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Chapter 19

Leila

The hemp binding my right wrist was finally beginning to loosen. I had been working at the coarse fibers for what felt like hours, cycling through every restraint drill Binwee had drilled into my memory during my early days with Asad Intelligence. I twisted my forearm, compressed the bones in my hand, and searched continuously for the weakest loop in the knot. The friction had worn my skin raw and sticky with blood, but I pushed the sting aside. Pain was merely sensory data, and the only reality that mattered right now was that I was close to breaking free.

I had slipped my left wrist out of its loop roughly ten minutes earlier. I kept that arm positioned against the headboard as though it were still anchored, refusing to give away my single advantage to anyone who might peer into the room. The cloth gag stuffed between my teeth tasted like stale linen and dry fear, forcing me to pull slow, measured breaths through my nose. I had to keep my pulse steady so I could think clearly.

Binwee would either be proud of my focus, or she would chew me out for getting ambushed in the first place. Knowing her, she would probably do both in the same breath.

I narrowed my eyes toward the tall windows, trying to discern even a flicker of movement through the heavy brocade drapes, but the fabric was far too dense. The curtains were designed to shut out the world completely, leaving captives stripped of any sense of time, location, or direction. That heavy disorientation felt almost worse than the ropes, an unsettling vertigo that reminded me of how easily hours could vanish when consciousness slipped away.

Darkness meant Lord Verrater had the cover he needed to carry out his plan.

I shoved that rising dread down into the pit of my stomach and kept grinding the rope against the carved wood. Kavan was going to find me. He was an apex predator, a fucking dragon, capable of catching my scent across mountain ridges and valleys. More than that, the fierce certainty in his eyes when he called me his mate had not been an illusion. He was not a male who abandoned what belonged to his heart, and he would never let anyone stand between us.

I only had to stay alive and conscious until he reached me. It was basic survival, and I was trained for this exact kind of pressure.

The cord shifted another fraction of an inch, and I swallowed a sharp breath of relief against the gag. I was almost loose. When Kavan breached that doorway, I intended to be standing and ready to fight at his side.

A violent crash tore through the quiet outside my gilded cage. The heavy sound of timber shattering against stone echoed down the hall, followed by a guttural, earth-shaking roar that rattled the crystal pendants on the chandelier. Then came the harsh, ringing shriek of steel biting into steel. The battle was right outside, moving closer with every passing second. Each heavy thud and violent shout sent a hot spike of adrenaline straight into my veins.

Kavan had arrived.

I pulled hard against the restraint on my right wrist, though my left hand trembled attacking the knot as I gave up the pretense of being bound. The knot refused to yield completely, biting deep into the raw ring of flesh around my wrist.

The heavy bedroom door did not simply swing open. It blew inward off its iron hinges, crashing against the plaster wall with enough force to send fractures spidering across the stone. Lord Verrater stumbled through the dust and splintered wood. The composed, aristocratic nobleman who had spoken with such icy elegance was gone, replaced by a frantic creature. His white hair fell across his face in tangled strands, and his golden eyes possessed the glazed, manic expression of a trapped predator determined to drag someone into the dark with him.

A long silver dagger glinted in his hand, catching the flickering candlelight, and my stomach dropped into a sickening void.

Before I could shift my weight, he lunged across the bed and seized a fistful of my hair, wrenching my head backward until my neck strained and my eyes watered with pain. The cold edge of the blade pressed flush against my throat, right over the frantic jump of my pulse.

"Don't move." His breath came hot and sour against my ear, stinking of fear and something darker, something desperate. "Don't even breathe wrong, or I open your throat."

Outside the broken entrance, that thunderous roar echoed again, vibrating through the floorboards and shaking mortar from the ceiling. I felt the deep resonance of it rattling in my own bones. Every instinct commanded me to thrash and strike, but Binwee's training held me frozen. I had to wait, measure the distance, and look for the opening.

The remaining frame around the entrance caved inward, and three massive silhouettes filled the doorway.

Kavan was the first through the threshold, and the sheer sight of him drove the breath straight from my lungs. He was barely clinging to control, his massive shoulders trembling with primal rage while his golden irises burned like open furnaces. Fresh crimson blood that did not belong to him was smeared in broad strokes across his chest and arms. Right behind him, Sanyra stood with a lethal, chilling focus, while Rhucard looked ready to tear the room apart with his bare hands.

All three of them were completely, unapologetically naked. Their skin radiated waves of furnace-like heat from their recent transformation, their muscles still twitching with the residual power of flight. Further down the wrecked hallway, I caught glimpses of additional guards, equally bare and equally lethal. They had clearly crossed the skies in their dragon forms to get here.

A fleeting, slightly hysterical thought flickered through my head about how wild my new life had become. This was Drakhone, and this was the male I had chosen. If staying at his side meant growing accustomed to seeing half the planet unclothed, I was fully prepared to accept it.

The three warriors froze the instant they registered the steel pressed against my jugular.

"Let her go." Kavan's voice did not sound like his anymore. It was lower, rougher, edged with something ancient and merciless. "Let her go, and I'll make your death quick."

"Quick?" Verrater's laugh cracked in the middle, unhinged. The knife pressed harder, and I felt the sting as it parted skin, felt the first hot trickle of blood slide down my throat. "I've lived nine hundred years, Kavan. I've watched empires crumble to dust. I've watched you weaken us generation after generation with your soft heart and your human sympathies, and you think I'm afraid of dying?"

"Our people have never been stronger." Sanyra's voice cut through the room like a blade of ice. "The only weak thing here is you, hiding behind a woman half your size because you don't have the spine to face us yourself."

Verrater's grip tightened, wrenching a gasp from me. "I'm saving our bloodline from dilution. From the mistake of chaining ourselves to an inferior species that will drag us down into their mortality, their fragility, their—"

"She's not inferior." Kavan's step forward was slow, deliberate, and I watched Verrater's arm tremble in response. "She's smarter and braver than you'll ever be. And if you draw one more drop of her blood, I will make you beg for the mercy of dragonfire before I'm finished with you."

"You already let one human die for your arrogance." The words spat out like venom, quick and vicious. "Lady Marion Huntingdon died because you thought you could take whatever you wanted without any consideration for our people. I made certain her husband knew exactly what she planned. I made certain he was waiting."

The confession detonated through the room like a shockwave. The air seemed to drop in temperature even as Kavan's aura flared with scorching heat. The king went utterly motionless, his gaze turning so bright and lethal that it looked capable of incinerating the stone walls.