Drayce set them down hard and immediately shifted into his human form, running the last few feet to collapse at Caelan’s side. Rayne was sure his heart had been ripped from his chest, the pain threatening to swallow him whole. Some dark part of his mind had always known this was a likely outcome. It had taken five gods to stop Zyros the last time, and he was so young and new at being a god. Their Cael wasn’t the type to stop when the odds were stacked against him. He would have kept pushing on until the very end.
Maybe it wasn’t too late.
If there was even the slightest spark of life within him, Rayne could possibly heal him. He’d pour all of himself and his powers into Caelan. Thia needed this man to live.
Rayne fell on the other side of Caelan while Drayce gathered his limp body in his arms, tears streaming freely along his cheeks. Rayne was vaguely aware of Eno dropping to his knees behind him while Adrian and Haru kneeled near Caelan’s head.
He pressed his fingers to Caelan’s neck, feeling for a pulse, but his hand was cold and shaking so bad. He didn’t feel anything, but he could be wrong. He had to be wrong. There was no way Caelan Talos was dead.
Rayne pulled together the power in his chest, shoving aside all the fears and pain clogging up his mind. He moved his hand to cover Caelan’s chest over his heart when his hand was suddenly knocked away.
Jerking upright, he stared at Caelan for a second in confusion. Who did that? The only one close enough to touch him was Drayce, but there was no way the dragon would stop him. Rayne lifted his gaze to Drayce to find a matching confused expression on his face.
“What happened?” Drayce demanded. Both the hands holding Caelan tightened as if he was suddenly afraid Rayne would try to pull him away.
“I-I don’t know,” Rayne stammered. He put his hand on Caelan’s chest only to have it knocked away again, but this time the flash of movement definitely came from their king.
“Stop it.” That mumbled command sounded as if came…from Caelan.
“What the fuck!” Adrian gasped, jerking backward into Haru.
“Caelan?” Eno whispered.
“Shhh…” Caelan hissed, his lips twitching as if he was fighting a smirk. “This is the part where I die, disappear with my fiancé, and Rayne takes the throne.”
“Holy fucking gods, Cael,” Drayce moaned, squeezing Caelan even harder in his relief. He pressed kiss after kiss to the top of Caelan’s head while Caelan’s lips finally formed the grin he’d been attempting to hold in.
Rayne groaned and fell into Eno, who wrapped tight arms around him. A choked laugh and sob broke from Eno’s throat, and Rayne found himself light-headed from the relief.
“You are not giving up the throne,” Rayne said in the best authoritative voice he could muster.
Caelan cracked an eye open and smiled at Rayne as Drayce continued to kiss him silly. “I’m a god.”
“And you’re a king,” Rayne argued. “Erya has suffered enough loss. Give your kingdom a couple of decades; then you can go be a god.”
“Spend a few dozen quiet years with your family,” Eno added, warming the last of the cold parts in Rayne’s soul. Family. Their family that somehow included dragons, a god, a throne, and more chaos that any one family deserved.
Rayne closed his eyes and laid his head against Eno’s. “Besides, I’m not cleaning up this mess without you.”
Caelan giggled and Rayne was sure it was the best sound he’d heard in the longest time. He opened his eyes to find Caelan sitting up and wrapping Drayce in a tight hug, whispering something in his ear that had the dragon clinging to him even more.
When he released Drayce and held his left hand up for Haru to assist him to his feet, a flash of gold caught Rayne’s eye. Their king had acquired a strange new gold bracelet in his struggles with the gods. As if realizing the direction of Rayne’s attention, Caelan smirked at him. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you everything later. The short version is that the gods are all settled…for now.”
“Why does that worry me even more?” Rayne grumbled.
“Because you like to worry,” Eno murmured as he pressed a kiss to Rayne’s cheek. His lover got to his feet and helped Rayne to rise as well.
“So, that’s it?” Adrian demanded.
Rayne rolled his eyes. They were still a good distance from everything being all cleared up, but he wanted to believe the worst of it was over.
“That god nonsense is done. Lore stabbed Zyros and she killed him,” Caelan explained waving one hand toward the two bodies.
“Tula?” Eno inquired.
Caelan’s smile slipped, but his voice was confident when he replied, “We’ve come to an agreement.”
Rayne was most definitely getting details about that agreement out of him later, but he was content to let Caelan leave the matter closed for now.