Rhys wholeheartedly agreed, but he was also concerned with Lily. Rhys had given Lily his word that her family would be protected. For every minute that wasn’t happening, there was the opportunity for Ulrik to harm them.
Rhys set aside his whisky on the table next to him and looked at Con. “You and Kellan are the only two who know where this weapon is hidden, and I understand and accept why you willna divulge the location or a description of the weapon to us. However, that leaves the two of you as the only ones capable of ensuring the weapon isna taken. I’m no’ suggesting you go to the weapon,” Rhys hurried to say when Con tried to talk. “I’m saying that you and Kellan focus your magic and attention on the weapon. If Dennis slips by us, as long as the two of you are keeping watch, he’ll never succeed in getting his hands on it. Even if the fool does happen to find it.”
Kellan and Con looked at each other. It was Kellan who shrugged and said, “That could work.”
“I doona like leaving Dreagan two Kings short, despite it being a mortal we hunt,” Con said.
Ryder cleared his throat, his face filled with guilt. “Well, actually we’ll be down only one King. Darius has woken.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Darius remained in the shadows, his senses bombarded with the lights and sounds of the humans. But his gaze wasn’t on the village. It was on the mortal with red hair who watched Lily Ross. Dennis arrived minutes after Rhys drove off. The human’s hate for Lily was apparent in the way he glared at the building.
Rhys’s mate. Darius couldn’t wrap his head around it. Of all of them, it was Rhys whom Darius had suspected would never succumb to a human female. A Light Fae, yes, but never a mortal. Apparently Darius had been asleep for too long for things to change so drastically. Over the past year he’d remained awake, but preferred to stay in his cave.
When he did leave his cave, he found the world turned upside down and some humans and the Dark Fae joining forces with Ulrik to take the Kings down. Darius wasn’t surprised about Ulrik. He’d known the King of Silvers would one day come for them. But the Dark and humans?
Darius shook his head in confusion. No matter what, that wouldn’t end well for the mortals.
But right now he was more focused on the man looking to hurt Lily. Darius might not have a mate of his own, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do everything to protect Lily while Rhys couldn’t.
His target moved and was joined by a second human. He was younger, innocent by the way he shifted nervously while Dennis spoke.
Darius didn’t care how many people he watched. One or a thousand, it didn’t change his mission to protect Lily. At least none dared to enter her flat, but he was prepared in such an event. There were few things as important to a Dragon King as his mate.
Darius wasn’t going to be the one to fail Rhys.
*
Lily’s eyes opened as she lay in her bed. She turned her head and looked at the clock, shutting it off before the alarm sounded a minute later. She sat up and stretched, amazed to discover that she’d slept despite the debacle she was in. Rhys could be the reason she was able to rest. In fact, she knew it was. All night she’d dreamed of dragons. Small ones. Big ones. Giant ones.
Rhys promised to show her a dragon, and she was going to hold him to it. His conviction in his belief of the dragons was in every word, every syllable as he told her his story. Only a cruel, malicious person would’ve refused to even consider his words as truth.
It was a tale she would never repeat. Not just because people would put her in Bedlam quicker than she could blink, but because she wouldn’t put Rhys or anyone at Dreagan in danger. Sometime in the night as she thought over Rhys’s story and dreamed of dragons, she grasped that Dennis wasn’t there to steal a piece of art. He was there to do something much, much worse.
Lily put her hand on her chest over her heart. She grew sick to her stomach as she thought of what might have happened had Rhys and the others not discovered she was the one being forced to help Dennis.
But Rhys had. There was a slim chance she could have him and her family. That wasn’t going to stop her from killing Dennis, however. He was slime, a vile fiend who tainted everything around him with nastiness.
Lily grabbed her mobile phone from the bedside table, hoping there was a text from Rhys stating that her family was safe. Her heart kicked up a notch when she saw she did have a text from him. It didn’t say anything about her family, but it did make her smile.
“‘I’m with you. Always,’” she read the text aloud.
She hugged the phone to her and closed her eyes. It wouldn’t be too much longer now before Dennis was out of her life forever. She could remain at Dreagan and continue to work, and hopefully date Rhys.