Page 68 of Dragon King’s Bullied Mate

“This is too much,” Lyra whispered.

“No,” Mikael said softly. “It isn’t enough after today.”

Their eyes held for one long dangerous moment before Beckett suddenly yawned dramatically beside them.

Mikael smiled faintly. “You should both try to sleep.”

After deciding it was okay to skip a bath for one night, Lyra got the little boy settled and got ready for bed herself. Sleep, unfortunately, didn’t last long.

Sometime deep in the night, Beckett cried out sharply from the next room. Lyra bolted upright instantly.

“NO!”

She ran into the connected bedroom just as Beckett jerked awake. He sobbed as he tried to untangle himself from the blankets. Panic flooded his small face while he gasped desperately for breath.

“It’s okay,” Lyra whispered immediately, climbing onto the bed and pulling him against her chest. “You’re okay.”

A knock sounded sharply at the suite door before it swung open and Mikael entered only seconds later, barefoot and bare chested. “I heard him yelling.”

Beckett immediately reached toward him too. That alone nearly shattered Lyra emotionally. Mikael crossed the room without hesitation and sat beside them on the bed while Beckett clung tightly to both of them now. He still trembled from the nightmare.

“They almost took me.”

Mikael’s expression tightened painfully. “But they didn’t,” he said firmly. “And nobody ever will.”

The certainty in his voice felt immovable, like a mountain. Eventually Beckett drifted back asleep curled against Lyra’s side while Mikael remained sitting beside them quietly in the dim light.

Neither adult spoke for a while.

Finally Lyra whispered tiredly, “I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

Mikael looked toward her immediately. “Do what?”

“Keep him safe.”

Emotion cracked painfully through the words. Mikael reached for her hand without hesitation.

“You’re not alone now.” The sincerity in his voice undid something inside her completely.

Later, after making sure Beckett remained asleep beneath the blankets, Mikael walked Lyra to her room in silence. Neither of them wanted the distance and that truth hung between them almost visibly.

When Mikael finally paused near the door connecting their rooms, Lyra looked up at him helplessly. “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”

Something fierce and tender flickered across his face at once. Without a word, he followed her into bed.

He wrapped his arms around her in the darkness and held her against his chest. He kissed the top of her head and she raised her face to give him a butterfly kiss before she settled with her arm around him.

Lyra slept more peacefully than she had since the nightmare began.

Chapter 25

Mikael

As days passed, the castle began feeling less like a home and more like a nest of hidden knives.

Mikael stood alone in the royal archives long after midnight with stacks of old military reports spread across the massive oak table before him. Icy rain lashed sharply against the narrow stained-glass windows as every new document uncovered another inconsistency, another missing record, or another carefully erased detail connected to Skelvarn operations over the last decade.

Someone had strategically been cleaning the archives.