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She and her dragon mate Tundreg had helped me stop the war in Mirdrakona only a few short days ago. A war Colin started to distract everyone from what he was doing in the Otherworld.
Add in Pietr’s long blond hair and matching beard set against a deep brown complexion, and it was no wonder he’d captured my interest when I stumbled into Mirognya. His well-defined muscles and leather musk hadn’t helped.
Thankfully, Thane understood my predicament. He had been on his way to angelic ascension and was not available for romantic anything, or so we thought. Fates—or maybe the gods—had other plans, and we had solidified our mating bond since then. Many times over.
There would always be handsome men in my life, but there was only one who had captured my heart and soul.
“We have angels stationed at every portal,” the archangel answered Pietr with a nod. “Colin was last seen entering his own realm and has not returned. He claimed the queen called him back.”
“Coward,” Lena mumbled from her chair on my other side.
Narrowing her bright blue eyes, she ran a whetstone along her sword’s blade to sharpen it and keep her hands busy. Her black dreadlocks had been half pulled back with a clip, keeping the thick strands out of her olive-toned face.
After I killed the usurper Galina, Lena became my personal bodyguard, and the warrior woman was as entertaining as she was fierce. Without her, I wouldn’t have gotten through the vampires’ Blood Trials, and Thane would have died.
“I may not like the guy, but I wouldn’t have thought Colin capable of all this,” Thane said, rubbing his scruff-covered face, his eyelids hooded from exhaustion. “I wouldn’t have mentioned anything about the fae’s involvement in front of him if I had.”
Even though the reason for his scruff sucked, it gave him a ruggedly sexy look I could get used to.
The door opened, and a younger-looking grim reaper pushed a large trash can on wheels inside. He moved to the kitchenette and cleaned up the leftover food and drinks from our afternoon discussions.
I wondered whether the job bothered him. Dying and waking up to find yourself a janitor couldn’t be much fun. At least this kind of cleanup didn’t often happen since reapers and angels didn’t need food or water, and they rarely had visitors stay this long.
Who knows, maybe he enjoyed getting to listen in. I sure would, even if it bored me. I was nosy like that.
“Do not blame yourself. I had suspicions but no concrete evidence, or I would have brought you in sooner.” Adam tilted his head to the side. “Although, I must point out that you do not work for me anymore.”
Thane chuckled. “You know I’m always willing to help.”
I yawned, which caused a chain reaction from most of those gathered. If I wasn’t so tired, I would have laughed. “I don’t mean to be the party pooper, but can we reconvene in the morning?”
As much as I wanted to murder the manipulative fae fuck responsible for orchestrating everything terrible that had happened in my life, I also knew things were somewhat stable at the moment. Colin wasn’t even in this realm right now, and I needed to be on my A-game when I faced him and killed him.
Gods, that was going to be such a glorious moment.
The others looked as tired as I felt and agreed to stop for the night. Adam had offered our drakony guests rooms within the DEA’s building until he secured another location.
If we couldn’t capture Colin in the human realm, we intended to bring most of the dragons and a bunch of phoenix warriors with us to the Otherworld. In that case, we would need a much bigger space to house everyone.
The dragons’ weirdly dilated eyes and overly tall bodies weren’t easy to hide from humans without magic. We needed to conserve all that we had unless absolutely necessary.
“Imos, before you go, I wanted to get your thoughts on something,” Thane said, remaining in his seat.
“Of course.” The dragonman’s skin was a darker brown than Pietr’s, but Imos had hair as black as Thane’s. Sitting almost a foot taller than either of the other two men, his golden irises regarded my mate patiently from across the table.
Thane explained what had happened on the battlefield in Mirdrakona when black scales like the dragons’ appeared on his skin and protected him. We didn’t know what it meant or how to control the ability.
Imos’s expression turned thoughtful. “I’d not heard of that happening outside a mated bond, but the tsarina does not have enough drakon blood to shift in such a way.”
“Could it be from the dragonstone?” I asked.
He tilted his head as he considered it. “It’s possible, though I admit I hadn’t thought a human would be capable of inheriting those qualities.”
“Well, he’s more than just human,” I pointed out. “He’s a realm walker and mated to a phoenix.”
Imos smiled, an expression he’d finally mastered. When we first met, he and the other dragons had just woken up from a few decades-long slumber and were adjusting to muscle movement again. That or he hadn’t smiled much before.
“And mated to a royal phoenix, at that,” he said. “I suppose I could be wrong. Perhaps the combination of the stone and your drakony blood passed through the mate bond and created this ability.”
