AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Conall looked at my hand as if it were an asp that might lash out and bite him, as if it were a life rope he could latch onto. Slowly, his head shook, arms and legs stretching a little wider over the bed.
"I'll do just fine here,mo chroí. You go on and get your rest. We'll run the meadow in the morning."
I wanted to dig into his thoughts, make him answer all my questions. Why was he falling to pieces to touch me when he'd arrived and now so terrified to come to bed with me and the others? Was he like Asterion? Did he want to claim me for himself and no one else? But he didn't seemjealous.
Hywel's smoke drifted into the room, lavender and rose, and I sighed. I'd had enough of questions and confusion. Hywel and Laszlo made their feelings clear, their intentions known. It frightened me, yes, but it was a comfort too.
I turned, and my extended hand slid into Hywel's free one as he led me back to the nest.
CHAPTER28
THE WYRM
“Why…whyisRolant here?" I asked through gasping breaths, hands clasped around my ribs to keep them from splitting open, which they clearly wanted to do.
I'd thought Conall's morning meadow run was just an excuse to have me alone again, but instead he seemed to take up his training in earnest.
"He's as old as Hywel, and he doesn't go about sleeping for centuries," Conall said, his own voice a little rough as he fell back into the grass, splayed out under the rising sun, tall shadows of grass streaking lines across his white linen shirt. "He doesn't help out of the goodness of his heart—everything is a transaction—but he's been cooperating, getting us in contact with some of the…less conversational monsters. A lot of the older monsters take issue with Birsha, not because of his actions, but because to them, he's an upstart human not minding his place."
I puffed and fell to my knees in the grass just a couple feet away from Conall. His head turned, and the green of his eyes matched the stalks that obscured his face.
"Come here," he said.
"I want more information," I answered.
"Then you'll have it…over here."
I crawled to his side and Conall pulled me to straddle his lap, pressing my hips down to sit firmly.
"You're going to distract me."
He shook his head. "I just like the way you feel right here. I like holding you this way," he added, and his hands squeezed my ass but he didn't move us into a grind. I was tempted, but I braced my hands on his chest and stared down at him.
"Well?" I prompted.
"I didn't know the history between Hywel and the Wyrm. He's never beenthatwilling to speak to me. I'm next to human in his eyes, even if I do have…a reputation. But when I mentioned Hywel was starting to wake, he was all charm suddenly. He gave up the locations of three ancient beasts we've been searching for in exchange for me allowing him to join me on my return."
I frowned and twisted to look back at the castle. "That seems suspicious."
"I thought so too, but Asterion said he could be trusted if we needed his help protecting you, and on our journey, Rolant seemed to know the way here. Are you worried for them?" Conall asked. I blinked, and he added, "Hywel and Laszlo? Or for yourself?"
My lips parted and I paused, staring down at Conall. "Not for myself—I know none of you would let anything happen to me. For Hywel, I think. Laszlo said they nearly killed each other before they left one another. What if Rolant wanted to come and finish the fight?"
"Then he'll end up dead, I expect," Conall said. "Hywel's a mated dragon now, nicely refreshed from centuries of rest and power accumulation. In a real fight between the pair of them, Rolant wouldn't stand a chance."
"Being mated makes a difference?" I asked.
Hywel called me his mate too. Did it matter if I was or wasn't when he was already mated to Laszlo?
Conall's stare drifted away and he shrugged in the grass. "It does for almost all monsters. There's a doctor who…makes a study of us with our consent. He says it changes something in the blood. Amongst werewolves, having a mate is having someone to fightfor, a reason to survive a battle. It's an honor from the gods to find that in life," he said with a strangely bitter note to his voice.
"You sound like you don't believe that," I said.
Conall stiffened and then relaxed once more, meeting my gaze again, his eyes narrowed slightly as if he were looking up at the sun, even though it was ahead of me, safely out of his view.
"I do," he said slowly. "I think it is also… To have something so precious, so perfect, so much a part of yourself…it changes you. It makes everything else in the world…less. And I think that's dangerous. If not to you or to your mate, but to the rest of the world."
I opened my mouth to ask if Conall had been mated, but he sat up before I could speak, wrapping his arms around me and rolling us in the grass so that he stretched out on top of me.
