The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  “And you’re telling me now because…”

  “Because with them you’ll be with blood family and the Alaz and the Alliance can’t touch you. Can’t make you go anywhere. You’ll be safe.”

  Elijah dropped his gaze, considering her words. Then quietly folded the paper up and handed it back. “They aren’t my family,” he said. “And my brothers need me.”

  Lyndi sighed, pride and the weight of a mother’s worry warring within her, a fierce battle that might break her in the end. At least she could have truly saved one if he’d chosen to go. “I figured you’d say that.”

  On a nod, Elijah turned and headed for the door. After pulling it open, he paused. “You know we’d do anything for you, don’t you?”

  Lyndi stilled at the deep sincerity in his gaze. “Just like I’d do anything for you guys.”

  “That’s just the trouble.”

  She frowned. “What is?”

  “You saved our lives. Do you think we want to repay that by putting you at risk like this?”

  “I have to run anyway,” she pointed out softly. “But even if I didn’t, it’s not about owing each other anything. This is about standing strong for the people we love. That is what a community is about. It’s not the laws, or the leaders, or even the need to barter and trade. It’s about living your life with someone beside you who says nothing is going to hurt you or take from you or threaten you. Not while I’m around.”

  Elijah dropped his gaze to the floor, thinking about that, then nodded. “I’ll see you up there.” And he was gone.

  Her brave kid.

  One who always seemed to know the right thing to do. A minor miracle given the tough positions he’d been put in early in life. Lyndi straightened. If Elijah could face those things, she could face her own demons, too.

  Determination walked her feet out her door…and right into her brother.

  “Got a second?” he asked, in typical brusque Drake fashion.

  “I’m really not in the mood.”

  “Good,” he said, unsmiling. “Neither am I.”

  And then he did the most un-Drake-like thing he’d ever done. He yanked her into his arms, wrapping them around her, and put his chin on top of her head, just holding her.

  Lyndi swallowed at the uncharacteristic show of affection and hugged him back. Just standing there for a moment acknowledging that, for the longest time, they’d been each other’s closest companions and confidants. Not that either was prone to confiding.

  “I made the mistake of leaving without saying goodbye once,” his deep voice rumbled against her cheek. “Not doing that again. You yelled at me.”

  She grinned against him and held on tighter. “You deserved it.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  Lyndi chuckled and pulled back. “Cami sure has had a positive effect on you, big brother.”

  Despite his stoic shrug, she could sense the smile lurking under the surface. “Don’t tell her that,” he said. “She’ll get all smug.”

  “That woman needs every advantage she can get, mated to you,” Lyndi teased.

  “Probably.” He paused, then squeezed her arms before stepping back. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself out there.”

  She searched his face. Usually it was Drake going off into danger. Even after she’d joined the team, most of her assignments were pretty tame. “You take care of yourself here,” she said, trying not to let emotion clog her voice.

  After another pause, Drake nodded, and then he was gone. Leaving her to gather her courage again.

  With a deep breath, Lyndi continued down the hall where she paused outside Levi’s room. She could pick up the sound of his feet as he moved around his suite. The soft sound of off-key whistling reached her from through the door, like today was any other day. He was too smart not to understand exactly what he’d signed himself up for.

  Sometimes, she suspected cheerful for Levi was a facade. A tell that he was, if anything, more worried.

  Lyndi closed her eyes, raised her hand, and knocked.

  The door swung open almost immediately and she lifted her gaze to find Levi standing there, filling the doorway, his unreadable gaze trained on her, almost like he was trying to divine her secrets for himself.

  For once, he didn’t immediately speak, which only upped the tension working its way through her body a muscle at a time. She twitched her shoulders, trying to fend off the unease. It didn’t help.

  “I can’t—”

  Levi stepped forward and pressed his lips to hers in a hard, harsh kiss. Then again, softer and sweeter. He lifted his head. “Try again.”

  Narrowing her eyes, she did just that. “You can’t—”

  Again, he cut her off with a hard kiss, followed by a soothing one that scrambled her brain. Almost like he was shutting her up with the first one, and the second…

  The second kiss…

  She couldn’t let herself define. Not if she was going to ask him not to go.

  “You aren’t thinking this through,” she said softly. “You have somewhere you have to be.”

  The twinkle in his eye died and he sighed, turning away. “You know me better than that.” He left her standing in the open doorway. “You need me more. The boys need me more. It’s not a difficult choice. I’ll go when I know you and the boys are safe.”

  She shook her head. “If the Alliance doesn’t believe our ruse and comes after them—”

  “Then we deal with it.”

  She paused as he swung a camo pack onto his back—the heavy-duty kind hitchhikers favored and likely fully loaded with things they’d need for wherever this venture was about to take them. Similar to the one overflowing with gear in her room.

  “Lyndi, if anything happened to the boys—” He paused, and his gaze held her in place like a butterfly pinned in a display. “If anything happened to you…” His voice had dropped, the harsher tones of his dragon coming through.

  He moved to stand directly in front of her. “Don’t try to talk me out of this. I’m doing it.”

  What kind of person was she that, instead of guilt or anger, her immediate reaction was one of pure relief? Like everything inside her unclenched. The thought of doing this on her own scared the shit out of her, but she could do it.

  I have to kill Tineen.

  It was the only answer to all of this. Then Levi could safely go on to the Gold Clan and she and the boys wouldn’t be in constant danger, always running. Of course, then she might never see Levi again, a thought that wrapped around something deeper within her and squeezed tight. But she’d deal with that after this nightmare was over.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  His lips tilted in a lopsided grin. “I could be trying to talk you out of going with Deep the same way, but I won’t.” He reached out, tracing her cheek with a single finger. “Just…be smart about it, okay? I don’t want to have to burn down the Rockies to get to you.”

  Twisting her lips to keep from smiling, she shrugged. “I’ll do what I have to do.”

  Levi dropped his hand, searching her expression with a frown. “Maybe I should tie you up and let Deep handle this.”

  Uh-oh. Better divert him or he’d figure out her true end game. She raised her eyebrows at him in deliberate interest. “Sounds diabolical.”

  Levi groaned. “Now I’m just giving you ideas.”

  “Actually…” She tipped her head to the side. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? “I do have an idea worth exploring.”

  “Oh?” He regarded her with extra suspicion, eyes narrowing.

  “Once I’m done with Deep and meet up with you, we’re about to be on the road indefinitely, with all of our, for lack of a better word, kids.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not a lot of privacy for…things.”

  Gold flared in his hooded eyes t
he instant he caught on. In almost one move, it happened so fast, he dropped his pack to the floor with a thump, kicked the door closed, and had her up against the wall, legs wrapped around him, cock pressing into her core through her jeans.

  “Now that is an idea I can get behind,” he murmured, warm breath brushing her lips.

  “I thought you might,” she murmured back.

  And let herself become lost in the perfection of Levi’s strength and tenderness.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dead silence greeted Tineen as he landed directly in the center of the black dragon village. No coming in by stealth. Though he could have. He figured speed and suddenness would serve him better. Only the place was deserted.

  Not a whisper of sound.

  Granted these were all black dragons, and most of them had been pretty fucking nonexistent on the last visit here. This was different. Felt different.

  “Boss—” Roan said beside him.

  “I know.”

  Shifting quickly, Roan following suit, Tineen strode into the nearest building, raising his nose in the air to sniff. Someone had been in this room not too long before. A day or two at most. If he’d come here first, he probably would have found them all in residence.

  What the seven hells? “Check the other buildings.”

  “Sir.”

  They split up to go faster, and every space he checked told the same story. Beds left in haste. Dishes in sinks or on tables. The scent of recent bodies inside and out. The settlement had been abandoned. Quickly.

  Slamming the last door behind him, he strode across the wide-open space at the center of the so-called town just as Roan emerged from the woods. “I found a trail.”

  “Good.” Roan’s expression flattened, and Tineen narrowed his eyes. “What else?”

  “I smell that old Huracán dragon, Deep, here.”

  Fury hit a slow boil. Had Deep been here while he’d been distracted with his new mate? Or before? “Follow the black dragons’ trail and report.”

  As Roan shifted to obey the order, Tineen yanked out a satellite phone from the pack he carried when he traveled. He didn’t dare use his cell phone for this.

  “Xi,” the man on the end answered.

  “Report.”

  “All quiet here.”

  “Boss?” Roan’s voice broke through.

  “Hold on—”

  He muted the call and waited for his second.

  “The trail goes cold heading south.”

  “To the Huracáns?” Roan would still be close enough to pick up the sound of the words.

  “Can’t be sure. Fucking black dragons.”

  Tineen tipped his head back to glare at the star-studded sky above. He put the satellite phone to his ear. “Contact Mathai and inform him that the black dragon mate in my chambers needs to be moved to the Alliance headquarters immediately.” Wasting his resources on keeping her bitch of a mate from trying to get her back wasn’t his focus right now. “Also, bring the men in the field back. Put the men currently in headquarters on standby. I want drills run until I return.” He hung up on Xi’s yes, sir. He couldn’t put them on full alert. The Alliance would learn of it and want to know why.

  If any one of the Huracáns or his new mate or her fucking orphans ran, they would need to follow. He planned to be ready.

  He shifted and took to the air. Rapidly gaining altitude, he caught up to Roan who held in wait for him. “I’m heading back to headquarters.”

  “And me?”

  “Stick to the plan. Go back to the Huracán mountain and watch those traitors for any movement in or out.”

  “You got it.” Roan tipped his wings and disappeared into the night.

  Tineen, seething with every beat of his wings, was tempted to follow his beta. Gut instinct told him he should just go back and take Lyndi now, force their hands instead of waiting for them to play this out. But he needed to get that newly turned mate, still held in his room, to the Alliance first. The sooner she was off his hands the better. He’d lost one of the pair. He wouldn’t lose the other, dammit.

  But Lyndi—she was the prize. The catalyst. He’d waited for this moment since the second those cowards in the Alliance hadn’t taken the entire Huracán team down after Yosemite. Now he would. He could taste it. He just had to keep his end goal in mind.

  …

  Deliberately, the entire journey to the Alaz mountain, a straightforward route to stick to her story of being there for her mating, took several days to give Levi and the boys more time to get away. Lyndi had struggled to keep her focus on what was coming. Every cell in her body, every thought, had been where her heart was. Somewhere on the way to the Alaskan wilderness.

  Had they gotten away okay? How far had they made it? Had they run across any trouble? Would she see them again?

  But now that she was here, the towering peaks of the Rockies all around her as she used every skill at her disposal to follow Shula up the Alaz mountain, she had to focus.

  Getting in would be the easy part. They had a plan. She and Shula had flown to the base of the mountain and climbed their way up until they were perched against the bare rockface, out of sight of where the main entrance was hidden. If the Alaz sensors and cameras were the same as the Huracáns’, they were searching for dragons coming at them, not humans.

  Mental note to tell Drake to change that situation.

  A shadow flashed overhead, and Lyndi froze and held her breath, slowing her heartrate. She needn’t have bothered. A red dragon swooped down to the flat ledge above her and Shula’s hiding spot. Deep. The distraction.

  He flew directly to the front dragon entrance and essentially knocked on the door with a thump of his tail against what appeared to be solid rock. After a long wait, the rock silently split in half, folding back to reveal a dragon-sized tunnel beyond.

  Whatever was said between him and the dragon that opened the door, she couldn’t hear, since she was in human form. Deep’s story was that he thought he’d discovered the location of the grizzly bear shifters who’d been involved in the fight that lost the Alaz team a dragon last winter. It must have worked, because both dragons extended their wings and flew inside.

  The instant they moved, she and Shula, on silent feet the way Rune had taught her, were up and over the ledge and sprinting through the shadows toward the closing door. This door was like a massive double garage door made of stone, closing in from both the top and bottom.

  “Dive,” Shula hissed.

  Lyndi leaped without hesitation, arms stretched out in front of her. She barely cleared the door as it whispered shut, then tucked and rolled to slow her motion.

  Fuck that hurt against the uneven stone, but they made it.

  “Follow me,” Lyndi mouthed.

  Every enforcer team had detailed schematics of the other team’s installations, which Drake had her memorize before she’d headed here. According to Deep, Bree wasn’t being held in the dungeons. She was in Tineen’s room. How he’d got that information, she had no idea. Slipping quietly from room to room, using the darkness to their advantage, she and Shula moved through several levels unhampered, upward to where the team suites were located.

  On the final staircase before the level where Tineen’s rooms were located, a low murmur of voices and pad of steps headed their way froze them halfway up.

  Shit. They were going to be scented any second now, no matter how invisible they made themselves.

  “Hide,” Lyndi mouthed.

  Without hesitation, Shula leaped straight up, attaching herself to the rocky ceiling like a freaking bat, blending into the crags and darkness. A handy skill Lyndi didn’t have time to admire. Deliberately she blew out a small stream of fire, her scent meant to mask the other woman’s and make the men follow her. Then she ran, light-footed, back down the stairs, leaving a trail behind her to the level belo
w and into one of the rooms her ears told her remained unoccupied.

  She had a minute at most and ignited her fire fully, blowing a long stream of it into the room, the red-tipped flames curling around themselves in midair. Then she shut the door and sprinted farther down the hall where she found the next room unlocked. Where were all these men? They couldn’t all be on night duty.

  She swung inside and left the door barely cracked so she could listen better. Not fifteen seconds later, the sound of running made her stiffen and silence everything about herself. Then a shout and the sound of a door being thrown back and thumping into the rock wall.

  “Where is it?” one of the men barked at the other.

  “Search the place.”

  Lyndi had one shot at this. She pushed the door she hid behind wide enough to scoot back into the hallway. Then with agonizing slowness, controlling her heartbeat with every inch gained, she crept down the hallway back past the room where the men searched. If she could get past them and to the stairs…

  A hand wrapped around her neck from behind and lifted her off her feet. “Got you!”

  The telltale crack of something hard connecting with a head sounded a millisecond before Lyndi found herself tumbling to the floor in a pile of limbs. Luckily not under the man who’d grabbed her.

  She jumped to her feet and spun, crouched and ready to defend herself, to find Shula there, pressed up against the wall beside the open door, a finger to her lips.

  “Xi?” A man came running out of the room, and Shula cracked him with a wicked-looking baton right in the head, dropping him like a sack of bones.

  Lyndi raised her eyebrows at Shula who shrugged. The woman had skills.

  Quickly crouching beside the men, she checked their pulses. Killing Alaz enforcers was not part of the plan. It would only bring more down on them and the team. Luckily, they were both alive. Giving Shula a signal, the two of them dragged the shifters’ bodies into the empty room, closing the door behind them.

  Together, she and Shula ran up the winding stairs to the next level, down the hall, and to the door that she was sure was Tineen’s suite. Shula held up her hand to wait, then shifted her nails to black talons at the tip of each finger, her expression one of concentration.