by T. S. Joyce
“I’m also here,” Nox said from across the restaurant.
Vyr twisted in his seat to look at the boys, the legs of his metal chair scraping the tile floor.
Riyah waited for the punchline to Nox’s joke because he always had a punchline, but the blond-haired, beefed-up, tattooed jokester stared back at Vyr with the most solemn expression she’d ever seen on his face.
Torren was leaning on his elbows, hands clasped in front of him, empty plate pushed away, frowning as he studied Vyr. “I didn’t know that was why you’ve been putting those fuck-up Crews in the territory you claim.”
Vyr shook his head. “It’s not some big honorable thing—”
“Yes, it is,” Torren said so softly she almost missed it. “I thought it was part of your need to control people, but I was wrong. This whole time I thought you were just making more Crews to put under you.” Torren swallowed hard. “I thought we weren’t enough.”
Vyr huffed a breath and stood. He hesitated a moment and then grabbed his and Riyah’s plates before making his way to their table. He sat by Torren and then waited until Riyah took her seat next to Nox before he spoke. “The Sons of Beasts have always been enough. The dragon wants territory, not Crews. My dad keeps tabs on every shifter in existence. It’s always been his instinct. He stopped trying to claim territory a long time ago, but he still watches everyone. For me, I do that on a smaller scale. I watch the outcasts, the ones I relate to. The ones who struggle like I do, or like you, Torren, or like you, Nox. Like Candace and Nevada.” He looked at her and gave a small, crooked smile. “Like Riyah, the ones who have trouble finding their place in this world. It feels good to give them homes. The dragon doesn’t give a shit about that part, but I do. There’s good and bad in all of us, but some have to fight harder against the bad. I want those to succeed so at the end of my life, I can look back and not just see the fires I set. I want to be able to look back on the fires I put out, too.”
For every bridge Vyr had been burning, secretly, he’d been building new ones.
Torren cleared his throat once…twice. “I’m here, too.”
Those three words welded together one of the many cracks in the Sons of Beasts Crew.
Oh, the scar would still be there, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore.
Under the table, Riyah slid her ankles against her mate’s. Good Alpha.
Vyr offered her a slow, crooked smile. Her favorite.
There he was—her Vyr.
And this was the moment she knew he’d been right.
Everything would be okay.
Chapter Nine
Riyah had never been to these mountains. Vyr had talked about them before, and she’d tried to imagine them, but never had she come close to the real thing.
Oregon was beautiful. They’d taken winding roads through logging territory to get to Grim’s Mountains. Entire forests had been cut and re-planted in sections, each with signs telling passersby the date the trees were replanted. On the way, they’d passed two lumberyards with towering stacks of logs that reminded her of home.
Vyr turned and offered Riyah his hand on the last ridge. The parking area was farther down the mountain, and they’d had to follow a trail to the Rogue Pride Crew’s trailer park.
The woods they were hiking through were covered in pine and ferns, moss and wild grasses. Evergreen needles blanketed the earth, and the woods smelled of rich, wet dirt, tree sap, and…smoke.
Something zinged past Vyr and slammed into the tree right beside him.
Riyah gasped as the fire-tipped arrow smoked and vibrated from the force of hitting the tree.
“You missed,” Vyr said in a bored voice to a tall, lanky man with Rockstar hair and gold eyes.
He was standing in the middle of the clearing, dipping the tip of another arrow into the firepit. “It was a purposeful miss, Dragon,” he said. “The first was a warning. The next will be a skull shot. I hear your healing is faster than us normie shifters. We’ll see if you can re-grow a face.”
“Vyr?” Ashlynn Kane asked, stepping down a set of porch stairs toward them.
Beaston Novak’s daughter, Remington, and Brighton Beck’s daughter, Juno, stepped out of the trailer behind Ashlynn, the one with the numbers 1010 beside the door. The women were all wearing sweater dresses and boots.
Riyah had met the girls in this Crew during holidays in Damon’s Mountains. Before the Sons of Beasts had gone to war with the Daughters of Beasts.
All three of them looked utterly stunned as they made their way slowly toward Riyah and the boys.
“We have a good thing here,” Juno said. “If you’re here to take it away, we aren’t going down quietly.”
“He’s good,” Ash said in a soft voice. “Vyr is good. I can tell. He’s been messing up, but he’s still Vyr.”
Riyah slid her hands up his bicep as Torren and Nox came to stand on either side of them. “We aren’t here for trouble,” Riyah said.
“Then why are you here?” a woman with long silver hair asked from where she stood on the porch of the last singlewide mobile home.
“Rose,” Vyr greeted her with a nod.
“Red Dragon,” she said formally. “My grandson is working near here with Kamp. He’s close.”
Riyah didn’t miss the warning in the woman’s voice.
“If I wanted Grim or any of you dead, you wouldn’t be standing here,” Vyr said simply. “Grim is safe from me.”
“Ya damn right, he is,” said the man loading a fiery arrow.
“Rhett,” Juno whispered with a frown.
Rose spoke up, “Did you buy my plane ticket here so that I would be safely away from Tarian Pride territory when you took it over? I’ve been wondering that for the last week. I think you care about Grim and his people. I think.” She frowned. “You’re hard to figure out. You burned half of my home mountains, and then you paid for me to be with my grandson and his Crew for the holidays. Was it out of guilt? Or are you planning more war?”
Vyr smiled wickedly. “Clever Rose. The thought did cross my mind to take the territory while you are here. Grim and all of you would’ve stayed out of it if you were safely away.”
“Because you don’t want to hurt us,” Ash said. “You smile like you got the devil in you, but you’re trying to make your wicked deeds less wicked, Vyr. You’re trying to get your people out of the way before your dragon is bad again, aren’t you?”
Vyr’s smirk fell from his face, and he composed it like his father so often did into an unreadable mask. He placed his hands behind his back and asked, “When will Grim be back?”
“Grim? Not for a while,” Rhett said, leaning on the hip-height compound bow. “The Reaper, though, he’s here right now.”
And right at that moment, a monstrous, black-maned, golden-eyed, scarred-up lion came barreling out of the woods straight for them. His muscles rippled as he charged, and his lips were curled back to expose long, curved canines. He looked terrifying.
One moment was all it took for Vyr to lose control.
One moment, and Riyah could see it so clearly in his head. That loss of himself wasn’t because the Reaper was coming for Vyr. It was because he was aiming his hostility in the general direction of Riyah, Nox, and Torren. And the Red Dragon, for all his faults, loved his Crew as much as a monster could love. And he would burn anyone who threatened them.
Vyr gritted out a pained noise, then bunched his muscles and jumped impossibly high into the air. The ground around his feet had sunk in and cracked from the force. The dragon exploded from his body at the height of his leap, near the top of the forest canopy. Wind whooshed down upon them all, flattening them against the ground.
He beat his scarred and ripped red wings hard, aiming for the clouds, and when he reached them, he twisted in the air and dove, circling back for them. The Reaper had been pushed to the side with the force of Vyr’s Change, but began his charge again for Nox and Torren and Riyah. Another lion, Kamp, she guessed, came fast from the woods and slammed int
o the side of the Reaper just as Nox and Torren Changed.
The Red Dragon was coming for the Reaper. His eyes were narrowed on the lion, and she could hear his Firestarter clicking deep in his throat. The sound echoed through the mountains.
“Vyr!” she screamed. “Don’t!”
Everything happened at once. Juno, Remington, and Ash Changed into grizzlies, Rhett and Rose into lions, and all of them headed straight for the Reaper. They weren’t coming for war on the Sons of Beasts. They were coming to the aid of their Alpha…or perhaps to stop him. Or fight him. Yes, they were definitely going to fight him.
Riyah’s inner bear roared to be released, and her skin tingled with the first signs of the Change, but she wouldn’t be fast enough to do anything. She couldn’t Change and get to the Reaper fast enough to protect them.
“Stop his fire,” Torren’s gorilla growled out before he bolted right for the divebombing dragon.
On the verge of a Change, Riyah lifted her hands, palms up, and focused every bit of her energy on Vyr and the Rogue Pride Crew. Her powers weren’t an exact science, though, and the bear was feeding her power too fast. The adrenaline was doing something bad to her, and waves of sick power pulsed from her. When Vyr opened his mouth and blew fire, Riyah screamed and diverted it upward to keep the fire from the ground. He was so low to the ground. Time slowed as Torren blasted toward him, leapt off the ground with his arms outstretched, and gripped onto one of the small red spikes that lined the Red Dragon’s jaw. Torren almost lost his grip when Vyr was catapulted upward with the force of her blast.
Nox roared as he stood protectively beside Riyah, but there was nothing to be done. Torren could hold on or fall. His destiny was completely up to his grip strength and the Red Dragon’s reaction to the gorilla.
Torren held on with one hand as Vyr arched his long back and pulled up toward the sky again.
He was going to fall. She could see it in Torren’s eyes that he was losing his grip. Red Dragon, it’s Torren. Take care of him. He’s yours!
Riyah cast another pulse of power from her hands, but it didn’t just go up. It levelled trees to her right with a deafening crash, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. She was focused on pushing Torren upward to help him get a better grip. Gravity was not a friend to the silverback right now.
As Vyr turned sharply, she lost sight of the gorilla and waited on baited breath for him to fall. Nox was running in that direction as though he would try to catch him when he did, but Torren never fell off the Red Dragon. As seconds went on and nothing fell from the sky, she searched Vyr desperately, hoping he would turn enough so she could see Torren and make sure he was okay.
And when he did give her a glimpse of the gorilla still clinging to his face spikes, Torren was yelling something into the Red Dragon’s ear hole.
Holy shit, he was doing it. The Red Dragon wasn’t circling back. Whatever Torren was telling him, it was working. Riyah could feel the Red Dragon listening to him.
Nox Changed back into a very naked, very angry man. “Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t ride him, but Torren can?”
If anything about this situation was funny, Riyah would’ve laughed. As it stood, though, Vyr was now burning a line in the valley between the mountains, the Reaper was still fighting his entire Crew, the girls’ pretty dresses lay in tatters where they’d Changed, Nox was jamming both middle fingers at the sky, and Riyah’s power had destroyed a good thirty yards of forest down the side of the mountain.
All they’d wanted to do was come here and apologize, and now look at this chaos.
Freakin’ C-Teams.
But she was a bright side kind of shifter-witch, and on a positive note, the Red Dragon had gone protective over his Crew. He’d also listened to whatever reasoning Torren was screaming into his ear and hadn’t burned down the trailer park and all its inhabitants. Those felt like small victories.
And with dragons, any victory, no matter how small, counted for a lot.
Good Alpha.
Chapter Ten
What was taking so long? It felt like hours since Vyr had re-burned the territory.
Grim and his Crew were inside the mobile home at the end, probably cleaning up after the fight. Some of them definitely needed stitches.
She was standing out by the firepit keeping warm, and beside her, Nox had dragged up a bright green plastic lawn chair that was held together with duct tape, like someone had thrown it against a tree or something.
More reminders of home, ha.
The flimsy chair legs were splayed in the dirt under Nox’s weight, and beside him was a six pack of some kind of beer named Pen15 Juice. The font on the logo was unfortunate since it looked like it said PenIS Juice. She pursed her lips against a smile and snuggled deeper into her jacket. Clouds were covering up the sun now, and it made everything look and feel colder.
“What’s wrong with him?” Rose asked softly as she approached from behind.
“Nothing,” Nox answered without looking at her. He took a long drag of a beer and did the man-sigh afterward. “He’s just an outlaw, and outlaws can’t be tamed.”
Rose came to stand on the other side of Riyah, holding her hands out to the fire to warm them. “I’m serious.”
Riyah parted her lips to say something, but it was Nox who answered again, “He’s a territorial dick, land-hungry, has a dragon he can’t control, pyromaniac, multiple personalities, aggressive, mediocre Alpha, closed off when he’s hurt, doesn’t talk about feelings, can’t stay in one place, and is the only person in the world who actually likes eating pea soup. Pros, he’s best friends with me.” Another swig of beer as Riyah stared down at him with her mouth hanging open. “Oh, and his mate is pretty cool, too.” He winked and did a silent cheers, then whispered, “Manners. You bitches love compliments.”
Riyah slapped him in the back of the head, and he spewed beer onto the fire. The flames leapt a little higher and then simmered down again.
“He’s been hurting,” Riyah said. “The dragon is hard enough to manage when everything is steady. When he suffers? It’s ten times harder to keep him in control.”
“What hurt?” Rose asked softly.
This was the part Riyah hated. The part where she was supposed to admit without breaking down that she’d lost her own children, that she hadn’t been able to get them to air safely. She was still a work in progress on this part. Clearing her throat, she said as steady as she could, “We lost twins. It isn’t our fate to have biological children. Their dragons were too strong too early.”
“Oh, my God,” Rose whispered. She hugged Riyah. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve both been through.” The woman hugged her tighter. “When he came to burn Tarian Territory, I feared it was something bad that had happened to him that set him off, but my heart hurts that it’s this. He deserves better. So do you. You both would’ve been amazing parents to those precious babies.”
Riyah’s heart stuttered as she melted into the woman’s hug. She’d talked about this so little with outsiders. She stared at the sky, praying for strength not to break down. Because that’s what happened, right? The pain never went away. A person could only hope to grow strong enough to hold the pain.
“Did you steal that from the shed?” Rhett asked.
Riyah released Rose and turned to find the Rogue Pride Crew all filing out of the trailer.
Nox lifted his beer up in the air. “I give it sixty-nine stars. Highly recommend.”
“You could’ve given us a heads-up you were coming into my territory,” said a tall, muscular, tatted-up man with a Mohawk. Grim. He came to stand beside Rose.
“You mean Vyr’s territory,” Nox said.
Grim let off a low growl. “The Reaper doesn’t like surprises.”
“Yeah,” Riyah said understandingly, remembering Vyr’s immediate reaction to Grim charging out of the woods. “Neither does the Red Dragon. I get it, and I’m sorry we didn’t give you a call. Vyr didn’t want you all on your best behavior. He wan
ted you…”
“All fighting each other?” Ash asked brightly. “Because we totally did that.” She had a scratch across her cheek, but she didn’t favor it when she grinned.
There was a loaded moment of silence, and then Juno let off a little giggle. And then Remington joined along with Ash. Kamp stood back, arms crossed over his chest, both him and Rhett fighting smiles.
Nox cleared his throat and stood. Riyah couldn’t read his face as he looked from person to person, but he hesitated when he got to Juno. Slowly, he traced three long-healed claw marks on the side of her neck. When Rhett snarled, Nox dropped his hand back to his side. “Wasn’t my choice,” he murmured. “Torren and I never wanted to hurt any of you. We didn’t know we were there to claim Tarian Pride territory.”
“Nox Fuller,” Ash whispered, stepping right up to him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “Did you just apologize?” She squeezed him hard until his back made a popping sound and said, “I never in a million years thought you would go soft!”
Riyah cracked up. This was awesome watching Nox’s cheeks turn the shade of cherries. “His mate has been teaching him manners.” She scrunched up her face at him and repeated his words, “Bitches love compliments.”
He glared at her, but pulled Juno in for a hug, and then Remington.
She could feel Vyr now. He was close. He still had the wall up between them, but it was thinning.
He and Torren strode out of the woods, both bare-ass naked, covering their nethers and damn near blue-skinned from the cold.
