Page 111 of The Flame King's Queen

“Not quite this dirty, perhaps. You were working in the cellar of the Great Hall. Soldiers came in and bowed to you, and it finally dawned on me who you were. Not the commander, but the king.”

Zabriel laughs as he recalls the moment. “Ah, yes,sha’lenla. You ran from me, and how dearly I wished to chase you down and mark your neck with my teeth.”

But he waited until I was ready because that is the kind of man he is.

I look around at the city. We have been working for hours, but we have nowhere near begun to put things back together again. “Will we be all right?” I whisper to him.

Zabriel strokes Sylvi’s sleeping cheek, and then takes my hands. “Maledin has endured so many battles, and has so many scars, but do you know why we will always prevail?”

“Why is that?”

“Because the people of Maledin love this country too dearly to ever let it fall for good. There will always be a dragon army to protect it, and if they lose their way in the mountains, there will be a witch to call them back.”

Zabriel leans down and kisses me among the falling ash. His lips are sweetly familiar, and so is his scent. My mate, holding me and our baby in his arms amid the devastation, reminding me that we have survived to fight again another day.

The battlegrounds have fallen silent. Our side has suffered painful losses, but in the days and weeks to come we learn of many moments of triumph and self-sacrifice. Our heroes are celebrated and our fallen mourned. Zabriel and I were not there to witness the ferocity of the violence and all the battles that were fought.

Others were, but those are their tales to tell.

EPILOGUE

Zabriel

Down on the dragongrounds, Esmeral is shrieking alarm calls that are carrying across the city. I run over the bridge to her, my heart pumping in apprehension. Isavelle is nowhere to be seen, which makes no sense when she would be the first to feel her dragon’s distress.

The rest of the flare is milling about in confusion, searching the skies and the cliffs for danger. Strikes from the wild flare. Attacks by enemy mages. None of the other dragons are joining in the calls. Scourge is standing over his mate, and he snorts in confusion.

When Esmeral sees me, she shrieks even more urgently. She’s close to the ground and her wings are lowered like she’s covering something. I lift the edge of a wing, and what I see surprises me.

“Isavelle?”

My mate is cowering beneath her dragon’s wing. Her cheeks are flushed, and she cringes away from the light. There’s sweat on her brow, and she whimpers.

“I got caught outside, Alpha,” she sniffles. “I didn’t realize I was going into heat.”

A pungent wave of her scent washes over me. I smell a tang of fear and distress because she’s been caught in the open, but most of all, there’s an overwhelming sweetness that makes my head swim with pleasure and my knot ache with need.

The restlessness and irritability that I’ve been feeling all day suddenly makes sense. I’ve been going into a rut, and the scent of Isavelle’s heat has pushed me over the edge.

“Come here to me,sha’lenla,” I groan as I reach for her. “Alpha’s got you.”

I scoop her up in my arms, tuck her under my chin, and wrap my cloak around both of us to hide her from the daylight. There were things I was meant to do today. People to see, plans to put into action. That’s all been swept aside by my need for my mate.

I glance back and I see that Scourge is sheltering Esmeral with his wings and nipping the back of her neck with his teeth. They’ll fly somewhere beautiful for their own heat and rut, like the hot pools to the south.

As always, I take my mate to her nest in the castle. It’s been furnished with a canopied bed enclosed with heavy curtains and piles and piles of blankets and cushions. Isavelle’s face melts with relief as I place her on the bed and draw the curtain around us.

For several long moments we’re kissing and holding each other tightly, groaning in relief that we’re alone together in a small, dark space. Her sweetness and the richness of my rutting scent grow stronger and stronger. I bite down on her shoulder, her arms, her breasts, her thighs through her clothes while she finds my knot through my breeches and squeezes it. Our garments are in the way, but we’re too drunk on each other to remember to move them until I want to get at her slick and I can’t.

With a growl of frustration, I rend her garments with my bare hands, tearing them open from her throat to her sex. As soon as I get the tangled shreds off her, I wrap her thighs around my head and taste her thoroughly. I push my tongue into her sex and moan at the sweetness on my tongue and the firm grip of her muscles.

When I sit up, Isavelle takes one look at my cock and swollen knot and rolls onto her belly, lifting up her hips, inviting me. It’s an invitation I can’t resist.

“Alpha, please,” Isavelle moans as I thrust into her.

“I want my baby inside you. I need you with child again,sha’lenla.”

Lately I haven’t been able to get the memory of my mate pregnant out of my mind. Every time she picks Sylvi up in her arms, I want to see her with another baby. I want our family to be growing.

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