The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (reading a book txt) 📕

blew fire over old-fashioned torches, adding to the flickering glow in the room.

Please don’t let me run out of juice too soon.

Igniting her own flames, washing the room in a red-gold hue, Meira turned the screen into her own searching device and started hunting through every room she could find a reflective surface in throughout the mountain, starting with the bedrooms she’d walked by to get to Tyrek’s rooms.

In short order, she pulled two women—unclaimed mates, she assumed—through and into the chamber with them. Then a boom rocked the mountain, and for a second she thought the whole thing was coming down on top of itself. The cavern held, dust and rock shaking loose to drop down over them. She kept looking, finding three more women before the first short single beep sounded and a door that blended into the cavern wall itself opened.

A green dragon stepped inside—a stocky man with burnished skin, black hair, and green eyes the color of jade in sunlight, which had tipped her off. One of Rune’s men? Aidan’s reaction, moving to help instead of attack, told her yes.

The green shifter had five more with him, including another man sporting a nasty gash across his forehead. Already healing. “I collapsed the back-tunnel exit,” the green dragon said, mouth a grim slash.

Sam was still outside—

No. Don’t think like that. He can handle himself. And if she let herself start worrying, she wouldn’t stop. “Who are we missing?” she asked.

“Who the fuck is she?” the green dragon demanded, looking to Aidan.

Old Meira would’ve gone quiet and let them work it out.

Not anymore.

“Someone who can help,” she said.

“Long story, Jiǎ,” Aidan said. “But she can help.”

Rather than waste time arguing, the man named Jiǎ stepped beside her. “How?”

Immediately, Meira showed him. That’s all it took. With painstaking slowness, given the urgency, lives on the line, quiet all around her as she worked with the dragon shifters on either side helping her search, they gathered their people. Some made their own way, others Meira pulled into the room, until they got everyone else inside the chamber.

Another massive boom, this one closer, was swiftly followed by the unmistakable rumble of falling rock shaking the room, sending more age-old dust falling on their heads.

“Jiǎ?” Aidan asked.

The green shifter shook his head. “Not us. That has to be them, trying to get out.” His grim smile set a cold rock in the center of her chest. “I might have melted the gears for the hangar door. They’re stuck in here now.”

Aidan grimaced. “According to Rune, nothing is happening outside. I have no idea how they are getting in.”

“How do we get out?” Meira asked.

Everyone else looked to Jiǎ. The clear leader in Rune’s absence.

Meira bit her lip at the distrust spinning off the man in her direction. But if this was Rune’s second… She stepped forward and put a hand on his arm without thinking it through until he tensed under her touch. “I’m a phoenix. They’re here for me. Let me out and wait long enough. They’ll be gone and you can get out.”

Of course, she’d likely be walking into her own death. But better one life than many. She’d already lost her uncle. Putting these good people at risk was unacceptable. She may not want to die, but knowing others did because of her would break her.

Jiǎ jerked his head back, disbelief slapping out at her. “You’d do that?”

“This is all because of me.”

The muscles under her hand relaxed, even though his face didn’t change. “We don’t sacrifice our own.”

Meira blew out a silent breath of relief. Was it selfish of her to have wanted someone to not let her sacrifice her life? Unfortunately, unless they came up with a better plan, she’d have no choice.

“We’ve made a new tunnel that leads out a different side of the mountain,” he said. “It’s on the other side of this chamber.”

But…leaving the mountain was a risk, especially with the still-human women. So was staying. The men inside the mountain might have others out there. They could wait them out, starve them out. Meira struggled through the options. “I can get a few to safety, but not all of us before I need to rest.”

“Where?” Aidan demanded.

Skylar was going to kill her, but she’d done the same sending Airk to Ladon’s mountain. And Angelika’s wolves were there now. Precedent had been set. Though, given these dragon shifters’ current situation as rogues, they might not like it, either. “Ben Nevis.”

…

They’d been walking for a long fucking time down a tunnel hardly big enough for a human woman, which as a dragon shifter meant stooping over and frequently whacking his head into overhanging chunks of granite. Easier to do given that the only light came from both their eyes. Black flames weren’t exactly bright.

“Dammit, Rune. Warn me.” Samael rubbed at the raw lump forming on his head.

“Sorry,” Rune tossed back.

No, he wasn’t.

“Hold up.” At least Rune gave him a warning before coming to a dead stop. The telltale click of buttons sounded a heartbeat before a beep, then the cavern wall appeared to swing wide. A hidden door.

“Move and I fry your ass,” a now-familiar voice growled.

Aidan.

“Asses, rookie,” Rune corrected. “And you don’t want to do that.”

Samael didn’t wait to hear the next part, shouldering past both men into a large, dank chamber to find it lit by torches around the part of the circumference that wasn’t taken up by an underground cave lake.

Beside an oddly propped computer monitor, the black surface of which was shattered, the splinters of glass reflecting the firelight and water, Sera sat with Meira’s head in her lap.

The relief at finding her disappeared at the sight of her still form. Too still. Samael was by his mate’s side, gathering her to him, one hand tangled in her hair to support her head, before he processed making the decision to move.

“What happened?” he demanded.

Sera flinched, and behind him Aidan let loose a soft but definite warning growl. Sera shot her mate