Page 56 of Dragon King’s Bullied Mate

When they finally returned to the cottage sometime later, Malaya looked up from the couch where she sat half-watching television while Beckett slept curled beside her beneath blankets. One glance at Mikael and Lyra together made her smirk immediately.

“Oh no,” she muttered dramatically. “That look means feelings.”

Mikael ignored her entirely.

Malaya pointed toward Lyra anyway. “I approve, by the way.”

Lyra nearly choked.

Mikael frowned slightly. “Approve of what?”

“Your choice of mate.”

The word hit Mikael strangely hard.

Mate.

His dragon surged instantly in absolute agreement. Shock flickered briefly through Mikael because instead of objecting to the claim, instead of rejecting how dangerously attached he had become in such a short amount of time, he realized he didn’t disagree, not even a little.

Mikael couldn’t read Lyra’s face at his sister’s words, so he tried to sway the conversation in a different direction. “I’m heading back to the castle to see if I can get to the bottom of whatever is going on. I need you to stay here with Lyra.”

Malaya smoothed Beckett’s hair off his forehead. “I can do that. I’m not used to having this much down time.”

Lyra laughed. “Beckett usually doesn’t get this much television time.”

“Just be sure to stay on alert.”

Malaya rolled her eyes at her brother. “When am I not?”

After a painful goodbye to Lyra and one final kiss, Mikael headed back to find out what awaited him. When he arrived home, the castle felt colder than he had ever experienced.

It wasn’t physically cold, it was something else. There was something tense and wrong lurking beneath the polished stone halls and carefully controlled routines of court life.

Mikael barely paused long enough to change clothes before he demanded that Dag meet him privately in the war room. By the time his commander entered, Mikael’s temper already sat stretched dangerously thin beneath the surface.

Dag closed the door behind him with his usual easy confidence. “Good to see you alive.”

Mikael remained standing near the map table. “Why did you recall the guards from the village?”

Dag barely blinked. “Because the castle required protection.”

“From what?”

“The possibility that whoever poisoned you intended a second attack.”

Mikael stared at him coldly. “A missing child was still being searched for.”

Dag shrugged slightly. “And additional soldiers wandering the mountains during a blizzard would not have changed much.”

The dismissiveness in his tone sharpened something ugly inside Mikael. “You made that decision without my authorization.”

“You were still recovering and I wasn’t sure of your ability to make decisions.”

“And yet somehow you thought it was okay to just make calls knowing they were in complete contradiction of what I had told you, regardless of how weak I was.”

Dag’s jaw tightened faintly at that. For several seconds silence stretched heavily between them before Dag leaned casually against the edge of the table.

“So,” he said lightly, “I assume that you found the boy and you’ve been with Lyra the last couple of days.”