The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  Relief that he finally believed her was short-lived, obliterated by a panic that she’d given too much away. If he knew her heart, he’d never give her up when the time came. He’d never find his true mate. Because of her. She knew Levi—his loyalty, his stubbornness. He’d never allow himself to seek that bond with someone else if he committed himself to her.

  Panic hit her stomach like a punch to the gut. Lyndi’s eyes flared wide as a battering of nausea slammed into her with the sweeping force of dragon fire. Hand to her mouth, she sprinted into the woods and immediately emptied her stomach of all its contents.

  Vaguely, she was aware of Levi at her side, holding back her hair until she was done. Breathing through her nose, she leaned over, hands on her knees, waiting to see if another wave of panic would crest and bring more up.

  “Here.” A canteen was shoved in front of her. When the hell did he grab that?

  Lyndi didn’t care. Slowly forcing herself upright, she screwed off the top, swished some water in her mouth and spit it out, repeated that a few times, then took a few tentative sips. “Thanks,” she said.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her glance skittered away from his hard stare. Dragons didn’t get viruses or stomach bugs, so there was no sense in lying. “I think the stress of…everything…is getting to me.”

  Not to mention the agony of what she’d have to do to the man standing in front of her. It was the only explanation she could come up with that made any sense to her.

  Levi tugged her into him, wrapping his big arms around her. “I know.”

  Not discounting her feelings or telling her not to worry or saying that he’d take care of everything, like Levi would have even a few weeks ago. Just acknowledging the worry.

  She relaxed into him, burrowing her face into his chest and breathing in smoke and brandy. Tension seeped out of her like a slow leak in a tire.

  “We get to the mountain today,” he said. “And we figure things out from there. One day at a time. Yeah?”

  She nodded against him. Then closed her eyes on a wave of despair so bleak, her throat wanted to close up and cut off all her oxygen. Once they were set up in the mountain, they’d be as safe as they could make themselves. They wouldn’t need him there after that.

  How am I going to let you go?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Finally getting to the mountain he’d scouted centuries ago hadn’t cut the work or worry at all. They had just as much to do and still had to watch their backs every second.

  Levi hid his concern for Lyndi, not to mention the gut-twisting knowledge that leaving her was just around the corner, behind getting shit done. Not hard to do when he was organizing and managing a bunch of juvenile dragons, trying to hide their tracks, and get them somewhere safe. All on a pinhead’s worth of sleep and shitty freeze-dried food.

  He watched his mate closely. No use calling her anything else now, because that’s exactly what she was. Though he tried not to let her see both what was in his heart and his watching.

  Concern was scratching at him like a flea-bitten dog.

  Getting sick was rare for dragons. Usually, it indicated a much bigger problem. They healed easily, but that didn’t keep a handful of the more deadly diseases completely at bay. What if this wasn’t stress and she hadn’t told him everything that happened getting Bree out? Or she’d just got unlucky? Cancer did happen among their kind, rare as it was.

  Stop.

  He shook off the thought because he was being ridiculous. After that one incident in the woods as they’d broken down camp, she’d been fine.

  Maybe she was right and she’d just had a stress reaction. The gods knew she had enough reasons for that.

  The problem was, she’d also backed off. Shutting him out in ways so subtle he couldn’t put his finger on how. She’d flown beside him. They discussed each move they made, and she listened to him. She even smiled at him. Laughed. Responded to his teasing.

  But the real Lyndi, the woman who’d finally started opening herself to him in other ways, was gone. A metaphorical plexiglass wall had come up behind her eyes. An invisible barrier, nothing he could point to or ask her about, but it existed just the same.

  Like he was a fucking mime, trying to get out of a glass chamber he couldn’t see, having to feel his way through a maze that might have no exit.

  “Sir?” Elijah asked from behind him.

  Levi turned away from the view out of the mountain cavern to find the kid holding out the massive banana-yellow satellite phone. Their connection back to the team.

  He took it with a nod and put it to his ear. “Levi.”

  “Is Lyndi with you?” Drake asked.

  “Yes. She’s safe.”

  “Thank the gods for that.”

  “They got Bree and Shula out,” he said.

  “Yes. We got…word…from Shula.”

  “They’d better get the fuck out of Dodge. Tineen will be coming for them again.”

  “Already handled,” came the grim response.

  No need for more. Levi had his own problems to deal with, and knowledge about details going on elsewhere could be dangerous.

  “We haven’t heard from Deep yet, though.”

  The solid plastic of the device in his hand cracked as Levi gripped it harder, trying to clench the whine of his dragon inside him. “He got out and met up with Lyndi. He was injured but healing when she left him. He was going to leave a false trail.”

  A beat of silence. “We’ll keep our ears to the ground for him.”

  “Yeah.” The only thing keeping Levi’s worries at bay was Calla. If something had happened to Deep, she would know.

  “Any updates for me?” Drake asked.

  “Not that I can share. We’re safe. No encounters or sign that we or Lyndi were followed. That’s all you need to know.” The keeping of secrets for safety went both ways.

  “Right.”

  Levi hesitated. Should he tell Drake about Lyndi getting sick? Worrying Drake needlessly, when he could do nothing about it from where he was, was pointless, so he kept his mouth shut. “I’ll check back in with you in twenty-four hours.”

  “Got it.”

  On that, they hung up, and Levi handed the phone to Elijah who’d waited. They’d placed him in charge of communications, and he refused to let that phone out of his sight.

  “Stay here and watch,” Levi ordered. Probably more harshly than he’d meant, but he needed to tell Lyndi about the call. Dread reached out with hands from the grave, tugging at his feet as he walked deeper into the caves. Deep better be all right.

  A sudden rumble echoed through the darkness from deeper in the caves followed by several shouts, then Lyndi’s voice, high and clear. “Get back.”

  Levi took off at a dead sprint, thankful his eyes could see enough in the dark for him to go without needing a light, even as the winding series of caverns and quasi-hallways took him lower. He used the extra speed being a shifter gave him and burst into a room lit by a single flashlight, the beam trained on a massive gray beast.

  A cave troll.

  The thing had to be close to fifteen feet tall and looked to be made of rock, dust coating its leathery skin and facial features hidden in a face made up of crags and crevices.

  And Lyndi, dammit, stood in the middle of the cavern, within easy arm’s reach of the thing, facing it down. She had her arms spread to either side of her, as though she could hold the boys back against the outskirts of the cavern through sheer force of will.

  Hard to tell if the troll was looking at her or somewhere else. Not wanting to antagonize the thing while his mate stood so close, Levi held his position at the entrance to the cavern. “Lyndi,” he said, soft, low, and steady. “Back away.”

  She shook her head, focused on the troll. “I am so sorry we disturbed your home,” she
said calmly. As though having a chat with a grumpy new neighbor.

  The troll said nothing.

  “We’re trying to find a place to hide.”

  “Nothing come here in much time.” The troll’s voice was low but surprisingly smooth. Slow and even, like time itself. “Except wandering humans.”

  Hard to tell with a face like that, but Levi got the distinct impression the troll licked its chops with that declaration. Or was he looking for signs that they’d run into a carnivorous one of its kind? Most trolls were vegetarians, but a few got a taste for human blood and that was it for them. At least he didn’t see human bones scattered about the chamber.

  “Are there other caverns we could use which wouldn’t disturb you?” Lyndi asked.

  She still sounded as though this was just an everyday thing. Like she was chatting with Delaney or Cami in the kitchen.

  Get back, he silently willed her. In his head, his dragon was posturing, spikes up, feet planted as though he’d charge the troll any second. Only the room was too small to shift.

  Levi took a step in her direction, but the troll lifted its head with a grunt, and he stopped, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. He knew a warning when he saw one.

  “No other caves in mountain,” the troll said, returning his focus to Lyndi.

  She was silent a moment. With her back to him, Levi couldn’t see her expression, but he had no doubt she was thinking through her options.

  “Is there something we could trade, or do for you, if you allowed us to stay here with you?”

  She wanted to trust a cave troll? Had she ever come across one before? Levi hadn’t, but the rumors were enough to make him wary.

  “Nothing.”

  There. That sounded adamant enough. “We’ll just be on our way—”

  Lyndi waved an irritated hand at him without turning away from the creature. “There has to be something you want. All alone here in such an isolated space. Food, maybe?”

  The troll seemed to rotate its head to the side, the motion a jerking slide, skin sounding like the rustle of leather on leather.

  “You stay. Is acceptable.”

  As in Lyndi could stay? Fuck that. Levi took another step, and this time Lyndi did whip her head around, her glare daring him to make another move or sound, eyes glowing red in the dim, lighting her face with angry color. He glared back but stopped moving.

  When she was sure Levi wouldn’t do anything, she turned back to the troll. “Stay with you how long?”

  The creaking leather sounded again as its face changed shape, a gaping hole suddenly appearing. Was the thing…smiling?

  “Haven’t talked to pretty girl in long time. Is all.”

  “Can I come and go, helping my boys?”

  She wasn’t seriously considering this?

  The troll appeared to debate the question, then nodded slowly. “If promise talk.”

  “Just talking?” Lyndi’s tone sounded like what was going on his head. It couldn’t be that simple.

  “Just talk.”

  Lyndi nodded. “I promise.”

  A growl ripped from Levi that he didn’t even want to stop, completely on the same page with his dragon.

  Again, the troll shifted his focus between them. “Mate?” he asked Lyndi.

  “No.”

  Stupid to want to argue with her right this moment, but damned if that one word didn’t have him gritting his teeth against a disagreement.

  The troll didn’t move. “Lover?”

  They hadn’t been overt in front of the boys, not that they’d been hiding anything, either. Levi crossed his arms, curious to see how she’d answer that one.

  “Yes.”

  Well, look at that. Progress? Or reluctantly offered truth? Part of him eased a fraction.

  “He stay, too.”

  Levi’s eyebrows shot up. That he hadn’t seen coming.

  “Really?” Lyndi asked slowly.

  “No get between mates.”

  “I told you, we’re not—”

  “Not stupid.”

  Levi hid a grin behind the hand he swiped over his jaw at Lyndi’s frustrated humph. He also relaxed the rest of the way. This troll wasn’t going to do anything to them. Their kind had dwindled, or perhaps gone into hiding, especially in recent years as humans took over the globe like a plague of locusts. Apparently, they were smarter than most gave them credit for. Or, at least, this one was.

  Lyndi must’ve thought the same, because she shot Levi an irritated glower over her shoulder. “I think I’ve been played.”

  As long as he could be there, too, and they could all stay in these defensible caverns, Levi didn’t give a shit either way.

  She turned back to the behemoth and held out a hand to shake. “I’m Lyndi Chandali.”

  “Vilsinn.” The troll’s massive hand engulfed her arm up to her elbow. “Means beloved follower.”

  “That’s lovely,” Lyndi said. Of course his mate would think so. “Are you a beloved follower?”

  “Was.”

  “Was?”

  “Followed Seeress until she dead.”

  Levi’s eyebrows might permanently remain in his hairline at this rate. A troll as a follower of a Seeress?

  “I’m sorry.” Lyndi patted the hand that still gripped her arm with her other hand. “That must have been hard for you.”

  “Yes.” Vilsinn released her and, without another word, rolled into a ball and tucked himself into the wall of the cavern, looking, suddenly, like just another boulder. Levi would be checking all the other boulders a little more closely now. Given that dragons lived in caves, maybe this explained how he’d never encountered one before.

  “Sleep now. Talk later,” the troll’s voice rumbled out from under his rounded form.

  At a signal from Lyndi, the boys moved farther down several different passages, going about their business of exploring the natural cave system, which is what they’d been doing to start. Levi canted his head at her to follow and led her into one of the smaller chambers he’d passed in his sprint to save his mate.

  The second she walked into the room behind him, she was already scowling. “Don’t lecture—”

  He yanked her into his arms and crashed his mouth down on hers. And his dragon, mostly mollified by their friendly new troll friend, settled completely at the touch, even if Levi’s body stirred to have her against him again.

  “I’m not going to lecture,” he said against her lips. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “Then what is this about?” she demanded.

  “It’s about keeping my sanity.” Because if he could touch her, she was still real, and safe, and still with him.

  He didn’t say that. Instead, he rested his forehead against hers. “I have news from your brother.”

  …

  Lyndi glanced up as a new light joined the camping lantern currently illuminating the small chamber where she squatted beside Marin. The room where Marin and Elijah would bunk down. She glanced over her shoulder to find a dancing glow of orange on the wall of the tunnel leading away.

  Someone must’ve lit a fire farther inside the mountain.

  And no wonder. It might be coming on to spring, but this far north winter definitely still had its claws dug in, though the deeper parts of the caves were more temperate. Still, even running naturally hotter by her nature, a fire was appreciated.

  She turned back to what she was doing. They didn’t need their tents any longer but still had to set up the “rooms.” They’d been busy all day getting a kitchen of sorts in working order, including where to store food so that other animals wouldn’t be drawn into their cave for it.

  Bedrooms of a sort for everyone had to be arranged, most of the boys doubling or tripling up given the size of the spaces, but also for safety in numbers. Bathrooms, unfortunately,
remained outdoors, requiring them to fly down to a spot in the woods and shift so they weren’t creating dragon-sized waste. They still had to bury everything or the stench, even from there, would eventually become overpowering. Not to mention a signal to any passing dragon.

  Levi had also set up a system of safety and defense. Buddying up. No one went anywhere alone. Hard rule. Along with set rotating patrols both inside and outside the mountain, and rotating sentries at the only point of entry big enough for anything to come through.

  It meant that at any given time six of their group, a third of them, were vulnerable. Each shift lasted four hours, so they all worked two shifts a day, leaving plenty of time to rest in between.

  Lyndi would have known to do some of that, but Levi, with his centuries of experience, also showed them other things that wouldn’t have occurred to her. Places to hide both inside and outside that provided the best points of view while minimizing exposure. Three separate plans should they be attacked. And he’d scheduled training sessions to start tomorrow. He’d do one round and then he was leaving. It seemed as though they kept getting only one more day together. But this time, nothing was going to give her a reprieve.

  This was it.

  Finished pumping the thin air mattress up with more gusto than the task required, she sealed off the cap and laid it down along with the sleeping bag and small camping pillow.

  “Levi says we should sleep with our heads to the center,” Marin informed her.

  Levi says was becoming a favorite opening line for all her boys.

  “All right.” She flipped the sleeping bag and pillow around, then rocked to her feet, stretching out limbs that had turned stiff with activity followed by squatting for at least ten minutes.

  That was the excuse she gave herself. The truth was, she was exhausted in a way she’d never been before. Bone deep. As though dragging her carcass around this earth and keeping her eyes open had become a battle against gravity itself.

  The emotional toll was finally breaking her down. No doubt about it.

  She was even too tired to maintain her fury beneath all the worry and work burying it down deep. Tineen was at the heart of all of this—them running, the mating. She was sure of that. How the fuck had he convinced the Alliance to give her to him?