Chapter 435: A Flaming Bag On His Doorstep

DRAKENCREST - WAR ROOM

Nicholas entered with a wolf that hadn’t stopped growling. And Maddox entered with a dragon that was about to shake the table. The meeting hadn’t started and everyone was already losing.

Reed was already seated. Damon entered behind Nicholas and took the chair beside Blair, who was already in her seat with files spread in front of her.

Sterling entered with a knot on his forehead that had graduated from purple to a yellowish green that made him look like a man whose skull had been used as a punching bag by someone with poor aim and excellent follow-through.

Blair stood immediately. "Sterling." Her gold eyes moved to the knot, then to his face, then back to the knot. "Should he be out of bed?"

"I’m fine," Sterling grunted as he dropped into a chair. He was going to sit in it and nobody was going to stop him and the concussion could file a complaint with his secretary.

Blair stared at him.

"Thank you for saving my life," she said after a moment.

Her humor was gone, her wit shelved, her delivery stripped clean because she was looking at a man who had stepped between her and dark magic and paid for it with three concussions and a day he would never get back.

Sterling met her eyes. "You’re welcome."

The exchange lasted two seconds. Both seconds were full.

Blair sat back down next to Damon and her shoulder found his arm the way it had been finding his arm for twelve hours, automatically, without consultation, the proximity no longer a choice but a setting.

Sterling stared at the arrangement and his jaw shifted by a millimeter that carried the full displeasure of waking up from a concussion to discover that romantic developments had occurred during his absence and the developments were touching. He did not comment because commenting required acknowledging the thing and acknowledging the thing required processing the thing and the three knots on his head were consuming all available processing power.

Beta Draven entered next and took his seat the way he took everything, quietly, efficiently, and without wasting time on ceremony.

Brennan slid into the chair next to him, running on fumes and enthusiasm, which was all that was left after a portal, a prison, a throne room battle, and a musical staircase had taken everything else. If he didn’t get a sandwich soon, things might start exploding. This was not a metaphor.

Kael entered last. He closed the door behind him, leaned against it, and crossed his arms.

Nicholas cut to it. "Do they have a case?"

"No," Beta Draven replied. "All charges dropped."

"On what grounds?" Nicholas asked.

"Insufficient evidence," Beta Draven replied.

"Insufficient evidence of what?" Maddox pressed.

"Of the thing they charged her with."

"Which was?"

"Attempted murder of King Solveil."

"And how was the evidence insufficient?"

"On the grounds that the evidence supported a medical event, not an attack."

"What kind of medical event puts a king in a coma?" Maddox asked, genuinely baffled by this.

"The kind where the King of Light woke up to find that the future queen of Velkaris was imprisoned on his behalf and was not happy about it," Beta Draven answered carefully.

Relief hit at those words. It lasted for exactly three seconds before two kings asked the same question at the same time and the answer was going to ruin the relief and everyone at the table knew it except the two kings asking.

"Then where is she?" Maddox and Nicholas asked simultaneously.

The synchronization earned neither of them a glance from the other because both of them were too busy staring at Beta Draven and Beta Draven was too smart to answer this himself. He had the information, the context, and the survival instincts to recognize that delivering this news to two territorial kings would end a career he had been building at this table.

So what did he do?

He turned to Kael.

Kael received the handoff the way a man receives a flaming bag of shit that someone has placed on his doorstep and rung the bell.

"Oh sure," Kael said flatly. "I get to be the one."

"You get to be the one," Beta Draven confirmed without a trace of apology.

Kael pushed off the door. He walked to the table. He did not sit because sitting would put him at eye level with the two kings and eye level was where fists traveled and Kael wanted the high ground.

"She has no memory of doing this," he began, voice level, every word selected with the care of a man constructing a sentence that needed to survive contact with two apex predators. "But apparently she marked him. Her wolf venom put him in a ’coma.’" He used air quotes. "She didn’t realize. She thought her light had flashed her into a random room and she woke up in a strange bed. Landon Solveil had brought her there unconscious so her light could stabilize and then wondered why she woke up terrified and ran from his Kingsguard." He paused to let that land. "Don’t even get me started on that. Anyway, she bit him. He woke up. Blew the door off the prison chamber we were meeting in."

The room absorbed that in silence.

The word marked hung in the air and nobody swatted it down because swatting it down would require touching it and nobody wanted to touch it.

Maddox processed it behind gold eyes that were getting brighter. Nicholas processed it behind amber eyes that were getting darker. Both processes were arriving at the same output through different operating systems and the output was fury and the fury was aimed in four directions: at Solveil, at the situation, at the universe, and at themselves for not getting there first.

Kael stood at the end of the table watching both kings cook and wondered, for the third time this week, whether being the messenger was going to kill him before anything else did.

Reed: For two men who just learned their wife marked a fourth king, they’re remarkably vertical.

Damon: That’s because they already knew Solveil was her fated mate. The man dove in a frozen river to find her.

Reed: True, it could be some random person.

Damon: Hard to hate a man who puts resources toward finding your wife.

Reed: Hard but not impossible. Maddox’s chair is smoking.

Damon: Nicholas hasn’t blinked since the word marked.

Reed: No, he hasn’t. He looks like a statue someone left a wolf inside of.

Damon: Still on the outside. Homicidal on the inside. Give it a minute.

A growl erupted from behind Nicholas’s ribs that the room collectively ignored.

Reed: There it is. The sound of grinding gravel. You called it.