Page 18 of Dragon King’s Bullied Mate

Her fingers slid firmly into his palm, grounding him instantly.

“It’s alright,” she whispered. “You’ll be okay.” She bent down and kissed his forehead.

The dragon quieted immediately beneath her touch.

Safe.

The word echoed softly through Mikael’s fading consciousness, no longer possessive now but certain in an entirely different way. He clung weakly to her hand while voices around him blurred and drifted farther away.

“We’re taking him now,” Dag said distantly.

Lyra’s fingers tightened around his once before slowly slipping free, and the cold left behind by her absence cut deeper than the mountain storm ever had.

It was that emptiness that finally dragged Mikael fully back into darkness.

Chapter 8

Lyra

Lyra kept her hands clasped tightly in front of her as the soldiers lifted Mikael onto the rough wooden stretcher. The muted winter sky made the paleness in his face worse in a way that made him look less like a king and more like a man already halfway to death’s door. Through voices and the restless stamping of horses, she forced herself to remain calm while Dag barked orders to the men surrounding him.

“How did you know where he was?” The question had swirled the moment they banged on her door.

“There’s not much out here,” came the response. Dag practically snorted. “It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.”

Anger welled up again. “And yet it took that genius how many days to find him?”

She shouldn’t have said it, but it blurted out before she had any control over her tongue. The blizzard worked both ways. She couldn’t get out, they couldn’t get in.

“Watch your tongue, woman. It wouldn’t be hard to press charges when we have no idea if you might be the one who injured King Mikael in the first place.”

“Don’t put this on me. I have no idea how he ended up buried in that snow.” She pointed at him. “And if his boot hadn’t been sticking out, I never would have seen him. He wouldn’t have been found until spring after the thaw.”

“That may be true, but I would still advise you to watch your tongue.”

She fought against the memories of the man now taking control of the king. Dag’s cruelty didn’t appear to have changed at all, but she refused to turn her back on the king now that they were taking him away.

“Don’t tell anyone where he was found,” she said before she could reconsider the request. Her voice was quieter than she intended yet sharp enough to cut through the commotion.

Dag turned toward her, his expression unreadable beneath the dark beard and windblown cheeks. For a moment the noise around them seemed to dull as his eyes narrowed with unsettling focus, just as they had in the past.

“That will not stop people from asking questions.”

“I don’t care about questions,” Lyra responded. “I don’t want strangers arriving at my home. I don’t want gossip spreading through the villages. Leave my name out of it.”

One of the guards adjusted Mikael’s blanket and revealed the king’s unnaturally pale throat. Lyra had to force herself to look away.

Dag studied her for another long moment, and something in his face shifted. “Have we met before?”

The question tightened every muscle in her body. She managed a small shrug. “I doubt it.”

“No,” he murmured while he stared at her. “You look familiar.”

Lyra said nothing.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

She could feel it then, the same dangerous sharpness she remembered from years ago that lingered beneath the controlled authority he carried now. It unsettled her more than she wanted to admit because time had altered many things about Dag, adding age and heavier lines to his face, but it had not softened him in the slightest.