Chapter 338: Of Course He Came

Neither mate appreciated the déjà vu arriving through their matebonds. She could feel that clear as day. Both sped up their thrusts like they were reclaiming territory she had mentally wandered back to.

Kael kept one arm locked under her and shoved his other hand between their bodies and started rubbing her clit.

Thought left. Just packed up and walked out of her skull like a tenant who’d had enough. What replaced it was heat and pressure and the absolute inability to do anything except feel.

"Kael..." his name came out like a cry.

The pressure snapped.

She came with a moan, the release tearing out of her around Kael in a hot, uncontrolled rush that ran down him while he fucked her through it. She couldn’t hold it. Each upward thrust wrung another pulse out of her until she was shaking in his arms.

Kael broke on the next one. He slammed up into her and came with a snarl against her throat, spilling into her in hard, helpless jerks, still rubbing her through it, still holding her off the floor.

Maddox followed like he’d been waiting for permission he was never going to ask for. The feel of her shaking, of Kael coming in her from the front, of her tight around him from behind, ripped it out of him. He drove in deep and emptied into her with a groan punched into the other side of her neck.

Her vision collapsed inward like a tunnel closing from both ends and the last thing she registered was two heartbeats slamming through her chest that weren’t hers before the dark swallowed everything.

✦✦✦

DRAKENCREST - DRAGON KING’S CHAMBERS - ONE HOUR LATER

Maddox’s glowing, unconscious, rune-spreading, kingdom-hopping, disappearing-in-white-light, "emotional support wife" as Kael coined it, was in his lap, being held by him. She was fully passed out from the dragon venom that he and Kael may or may not have overdone.

The flash came without warning.

White light pulsed from Guinevere’s body in a burst bright enough to turn Maddox’s eyelids transparent. He had seen it enough times now to skip the flinch.

Kael was ready, crossing the room at a speed that said his dragon had been tracking her vitals from seven feet away and had pre-approved the lunge. Both hands closed on her shoulders.

A sliver of the light surged into Maddox while a tsunami flooded into Kael. Neither of them moved until the flash stopped and the runes faded, leaving just the golden glow that happened when they touched her.

"The intervals are shortening." Maddox stood with her in his arms.

The fact that Maddox Drakencrest was voluntarily handing his wife to his brother when he could still hold her just fine said more about the last seventy-two hours than any historian would ever be able to capture.

But he would rather hand her to Kael than risk her vanishing because Kael didn’t get there in time to absorb the light. This was the logical decision to mitigate risk.

Kael’s arms were already fully extended like he had been waiting for Maddox to reach the conclusion he had arrived at thirty minutes ago. Every fiber of his being had been projecting ’give her to me’ at a frequency Maddox could feel through their bloodline and was choosing to ignore until the logic caught up with the possessiveness.

As soon as he had her, he settled into one of the new armchairs with the specific, reluctant ease of a man whose spine was being seduced by lumbar support. He would burn this Keep to the ground before he admitted it was comfortable, which it wasn’t.

Ryker: Guess who.

Maddox: No.

Ryker: Shadowfell. His Beta and mage are with him.

Maddox: Of course he is.

Ryker: Show him to your quarters or what?

Maddox looked down at Guinevere, who was in Kael’s arms. Tiny silk pajamas. Slippers. Glowing gold. Hair damp and wavy.

He could say no. Send him away. Close the door and hold her and pretend the wolf king didn’t exist and the matebond between them was a clerical error the universe would eventually correct. But Shadowfell was a good man. He had protected Guinevere and died for it.

He also had watched her look at Nicholas the way a drowning person looks at a piece of driftwood. She didn’t want to leave him in Greyhall and the grief she felt then was still sitting in Maddox’s chest. Nicholas had told her that he would come.

Maddox shook his head once. No, he was not going to be the man who took that from her. He had done a lot of shit this week. He had flown across oceans and negotiated with sociopaths and caught his wife falling from the sky. He had earned his claim six ways to Sunday and would earn it six more if the universe asked.

But keeping her from the man who made her feel safe, a man who had died for her, a man who Maddox respected, was not something he was willing to do.

Maddox: Yes, send him.

Three words that cost him more than the seven hundred and fifty million gold he had paid for her. The gold was just money. This was ego, territory, and every possessive instinct his dragon had been screaming about since the corridor, all shoved into a box and sat on so the right thing could happen.

He grabbed a navy blanket from his closet that matched the chairs. Then he draped it over Guinevere carefully, tucking it around her. Every inch of silk pajama, every sliver of exposed skin, every visible curve vanished beneath navy wool. She looked like the world’s most expensive burrito and Maddox looked entirely too pleased with himself for the burrito-rolling.

Kael was unimpressed and gave Maddox a look flat enough to level Blair’s renovations. "Did you just swaddle a grown woman."

"I covered her."

"She’s burning up. By extension, so am I."

"Fine. Give her back to me. I have no problem with the blanket."

"She’s fine, actually," Kael said immediately. "I’m the one suffering."