With
a combination of glares, dirty looks and curiosity filled glances,
mostly from the women, they dispersed, walking away to disappear down
various human-sized corridors that all met in this place.
Except
Cami didn’t get the memo to leave. Drake’s voice, the familiarity
of those deep, rough tones, and something else, some strange
awareness, drove her feet forward into his path.
The
second his gaze landed on her, Drake stilled, though his expression
gave nothing away.
“Shit,”
he muttered.
“Camilla?”
Rune asked beside him, a million questions in his tone.
Only
she didn’t look at him. Instead, she stared at Drake, scrunching up
her eyes like viewing at him out of focus might help.
He
remained still and silent while she studied him.
The harshly handsome face stared back at her—a slash of cheekbones,
strong jaw shadowed in dark stubble, jet black hair, though instead
of the warmth of dark eyes she would have expected, his were an
unusual, intense reddish-brown shade.
Red
dragon, a vague part of her mind identified. You could always tell by
the eyes.
But,
while Drake’s dark glower should’ve had her heading in the other
direction—that bite sharper with him, darker—fear was not what
she felt. What she felt was…almost like gratitude. Trust.
A
warm little sunspot somewhere in the region of her heart and a voice
inside that whispered. Only she couldn’t catch the words.
A
brightening around her told her that the internal glow at the center
of her chest had taken on a life of its own. The way his gaze dropped
then narrowed told her she wasn’t wrong. Sparks would follow any
minute now, but she didn’t care, for once.
She
needed
to know first. “Have we—”
Suddenly,
Drake pitched forward, one hand to his knees, his breathing turning
harsh and erratic.
Alarm
pierced that warm familiarity. “Are you okay?”
She
bent over and instinctively put a hand on his back in a gesture meant
to comfort. Immediately he tensed, his muscles going so rigid under
her palm that she jerked her hand away.
Only
he didn’t snap at her, or straighten, or make a sound of any sort.
Instead, the man fell to the floor in a tangled heap of limbs,
convulsing for several agonizingly long seconds, before he stopped,
laying so still that almost scared her more.
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