Page 23 of The Dragon’s Stone Hearted Mate (Mori’s Mementos #1)
Morvan
I rubbed the bridge of my nose as Teal and his family talked the fates of the three prisoners in circles.
This isn’t what I imagined my matingmoon would be like.
I should’ve been tucked away somewhere cozy with Rho getting to know him.
I should’ve been smothering him in love and cum and ignoring the rest of the world.
“Morvan? Can you think that a little quieter, please?” Crilus said, a pink blush rising on his cheeks. “I mean, I’ve done stuff with dragons and it has never been enough to smother me.”
“Let’s not,” Clarence said. “Don’t even go there. You’ll understand one day, Crilus. When you meet your true-mate all his pining, hyperbolic thoughts will make sense to you.”
“And I’ll try to smother my mate with cum?” Crilus asked and Cobalt broke. He turned away, trying not to laugh, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“This is very serious,” Clarence said.
“I know! He’s admitting he’s going to kill his mate with---” Crilus started but Teal slid his hand over the elf’s mouth before he could finish his sentence.
“It’s serious but we know what we have to do,” Cobalt said a second later. “They can’t live. They forced everyone’s hand here and it’s too much.”
“The omega is possibly pregnant,” Clarence countered.
“But not pregnant enough to be a baby,” Indigo countered. “It wouldn’t even show up on a test, I don’t think.”
“I am not going to argue about when someone is pregnant enough to be pregnant,” Clarence said. “That’s a dangerous sentiment. If he was coming to one of our healers to terminate his own pregnancy that is within his rights. Are we okay with killing a baby for the sins of the parents?”
“This isn’t us smashing a baby to death,” Indigo countered again.
“We ask what he wants,” Crilus said, his voice serious again. “Maybe he wants to die with his mate. Maybe he wants to live without Georgie and face the consequences.”
“He was willing to kill you all for his mate,” Indigo frowned.
“And you’d kill me if you thought that was the only way you could protect Ambry. Hell, I’d off one of you if that’s how I kept Teal safe and he’s not even my mate,” Crilus said, and Teal looked away as if he didn’t hear him speak.
Teal had found his true-mate not long after turning Crilus away as a chosen mate.
Their friendship had somehow survived, but they were still awkward about the situation.
I’d been blind before not to realize Crilus was only involved with this because he had a thing for Teal or maybe all of them. I wasn’t sure anymore.
“That’s not the problem at hand,” Clarence said, picking up on my thoughts over the group link again.
“There are many problems at hand, oh dragon of old,” a familiar voice said from the doorway and my heart skipped one beat and then the other.
I nearly knocked over the only woman in the room to crash into Rho.
He stumbled back a few steps until we managed to find our combined center of gravity and our lips crashed together.
“How did you get here?” I asked between kisses.
“Who’s the chick?”
“I thought you couldn’t travel away from your standing space?”
“Well, if you stop kissing me long enough for me to answer, I can tell you,” he laughed and kissed me again without filling in the gaps.
I lost myself to his soft, supple mouth.
Fuck Georgie and his crew. Fuck Torvan locked in the freezer and Crilus and his dirty jokes.
Fuck everyone and everything who wasn’t my mate.
I wanted him. I needed him. The rest of the world could sit on Frost’s Pit.
“I need you,” I murmured against Rho’s warm lips.
“I need you and only you and this whole life and death thing is such fucking bullshit, mate. It’s all bullshit.
My brother is a fucking ghost. Dead is alive and alive doesn’t last long.
I don’t want to think about it anymore. I don’t want to think about anything except you.
I want to spend the rest of eternity breathing in your scent and listening to your heartbeat against mine. All the hows and whys don’t matter.”
“I do not think Clarence will appreciate us mating here,” Rho chuckled, cradling my face in his hands.
“It’s my restaurant. I’ll fuck you on every table if that’s what I want to do,” I growled.
It wasn’t Clarence or any of the men who interrupted our kissing. It was the strange woman who both seemed in and out of place lingering in the kitchen doorway of the restaurant. She cleared her throat and asked when she might see Torvan.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, ma’am,” Clarence said.
Fire exploded inside me! How dare he tell her what she could and could not do inside my restaurant? She had more right to be here than he did!
“Who is she?” I whispered to Rho. “I’ve never felt so protective of a woman.”
“She is Torvan’s mate. I don’t think she remembers her name but that’s who she is. I also think fate has played a cruel joke on her and your twin. I believe Patrica and her goat mate maybe her parents unless you know another lynx and goat pairing nearby.”
I fought off the urge to facepalm and reluctantly pulled away from Rho’s warm body. I was erect but everyone was polite enough not to comment about it. One look around the room was all it took for my dick to calm down. This was the only chance I was going to get to lay my brother to rest in peace.
“Lay him to rest in the Pit where he belongs and don’t let him come back until he learns his lesson,” my dragon chimed off into my thoughts.
“Let her talk to him, Crilus,” I said without explaining the newcomer to anyone else.
Clarence could bitch later or take me to his little janky, overcrowded jail with the drug dealers, if that’s what he wanted to do.
For once, I wasn’t going to be the golden retriever.
I wasn’t going to think about what the good of the many was.
This time I was going to think about what I wanted and what I wanted was time alone with my mate.
I wanted to begin our lives together without Torvan’s wraith hanging over my head.
Hell, maybe I’d live in Heartville with the triplets and our little rock dragon babies could grow up in the fields of food Teal spoke of so often from his childhood.
“Are you sure? Do we even know who she is?” Crilus asked and glanced at Mori as if the spirits had warned him about her.
“Let her in,” Mori sighed. “Perhaps, if she had been able to arrive sooner this would’ve ended differently.”
“That still doesn’t decide the fates of those three,” Clarence said.
“You were willing to kill my brother but you’re trying to keep them alive?” I asked, disbelief filling my cells.
“Not all off them. The omega bear wasn’t around when Georgie convinced Torvan to hire a hitman and the fox, well, he’ll probably never see the free light of day again either way,” Clarence sighed.
“Morvan, I did not enjoy arranging the death of your brother. The information we gathered since his death doesn’t change that.
I make the choices that I can live with just like the rest of you all do.
I could live with him being dead but not with you being dead because of his carelessness and cruelty. ”
“I’m glad he’s not dead,” Rho said, hugging me from behind.
His fingernails glowed a pale pink under the crystal fluorescent bulbs in the kitchen. I put my hands over his and tried not to think too hard about what came next.
“Let her in,” Clarence finally sighed at Crilus and the elf moved to do so.
The woman disappeared into the freezer and for a moment time stood still.
Torvan was having his moment. He was seeing her for the first time as this version of himself.
This was torment. It had to be. She was about to be reborn to the woman who killed him and either he would be forced to roam Earthside as a lost spirit or be accepted back into the soul family and sent to spend endless days in Frost’s Pit.
The place wasn’t exactly extinct human hell.
It was a place of rehabilitation for souls that took one too many wrong turns when they moved amongst the living.
“I think he’ll be accepted back into the folds of his soul family,” Mori announced breaking the silence.
“Why’s that?” Clarence asked.
“Because Morvan is safe. The assassins are taken care of, right? You’re not going to let them roam the streets trying to kill him for money, vengeance, or whatever game they’re playing.
He might not have killed them but he stopped Morvan from dying even if he didn’t remember that’s why he was sent back as a spirit most of the time,” Mori explained, leaning one hand on the metal prep table I leaned on when Georgie first showed up toting his gun.
“Then why is he still here?” Teal asked.
“Because he hasn’t had his chance to say goodbye to you,” Mori sighed. “That’s what I’d come out to tell you all when I found you with your hostages. His door had shown back up in the freezer. Whatever needed to happen, happened. Something shifted.”
“Why was he still yelling to get out then?” I asked.
“Because you’re out here,” Mori frowned.
“I’m not saying he’s a good guy even now and you’re not obliged to give him closure but as someone who had a recently dead man show up in his bedroom to tell me something he never got around to saying while he was alive, take it from me, you should find closure where you ---” Mori hit the floor.
“Fucking Postcard Men,” a bear who smelled an awful lot like Mori swore from the doorway.