The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  Which made him more…relatable. Which should scare her, but somehow didn’t. And how hadn’t she already known this about him?

  Because you’ve been avoiding him since day one.

  Ugh. With effort, she put a muzzle on the voice and shoved the thoughts into a hole in her mind. She needed to focus.

  A scent reached her, and she didn’t stop flying. “One of them is here,” she warned Levi and Deep.

  “I know,” they both came back at the same time.

  She didn’t have to scan the skies long because the black dragon didn’t bother hiding himself. He approached from a long way off, giving them plenty of time to see him in the air. No sneak attack this time.

  “Are you the dragons we mistook last night?” He sent the thought on ahead of him.

  “Yes,” Levi answered before she could.

  “Do you mean us harm?” the dragon asked next.

  “Do you plan to attack us again? Or set another fire?” Lyndi asked.

  “No. You were not who we were after.”

  Could they believe him? “Then you should be safe enough.”

  “Good. Don’t come looking for us again.” He started to turn in a large arching loop.

  “We are the enforcer team for this region. We need to talk to your colony,” Deep said. “Maybe we can help with…whatever made you set that fire.”

  The black dragon paused, beating his wings to hover in the air, his back to them. Dangerous to turn his back on other dragons. “Do you have a man named Tineen on your team?”

  Lyndi should have been shocked. She wasn’t. The leader of the Alaz team was named Tineen. Combined with the beta’s name, Roan, being overheard, this couldn’t be a coincidence. Could it?

  “No.”

  The dragon turned, still hovering as they drew nearer, seeming to debate with himself. “Follow me.”

  The trip to the black dragon’s—who didn’t give his name—people took longer than Lyndi expected it to. They took a few detours and also had to stop at least once for Deep to take a break.

  This was the first time she’d ever seen the old alpha do anything like that. Deep had to be nearing his eighteen-hundredth year on this earth, which put him in his late seventies in human aging. Not as spry as he once was, and yet still determined to serve.

  “Deep?” She sent the thought only to the dragon at her side. “You’re from the Red Clan.”

  “I always considered you an intelligent woman, Lyndi.” The amusement in his scratchy voice suggested he was reconsidering that opinion.

  “I’ve got a point.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “You were around before…” How did she put this?

  “Before the current regime of kings?” he guessed. And hit it on the head.

  “Yes.”

  “I was in my thirteenth century when Pytheios took the throne of my clan.”

  “Did you know the previous king?”

  “Yes. And his phoenix mate, and their daughter.”

  All before her time, before everything happened. She’d only known one way. “What was it like? Before?”

  He was quiet long enough that she wondered if he was going to answer.

  “Better,” he finally said. “Not a total peace like you would think the phoenix legend indicates. Instead, life for dragons was more…open. The High King made sweeping decisions, but only after discussing with the other kings. The clans had remained fairly segregated until the 1700s, which had both good points and bad points. The colonies changed that somewhat, showing we could live together successfully in mixed groups. But mostly there didn’t exist this air of…hatred and fear.”

  Lyndi tried to picture it. Difficult to do through the lens of her own experiences.

  “Once the king, his phoenix, and their daughter died,” Deep continued, “things changed quickly. Almost as though the hatred had never been truly gone, but held at bay, buried somewhere dark, waiting to be released. Our society became one of judgment. Of such easy offense that everyone except a select few were deemed worthy, and even they had better walk on eggshells.”

  “But you served the new king,” she said. “I mean you came here to uphold his laws.”

  Deep’s lips pulled back, exposing yellowing but still sharp teeth in dark amusement. “I accepted the honor of leading the first team of enforcers in the Americas because it saved my life.”

  The way his tone changed around the word honor had Lyndi’s scales prickling. “What does that mean?”

  Though she thought she had a fairly good idea. Deep had come here for the same reason Drake had. Being shuffled off to nowhere.

  Following Levi’s motion, they both tipped their wings, turning to the south.

  Deep took another few beats of his wings before he answered. “As a skilled fighter, and being from one of the older families in the Red Clan, I could be considered a threat to the High King. Politically.”

  She watched Levi’s steady strokes, the way his body rippled with the movement, the strength of the muscles under the scales apparent even this relaxed. She’d witnessed him in action, formidable and powerful. Had he also been sent here not as an honor but as a way to get him out of the way?

  Only…the approach he took to his role as an enforcer, as an important responsibility he’d never shirk, told her maybe he’d had a different experience. Though, they all took their roles seriously. Even Rivin and Keighan had a serious side to them when it came to the job.

  “Were female-born dragons treated any differently before?” she asked.

  Deep cocked his head, surveying her from one large faded red eye. “No. But there didn’t seem to be as many then as there are now. Though I’m ashamed to say I didn’t pay that much attention.”

  Lyndi huffed a chuckle, both she and her dragon used to it. “That’s okay. Interesting about the numbers, though. There aren’t many of us now. By the time I left Everest, there were only a handful of others in the Red Clan. Four in total at the time, including me. I didn’t have much to do with other clans, so I don’t know about them. I’ve heard the new King of the Blue Clan has a sister who flies with him.”

  “Hmmm… Well, when I was a younger dragon there were only one or two in each clan, if that. I don’t think the Gold Clan had any. Assuming there’s as many as five in a given clan, that’s more.”

  “The question is why?”

  “Time will tell,” he replied more easily than she could’ve. “Change is never simple.”

  Lyndi shook her head. She’d always loved how Deep and Calla both took everything life tossed at them in stride. In his lifetime, he must have seen amazing things, not only among dragon shifters, but the crossing of the oceans, the advent of modern technology, the invasion of humans into their domain of the sky. Few other dragons were so easygoing.

  When she was his age, perhaps she’d be as calmly laid-back. She eyed the gold dragon flying in front of her, unease niggling at the back of her mind like a worm working its way through a rotting apple.

  Maybe not. Relaxed wasn’t really her style.

  “We’re dropping,” Levi warned a beat before his body flowed like a river of gold, transitioning easily into an angle guaranteed to bring them to the ground quickly.

  Lyndi and Deep followed.

  She’d already argued, and lost, that she should arrive beside their escort, to be seen as less of a threat. At almost six foot seven in human form, his dragon had closer to a fifty-foot wingspan. He was the biggest of all the enforcers on the Huracán team. Most every creature, if they were smart, remained wary of him.

  But Levi was having none of it.

  Instead, deliberately, she made sure she was visible behind his bulk, sort of fluttering around in the sky so he couldn’t block her. Seeing a female with the group might make them second-guess themselves.

  They made i
t to the ground without sighting a single one of the black dragon’s people. On purpose, trying not to alarm them, they hadn’t flown directly into where they lived, instead choosing to land farther out and walk in.

  The mountains out here were truly high desert with hardly a tree in view. Barren, brown, and bald in the moonlight. Now she was in her more vulnerable human form, the chill felt lovely against her skin.

  Lyndi scooted up to Levi, touching his arm to get his attention, trying to ignore how the muscles jumped under her fingers. “I’m not a fan of being so exposed.”

  “Me neither,” Levi muttered. “Stay close.”

  Their escort in the lead, they followed a small creek the long way around the bases of the mountains, scrub trees and some stubby pines finally taking over the landscape, though still not providing much cover. He moved them deeper into wilderness, and Lyndi inched closer to Levi, with Deep at her back, her senses tuned to everything around her, just as her brother had taught her. Only they were dealing with black dragons, known for their stealth, and the hills had eyes. The feel of them on her was like walking through spiderwebs. Her dragon could sense them, too. She kept pacing in Lyndi’s head.

  They rounded a bend, breaking out of the trees to find what appeared to be a small town at the bottom of a short, easy slope, the creek meandering off to the side of the group of buildings.

  A ghost town by the looks of it. Not a single light on at only ten o’clock at night. No way.

  “Where are they?” Lyndi asked.

  “They’re here. We can’t afford to live inside a mountain like others do. Our group isn’t subsidized by our clan.” No missing the sneer to his voice. “We live here by the sweat of our own brows. There are sentries posted along the creek. They knew we were coming and warned the others.”

  How they would have done it were they in the same situation, Lyndi bet. Which was probably why Levi and Deep didn’t comment.

  The black dragon—compact and all muscle in human form with eyes that glittered in the night—nodded. “They’ll be more likely to hear you out if—”

  “If you show vulnerability,” a higher-pitched voice sounded in the night.

  Still, it took a moment for Lyndi to locate the woman standing in the shadow of the tallest building. With mahogany-deep skin, jet-black hair, and glittering black eyes, she was almost impossible to make out in the shades of night.

  Levi glanced at Lyndi and Deep, then back to the woman. “Are you in charge here?”

  Lyndi turned her head to stare at him and her world narrowed and focused on a set of copper-colored eyes, dead serious, not even a question mark floating above his head in a thought bubble. He’d asked that question like it was normal. Like women often led groups of dragon shifters. Which they didn’t.

  Even so, he didn’t flinch.

  Except, something was off. Lyndi knew about Levi’s opinion of women dragons. The first time they met and the way he’d acted had cemented that truth in her mind. Plus, all the times he indicated that a woman shouldn’t be part of the team, or go out alone, or do anything that smacked of man’s work…

  His actions and attitudes didn’t line up in her head.

  The woman flicked Lyndi a glance. “Maybe.”

  Not good enough. Maybe she’d be more open with a fellow female. Lyndi took a step forward, slightly ahead of Levi. She almost expected him to jerk her back or take another step himself, but he didn’t. “We asked your man to bring us to you so that we could talk,” she said. “And maybe help.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Help? Your people took…one of our mates.”

  “Not our people,” Lyndi countered. “Whoever took your mate wasn’t on the Huracán enforcer team.”

  Hooded, dark eyes glanced between them. “How do I know you are?”

  “When you moved here, one of our team should have been in touch to introduce us. He also should have given you a safe word. Did the other men claiming to be us use it?”

  Still the woman didn’t budge, no give in her. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Divine is the word.”

  The woman seemed to consider that. “Assuming I believe you…what makes you any different from the men who took Bree?”

  Levi and Lyndi both looked to Deep who grimaced. “Is there a place we can speak…” He glanced up to the sky then back at her. “…frankly?”

  Perfect eyebrows winged up. “Interesting.” She paused, staring hard at each of them in turn, searching their expressions for the gods knew what. “Follow me.”

  She led them between various buildings which had been erected with no roads connecting them and no particular design. They also still appeared empty, though Lyndi knew they weren’t. The prickles at the back of her neck told her so.

  Dragons were watching.

  They followed the leader to one of the more innocuous buildings. Smaller than the others, it reminded Lyndi of an ice-fishing shack she’d visited once in search of one of her orphans in Montana. Inside, however, told a different story. Soundproof. Including the thick door that closed behind them.

  “Talk.”

  “What’s your name?” Lyndi asked quickly.

  The question earned her a guarded stare. “Shula.”

  Lyndi nodded. “I’m Lyndi. This is Levi and Deep.” She waved at the two men now standing to either side of her. Deliberately she left off last names, because hers tended to be polarizing. Especially lately.

  “Uh-huh. Talk.”

  Lyndi pointed to Deep. “You’re up.”

  He wasted no time. “With the upheaval in the clans, we’ve lost all confidence in the Alliance and the other two enforcer teams that still serve them.”

  Shula’s eyebrows—Lyndi really needed to ask her how she got them so perfect—shot up. “That’s…” She stopped herself, eyes narrowing again. “Why?”

  Deep didn’t pull his punches. “We, too, have had issues with them trying to take mates. One woman, in particular, even though she’s now mated, is still in hiding with her family.”

  “My mate was already turned, and they took her anyway,” Shula said, the words flat and bitter.

  Lyndi would have sat down if there’d been a chair in the room. A feather could’ve tipped her over. “You turned a human?”

  A female-born could do that? She’d never heard of such a thing. Shock skittered down her spine like a rat down a sewer pipe. What else didn’t she know about herself and the others like her?

  The crook to Shula’s mouth could almost be considered a give. “Believe me, it stunned me as much as anyone when she showed up with my family crest on her neck. My line dies out with me. All my brothers are dead, which is why I came here. Hope of a different life. I brought others from my clan with me who were also searching for a fresh start, and we’ve lived here in peace. We haven’t bothered anyone.”

  “But she survived your fire?” Levi asked.

  Another twitch of her lips. “Yes.” The miniscule smile disappeared. “And now she’s been stolen from me.”

  “Did they give any indication where they were taking her?” Lyndi asked.

  Shula dropped her head, glaring at the ground. “They want to send her to the Mating Council to be…examined, I believe were their words.”

  “Shit,” Lyndi muttered.

  Examined, as in under a microscope? Poked and prodded as the powers that be tried to figure out why things that weren’t supposed to be happening were happening? Only by the grace of who they were mated to had that not happened to Delaney or Sera.

  “Exactly.” Shula pulled her shoulders back sharply, no more give in her, only suspicious wariness. “So what kind of help are you offering—”

  She paused, canting her head as she appeared to listen for something or to someone. Then she shot them a narrow-eyed glare. “You brought backup?”

  “What?” Lyndi looked at Levi
and Deep who shook their heads. “No.”

  “Three. Names of Mike, Attor, and Coahoma.”

  Lyndi closed her eyes. Dammit. “Those would be my boys.”

  Shula’s lips flattened as she crossed her arms. “Your boys? A gold, red—well, pink from what I understand—and white dragon are your boys?”

  “Orphans,” Lyndi said succinctly. “I adopted them so they wouldn’t have to go rogue.”

  Shula’s arms dropped to her side as she stared harder. “I’ve heard of the dragon shifter orphans banded together near here. I just didn’t believe it.”

  Was that a good thing? Or a bad thing?

  “Why did they follow you?” Shula asked next.

  Beside her Levi snorted. “At a guess, they don’t like their adopted mother being in any kind of danger.”

  He wasn’t wrong. They better have left someone with the younger boys, or there would be even more hell to pay.

  “You should have the pink one practice more. We saw him coming a good ten miles away.”

  Mental note to have Drake and Levi work with Mike on that. They’d already improved his ability to camouflage his unfortunate neon coloring. Just not well enough, apparently.

  “So, what do you suggest?” Shula asked.

  Lyndi frowned. “About what? Mike’s unfortunate dayglow coloring? My boys following me here? Or your mate?”

  “The last one.”

  “I think you and your people lay low. Don’t do anything to attract more attention. And we’ll see what we can find out about where she’s been taken.”

  …

  Damn the gods for landing him with a woman who wanted to fix everything that was wrong with the world, no matter what the cost might be to herself or those who loved her. Conveniently ignoring the fact that he was made of the same stuff. The same need.

  He knew the words were coming before she even opened her mouth. A promise. He should be grateful she hadn’t flown off half-cocked to bring Shula’s mate back herself this very night.