Page 49 of Magic Betrayed

More like I’d stalled them until I could free the dragon, but I was willing to take the win.

“Thank you for saving me… again.” My voice rasped and shook in the aftermath of so much adrenaline.

“You saved me first.”

Somehow, every time the two of us were together, we ended up almost dying.

“We need to stop doing this.”

Callum’s hand dropped as a bit of a growl rumbled from his chest. “Doing what? Winning?”

That’s what I got for hanging out with dragons. “No, that part I’m good with. But I’d like to skip the near-death experiences, starting now.”

He just shrugged, as if near-death experiences were on par with gnats or unexpected rain showers or stepping in gum in a parking lot. “I’m afraid you may not be able to escape those entirely. The important things are being prepared to defend yourself and knowing who to trust at your back. And Raine?” He caught my gaze and held it pointedly. “I trust you. No matter who I was facing, if I could only choose one person to have my back? I would choose you.”

My heart tried to stop, and I could only sit there blinking stupidly as I attempted to process his words. It was an utterly insane thing to say. He could call on help from other dragons. A winged assassin. A fae prince. Some of the most influential Idrians on the planet were among his friends. So what did he mean by saying that he would chooseme?

Maybe a more important question was, what did Iwanthim to mean? And did I even have the energy to figure that out?

“Car,” I managed to say, changing the subject to something a little less fraught. “Safer.”

He took my arm. Somehow pulled me to my feet, and together, we staggered to the SUV. Opened the rear door and crawled in.

I didn’t have enough energy to pull myself up onto one of the seats—not to mention the leather was white and I was covered in mud—so I simply stayed on the floor, setting my back against the front of the seat and stretching my legs out towards the cab. Callum followed, shut the door, locked it, and then collapsed on his side next to me.

Thanks to the custom interior, there was a lot more open floor than normal, but it was still cramped with six and a half feet of muscled shapeshifter sharing the space.

“Have to stay awake.” Callum’s words were slurred, and I could feel his body going limp beside me. “Call Ryker.”

Call Ryker. I didn’t have a phone.

“Callum, where is your phone?”

He went silent for a moment.

“Dropped it.”

So the phone was outside somewhere—maybe lost in the mud—and we had no way to ask for help. Hopefully, whenever the tow truck got here, the driver would call someone.

Well, more than likely they would call the human emergency services, and we would be in an absolute crap ton of trouble for creating a brand new sinkhole, setting a van on fire, and disturbing the peace.

But it was difficult to be very afraid of these consequences when I was limp with exhaustion and floating on a sea of emotions I couldn’t seem to bring under control.

We’d won the fight.

But we’d lost the van.

We were exhausted and vulnerable.

But Callum was lying beside me.

His bulk was somehow warm and reassuring, even as he slipped towards unconsciousness. And with him this close…

It was impossible not to be reminded of the almost magnetic attraction I’d felt when I first saw him—an attraction that time had neither softened nor diminished.

He was still gorgeous. Utter physical perfection in my eyes. Only now I knew that he was also caring, protective, responsible, dependable, and gentle when the occasion called for it. He loved his family, cared about injustice, and knew how to apologize when he was wrong.

And he trusted me, even when it made no sense.

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