The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  Shula eyed Lyndi, flicking him and Deep a quick glance before returning to her. “You find her for me, help us get her back, and my people will swear allegiance to yours.”

  Lyndi shook her head at the same time that Levi did. “We’re not looking to take over,” he said.

  “We simply want to help protect our people until the kings figure their shit out and can step in,” Deep added. “Knowledge is power. Forewarned is forearmed.”

  “You have more faith than I do,” Shula murmured, then pulled a phone from her back pocket to glance at the screen. “They are refusing to come until they have proof that you are safe.”

  “I’ll go,” Deep said.

  “Fine.” She walked them out of the soundproof shack and to a flat area located at the center of the buildings, which was a wide-open circle just big enough for one dragon to shift at a time. They arrived in time to see one of her people ready to take off.

  With a wave of her hand, she indicated Deep to join him. A bigger show of trust than any up till now, allowing one of them access to flight with only one “guard” to make sure Deep didn’t do something against them. No doubt scouts would follow, but Levi’s old boss wouldn’t worry about that. Winning more of their trust.

  After the black dragon took off, Deep moved out to the center of the area and shifted. Even toward the end of the two thousand years a mated dragon could live, he was still impressive in dragon form. Imposingly huge, especially for a red dragon, with scales so red they put Levi in mind of what he pictured in the biblical story of the ten plagues and turning the rivers to blood, especially when Deep moved and his scales rippled. With a whoosh of wings, he pushed off.

  “This way,” Shula said before he was barely in the air.

  Next, they found themselves in what appeared to be Shula’s home. Basic, like all the buildings, but neat and comfortable if a tad run-down, the furniture, though well taken care of, obviously second or even third hand. Similar to Lyndi’s house, actually, just on a smaller scale.

  “Stay here. I’m going to get your…boys.”

  Shula was out the door before either could say a word.

  Lyndi ignored Levi’s pointed stare as she poked around the house. At a bookshelf, she paused and picked up a framed photo and Levi stepped closer, though he just kept himself from touching, to look over her shoulder at two women smiling for the camera, Shula and a lovely woman with pale skin, dark, curling, shoulder-length hair and kind brown eyes. This must be Bree.

  “I had no idea a female-born could turn a human,” Lyndi murmured. She looked over her shoulder at him, more questions in her eyes than he’d bet she even realized. “What does that mean?”

  Unable to stop himself, he lifted a hand to tuck a silky strand of her hair behind her ear. Levi wished he had answers for her, wanting to give her the world if he could. “I don’t know.”

  “What if I’m supposed to—”

  “No.” He didn’t mean to cut her off so sharply. Levi took a beat, told his dragon to calm the fuck down, and tried again. “A mate—human, dragon, or otherwise—will happen when it happens. Don’t worry about supposed-tos or should-haves.”

  And damn if any man or woman but him would stake a claim on Lyndi. She was his.

  His dragon pushed against the inside of his skin uncomfortably, urging him to say that to her. But Levi was beyond sure that if he told her anything about where his head was at—hell, where every part of him down to his soul was at—she’d fly away and never come back.

  She tossed him an odd look. One, for once, he had no trouble interpreting. “I don’t believe in fated mates,” he said quietly.

  Surprise was quickly hidden beneath lowered lashes. “Except you see several pairs every day. You can’t deny the bonds Finn and Delaney and Drake and Cami share. The way they’re so in tune with one another. Delaney and Finn can practically hold an entire conversation without speaking.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t believe in mates. Once the bond sets in, it’s a beautiful, powerful thing to see. And yes I want that.” With you. “But the fated part is harder to swallow.”

  “What about all those women who die in the mating process.”

  “I think that has less to do with the pairing than with the process itself. Being reborn by fire is a perilous thing. Only the strongest will survive.”

  “And the piece of the male dragon’s soul that dies with them?”

  “I heard somewhere once that that was the piece of his soul he gives in the flames. The piece of himself that would tie them together, form that bond, if or when she survived the turning.”

  “You’d give up part of your soul to have your mate?”

  To have you? I’d give everything. His dragon stretched inside him again, reaching outward. He ignored the animal side of himself. “Yes.”

  Lyndi nibbled at her lip, a rare show of vulnerable confusion. “Sometimes, Levi Rowtag, I really like you.”

  Levi lifted a hand and smoothed a flyaway tendril of hair that had escaped her ponytail back from her face. “I like you, too.”

  The front door banged open, and Levi dropped his hand as Mike hurried in, followed by Attor and Coahoma. “Before you say anything,” Mike rushed to say, “we’re sorry we got caught.”

  Deep came in right behind them and smacked Mike in the back of the head. Levi hid a laugh behind his hand.

  “You mean you’re sorry you got caught,” Lyndi said, hands on her hips, taking on full-on mother mode.

  Mike grimaced.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Attor said. “It was mine.”

  Coahoma shook his head. “No. I was being too loud.”

  Now Lyndi bent a glare on the other two. “As noble as it is that you’d step up for your brother, you’re also robbing him of the chance to learn this lesson.”

  Fully grown young men with hangdog expressions, scuffing their feet like chastised children while a bundle of female mothering cowed them, was worth the price of admission.

  “I’ll learn,” Mike promised.

  “Yes, you will,” Levi said, sobering quickly. “With daily drills starting the second we get back.”

  He paused as the implication of his words sunk in, realizing that he could get it started but wouldn’t be there to make sure it continued. “Drake will see to it.”

  Though Mike winced, he didn’t argue, and Levi mentally gave the kid props for that.

  “You weren’t kidding when you called them your boys,” Shula commented as she came in, shooing the three out of her foyer and out of her way.

  “She’s the only one who’s allowed to do that,” Attor growled.

  Humor lit the dragoness’s otherwise pitch-black eyes, though her expression remained sober. “Noted.”

  Shula moved into the dining room, waving them all to sit. “I’ll start. After I tell you what I know, I want to know more about your experiences.”

  Levi paused halfway to seated. She waved him off. “No one is getting near here tonight. Don’t worry about being overheard.”

  He glanced at Lyndi and Deep who both nodded. He’d just have to believe that Shula’s confidence in her guards was well-deserved, and that none of her people would turn traitor and run to the Alliance. A tall ask, but trust had to start somewhere.

  Levi moved his chair closer to Lyndi’s, his thigh pressed against hers, and caught her swift glance. But his dragon was starting to get antsy with the pressing weight that was his need to protect her while they were surrounded by strangers and in a location recently hit—apparently by the Alaz team, which would take some figuring out. He was so screwed. Contact settled him…for the moment. No way was he letting her out of touching distance.

  Although contact brought a different problem into stark relief. Now he knew the taste of her skin and the sound of her moans, his dick twitched at even the hint of her spring and smoke scent around him
. One round with her in the bedroom wasn’t enough, but there was more to his need than that. Like opening that window to her had thrown open every door and window in the house.

  He wanted more, but the more he wanted her, the more he needed to protect her. A compulsion growing by the second.

  One she wouldn’t appreciate, but it was so much a part of his nature he almost couldn’t control it.

  “Start talking,” he told Shula.

  Chapter Eight

  As Tineen stalked down the hallway, an unbidden snarl escaped his throat. No doubt his gunmetal gray eyes would be filled with flame and ire. He’d been fucking summoned.

  No one did that in his mountain. He was the one who summoned, who remained in charge, in control. Rounding the corner, he stopped in the doorway to the war room, expecting to see Mathai’s face on the screens. Only every screen showed the usual shit.

  “Galib called and said the Alliance wished to speak to me,” he snapped at Xi, one of the green dragons on his team who happened to pull night duty.

  A hard face turned to him with zero emotion. His man knew better than to show either surprise or concern. “Not through me, sir.”

  Tineen frowned, then realization struck with all the subtlety of a black dragon in daylight. “He’s here,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck.”

  Mathai’s reputation of cold calculation hadn’t been exaggerated. Tineen had enough experience with the red dragon leader of the Alliance to know that. His arrival here could be neither good nor a coincidence.

  Xi, who knew better than to ask, turned his attention back to the screens he was monitoring.

  Without another word, Tineen whipped around and stalked from the room, retracing his steps back to the upper levels of the mountain where he had no doubt he’d find Mathai waiting in one of three possible locations. The foyer, Tineen’s office, or the more formal entertaining room which was the only space that wasn’t strictly utilitarian in the mountain.

  Unlike the Huracáns who’d made their mountain into a ridiculously cozy little home. Not that that was important right now. He had bigger issues. What was the leader of the Alliance doing here?

  Not that Mathai had far to come. The Alliance headquarters was housed in the same region: Long’s Peak in Colorado, centrally located, giving them easier access to all the dragon shifters in their region.

  The foyer was empty when Tineen reached it. So was his office, which led Tineen, now quietly containing a rage that had his dragon thrashing inside him, to the receiving room.

  There he found Mathai comfortably settled on the stiff-backed sofa, arms sprawled along the back of the formal piece of furniture provided in this space for visiting dignitaries. Beyond a red flicker in his eyes and a certain rigidness to his posture, the Alliance leader appeared perfectly at ease.

  Tineen had no intention of underestimating this man, or assuming this visit was anything resembling casual.

  “Mathai,” he greeted with a formal nod, hands clasped behind his back. “To what do we owe the honor of a personal visit?”

  The older dragon smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. It never did. Mathai used smiles as though he’d been told he needed to in order to fit in, almost like the movement was a learned reflex. “It never ceases to amaze me how quiet a black dragon can be, even when he’s not trying.”

  Tineen remained silent. He had been trying. Catching any person off guard provided a wealth of information in nuances of expression, posture, and reaction that they wouldn’t otherwise give up.

  “I understand you’ve discovered an unusual mate,” Mathai said next. “I’ve come to see her for myself.”

  Fuck.

  No one, not one fucking soul, should have known about her. Not yet. Only because he’d practiced for centuries to show no emotion did Tineen keep his reaction minimal.

  The question was, what to do about the man in front of him? How had Mathai learned of her, and what else did he know?

  The woman was bound and gagged, tied up in Tineen’s own suite of rooms as he determined what to do with her. Kill her had been his first thought. A human turned by a female-born dragon was unheard of. Impossible. Much like the multiple brands that had showed on the back of Sera Morrison’s neck. Anomalies that they would do better to eradicate, rather than upset a system that had been working for centuries.

  “We did run across a…curious case,” he said, no trace of emotion in his voice.

  “I would be interested to see her.” A reasonably worded command.

  “Of course. Follow me.” Tineen led the way back through the twisted labyrinth of halls and chambers in his mountain.

  Unlike many other dragon mountains that had been smoothed out and forced to conform to more human standards of cultivated beauty and civility—to appease human mates—the Alaz mountain had stayed true to the original caverns, only carving out new spaces as chambers needed to be connected. Even then, they’d tried to minimalize the impact. The result was a rougher, truer form of a dragon shifter home.

  At the door to his suites, Tineen paused to explain. “She’s given us some trouble, and I also didn’t want her presence widely known. I’ve been keeping her in here.”

  Mathai merely waited.

  The woman, Bree, was in one of the smaller bedrooms, secured in dragonsteel cuffs that would slice off her hands and head if she tried to shift, and bound to the headboard of the dragonsteel bedframe. She was going nowhere.

  The second he opened the door, she opened her eyes, glaring at both him and Mathai. Her dark eyes changed color, turning silver an instant before flame sparked in them.

  Mathai stilled. “She’s already mated?” he asked quietly.

  The danger underlying those words should’ve had Tineen ducking his head to avoid the other man’s eyes. It didn’t.

  “That’s what is so unusual,” Tineen said. “She was turned by a female-born.”

  If he’d thought the leader of the Alliance still a moment ago, now the man could’ve been hewn from the granite of the mountain they stood in.

  “I see why you found the need to bring her to our attention.” The tone of Mathai’s voice and his expression were innocuous, but the words were passive aggressive, and his stillness remained disturbing. A warning that he was well aware Tineen had had no plans to tell the Alliance.

  The need to defend himself surged through Tineen, tensing his honed muscles one at a time, his dragon curling up in his head like a rattlesnake, ready to strike.

  “You did the right thing hiding her from others,” Mathai said. “Until we know more, this should not be widely known.”

  Like sludge oozing from a sewer, the tension bled out of Tineen, his dragon uncurling slightly.

  “She must go to the Mating Council,” Mathai said. “For study. Along with her mate.”

  Tineen turned his head to stare at the woman, hiding the doubt likely reflected in his expression. “Her mate?”

  “Yes. The female who turned this one. The council will want to examine both.”

  “Taking the mate may be…difficult.”

  They’d stolen this woman before her small settlement really knew what was happening, giving him and Roan the advantage. Granted the mate was a mere female, so clearly less dangerous than a male dragon, but the rest of the group they lived with were male, and black dragons. Tineen had already increased the defenses and patrols around his own stronghold in case they figured out he and Roan weren’t from the Huracán team as they’d said and decided to try to retrieve Bree. A stupid move, but dragon mates didn’t separate well, and he wasn’t fool enough to not be prepared for all contingencies.

  “Difficult?” Mathai came as close to a genuine smile as Tineen ever saw. “Yes. I imagine it will be.”

  …

  Lyndi sat in the family room letting the conversation—the usual back and forth of the Huracán team—flow aroun
d her. Like she’d been doing for the last few days since they’d met with Shula and her small colony.

  Afterward, Deep had gone off to convince yet another group of what was happening. She and Levi had returned to headquarters. When they’d got home, she’d half expected Levi to drag her upstairs and pick back up where they’d finished. Instead, after they’d met with Finn and Drake and the team to debrief, the alphas had sent Levi back out to see if he could track down where Tineen had taken Bree.

  And she’d almost gone after him, dammit.

  Instead, she had been left behind with all her chaotic, twisted thoughts. And a loneliness with an ache that had surprised her.

  I like him. Genuinely.

  She’d said it and she’d meant it. Somehow this seemed like a huge discovery and yet something she’d always known deep down. She’d been around Levi Rowtag for centuries and, in all that time, had only allowed herself to be annoyed by him, frustrated by him, or generally ignored him.

  A defense mechanism to keep them both from making a huge mistake.

  Any attraction she held for him, she’d stuffed down under all that, along with any appreciation. Sure…she’d respected the way he was loyal to the team. He’d have their backs no matter what. If she was honest with herself, every time her brother had gone out to do what he did, if Levi was part of the group, she felt…better. Like Levi would make sure nothing bad happened.

  But what did liking him mean now?

  “Nothing,” she muttered to herself.

  Because she liked Hall, and Kanta, and Rivin, and Keighan, and Finn. They were essentially all her brothers in a way. They’d all taken care of her and she’d taken care of them. They were a family, more than her other brothers by blood, still residing in Everest, ever had been. That was for damn sure.

  Except you don’t want to sleep with any of them. Only Levi. And you don’t care much about what they’re thinking. That small voice was slowly growing louder.

  She didn’t let her mind move beyond the sex part. Because giving herself to him beyond the physical was out of the question.