Chapter 339: The Mate Summit. No Landon’s Allowed.

Three visitors. One of them was a wolf king with a matebond to his wife. One was the Beta who had married said wolf king to his wife while the king was dead, something that the dragons weren’t aware of. And one was a mage whose skill set included punching through continental wards with a sandwich. This was going to be fun.

The chamber doors opened.

Nicholas Shadowfell entered the chamber looking like a man who had caught the runes. The runes that had already vanished from Maddox and Kael were still on his skin, taking their goddamn time to fade. And they looked better on Nicholas than they had any right to. Maddox stared at them for one second longer than he should have and hated them immediately.

Damon, Brennan, and Ryker entered behind him.

Nicholas gave Maddox and Kael both a respectful nod. He knew the cost of this door opening and he wasn’t going to repay it with anything less than civility, regardless of what the matebond was doing to his nervous system.

Then he walked straight to her.

Without a word, he peeled the blanket back, away from her face. Kael did not protest. His expression remained neutral.

Steam rose off Guinevere’s skin.

The heat coming from her was immediate and visible, curling upward from her cheeks and her collarbone in thin wisps that caught the firelight and dissolved.

His fingers touched her forehead and he froze. She was radiating fuck-you heat that belonged to a furnace. He had felt Guinevere hot before, but this was hotter.

Every territorial instinct he had was screaming that this was wrong, that her temperature was dangerous, that the woman lying unconscious in a chair smelled like she was cooking from the inside out and nobody in this room appeared to be treating it as the emergency it was.

His wolf snarled under his ribs so hard his vision flickered gold at the edges.

"Maddox put it on her," Kael offered from beneath the cocoon, assuming that’s why Nicholas’s eyes had changed color.

Nicholas’s head turned to Maddox. "She is burning up, Drakencrest."

Maddox’s jaw tightened by a fraction that most men would have missed. Nicholas was trained to catch fractions.

Kael pulled the blanket off both of them in one motion. His vindication was so complete it should have come with a certificate.

Blanket on floor. Mate not dying. Crisis over. Kael breathed out like he had just escaped a wool volcano and the air fogged from the temperature differential.

Maddox’s nostrils flared. Guinevere was back on display. Tiny silk pajamas. Blair’s slippers. Damp white hair. The full, unedited, un-blanketed, nude-adjacent situation that Maddox had spent three minutes burying like a crime scene.

"Oh, relax. Everyone here has seen her in her goddamn pajamas, Maddox," Kael said flatly.

Maddox did not relax. Maddox looked like a man whose fortification had been dismantled by allied forces and was considering whether allies could be reclassified.

Nicholas’s arms twitched like he wanted to take her from Kael. The universal, cross-species, multi-kingdom involuntary reach that every man mated to this woman does when they are near her because her body had its own gravitational pull.

Kael locked down immediately. Possessive. Preschool. Toy law. Mine-you-looked. Both of them were doing it with their whole chests. Pants-off obvious.

Maddox watched this interaction, visibly irritated, while the Beta, the mage, and the High General all suddenly found the ceiling fascinating.

"Why is she burning like this? And why is she passed out?" Nicholas’s voice was level but the tendons in his neck were standing at attention and he hadn’t moved his eyes away from her.

Simple question.

Kael’s hearing seemed to have been stabbed in an alley so the words didn’t even register. Maddox also seemed to have lost his ability to hear. He yawned and dropped into a chair, unbothered.

Silence stretched.

"She was marked twice in twelve hours," Ryker answered from the door after a good ten seconds.

Twice was doing steroids in that sentence and the other two dragons in the room knew it. Neither corrected the record.

Nicholas’s gaze landed on Maddox because Maddox had the self-control of a toddler and permanent marker when it came to marking her. But he said nothing because, in the last day, Nicholas had done it too. So, make that three times. But that was not why Nicholas was here.

"Drakencrest. A word."

Maddox studied him. Whatever this was, it had weight. Nicholas Shadowfell didn’t ask for words. He took them.

"I’m not leaving her tonight. The white light keeps surging. Intervals are getting shorter."

Nicholas gave a single nod. He knew exactly what that meant.

"Then clear the room," Nicholas said.

Maddox looked at Ryker. "Everyone out."

Ryker was halfway to the door before the second syllable landed. Damon followed without wasting air. Brennan ping-ponged Guinevere, door, Guinevere, then slunk after Damon like a dog being pulled off a barbecue by the collar.

Kael adjusted Guinevere in his lap and raised an eyebrow at nobody in particular. Leaving had never been on the menu. No words were needed on that front.

The door shut.

Nicholas’s eyes stayed on Guinevere while he spoke. "It took me with her twice during the flashes."

Kael settled deeper into the chair like a man who had won something Nicholas hadn’t realized they were competing for. "Must be nice. I’m absorbing it."

"The second time dropped us in a field. An hour from Greyhall. Manageable." Nicholas paused. "The first time I woke up to freefalling in open sky. Less enjoyable."

"That tracks," Maddox said. "I caught her freefalling one hour outside of Greyhall."

Nicholas looked at both of them. "There’s something you should know."

"If it’s about Solveil, we already know," Kael cut in.

Nicholas rubbed the back of his neck once, the only crack in the composure he’d walked in with. "Did she tell you about us running from the police there?" 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

Maddox went very still. "Us."

"Yes. We were surrounded and the Kingsguard was coming to arrest her."

Kael dragged a hand down his face. "No, she didn’t mention that part. When was this?"