The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  He’d been enraged at the way the Alliance had handled the incident with Drake and Cami, and the loss of his Alaz enforcer as a result. They’d all seen his face when that decision was made.

  This was all his doing, somehow. Which made him a man to fear. Would he find them here?

  Cracking her neck, Lyndi buried her sorrow and worry and everything else. “Come on,” she said to Marin.

  Together they left the room and walked toward the large chamber where their new troll friend stayed, drawn by the flickering of fire that reached down the narrow tunnels like welcoming hands greeting her.

  She paused at the entrance to the chamber, her brows shooting up. Everyone except those on duty had gathered around a fire lit in the center of the chamber. The smoke, instead of filling the room, drifted lazily upward, as though drawn out through an open chimney flue.

  Vilsinn had awoken, taking up one entire side of the fire all by himself. Levi was there, too, watching her across the flames, a light in his eyes not coming from the fire, but from within him. For her. A tenderness that reached out and wrapped around her—soft, beautiful, and fucking terrifying—like making a promise you knew you’d never be able to keep. Only a large part of her wanted to see if she could keep him, and that was what scared her the most.

  This man was going to burn her heart into ash.

  He grinned suddenly, one side lifting higher than the other, which only made everything worse, and patted the floor beside him. As though she were in a dream, drawn to him despite herself, Lyndi found herself at his side before consciously deciding to move. Instead of letting her sit next to him, he wrapped a hand around her wrist and tugged her around to sit between his bent legs, leaning her back against his chest.

  Though they ducked their heads or looked away, each of her boys grinned. Not suggestive grins, like the Huracáns would’ve hit them with, or the embarrassed grins of children watching their parents. The boys were…happy…about her and Levi.

  Getting attached not only to him, but to the idea of him and her together.

  Oh gods. Why hadn’t she realized until this moment that hers wasn’t the only heart in danger here?

  Worry had her moving restlessly against Levi. As though attuned to her thoughts, he lowered his lips to her ear. “Easy min eneste.”

  For some stupid reason, she settled. As though her dragon responded to him, curling up in a contented ball, as well as her soul.

  Lyndi blew out a frustrated puff of breath. Then closed her eyes and let herself sink into him. Selfish of her. So selfish she was already mentally berating herself. But if she only had a little while longer with him—until tomorrow when he had to leave—then she’d absorb him into herself, so that she could keep the memories of them.

  Small consolation, but she’d known all her life this was how it would be if she ever allowed herself to fall for a dragon shifter.

  She’d fight harder next time. Leave instead of staying nearby. Though even contemplating a next time set a darkness inside her that tried to swallow her whole. Gods, she was a terrible person. What kind of love was she showing right now, taking advantage of Levi’s goodness when she knew this would end?

  Lyndi tried to sit up away from Levi, only to be caught back against him, his arm tightening.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he murmured into her hair.

  She shook her head, muscles trembling with the effort to hold herself apart, fighting both him and herself. “I shouldn’t—”

  The troll beside them jerked upright, as though shocked with a cattle prod.

  “You red eyes,” he said.

  Was he looking at her? Hard to read the emotion in the words, few and still unfamiliar in that voice, like she had to listen harder to make out sounds she recognized.

  “Um—” She tried to shift her mind from the guilt that had her running to escape the years of empty, aching loneliness she was about to subject herself to because she wasn’t being fair to Levi, to figuring out what the heck Vilsinn was trying to say.

  “Yes,” she finally managed. “Dragon shifters’ eyes light up sometimes.”

  “Dragon.” The troll rolled the word around. “You dragon shifter?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly.

  Couldn’t he tell earlier when they’d confronted him? Not that any of them had shifted. But no doubt this fire had been started by a dragon.

  “This mate?” He pointed to Levi.

  He’d already asked her that, but he seemed so intent on this line of questioning, she answered again.

  “No. I am female-born.” And, while that life came with its own hurts, as did any life, she hadn’t felt them as acutely as this very minute.

  “You red dragon?” Though nothing in his demeanor had shifted, urgency palpitated off him in waves.

  “Yes.”

  “Female red dragon,” Vilsinn whispered. Then straightened, large rocky shoulders rolling back, hands moving to rest on what she guessed were his knees.

  “I have story, too,” the troll said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Now why did the troll’s words come off sounding ominous? Levi hesitated, swinging his focus from the woman trying to get away from him to the creature beside them. Lyndi must’ve heard it, too, because she stilled in his arms, though she remained painfully stiff.

  Again, Levi had to beat back unaccustomed panic with a will made of dragonsteel, caging the emotion inside a dark, empty corner of himself. The way Lyndi had been watching him today, drawing away from him, had already raised red flags—as the humans put it—all over the place. But the way she’d jerked in his arms, as though rejecting being in them at all…

  He’d clamped down on her through sheer instinct, unable to let her go. He had every intention of making her his before he had to leave. With a promise to return, of course, and a prayer that this war didn’t last long. Leaving her behind while he went to his king would hurt, but letting her go forever would be the end of him. If she left him, he’d willingly give over to the dragon raging inside, release his humanity so that maybe, just maybe, he could escape the pain by hiding inside the stronger part of himself.

  “Two hundred years, I wait in mountain.” Vilsinn started in the halting cadence of unpracticed speech.

  “For what?” Lyndi asked.

  Vilsinn appeared not to hear her. “The Seeress say. She tell me wait, so Vilsinn wait.”

  Why did these words sound important?

  “Trolls no lonely. We slumber, like bear. Humans come. I take.”

  Levi opened his mouth to clarify what the troll took, but Vilsinn beat him to the question. “I take things.”

  Okay.

  “And wait.”

  “For what?” Lyndi repeated. “What were you waiting for?”

  “For female dragon. Red female.”

  A snake of electric shock shot up Levi’s spine, though his dragon remained strangely relaxed, sensing no ill intent from the troll. If he wanted to hurt Lyndi, he could’ve any time today.

  “Me?” Lyndi asked.

  “You first female dragon Vilsinn see. You red?”

  Lyndi’s chin went up, a sure sign she was battling back nerves. “Yes.”

  “Then you.”

  “Why did you need to wait for me?” She voiced the same question rattling around in Levi’s head.

  “To give you message,” the troll said.

  “A message?”

  “Yes.”

  “From two hundred years ago?”

  “Seeress not see when you come. Just that you come.”

  “Why did she not stay to deliver the message herself?”

  Vilsinn appeared almost to roll in on himself, like he had when he’d gone to sleep, and his voice came from deeper inside his body. “Seeress no long live. She dead.”

  “Oh,” Lyndi said in a small voi
ce. “Right. You said that earlier. Sorry.”

  “Last ask from Seeress, so Vilsinn stay.”

  Lyndi looked around the chamber, almost in a daze. Levi could feel her readying herself for whatever came next. He found himself breathing with her, rib cage expanding with each inhalation.

  “What’s the message?” Lyndi asked.

  “Seeress say tell red female dragon she first not last.”

  Levi paused, then leaned slightly back, frowningly tossing the words around in his head. First not last. Could that be any more cryptic?

  “Does that mean anything to you?” He addressed the words to Lyndi’s back.

  Only she didn’t move, everything about her as still as the mountain itself. Immovable.

  “First not last,” she murmured, as if tasting the words.

  The troll unrolled himself to nod. “I fulfill last promise. Now can leave.”

  “No.” Lyndi jumped to her feet and put a hand on the troll’s arm as he lumbered to his feet. “You’ve been a true friend and follower of your Seeress, waiting all this time.”

  “Promise is promise.”

  “Don’t go. Stay with us.”

  The troll didn’t change expression, as far as Levi could tell, nor did he move. “Stay with female red dragon?”

  Lyndi smiled. “Lyndi. You can call me Lyndi.”

  Even through the crags and crevices of his unusually molded face, a sort of gratified pleasure broke over the troll. The expression was a familiar one. Levi couldn’t help shaking his head. Damned if the woman he intended to mate didn’t have a heart as big as the sky. If only she’d give him a piece.

  “Vilsinn stay with Lyndi?”

  Another smile from his intended mate. “I’d like that.”

  “What about man dragon?”

  Levi snorted a laugh. Tempting to lay a claim, make sure the troll understood who Lyndi belonged to, but the way she’d been ready to rabbit only minutes ago helped him resist the urge. “We are always happy to make new friends. And I have to go. Tomorrow.” He had to force his jaw to unclench, voicing that out loud. “I would feel better knowing you were here.”

  “Protect,” Vilsinn said with a nod.

  “Exactly.”

  “Vilsinn like.”

  Lyndi patted his massive arm. “We do, too.”

  The troll grunted, and Levi wasn’t sure if the sound was one of happiness or merely acknowledgment. “Sleep now.”

  As he’d done before, the troll moved to what Levi was starting to think of as his corner and curled in on himself, turning back into what appeared to be a boulder inside a cave.

  After a long pause, staring at the lump of troll, Lyndi turned to the boys. “A good idea for all of us.”

  Levi checked his watch. “Next patrol shift is up in ten minutes. Go ahead and relieve your brothers now,” he said.

  Lyndi moved off without him, without even glancing in his direction. On his way out, he grabbed Elijah. “Let William know I’ll relieve him in ten.”

  Elijah’s gaze followed the woman who’d given him and his adopted brothers a chance in life, obviously realizing Levi intended to speak with her, but wisely for his age said nothing. “You got it.”

  Following her springtime and smoke scent, Levi found Lyndi standing at the entrance to the cave, arms wrapped around her middle, watching as Elijah stepped out to the ledge big enough for a single dragon to shift, shimmered into the green dragon he became, and launched himself into the air from there.

  “Anything?” Levi asked, coming up behind her.

  “Nothing.” She sighed, shifting restlessly on her feet. “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

  “We’re never safe. We have to assume that.” Levi should follow Elijah, but first he had to know. “Do you know what the troll meant?”

  She shook her head. Then again, with more conviction. “All I can think of are things that wouldn’t ever—” Her arms tightened around her, as though she was having to hold herself in.

  With hands gentle on her shoulders, Levi turned her toward him, taking in a face made more pale by the blue light of the moon filtering in the cave entrance from outside. The worry smoldering in her eyes was unmistakable.

  And he knew.

  He was out of time.

  Right. No more waiting. He leaned down and captured her lips, an all-out deliberate assault on her senses, but also on her heart, telling her with each brush, each press, that she was the love of his fucking long life.

  Pulling back, he put his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, just taking in her scent, the radiant heat of her body, and the connection that they’d both been denying for far too long.

  “Min eneste means my only one, which is exactly what you are.”

  Lyndi sucked in a shuddering breath as he walked away, starting his shift even as he moved. As soon as he was done, he craned his long neck to find her still standing there, so self-contained.

  “I love you, Lyndi Chandali. With every part of my soul, I love you. Always have. When I come back from this patrol, I have every intention of mating you.”

  A small whimper of distress pierced his heart, threatening to bring him down even as he launched into the night sky. He sent one last thought to the woman who held his future in her hands.

  “I dare you to be brave enough to love me back.”

  …

  Instinct drove Lyndi out of the mouth of the cavern onto the ledge, releasing her dragon in a shimmer of changing perspective as she became something else entirely. A tangle of emotions—anger, guilt, confusion, even fear for the pain giving in would cause them both—she didn’t take the time to unravel drove her over the edge to extend her wings. With a leap, she dropped only to swoop back up, riding the currents of the wind buffeting the mountain and redirecting her wings.

  She popped up above Levi, then dropped down, taking a swipe at him with her tail as she flashed by.

  “Dare me?” She winced inwardly, because that came out as more of a screech. “Dare me?” she tried again. There, that had only anger in it. “This isn’t a game.”

  She paused below him, hovering there. The massive copper-colored dragon, a glorious dance of shimmering, gilded color in the moonlight, spun about and shot straight at her, getting in her face. “You love me, Lyndi. I feel it when I’m inside you. I see it sometimes in your eyes as you look at me, in the touch of your hand. And it finally hit me that all these years of you keeping me away were two things and two things only.”

  “And what are they?” she snapped. Either attack or run, because she had a feeling she knew what was coming.

  “Fear and love.”

  That very fear lodged in her heart threatening to drag her down. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The gold dragon shook his large head, wicked spikes glinting like the ornate masks many human cultures created of gold, copper, and precious gems.

  “William,” he called out. “Go get one of the other boys from the next shift to trade out with you.”

  Lyndi tried not to let her jaw drop, but Levi shirking his duty, especially when it came to protecting others, was not like him at all. Which meant he was dead serious about this, flattening some of the anger she was trying to keep up, shielding her from his words.

  “Follow me,” he said to her, and tipped over, his body flowing into a fast but controlled plummet to the earth.

  After a brief pause where she closed her eyes, trying to mentally ready herself for a confrontation that had been coming for years, she followed. Lyndi landed on his heels, then shifted. As she came back into herself, Levi scooped her up in his arms and sat on a boulder with her on his lap.

  “Let me go.” She shoved at his chest.

  “No.” Pure stubbornness stared back from gold lit eyes. “If you’re going to reject me, you’re going to do it whi
le you’re touching me, not with distance between us that makes it easier for you to forget how we are together.”

  No.

  Panic seized her ribs, squeezing tight like a car compactor, leeching the air from her lungs. No way could she do this touching him, breathing him in. She was already fighting her dragon and herself. “That’s not fair,” she whispered.

  “We’re talking about mating. Given your hang-ups on the topic, I don’t intend to play fair.”

  Lyndi grabbed onto the first emotion to hit her. “Hang-ups?” she growled. “Like I have some silly mental block like a fear of heights or snakes or whatever that is all in my head?”

  “No. Like not being able to give me the respect to make a decision for myself. To know what I want.”

  “It’s because I respect you that I can’t let you—”

  “Let me?” He gave her a little warning growl. “You don’t get to decide for me. My life. My choice.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “Then we have a problem.”

  “Yes. We do,” she shot back.

  He bent a glare on her that Lyndi had never seen from Levi. Not in the hundreds of years she’d known him. One full of fury and frustration…and fear.

  Her heart shriveled like a sundried prune. She’d done this to him.

  “I’m already hurting you,” she said, going quieter.

  “I love you.”

  She shook her head.

  “I love you.” He lifted a hand to slide it into her hair, cupping her head, and she tried so hard not to lean into his touch. “I love you, Lyndi Chandali.”

  Lyndi swallowed hard. “I believe you do. Right now.”

  Brows met over his eyes in a fierce scowl. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “What happens when your fated mate finally shows up? I know you, Levi. Your loyalty and your heart. It’ll tear you apart. And the longer we’re together, the worse that will be.”

  He shook his head, adamant. “Won’t happen. You are supposed to be my mate.”

  “You can’t know that for sure.”