The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  Her dragon pushed and the tether keeping all her good intentions where this man was concerned stretched to near breaking. “Nothing,” she threw at him. “What I need from you is to stay away from me.”

  Even in dragon form, shocked hurt darkened his eyes, and her own heart squeezed so tight it hurt to breathe. Keeping him at a distance all this time had always been a fine line to walk. Because she’d never wanted to hurt him, not more than she had to.

  “Then we’re clearly not feeling the same thing,” he said, the words defeated.

  The words too closely aligned to what she’d secretly never let herself want. Fight or flight kicked in so hard, she had only one choice. Lyndi shot her body straight up into the air. She couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Chapter Two

  The first light of dawn was brightening the sky when they arrived back at the Huracán headquarters. Landing at a slightly reckless speed, Levi forced Rivin and Keighan to jerk out of his way.

  “Steady on, Maverick,” Rivin called as he swooped by, low to the ground, bleeding off speed.

  Levi timed it exactly right to land closest to the hotshot crew building, shifted quickly, and marched inside.

  Gods, this woman. Tough and stubborn as hell. Bright and animated with everyone…except him. The moment under that bush that he’d realized she was turned on…

  He’d gone hard as a fucking rock, then fucked it up, as usual, by admitting way more than he’d wanted with that line about not feeling the same thing. He’d crossed that invisible, unspoken line that she’d kept firmly between them since they’d met.

  And look where that got him.

  She’d beat him back to headquarters, but the team still needed to debrief, so he knew exactly where she was going. Levi took off after her, his long legs eating up the distance as he strode around the side of the stairs, down a hall, and into the massive family room area, then past the doorway into the kitchen to a spiral staircase that reminded him of medieval castles, hewn into the stone of the mountain. Down two levels, the patter of Lyndi’s feet ahead was hardly discernable, even this close.

  Levi stepped off the stairs only to see her shoulder and a wisp of her long black hair that swung out as she disappeared around the curve. He put on a burst of shifter speed and reached her just outside the door to the war room.

  “Hey—” He snagged her by the wrist and swung her to face him, at the same time backing her into a natural dip in the cavern wall.

  Lyndi’s chin went straight up. Except, now that he was looking for it, he caught the flash. So brief no wonder he’d missed it before. Need. Raw and hungry and tempered by something else that he might’ve labeled cold terror if it hadn’t been gone so quickly.

  Holy fuck.

  “Levi,” Finn barked from inside the room. “Get in here.”

  Lyndi ducked past him and into the room. He could pass for a ballerina en pointe the way this woman kept him on his toes and dancing to her tune, that was for damn sure.

  Grinding his teeth, he followed. “We’re not done with that conversation,” he shot at her on the way by.

  A solid wall of monitors stared at him from the opposite side of the room, technology they now used to track dragon fires and to communicate with dragon leadership. But what was on the screens—the usual stuff—wasn’t what threw him. The people gathered in the room did. He found not only the team members from tonight’s patrol, but everyone else currently staying in the mountain gathered inside.

  Finn’s mate, Delaney, stood beside Drake’s new mate, Cami. Rivin and Keighan, along with the team’s two green dragons, Hall and Kanta, created a wall of muscled flesh behind the women. Three of Lyndi’s boys, now training as enforcers, took up space at the back of the room, Lyndi beside them.

  With their recent losses, the Huracáns had been forced to fill the gaps in their team with some of Lyndi’s orphans, as well as with the team’s new mates. That decision had been a brawl of a fight. The women, in the end, took the decision out of their hands. Or Lyndi did, when she started training Delaney in the same self-defense techniques Drake had taught her.

  That, more than anything, had brought home the fact that their world was turning upside down and might not right itself.

  Finn—still the boss, but only as far as the team was privately concerned—stood at the front of the room, speaking quietly with Drake, in profile only. A glow flickered over their previous alpha’s face, casting blue shadows over pale skin inherited from his British ancestors.

  The man was pissed.

  As beta, Levi should be in there with his alphas, so he moved to stand at Finn’s back, arms crossed.

  “Drake, why are we all here?” Rivin asked.

  They wouldn’t have called the entire mountain for a debrief. Just those on patrol and Finn.

  “Yeah, boss,” Keighan tacked on. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not the boss,” Drake turned from Finn to snarl.

  Still so weird that the Alliance had taken the leadership of the team away from Finn and given it to Drake thanks to his blood tie to Pytheios, the High King. Politics.

  As the kings and clans remained eerily silent on the other side of the world—not a good sign in Levi’s opinion—the dragon shifters in the colonies were left with only the Alliance to look to for leadership, corrupt assholes whose only goal seemed to be ducking and covering until the winner of the Kings’ War was determined. They’d been the ones to decide the leadership change.

  “Alpha?” Rivin tried.

  “Oh exalted one?” Keighan followed up with.

  “Shut up, boys,” Levi said. Ordered. “Now’s not the time.”

  In unison, they gave him a silent salute.

  Ignoring them, Finn turned to face the room. “We’ll get to why we’re here in a minute. First, what happened tonight?”

  Drake’s expression went cold. “Black dragons. At least ten of them that I counted. Attacked, then ran.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “Nothing that isn’t already healed,” Lyndi muttered from the back of the room.

  “I’m not sure we were who they were after,” Levi put out there. “They seemed surprised that white dragons and a female were involved. Just a gut feeling, boss.”

  “I have an idea of the direction they came from,” Lyndi piped up.

  Levi frowned. Of course she would be the one to sight them. Keeping her safe was becoming a full-time job.

  “When the one who had my tail let go, he took off to the east, slightly south,” she said.

  Finn nodded. “Let’s keep an eye on the region, see if another fire breaks out tonight.”

  No one objected.

  “Right,” Finn said. “With that out of the way… I’ve called everyone in because I’ve just heard from the Gold Clan.”

  Levi stilled. His clan?

  “You mean the Alliance has?” Kanta asked in his scratchy voice, like he’d inhaled too much smoke every day for thousands of years. Methodical and logical, the green dragon was the rock of the team. He’d always reminded Levi of an ancient forest, all ebony skin, deep green eyes, and still, unwavering peace.

  Finn shook his head. “No. I mean directly from the king himself.”

  A ripple of disbelief passed through the room as they all shifted on their feet at the news, though no one spoke. The entire purpose of the Alliance was to be the conduit the kings used to communicate with their people in the region. Kings didn’t just bypass that governing body to speak directly to smaller groups. Even enforcers.

  Dammit. I should have been here. “You saw him?” Levi asked.

  Finn nodded. They’d all met Brand Astarot, the new King of the Gold Clan, in person a while back. If his alpha had seen the man, he couldn’t be an imposter.

  “Is the war over?” Lyndi asked.

  “No.” The grim expression, even for Fin
n, only worsened as his eyes ignited again. “He’s calling all gold dragons loyal to the throne back to the clan.” His eyes shifted to Levi.

  If Levi hadn’t been standing in front of his entire team, he might have stumbled at the impact of those words, like taking a dragon tail to the gut. As it was, a sensation of falling from a great height slammed through him.

  Recalling all gold dragons? Holy shit.

  Trying to contain his own reaction, Levi crossed his arms and happened to catch a glimpse of the king’s mark on his right hand, the magically tattooed emblem of the house of Astarot. A mark of loyalty to his king and his clan.

  Fuck. The word went off like a series of grenades in his head.

  Everyone else must’ve hit the same reaction after the initial shock, because the room erupted in sound, a cacophony of voices protesting loudly, astonished, and under the stunned anger, fearful. No one had ever been called back since being assigned here. Never. Not in centuries.

  What the hell did this mean? If the king needed dragons on his side, the war was escalating. What if all the kings started recalling the dragons scattered throughout the world? Hell, the clans were already split down the middle, with the Gold Clan’s allies being the Blue and Black Clans. Was Finn going to be next?

  How can I leave the team? That thought, more than any other, carried the bitter tinge of panic, a sensation he didn’t encounter often. Like swallowing his own bile.

  The Alliance barely tolerated the Huracáns. The neighboring Alaz team of enforcers straight up hated them after what happened in Yosemite last winter. The dragon shifter colonies were in disarray, teetering at the edge of full-on rebellion. All of that, and the team was barely functioning, at the weakest they’d ever been. Vulnerable. Half their numbers were currently made up of newbies. Many of their trained, experienced enforcers had scattered or died. Deep, the former alpha of their team, was off doing gods knew what. Rune, the former beta who had gone rogue, was still in hiding. Aidan and Sera were on the run. Titus was dead.

  Fury followed the fear and shock, as if he was passing through the stages of grief in rapid succession. Damn the gods. No. I won’t go.

  But he couldn’t refuse an order from his king. It would mean going rogue, and that would force him to have to leave the team anyway. He served as an enforcer at the pleasure of the king.

  Lyndi.

  Her name whispered through his mind on a tidal wave of every other thought hitting him at once. He didn’t dare turn to look at her.

  “When?” he demanded, the word a harsh bark.

  Finn clenched his jaw. “You need to leave within the week. They have no safe way to get you there, so you’re on your own for travel.”

  A week. All he had was a week. Nothing.

  Levi wasn’t remotely in a place to start thinking through the logistics. The political situation, not to mention the fact that dragon shifters couldn’t fly across the oceans, the distance too far for them, made getting from California to Norway a nightmare. What the fuck was Brand Astarot thinking?

  “What about me?” Attor, one of Lyndi’s boys, asked from where he stood beside her.

  Finn shook his head. “Only dragons over three hundred years old.”

  “Screw that,” the younger man blurted out, but Levi blew out a silent breath of relief.

  Three hundred in dragon years was essentially early to mid-twenties in human years. At least the king was keeping kids out of the war. So far. None of the orphans would be impacted. Thank the gods for small mercies, because Lyndi would be beside herself if she lost even one of them. They might be part of the team, but so far Finn and Drake had made sure to use them only in situations that wouldn’t be dangerous. War was a different story.

  Unable to stop himself any longer, Levi searched for Lyndi’s smaller form behind the wall of bigger men. He backed up a step and collided with a gaze so full of desolation, all red banked fire and heartache so raw, that he had to look away for a second to get his own violent reaction under control. When he looked back, Lyndi had dropped her gaze to the ground, hiding from him.

  Confusion drowned out every other emotion rioting within him, so loud his head almost buzzed with it. What had that look been? Because if it was even a hint of what he hoped it could be…

  The gods had shit timing.

  Until this second, with the way she constantly sniped at him, and had from the moment they met, he’d believed she hated him. Carried a grudge for that first misunderstanding, and all the misunderstandings that followed. She’d always taken his need to protect her the wrong way. He hadn’t wanted her to build her orphanage in a human home, so unprotected and vulnerable, not because she wasn’t capable but because he expected the Alliance to show up unexpectedly and wipe out all the boys they felt were stains on the dragon world—and she’d be caught in the crossfire. He hadn’t wanted her to join the team because the reason they needed more bodies was because they kept losing team members. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, too.

  Her temper had always been a little quicker, a little sharper with him than the other guys. Even his jokes. Mike called her Lyndi-Loo-Hoo all the time, but Levi had tried it once and she’d about taken his head off for it.

  But other moments slowly began to coalesce in his mind. Small moments he’d written off. A look filled with heat that had suddenly cooled. A smile just for him when she never sent him smiles. Even a few of her frowns had held a different meaning.

  Had all her sharp edges been like a hedge of thorns, built to keep him out? Had that one dance at Drake and Cami’s wedding reception been more than he’d let himself believe? A gap in the hedge, letting him glimpse the true heart of her before she’d closed it over with sharper thorns?

  He’d relived that moment over and over every day since.

  Lyndi had caught the bouquet and then headed across the dance floor to her brother. Levi, to this day, had no doubt she wouldn’t have gone in that direction if she’d seen that Drake was standing beside him.

  When she’d got to them, she’d ignored him and flashed her brother that easy smile she gave to everyone but Levi, waving the flowers in her brother’s face. “Nervous?”

  “That you’ll be the next to mate?” Drake had lifted a single eyebrow.

  “He’d have to be nuts,” Levi had muttered darkly, thinking of ripping some nameless man’s face from his head if he tried it. He might have to leave the team.

  Drake had snorted at his words, but Lyndi’s reaction had been more dangerous given the humans around to witness. Her eyes flared red, glowing and brilliant.

  “Just because I’m sterile doesn’t make me worthless,” she’d practically spat at him.

  Back to that same original misunderstanding.

  “Which is not what I meant, and you know it,” he’d answered back.

  Only her eyes had gone brighter, sparking with flame. To hide her face until she could get herself under control, Levi had quickly stepped into her and drawn her into his arms for a dance, making sure to use his broad shoulders as a shield.

  For once, she hadn’t yanked away. In fact, after a minute she’d huffed a breath. “Thanks.”

  The fact that she’d even relaxed slightly against him had made him do something probably pretty stupid. He’d pulled her closer, their combined heat mingling, and inhaled the smoky sweet scent of her hair.

  “I always seem to rub you up the wrong way.” He’d gone over this a hundred times since, wondering why he’d said that. Those words came out too easily, lulled by the slow music and the sway of their bodies. “Why is that?”

  “Maybe I want you to rub me up the right way,” Lyndi had quipped.

  Her response was seared into his memory. She’d sure as hell shocked him. Blood had surged through him, making him hard and hot at the same time. Only the jolt of hope had been followed by a sudden drop when she’d immediately jerked to a stan
dstill in the middle of that dance floor.

  Not looking at him, eyes lowered, Lyndi shook her head, then dropped his hand and stepped back. “I don’t know why I said that. A stupid joke. It didn’t come out right. Ignore me.” Her laugh might have sounded forced. He still wasn’t sure because of the dull roar filling his own head. His dragon didn’t take disappointment well.

  “Too much wine,” she’d mumbled.

  She’d fucking taken it back, just like that. Then she walked away without a second glance.

  He hadn’t followed. Maybe that made him a total idiot, but Lyndi wasn’t exactly easy. Look at what happened under that bush and then out from under it. The conflicting signals. He’d been so sure she wanted him, and then she’d shut him down hard.

  She’d been shutting him down for hundreds of years.

  He intended to end that. Today.

  “That’s all,” Finn announced.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Levi was aware that his alpha turned to him. “Let’s talk about getting you there safely,” Finn said.

  Levi watched Lyndi slip out the door ahead of all the others, not looking at him. Levi couldn’t follow. Not yet. Everyone else shuffled out, still buzzing over the news, casting him furtive looks. Kanta clapped him on the shoulder before leaving him there with Finn and Drake.

  “Actually, boss,” he said slowly, turning back to the two alphas. “I need to think about this first.”

  “I get that,” Finn said. “But there’s no time.”

  Story of his fucking life. Two hundred years hadn’t been enough time to figure Lyndi out. A week… That was nothing, a blip. Blast and damn this war.

  With a nod, they got into discussing the safest route for him to take. Something that took a solid twenty minutes. Trying not to look like the hounds of hell were after him, Levi finally left the room with only one thought.

  Finding Lyndi.

  As soon as he reached the main level, the general chatter of the common rooms of their home hit him. Just the normal, everyday stuff. Sounds he’d taken for granted until now. How was he going to leave this? The second he showed his face in the kitchen, though, everyone went dead silent.