his lungs and pushed tension out through his skin.

The water turned pink where it crossed his bandage, thinning the blood that had been sitting there since the last healer session, and he watched it spiral down the drain with the detached calm of a man who had bled enough this week to fill a bathtub and was running out of fucks to give about it.

He reached for his soap before remembering that his soap was gone. What remained was a bottle of something that smelled like a flower shop fucked a funeral.

He used it. He would deny this forever, under oath, under torture, under a second bottle.

His dragon had opinions.

She is in the other room. We are in this room. This is wrong.

"She’s with Maddox."

We take her from him. We wash her. We feed her. We keep her in our room.

"She’s not a pet."

We use the nice soap and soft towels. She will like that. Then she sleeps on our chest naked and we growl at anyone who comes near us.

"Act like a damn dragon."

The dragon retreated, but the damage was already done because every image it planted was now living rent-free in Kael’s skull.

He wanted her again now. His fangs ached, which wasn’t supposed to happen. He thought it had been bad before. Still manageable, but definitely there. That was nothing. It had gotten so much worse. And now he was hard again like the last hour hadn’t happened. He shut his eyes and it got worse. He could still feel the tight, hurting give of her when he shoved in from behind. He braced harder on the marble and breathed through it.

It did not help.

He cursed then wrapped a soapy hand around himself and stroked to the memory of her clenching around both of them.

Steam. His pulse in his hand. Her body in his head. That was the whole world for ten seconds.

With a groan, he came entirely too fast and too angry.

His nostrils flared once.

It helped a little. But the urge to mate was still there. He needed it like he needed air. Maddox could deal with it.

When he stepped out of the shower, his vision tunneled.

A dagger was on the floor near the base of the counter, half hidden behind the pedestal of the basin. Small. Bloody. He had been so distracted by Blair’s hellscape masterpiece that he had managed to miss it.

"Shit."

His hand closed around the handle before his next breath. He turned the faucet on. Cold water hit the blade and the red ran down the drain in a thin ribbon that disappeared without ceremony.

He dried it on a towel. Then he looked for somewhere to put it.

The linens were stacked in the cabinet beneath the basin. He pulled the stack out to tuck the dagger underneath, and the fabric met his hands with a softness that stopped him mid-motion.

These were kind of nice.

He tucked the dagger beneath the bottom linen. He would get it later, after he decided what to do with it. This wasn’t about hiding things from Maddox. This was about controlling the order of operations. A man making a decision that he knew was wrong and doing it anyway because the alternative was handing over the murder weapon to a team who already thought she was guilty. Right now, there was still a sliver of doubt. If Kael showed them the bloody dagger in question, it would fully seal it for her.

She had turned to him, afraid about it. And he was going to take care of it for her. End of story. She didn’t need strategy right now. She needed someone to stop asking and start standing between her and every goddamn thing that wanted a piece of her.

That was Kael’s job. He had appointed himself to it, no one had asked, and he was not accepting resignations.

We burn it.

His dragon had a point.

"Done."

No one would know about it except for him.

He dressed in under four minutes because Guinevere was forty feet away and his dragon was counting every second she was in Maddox’s arms instead of his.

When he stepped into the main room, toweling his hair, his eyes found them immediately.

Maddox was still in the chair. Guinevere was still in his lap. Standard.

But something was different.

Maddox was looking down at his own forearms with the expression of a man who had just opened a gift he didn’t know he wanted and was going to be insufferable about it for the foreseeable future.

White runes were carving across his skin.

They moved in real time, spiraling from his wrists to his elbows in glowing lines that matched the ones on Guinevere. The same pattern. The same rhythm. The same pulse that Kael had been watching write itself across his own body for days.

Maddox had caught the runes.

And the look on his face was the dumbest, smuggest, most chest-puffed expression Kael had ever seen on a grown man. He was looking at the runes like they were a trophy. Proud. Victorious. Radiating the energy of a man who had been excluded from a club and who just received his membership card.

"Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me," Kael snapped.

Maddox looked up. The smirk was so wide it had its own zip code.

"Look at that."

He turned his forearm in the light, angle by angle, showing off his new tattoos. No take-backs. New guy energy.

"I’ve got them too."

"Congratulations."

"They’re glowing."

"They do that."

"They’re spreading."

"I have eyes, Maddox."

"They are forming on you too."

"No shit."

"Mine are bigger than yours."

Kael threw his towel at Maddox’s face.

Maddox caught it one-handed without losing the smirk or the wife or the chair like a man who had proudly just caught the STD his wife had warned him about.