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

create a new design. Except her mother hadn’t carried a crest.

His touch crept lower, closer to her most intimate parts, but not yet touching. “Maybe we should keep trying. Just in case,” he murmured.

That ache they had assuaged once already bloomed between her legs at the words. “Already?”

“You told your sisters two days, right?” He slipped that errant finger between her legs, teasing her with it, parting her only to feather across her slick entrance.

“To rest,” she pointed out with a smile. Not that she wanted him to stop.

Contentment remained, but now hot need swamped the feeling, drawing an answering need from her, heat searing her veins.

“You can rest all you need,” he murmured.

She gasped as he slid that finger inside her.

“I’ll do all the work.”

Chapter Fifteen

Pytheios stood with Tisiphone’s hand on his arm facing the door to his bedchamber. At their back, the bed had been prepared especially for this occasion, sheer crimson panels draped over the massive, ornately carved canopy. This bed had once belonged to a human monarch of some renown. Flower petals, also red, had been strewn across red silk sheets, filling the air with a sickly-sweet scent he could have done without, but they might help his mate stomach the stench of his rotting flesh.

“What are we waiting for?” the woman at his side asked, impatience—or perhaps nerves—rife in her voice.

Though he’d yet to see Tisiphone nervous. The female-born dragon shifter was cunning, a quiet watcher. While his methods of getting what he wanted were more overt, hers were sly. A whispered word of poison in an ear. Effective. Together they would be unstoppable.

“Witnesses,” he said.

Though she didn’t make a sound or move, the flutter of her pulse sped up, tapping through the thin skin of her wrist against his arm. “For the ceremony?”

“For everything.”

He waited for her to protest, but none came. A glance revealed a coolly assured expression in her white-blue eyes. If anything, a tiny smile curled the corners of her mouth.

“This pleases you?” he demanded. “To have others watch me fuck you?”

She lifted a negligent shoulder. “To have them watch me become the mate of the High King? Indisputable proof. I don’t mind an audience for that.”

Satisfaction thrummed through him. Had this been Rhiamon, he doubted the response would have been the same. His brother’s plan to create a phoenix from a female-born dragon shifter had been beyond brilliant. Not even Nathair, however, had thought to have Pytheios mate the Trojan horse they’d created.

Pytheios had reasoned through that one on his own. He’d declared her his phoenix—of course he would mate her. All dragon shifters would expect that. The question was, how would it work? A dragon shifter didn’t have to be turned, already a creature of fire, but Tisiphone was something else now, something different thanks to Rhiamon. Still fire, but new.

Surprisingly, it had not taken long to find the right candidate. A female-born dragon, sterile and unable to provide children, didn’t have much of a future to look forward to. To be offered a position as mate to the High King had been an incentive none would pass up. Still, he’d been lucky to find one who fit in so beautifully with his plans.

I have chosen well.

The chamber door opened to admit Jakkobah, his black-and-red suit appropriate for the occasion but somehow only making him appear sickly. Behind him, Pytheios’s younger brother, Nathair, entered, his jet-black hair a mess and clothing rumpled. He’d traded in the Rubik’s Cube he used to keep with him at all times, a tool to keep his mind and hands busy, for a similar toy, one more complicated, shaped like a star.

Pytheios scowled. “Where—”

Jakkobah held up a hand. “Rhiamon, and I quote, declines to watch you bind yourself falsely to this whore who has not earned your love or respect.”

Fire stirred in his belly, and Pytheios let it burn. He would need it for the mating.

Tisiphone patted his hand carefully, as though she couldn’t stand to touch his rotting skin. Not rotting for much longer. “Probably better she not be here anyway,” she said.

She was right, of course. He should probably be glad Rhiamon hadn’t burned Everest to the ground when she’d learned of his plan to mate another.

He glanced to Jakkobah. “And our other witness?”

Jakkobah gave a birdlike bob of his head. “Shall be here shortly, my king.”

As though on cue, a knock sounded at the door. “Enter,” Pytheios called.

First to enter was a large man who, despite being a gold dragon, could almost pass for a black dragon with his darker hair and eyes. “I almost had her,” he snarled as he prowled into the room. “Why was I called back?”

“To witness my mating.”

Brock pulled up sharply at that, his gaze cutting to Tisiphone. “I’m…honored to be included.”

“And after that, your own position might be addressed…” He let the sentence dangle, enticing.

Satisfaction lit Brock’s eyes a molten iron ore, and he dipped his head in an uncharacteristic approximation of a bow. “Then I am doubly honored.”

Four armed guards appeared behind him, two hauling their almost incoherent charge, who appeared unable to keep his feet beneath him or his head, which hung limp from his shoulders, raised. One guard grabbed him by the hair and forced his head up.

“Who am I?” Pytheios demanded.

A dark-gray fire, like billowing smoke, lit the eyes of his prisoner. “A murdering, thieving bastard,” the prisoner slurred.

Excellent. He needed this witness above all the others. “You are here to observe my mating with the one true phoenix, solidifying my claim as High King. When this is done, we will return you to your clan so that you can report to all what has transpired here before your eyes. Understand?”

The man before him forced his feet beneath him, grunting with the pain and effort of it, and slowly shook off the men supporting him. He swayed, but he faced down Pytheios on his own. “Get on with it, then,” Gorgon spat. “I haven’t got all fucking