If only her legs would stop shaking.
Needing to bleed off the tension buzzing through her, Meira fluffed out the skirt of her midnight-black mating gown, the color of her new clan. The sparkling jewels in all the colors of the dragon shifter clans—black, white, blue, green, gold, and red—sewn into the delicate material flashed and glittered with the movement.
Angelika, the only one of her sisters whose existence had still not been revealed to any but the three allied kings, was already inside with the wolf shifters their mother had sent her to for protection. She would continue to pretend to be one of them, hiding her existence from all but a handful who knew the truth.
She had been pissed as hell not to be included in the ceremony, storming into Meira’s room the day she found out, luckily when only Kasia and Skylar had been around to witness.
“I’m supposed to be part of this day,” Angelika had grumbled.
Meira had taken her by the shoulders. “You are.”
That had earned her a wrinkled nose. “Yeah. Sitting at the back of the room with the rest of the rabble.”
“Wolf shifters aren’t rabble.”
They’d stared at each other a second before both snorting. “To us, maybe,” Angelika had said. “But as far as most dragon shifters are concerned…” She’d shrugged.
Meira had said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Angelika wasn’t wrong. Dragon shifters called the wolves mutts behind their backs, sometimes to their faces. But they were men to be trusted as far as the sisters were concerned. As long as the wolves were keeping Angelika’s existence secret, she had to pretend to be mated to one, which meant she wouldn’t stand at the front of the great hall with Meira today.
But at least Angelika was there.
Kasia and Skylar moved to stand in front of her, their overbright smiles hiding their doubts.
Their emotions pelted her anyway.
Of the powers she’d inherited when their mother had died, being an empath was one she could’ve done without. It was what had driven her to bury herself in technology rather than interact with people. Computers and code were consistent, predictable. People were less so, even for an empath like her.
Right now, her sisters’ concerns wrapped around Meira like a thick blanket, stifling and suffocating.
Telling them she was okay wouldn’t make it go away—she knew, because she’d tried. Instead, she just blocked the emotions.
“You look so beautiful.” Kasia took her hands, giving them a squeeze.
Dressed in a silken gold gown the color of her own clan, her dark-red hair pinned up, Kasia was equally stunning. So was Skylar, beside her in a matching gown of blue, black hair also intricately coiffed, though she’d chafed under that decision. The sisters had inherited their drastically different coloring from the combination of their phoenix grandmother and mother, white dragon shifter father, and red dragon shifter grandfather. Her sisters’ glacial white-blue eyes reflected her own worry and anticipation.
“Better than any fairy-tale princess,” Kasia teased.
Meira managed a chuckle at that. Of the four, Meira had been the one who’d preferred the earlier eras they’d lived through. As the modern age had dawned, she’d fallen in love with fabled tales of knights and princesses that reminded her of those times. A reminder of chivalry and gallantry and a different way of life. “That’s clearly what I was going for.”
Skylar snorted but otherwise kept her derisive thoughts to herself. They were all well aware Meira had had little choice in today’s events, swept along by tradition and the need for all three clans to put on a show for the rest of the dragon shifter world.
“Ready for the last touches?” Kasia asked.
At her nod, Skylar picked up a small gold chest, ornately decorated—a traditional token for Meira’s soon-to-be mate—and placed it in her hands. Then Kasia lifted the sheer black veil with matching jewels decorating the edges, settling it over Meira’s face, clouding her vision and giving everything around her a darker cast.
She glanced in the mirror off to the side. Only instead of herself in that reflection, for a heartbeat she honestly expected to see…him.
A memory she should do her best to forget.
That day when someone had seen through her magical ability to turn mirrors into portals had shaken her to the core. No, not just someone…Samael Veles. Ever since then, when she looked into mirrors, a small part of her expected to see him standing there, demanding, hard, and suspicious.
Except she didn’t. Instead, she saw him in person all around the mountain or at Gorgon’s side. The only person in this place whose emotions were locked down so tightly, she had no idea what he felt, or what he thought of her and of this mating.
She jerked her gaze from the mirror and put a stop to all those thoughts, facing her sisters’ expectant expressions instead.
“I wish Mama could be here.” She smiled, trying to take the sting of her longing out of her words for herself but also for her sisters.
“She is,” Kasia whispered. “In spirit.”
Kasia and Skylar stepped closer and put their foreheads to hers through the veil, like they’d done since they were children, a show of solidarity.
Meira closed her eyes. Spirit wasn’t going to help them win this war, or help her take this step.
…
Raw. The only word that could describe Samael Veles on this day.
Meira Amon’s mating day.
Like a fresh kill ground up in the butcher’s shop. Like a gaping wound left by the slash of dragon claws followed by a blaze of dragon fire disintegrating his flesh from the inside out.
He’d looked into a mirror and seen a woman. That was it. He’d seen her for a handful of seconds before he’d scared her away. At the time, he’d hardly been able to reconcile what he’d seen. A woman in a mirror like a damn ghost.
She was no ghost, it turned out, but she’d been haunting him all the same.
Raising a steady hand—his hands never shook, no matter the provocation—he knocked on the heavy wooden door to the small chamber situated just off the front of the throne room. This chamber was usually reserved for the king and his Curia Regis of advisers. Today, however, three men stood inside waiting.
Samael offered a brief acknowledgment to Brand and Ladon, their allied kings. Then he turned his attention to his own leader, Gorgon. More than a king to Samael. His mentor, his friend, and after all this time without a family of his own, a father figure.
“All is ready,” Samael said.
At those words, he struggled to quell the beast inside him, his dragon thrashing against what was about to happen. Even now, the smoky scent of his own fire wound around him, stronger, the beast close to the surface. Months of his dragon raging, lambasting him from the inside. The rage had grown bad enough that Samael didn’t dare loose the animal side of him anywhere near Ben Nevis while Meira Amon remained safely ensconced there with her sisters. Not until her mating was complete.