by Abigail Owen
Sera chuckled. “Must be the dragon in me. Who knew, right?”
A look passed over his face, too quickly for her to pin it down. Haunted almost. He grunted what she guessed was agreement and turned back to the dishes. “You can clear and put leftovers away.”
Had she caught just the slightest twitch of his lips before he ducked his head? Why did she get the feeling she’d won big points with the dragon shifter? Though ten minutes later she had her doubts. Drake effectively ignored her while they went about their duties, though he also seemed to keep a close eye on her.
Sera put the last container in the fridge, then wiped down the white granite counters with lemony scented antibacterial wipes, mentally shaking her head at how normal all this seemed. Except when she noticed how they were in a cave. That so wasn’t normal. “I can’t believe we had this much left over with the number of guys in this room.”
“Delaney knows we eat all day,” Drake said. “She makes extra.”
Sera glanced around the room. Drake had the dishes, and she’d taken care of everything else, including wiping off the counters and tables. Except she wasn’t ready to be on her own. So she propped her hip against the counter. “Can I ask you a question?”
He paused in his scrubbing, then resumed without turning to look at her.
She took that as a yes and cleared her throat. “You didn’t say anything last night. What do you think I should do?”
He said nothing for a long beat. Sera was about to give up on him answering when he finally spoke. “You should find your mate. The right mate. And be happy with him.”
To her, his voice sounded almost…hollow. She stepped to the side, wanting to check his expression, only he must’ve sensed her because he went right back to scouring the pot in his hands.
Sera bit her lip. “I’ll try.”
Another grunt from Drake which she took as acknowledgment, whether that’s how he intended it or not.
She was halfway out the door when the dark tones of his voice stopped her. “Sera?”
She turned to find him leaning against the counter, feet crossed at the ankle, watching her closely.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“I’m glad you’re a dragon shifter.” He delivered the words in the same glowering manner that he did everything, but somehow she could tell he was sincere.
She did her best to keep her mouth from hanging open. Of all the men on the Huracán Enforcer team, Drake was the last she would have expected that from. Her heart warmed like stepping up to a potbellied stove in winter as the hardest of them accepted her into the fold.
“Thanks.” She left it at that, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate more.
Drake gave a slow nod, then turned back to the sink, leaving Sera to make her way back to her room.
Except halfway down the hall, she pulled up short. Dang it. My phone.
She’d left it on the counter while she helped clean up. With a sigh, she spun on her heel and retraced her path. One step into the kitchen, though, she paused.
Drake stood, water running, his hands gripping the edge of the sink, head bowed.
Everything inside her hollowed out at the sight of him. What should she do? Ask if he was okay? Leave him be? Hug him?
Before she could make a decision one way or the other, Drake heaved in a deep breath and went back to the dishes.
Sera quickly grabbed the phone and edged back into the hall. It went against all of her instincts, but Drake was private. Despite whatever was bothering him, he wouldn’t be receptive to her prying.
She hurried toward her room, intending to give Blake a big hug that might help shake off the image of the red dragon shifter still in the kitchen. A voice drifted down the hall from a room up ahead. Finn’s voice. In most circumstances, she would’ve passed right by, except a few words snagged her attention.
“Has the Mating Council acknowledged your mating with Maddie yet?” Finn asked an unknown person.
“Surprisingly, yes,” an unfamiliar male voice answered.
Sera slowed and poked her head around the door left cracked open. Finn was in the war room where they’d talked last night, the monitors covering an entire wall doing their thing. Except one of the screens showed a man who appeared younger than Finn, but she knew had to be related—same dark hair, same eyes, same jaw. Only this one was a smiler.
That’s got to be Fallon. Finn’s brother. According to Delaney, he’d recently mated and lived in Scotland now, with the Blue Clan. That’s about all she’d gleaned about him over the last few months.
Sera pulled back, listening intently.
“The king submitted a request,” Fallon said. “The Council didn’t acknowledge Ladon, but did send me a document showing us as official. Between you mating Delaney without permission, and my sneaking off with Maddie mid-mating process, the powers that be can’t be too happy with the Conleth boys. I guess they must like us to keep us around.”
Sera tensed. She’d known the Council had grudgingly allowed Finn’s mating, but Fallon had mating issues, too? Why?
“How is the new king?” Finn asked.
“Still figuring things out.”
A long silence greeted that statement.
“Is it causing any problems for you?” Fallon asked.
Sera frowned. Why would a new king be a problem?
“Not directly. Yet.” No missing the sarcasm, but what did that mean? “We’ve found another dragon mate.”
Sera straightened from the wall she’d slumped against. This was about her now?
“Wow.” Fallon’s surprise came through loud and clear. “Three in less than a year between Maddie, Delaney, and now this new one? What are the odds?”
“The timing couldn’t be worse.”
Sera bit her lip, her heart bottoming out. Were they not telling her something important?
“There you are.”
Sera jumped at the sound of Aidan’s voice down the hallway. Grimacing, she forced herself to walk by the doorway like she hadn’t been standing there eavesdropping.
“Sera?” Finn called.
She grimaced, and Aidan’s eyebrows rose in question before she turned to find Finn in the doorway. “Yes?”
He waved toward the room. “Why don’t you come in here for a second.”
A glance back over her shoulder told her Aidan had slowed, a frown drawing his brows low. “Problem, boss?” he asked.
“No. You can hear this, too.”
Sera’s shoulders dropped at that. It couldn’t be too bad if Finn wasn’t talking to her privately. Could it?
Except he closed the door behind them. Fallon was still up on the monitor, watching with open curiosity.
“Sera, I’d like you to meet my brother, Fallon,” Finn said, canting his head toward the screen.
“Nice to meet you,” she managed and received a boyish grin in return.
“So, you’re the new dragon mate?” he asked. “Congrats. Welcome.”
Okay… “Thanks?”
Fallon chuckled. “Was that a question?”
She couldn’t help but smile back. Fallon was definitely different from Finn’s more serious nature. “Sort of. I’m still figuring it all out.”
“I’ll introduce you to Maddie soon. My mate. She was less than thrilled at first, too. You can ask her all sorts of questions.”
Confusion swirled through Sera. Given what she’d heard, she’d expected this to be an uber-serious round of convincing her to stick with the mating thing. Instead she was getting relaxed and pleased vibes. “That would be…nice.”
“I wanted to explain what you overheard,” Finn said, pulling her attention away from the screen.
Sera tipped up her chin, ready for the hard sell. “Okay.”
“Aidan, Fallon, and I are blue dragons. About the time we met you and Delaney, our clan got a new king. Ladon Ormarr.”
What did kings have to do with mating?
“His taking the throne was an internal Blue Clan coup, of sorts. Pe
rfectly legal. He’s of royal blood and challenged the previous king. He won.” Finn’s lips went flat.
By which, she had a decent idea the previous king was dead.
“Unfortunately, the High King, Pytheios, from the Red Clan, backed the other guy. Consequently, political tension has arisen around the Blue Clan right now.”
Ah. Now the situation was starting to come together in her mind.
“Fallon was in France during his mating process right when this happened. He and Maddie had already gone through the full process and chosen each other, and the mating was, essentially, sanctioned, despite how he stole her away at the end. But he was nervous that Ladon’s gambit might cause problems.”
Finn quirked a rare smile. “If you haven’t noticed, mated males tend to be…”
“Protective?” she supplied. Helicopter moms had nothing on mated dragons.
“Yes,” Finn said. “To be safe, Fallon and Maddie snuck away and went to the Blue Clan’s headquarters in Scotland. They’re there now.”
Sera glanced at Finn. “Add that to you mating Delaney without any mating process at all, and the Mating Council isn’t too happy?”
Finn’s shrug said everything. Aidan remained quiet by the door.
She considered the downstream impacts. “So you can’t fuck up when it comes to how you handle me. Is that it?”
“It would be nice if your mating went smoothly the traditional way,” Finn admitted.
Sera looked to Aidan, but his expression had a total fortress-of-solitude thing going. No help from that corner. Dammit.
She scrunched up her face. One more thing in a long, long list of things. “Thank you for explaining.”
“That said, I don’t want you worrying about me,” Finn said. “How you handle your mating is still entirely up to you.”
She glanced between the two men and the monitor. “I’m not following.”
“We will alert the Alliance tonight, but whatever you choose to do, or if you need anything from us, you only have to ask.” On that helpful pronouncement, Finn ended the call with Fallon and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Sera dropped into a black conference chair and rubbed her tired eyes as she attempted to absorb yet another piece of information.
“You okay?”
Aidan’s voice came from right in front of her, way closer than he’d been when she sat. She lowered her hands to find him crouching before her. Her chest tightened as he scanned her face.
“Okay?” She huffed an unamused laugh. “I’m…confused.”
Aidan’s mouth hitched in that crooked grin of his. “I don’t blame you. Anything I can help with? What’s your biggest question mark?”
What would he say if she said something like, “I’m staring at him”?
But she didn’t. Her confusion over Aidan originated from dreams. From a connection to a man who didn’t truly exist. So instead, she said, “I guess I won’t feel right until I figure out who my mate is.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, his sky-blue eyes flared with fire for a second before going blank. “That’s understandable.”
“It’s just…” She glanced away, needing to gather her thoughts. “I feel settled here. Do you think that means something?”
“I think it means you’re sensing what you truly are. Once you find your fated mate, then you’ll know for sure.”
Why disappointment popped inside her like a fragile bubble hitting a blade of grass, she couldn’t say.
No.
Not true. If she were brutally honest with herself, she’d admit that the fact that one of the marks on her neck was for a blue dragon had her secretly wishing maybe Aidan…
She got up and crossed the room. “I should go check on Blake.”
“Sera, wait.”
Before she could face him, an alarm went off in the room. Piercing and insistent. Sera pulled up short and whirled back to face him.
Aidan stared at her, for once his expression not closed but an almost comical mix of longing and frustration.
Torn.
Her heart tripped over itself as those emotions registered. He wasn’t as indifferent as he wanted her to think. Hope soared. Maybe…
“I’m sorry.” Before her eyes, he went cold and resolute, every inch the enforcer. Aidan turned to the monitors on the wall, pushed keys on a keyboard, then fiddled with a joystick, zooming in on a map on the wall showing a bloom of color.
Was that a fire?
“Shit.” Pulling up a headset, he flipped a button. Then his voice was coming over what she realized was a mountain-wide intercom. “We’ll need everyone for this one. It’s near a town.”
…
Dealing with fires in broad daylight sucked ass. Always.
While the scales on their bellies reflected the sky above, that only helped when they remained higher up. In close, like they needed to get to handle fires, meant humans could see them.
Titus, Kanta, and Hall remained behind, their colors too distinct against the blue of the sky. Drake’s were, too, but he’d stay high overhead, camouflaged by his scales, and relay what he was seeing to the rest of them. That left Finn, Aidan, Rivin, Keighan, and Levi, although the gold Beta wasn’t able to do as much. He flew in with the sun behind him, but that was the most he dared. Instead, he spent more time on the ground, tackling things from there in his dragon form, hiding within the flames themselves.
Deep stepped in with the human teams already on the ground, directing the Huracáns where to go that would have the most impact while avoiding being seen. This time, that meant dead center of the fire.
They lucked out. The bulk of the fire was blocked by a ridge that stood between it and a small town, slowing the progress of the flames eating their way across the land. Whoever set this knew exactly where to put it, in relation to the winds and land, to threaten the humans there. But not too quickly.
“Fuck,” Finn said as they landed in the center.
The heat of the fire warmed Aidan through his scales from all sides but didn’t burn. The spot on his wrist had fully healed over, so he didn’t need to protect it.
“Yeah, I smell it, too,” Levi commented.
“Rune?” Aidan asked. He hadn’t met the man but knew the shifter had been part of the team not long ago. Hell, he’d been Beta before Levi took the spot.
“Rune,” Levi and Finn agreed in unison.
Damn. What the hell was the bastard thinking, going after humans?
“Keep an eye out,” Finn warned. “They may try to stop us from putting it out.”
After relaying back to base, all five of them went at it hard, dragging the flames into themselves, working the blaze. Levi and Finn kept to the middle. Rivin and Keighan, able to hide in the billowing smoke, flew a funnel formation, circling the edge of the smoke at speed, forcing the flames up a vortex of air, like a dragon-caused tornado.
“Boss, I’m seeing a home in trouble,” Drake’s voice came over the telepathic link.
“Are humans involved?” Finn asked.
“Five that I can see, and the fire’s closing in fast. They have no escape route.”
“Who’s closest?”
“Me. If any one of you comes off the line right now, we go back to square one. The winds are too high.”
“You know what to do.” Which meant Drake would save them and then wipe their memories. “And don’t get seen.”
“Yes, boss.”
“The rest of you keep at it,” Finn ordered.
Aidan, blending in the most with the pale blue of the summer sky, moved farther out, attacking the fire from the edges and driving it back toward his teammates. On one pass, a glint of light off what had to be man-made glass caught his attention, and he paused, beating his wings to hover in the air as he focused his gaze on the spot.
“Damn. We’ve got a problem, boss.”
“What’s up, rookie?”
“I think a human caught me on video.” That had definitely been a cell phone glinting in the sun.
He’d been on the lookout, but the wind was blowing toward where a group of three men stood watching. Combined with the stronger smoky scents of fire and dragons, he’d missed them.
Fuck it all.
“Take care of it,” Finn came back. “We’re almost done here.”
“On it.”
The tricky part would be sneaking up on them. Rather than go at them head on, Aidan circled higher until he was sure he’d be lost in the blue of the sky. Waiting the few minutes to be sure they couldn’t track him, he flew several miles away, hidden by yet another rolling hill, before dropping and turning back. Aidan skimmed the trees until he was damn close. From this direction he could smell them, their human odor mixed with the smoke. Spying a break in the trees, Aidan dropped, hovering for several seconds before touching his feet to the ground as softly and silently as possible.
As fast as he could, he shifted, his body pulling in on itself as the beast retreated into his human size. He lost the advantage of covering ground fast and the fullness of his senses, but he needed to be human for what he had in mind.
Aidan set off through the trees at a run, pausing to lift his head to scent them or hear them.
One of the men’s excited voices finally directed him the rest of the way in. “That thing was a dragon. Look there’s another one. Holy shit!”
Aidan slowed his approach, pausing under the heavy cover of pine trees and brush to take in the scene. Sure enough, three campers happened to be far enough out that they’d caught his team. They were huddled over a phone, obviously watching the video playback.
Aidan gritted his teeth. He’d have to make sure that video was deleted both on the phone and in the cloud.
While they were distracted looking from the device to the smoke rising over the tree line, Aidan skirted the perimeter and snatched one of their packs. He deliberately pulled the water bottle off, as well as the black sleeping bag rolled up at the top, making it less obvious that this gear wasn’t his.
He strapped it to his back and stepped out of the woods like he was another hiker who happened on them. “Hey guys.”
All three jerked around to stare at him and Aidan held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “I heard your voices and thought I’d see if you have a way out. You worried about the fire?”
