by Abigail Owen
And Demyan was here, too? Another orphan who’d never quite joined Lyndi’s group, the white dragon was one of the best message runners, stealthier even than black dragons, Levi had ever seen. And the only one to know where Aidan and Sera were hiding at any given time.
Levi looked over to find Lyndi worrying at her lip with her teeth. Damn his dick, which swelled at the sight. Clearing his throat, he turned back to Aidan. “When did you get here?”
If they’d arrived in daylight, they’d risked a lot. The Alaz team and the Alliance both had reasons to keep a close eye on the Huracáns these days. Which meant they were desperate.
Aidan urged Sera into a seat, though she took his hand. “Demyan got us in late last night, but we waited in the back tunnel until daylight, just to be sure we hadn’t been followed.”
The kid was scary smart when it came to his ability to get in and out of places. He’d had to be, learning the hard way when he’d crossed over from Russia alone. The colonies were easier for orphans than the clans.
Levi eyed the gathered team, getting only grim expressions in return. “What have you talked about already?”
“Nothing,” Aidan answered. “Just a lot of hugs and getting assembled down here.”
“Good. I won’t have to make you repeat it then.”
Aidan shot him a crooked, exhausted grin. “Like you could make me do anything, old timer.”
Levi snorted, then grabbed the closest chair. Except Lyndi made to move around to the other side of the table.
No way was his dragon having that. Him, either.
In a silent move, Levi snagged her by the wrist, then looked pointedly at the chair beside him before raising his eyebrows at her. He earned a sharp glare, and he knew exactly why. Because with that one small action, he’d told the entire team a hell of a lot. If Aidan and Sera being here wasn’t so serious, he would’ve shot his lover an unrepentant grin. Damned if he was going to let her hide them in the dark like a dirty secret, sordid and embarrassing.
Ignoring every other person in the room, he let go of her wrist and waited, more curious than anything, to see what she’d do next.
Eyes narrowed on him, promising retribution that he had an inkling he’d enjoy a lot more than in the past, she sank, stiff-backed, into the chair. But still beside him. Levi couldn’t regret the smug triumph expanding his chest or the satisfied rumble of his dragon.
“So, why are you here?” Finn’s question, couched in his low rumble, had Levi sitting forward, elbows on his knees.
Focus, dammit.
He was losing his touch, thanks to the woman at his side.
“Demyan got us out of the house we’d been staying in for a few months now. Just in time, too. We watched them blow it to hell with a grenade launcher.”
Fuck. The room rippled with reaction.
Almost as a code of honor, shifters didn’t often use human weapons. They were living weapons. To debase yourself that way was almost as dishonorable as turning rogue on purpose.
“Who?” Finn demanded.
“I’m not sure,” Aidan said. He exchanged a long look with Sera, residual fear for his mate and their son reflected in the grim set of his jaw, his lips a white slash. “Demyan says he recognized an Alaz dragon. We didn’t actually see them.”
The Alaz again? Hell. What were those bastards up to? Retribution? Orders from the Alliance?
“Why come here, though?” Levi asked.
“Because every other safe house was destroyed as well. With no other place to go, we’re headed to Rune, but getting to him is tricky since we don’t know exactly where he is.”
“Coming here puts us all in danger,” Kanta said slowly. No accusation in his voice, just stating facts in his way.
Aidan speared a hand through his hair. “We’re hoping that this would be the last place they’d think we’d dare to come. We’ve heard rumors, even as isolated as we’ve been.”
“What kind of rumors?” Finn asked slowly.
“Same things you’re hearing, I expect. Enforcers cracking down on even the smallest of the laws, going group by group to inspect. A few shifters disappearing…mates, orphans, rogues of course. They’ve had it out for us since I mated Sera. Worse probably after the thing with Drake and Cami. We’re all on their shit list.”
Levi exchanged a glace with Finn and Drake. The rookie wasn’t wrong. “Makes sense that they’d double down on searching for Aidan. The question is…is this coming from the Alliance or is the Alaz team acting alone?”
Aidan stiffened, ice-blue eyes sparking. “Why would the Alaz team go off on their own that way? Unsanctioned?”
Levi raised his brows at Drake who gave a low growl. “They lost one of their men in a scuffle that involved Cami and her family. Because of Rune’s involvement, the Alliance stuck with blaming him rather than us. Tineen, however, does blame us. He’s got to be pissed. I would be.”
Finn nodded slowly. “I think you’ve got to be right. As far as the Alliance is concerned, we’re to be monitored but are otherwise untouchable. This, all of it, the way it’s piling up, feels more like…”
“Retribution,” Levi spat.
A series of nods circled the room like a wave.
Sera scooted forward in her chair, slipping her hand into her mate’s, the gesture unconsciously done. “So they’re coming after us harder to hurt you, maybe to get you to react, as proof for the Alliance?”
Levi straightened at the same time as the others. Why hadn’t they seen it sooner? This had to be exactly what the Alaz team was doing. Provoking the Huracáns like poking a stick at a rattlesnake. Eventually, the serpent would strike, and they’d get their proof and permission from the Alliance to behead the danger.
“Then this attack on Aidan and Sera wasn’t just tracking them down,” Kanta said. “This was a declaration of war on us and anyone associated with us.”
The room went deadly quiet, shock reverberating through it like someone had taken a hammer to a bell. Holy fuck. If they were right about this, even if these moves against them were sanctioned by the Alliance, shit was about to hit the fan.
Whatever the Alaz’s next move was going to be, it no doubt was coming soon.
And I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m abandoning my team when they need me most.
Lyndi was the first to speak. “Rune is still part of the equation, then. He might not be the safest place to go.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“He’s too far away for them to get to easily,” Drake assured everyone.
Aidan’s brows went up. Being gone as long as they had, he and Sera had missed a lot.
“Only Drake and Cami know where Rune is,” Levi explained.
Drake’s jaw worked before he glanced at his mate. Cami nodded. “Where he is, is probably your safest bet.”
“Where’s that?” Aidan asked.
“I’ll only tell the two of you in private,” he said. He shot a hard stare around the table. “Not that I don’t trust the rest of the team, but if we’re right about this and the Alaz gets ahold of one of us, the fewer people who know, the better. The Alliance, too. He’s still top of their Most Wanted.”
Aidan turned his gaze to Sera, communicating with her in that silent way mates had. “We’ll leave as soon as night falls.”
Levi nodded, seeing no other way.
Drake didn’t do anything, which meant he also agreed.
“We’ll need to keep them isolated in the mountain until they go,” Levi said, thinking of their scents, which other dragons would pick up if they came, even a day later. “Actually…” Levi mused. “The best place for you would be the dungeons.”
Lyndi whipped around to send him a glare. “We are not making them—”
“Trust me,” he mouthed.
She cut herself off mid-word, and he almost had to laugh at her expression. A
mix of still irritated and confused and reluctant turning to belief.
She gave the tiniest nod, just for him, and that warm contentment in his chest expanded, easing the grip on his bones. It had taken over two hundred years. One tiny battle won with her. Another step forward.
“We have to stay down here anyway,” Aidan said. “Blake can’t get upstairs.”
“Good. If someone were to drop by, they’d scent you in there primarily. We could say we’d caught you, but you escaped.”
“A plausible lie,” Lyndi murmured.
Levi tipped his chin at her, holding her gaze. See min eneste, I’m for us. Not against us.
She dropped her gaze, hiding her thoughts from him with a sweep of her dark lashes.
“That will work,” Aidan agreed.
“Thank you,” Sera said at the same time, as though the two had already discussed it and responded simultaneously.
Levi blinked. Damn. Not even Delaney and Finn were that in sync yet. Deep and Calla did that often, but they’d been mated for a long time. Perhaps the need to hide and run and move constantly had fast-forwarded the bond the younger couple had formed.
“Is Blake downstairs?” Lyndi asked Sera. “I want to see him.” Without a backward glance, she left the room with all the women, chattering about Sera’s son from her first marriage to a human.
Levi didn’t realize he was staring after her, working through the hole that seemed to sit inside him with her absence, until Hall clapped him on the shoulder. “What was it that scared you away from the grocery store? It was the cucumbers, right? Like green dicks.”
Levi ignored him, heading out of the room and into the war room.
He should’ve known the men would follow. All except Drake and Finn. They already knew what they needed to know.
“Go away,” he said. “I’m on duty. You’re not.”
No one moved an inch.
With a sigh, Levi spun in the chair he’d dropped into to face them, taking in their expressions. None of his brothers in arms looked concerned, though they had every right to be. Instead, they appeared curious.
“We figured talking always helps,” Rivin said.
Behind him, Hall rolled his eyes. “Sharing feelings is not our thing.”
“But he’s gotta have things to get off his chest,” Rivin countered with a hand thrown out in Levi’s direction.
Hall just grinned. “I have no interest in some kind of kumbaya moment. I’m here to screw with a buddy.”
“Then you can keep quiet,” Kanta stepped in, still zen-like and yet his annoyance made itself felt. “Or I’ll get Drake to join in on this conversation.”
“You can’t do that,” Hall pointed out, smug. “Drake will cut Levi’s balls off if he knew the guy was fucking Lyndi.”
“I already said what needed to be said to Drake and Finn,” Levi informed them, leaning back in his seat, ostensibly at ease. “The rest is private between me and Lyndi.”
Hall dropped into a chair across from him, suddenly intent. “We weren’t asking for the dirty details—”
“Speak for yourself,” Rivin and Keighan said in stereo.
Kanta smacked them both across the backs of their heads.
Hall shot them a glare for good measure, then turned back to Levi. “We just want to make sure you know what you’re doing. This has a high fuck-up probability.”
“No shit.”
“What Hall means, in his unique way, is…you’re leaving,” Kanta said.
Also no shit. Levi was just waiting for the new moon and the cover of full darkness to head out.
“Is she going with you?” Kanta asked.
Levi shook his head. “She can’t, and I wouldn’t ask her to. The clans are at war.”
Even the wonder twins didn’t crack a joke at that.
“Then what are you going to do?” Kanta again.
“Ask her to wait.”
Quiet settled over the men. The kind that happened sometimes when they were dealing with a fire, or with any of the thousand serious incidents that had piled up over the years. The kind of quiet that acknowledged that sometimes there were no good answers, just shitty options.
“We’ll keep her safe,” Kanta promised. “We have your back. No matter what. Hers, too.” The others nodded, eyes suddenly glowing with dire determination, the colors bouncing off the walls in greens and whites.
“I know you do.” Only he wouldn’t fucking be here, and that was tearing him apart.
The guys peeled away, heading out of the room and back topside by the sound of the feet in the halls.
“We’re really happy for you,” Hall paused to say. One of the rare occasions he dropped the sarcasm. “You know that, right?”
Levi paused. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
Hall nodded, then slid out of the room.
For the first time, maybe ever, fear buried its hooks into Levi’s psyche. Finding his way to mating Lyndi would be akin to traversing a minefield blindfolded. From across the damn ocean, because no way was this happening before he left tomorrow.
Please don’t let this end up with either of us torn up and bloody from the explosion.
Chapter Eleven
“Hey Lyndi!” Blake’s high-pitched excited voice reached her before she’d made her way far enough down the tunnel to be able to see him, though she could hear Sera’s son playing with Lyndi’s younger boys.
They’d all come over for the afternoon to see Aidan, the first and oldest of her orphans, while he was there. Mike, Coahoma, and Attor were all still upstairs with Aidan and the team, while the rest of Lyndi’s kids were down here with Blake. Their antics echoed off the rounded cavern walls, drilled and widened to accommodate a full-sized dragon flying out of the mountain in full shift.
Blake’s senses were top notch if he could tell from a distance who was coming down the tunnel.
“Come play with us,” Blake urged.
All her boys, eager to help another young dragon the way they’d been helped, had decided to use the short time they were there to work with Blake on shifting to human. Though as she rounded a corner, what they were doing looked more like a game of chase to her, with her boys, all in human form, running around under Blake’s legs. They were going to get squished by a baby dragon not used to his own size if they weren’t careful.
In a move that sure seemed deliberate, he managed to sweep his tail under several of them, taking them out while avoiding them with the spiked end. Only William, one of the biggest and tallest, given he was nearing eighteen in human years, managed to hop out of the way in time, his dark hair flopping into his red-brown eyes with the move, so he missed the second swipe and ended up on his backside next to Elijah and Marin. They all rolled quickly to their feet and sprinted away.
Lyndi shot raised eyebrows at Sera who sat off to the side with Delaney and Cami and got a laughing shrug in return. Props to Blake for a move like that. Maybe he’d been in this form so long that he had the size thing figured out.
“Come on, Lyndi,” he called again, wearing what passed for a grin in dragon form, still gruesome even on his smaller face.
“The last time I played that game, I lost a chunk of scales,” she said with a laugh, holding up both hands in mock defense. “I don’t think Drake or Finn would be too pleased if I couldn’t do my job thanks to something like that.”
“I’ll keep you safe, Lyndi,” Elijah offered in his sweet way.
She caught a flash of his sandy mop of hair from under Blake’s belly. Unusual for a green dragon to have that color hair, but his mother had apparently been from the Americas.
“You’re the one who did it,” she reminded him with a wrinkled nose.
Elijah had to hop back as Blake dropped into a quick crouch trying to squish him. He didn’t quite make it and his burst of laughter was followed by, “Yo
u pinned me. I give!”
In a flipping maneuver, Blake launched himself out of the way, managing to corner William at the same time. Not an easy thing to do. A red dragon, William tended to be both quick and good at maneuvering, even in human form. Though the small scar on the bottom of his chin said he hadn’t always been so lucky.
Meanwhile, Elijah was left still sitting on the ground. So nice to see his serious face split in a rare, wide grin, though Lyndi made a mental note to get the kid to the orthodontist. Those teeth were not going to straighten themselves.
A tug on her hand had her looking at Marin’s face, his white-blue eyes turning bluer with his excitement, and she softened to goo. Currently her youngest, she still worried that his time alone in the wilds had left him malnourished. He was on the small side, even for his age, which in human years was closer to nine, but he looked more like seven or eight. “I’ll protect you, Lyndi.”
Her heart cracked, too heavy to stay whole watching them all now. What a world to be born into. How was she going to protect them? What if the Alaz came for them, too? Blew up her house with a grenade launcher, like they’d done to Aidan and Sera? What if they weren’t as lucky and didn’t get out in time? What if… Gods above, so many what-ifs.
“I already said I’d protect her,” Elijah called out from around Blake’s bulk. Then he managed to dodge around Blake, jumping from a stalagmite to a slim outcropping and down beside where she stood with hardly a blink.
“You did it the last two times.” Marin, standing closest, shoved his brother in the arm.
“Did not.”
“No one needs to protect me, because I’m a badass.” Lyndi grimaced. “Sorry, Sera.”
Her friend snorted a laugh. “Around this crew, I’ve given up saving his ears from swear words.”
Meanwhile, the boys all dissolved into laughter. “You’re the worst at this game, Lyndi,” William hooted off to one side. “You need more protection than Marin.”
Lyndi planted her hands on her hips, ready to defend her honor. “Only because I let you guys win.”
That only sent them into fits of harder laughter. “Remember that time Elijah accidentally smacked you into the side of the mountain and you passed out?” William teased.
