“You had to tell her?” Fin grumped. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he told them as I stared from one to the other. “Next time you decide to go hunting for information and using yourselves as bait, tell her. I guessed. She didn’t believe me that you would be fine.”
“He’s right.” It was my turn to growl. “I didn’t believe him. I broke out of here and ran away to get you, and you wanted to be there?”
“Kitten…” Maddox began.
Rogue slid onto the edge of the pool and held a drink out to me. “You need to eat, little sváss, then we will hold them so you can beat them for worrying you so.”
Oh, there was going to be a beating. I glared between the two and finally locked my gaze on Maddox. It was his pain that tortured me. “Explain.”
Chapter 6
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react that matters.” - Epictetus
Rogue
Ignoring the dark look Fin shot his way, Rogue ran his fingers through Fiona’s soaking wet hair. There were snarls and tangles he loosened with very little effort.
“I’m waiting.” She snapped out the two words, her attention focused on Maddox. A reasonable direction for her anger. He was the one she’d mated first, after all. Mated. Trusted. And while Rogue understood the strategy and even the reasoning behind their actions, she didn’t. Not yet.
Alfred and he had both tried to assure her they would be fine, but his little sváss’ heart proved far too open, despite the prickly and biting exterior.
“Eat,” he murmured almost under his breath. As fierce and warrior-like as she’d looked half-covered in blood and soot from the battle, he hadn’t missed the hollows in her cheeks or the over-brightness in her eyes. The battle had taken more out of her than she’d admitted, and she’d also fed both Fin and Maddox after their incarceration. It was why he’d agreed with Alfred she needed to feed on him.
Rogue would make sure she ate food, and then he’d feed her blood as well. A week. She’d evaded them for a week. He and Alfred had damn well known where she was heading, but the fact she’d managed to stay hidden had been a sharp if irritating surprise. If she could stay hidden from them, in all likelihood, she could avoid those hunting her.
But there was no doubt at all that Cyril and the others wanted her eradicated, and her going off on her own could have had far deadlier consequences. Maddox and Fin both knew this, yet they’d kept that crucial bit of information from her, and she was far too stubborn and headstrong to listen when compelled by a far more primal nature than any of them possessed.
Well, at least that they’d possessed any longer. Maddox would have been the same if it was his mate. Fin had proven it when he’d found out she was in the prison in the first place.
With a huffed sigh, Maddox said, “We needed to know who among the Seven sent the shadow demon after you. We knew it had to be one of them. We’d tracked nearly all of them…” He glared at Fin as if the druid were the one who’d had the insane idea. As likely as that was, Maddox still went along with it, so Rogue had very little sympathy for the dragon’s predicament. “Between us, we decided that allowing our capture would give us a chance to see what they would do.”
“Why?” Fiona demanded. “They could have executed you.”
“Yes and no, Beautiful,” Fin said, not pausing to let her argue that point. “We’re a lot harder to kill than you might think for one, and for another…”
“They’re leverage,” Alfred answered for them as he joined them, a goblet of spiced wine in one hand. He held it out to her, and she wrinkled her nose like she’d smelled something awful, and he frowned. So did Rogue.
Last he’d checked, she liked the wine.
“Then they would have tried to use them against you?” Fiona asked, glancing up at Alfred this time as he set the wine aside. Rogue didn’t bother to hide his smile at the twin looks of shock on Maddox and Fin’s faces. Alfred had done a fair amount to win her over, though not enough, or she wouldn’t have fled them. Then again, maybe she would have.
If nothing else, he had to accept that her very nature demanded independence. Still…
“Perhaps,” Alfred told her. “They might have used it more to guarantee their distance should they try to bring the fight to me.”
Nose still wrinkled, Fiona snorted. “You were hardly struggling against them today.”
“Hmm,” he replied almost noncommittally. “Then why did you rush to my defense, Hellion?”
“Because you’re my asshole.”
Alfred’s pleased smile made Rogue laugh. Only Fiona could turn an insult into a compliment.
“Besides,” she continued, expression sobering as she glared over at the pair in question. “I felt your pain.” All at once, what humor there was to be found in the situation evaporated. There was no mistaking the very real anguish in her voice. “That’s how I knew something was wrong, even before that stupid bitch brought the warning.”
“Stupid bitch?” Fin asked.
“Eleanor,” Alfred supplied. “Synove sent her with a message.”
Maddox pushed away from his side of the pool and came straight to Fiona. Rogue didn’t back off, but continued to work his fingers through the tangles in her hair. Periodically, he’d scratch his fingers over her scalp, and it would loosen some of her tension. Not all of it, not when she kept getting angry all over again.
“Kitten…”
“Were you really in pain?”
Grimacing, the dragon gathered one of her hands in his, but Rogue and Alfred both glared. She was barely eating anything, so he gave a near silent huff before picking up one of the croissants and offering it to her. The stare-off between the two was impressive, but she finally opened her mouth and took the bite, even as she rolled her eyes.
“The pain was necessary,” Maddox said slowly, but there were lines etched around his eyes that told Rogue what he would say next before he even spoke the words. “I didn’t imagine you would feel it.”
“She’s your mate,” Rogue reminded him. “She claimed you, even before she allowed your claim. What part of mating had you forgotten?”
That earned him a baleful look that didn’t impress Rogue. Nor would he back down from the implied challenge. “I would never have allowed her to come to real harm.”
“But you did,” Rogue reminded him. “Something we didn’t quite understand because we worried she might be overreacting, but I don’t think she was anymore.” For that, he would apologize to her personally. But later, when they were alone.
“I’m aware,” Maddox growled, this time at him. “I’ve never mated before, and it didn’t occur to me she would feel it…” Rogue wasn’t the one he needed to be saying this to, a fact he seemed to recognize himself as he looked down at Fiona again. “I’m sorry, Kitten. Truly.”
She gave a little shrug, and it crushed Maddox some. If Rogue read her right, she was about to let him off the hook. The dragon had made a mistake and now he wanted to make up for it, but her not allowing him to would be even a worse punishment.