Eeli (The Brotherhood of Ormarr Book 3)

by Bobbie Rayne

  Kyla did as I requested and waited for me by the front door before she walked in. Davis had grabbed our bags, so we followed the three men down the hall and into a living room where more—holy crap, there were more—of the little beasts clung to other men in the room. Zale had a blue dragon thing that popped right off his body, and Davis had a silver one that hugged him before they went onto the floor where they joined a red and green one. They all chirped away as they gathered at my sister’s feet. My heart jumped into my throat as she dropped to her knees and started to pet them all as she cooed away, and they continued to chirp, all of their wings flapping away around her. Kyla giggled with delight, a sound I hadn’t heard since before my parents died, not even when she’d been hanging out with Jessa. Seeing my sister so happy was… everything, so I turned to Eeli who was chewing on his fingernail nervously, and said, “Okay, so what do we do now?”

  All of the men turned to the tall, sandy blond-haired man standing in the corner of the room near the windows looking out over the ocean. There was no question he was grinding his teeth as his eyes flicked from Eeli, to me, to my sister, and back again. It settled my nerves knowing I wasn’t the only person who thought it was crazy my sister and I were here; maybe they all weren’t mental after all. As he began to open his mouth, a shorter, brown-haired man with a short beard leaned into his side and rubbed his chest. “Azaran, why don’t we let everyone sit down? I’ll get the kids a snack, and then Eeli can tell us what’s going on. We’re all going to remain calm, right?” He tilted his head back to look up at the man. I recognized the name Azaran as the brother who they said would solve this mess. Good.

  Azaran nodded, but before the other man had even had a chance to cross the room, he said to Zale, “Why did you let this happen? Why didn’t you—”

  He was cut off when the smaller man who’d told him to wait for snacks stalked over, grabbed his hand, and pulled him out of the room.

  An extremely tall, buff man rose from the couch. I saw my sister’s eyes widen as he stood up. He had to be way over six feet, closer to seven, if I had to guess. The only reason I wasn’t intimidated was he’d been in the grocery store several times, and he was always super nice to all of the employees. More than once I’d seen him grab something off the top shelf for another customer. He walked to me first with an outstretched arm, shaking my hand as he said, “I know I’ve seen you at MJ Supermarket, I don’t think we’ve ever been properly introduced, though. I’m Malachite.”

  “Nice to meet you... um, I’m Slash, and that’s my sister, Kyla, on the floor with the… the uh, um…”

  “Dragons, Slash. They’re definitely dragons,” my sister said matter of factly. “Am I right?” She tilted her head way back on her shoulders to ask Malachite as Eeli and I gasped.

  “You got it, Kyla,” he said, dropping down to a crouch in front of her.

  “What are their names?” she asked the big man.

  “Well, the one wrapped around your neck is Bodhi.”

  “This little sweetheart and I have met already. Are the others girls, boys; who do they belong to?” she peppered him with questions.

  “Well, they’re all girls except the silver one, he’s Harri and belongs to Davis. The red one right here is Azaran and Toby’s girl, Sandri. Those are the two guys who went into the kitchen, by the way. Azaran’s our oldest brother and Toby is his, um—”

  “Person,” she supplied.

  “Yeah, that’s right.” He smiled so wide at her that even I couldn’t help but grin a little. “Okay, so the little blue one here, this girl is Zale’s dragon, Itsaso.”

  “You can call her Saso, Kyla. She’d like that,” Zale said from where he’d perched on the arm of the chair that Davis had slunk down into.

  “And this little darling”—Malachite picked up the green one, who immediately wrapped her wings around his shoulders—“is my girl, Kesia.”

  Kyla turned to me in excitement. “Aren’t they beautiful, Slash? They’re the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. Turning to Eeli, I asked, “Do they all do that thing Bo did back at the school? You know, grow?”

  “Are you kidding me?” growled Azaran as he re-entered the room carrying a tray with cookies, crackers, and cheese, followed closely by the other man who held several bottles of water and soda.

  “Set the tray in the middle of the coffee table and hush, Az.” Then to me he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, yet, but I’m Toby.”

  “I’m Slash and that’s Kyla surrounded by your pets,” I said, giving a half wave from the door I still hovered by.

  “Well, Slash. I’m not sure why no one asked you to sit”—he glared around the room pointedly from one brother to the next—“but why don’t you come have a seat on the couch, and we’ll get this all figured out? I’m sure your parents are worried sick about you.”

  My sister stilled immediately and concerned expressions passed over all the men’s faces. Before I could go to her, Malachite dropped all the way down next to her on his butt. Toby sat down on one side of the couch and patted the seat next to him, so I went and reluctantly sat next to him. If I wanted to get Kyla and I out of Eeli—and apparently everyone else’s—delusion, Toby appeared to be the most reasonable one to deal with.

  “Okay, you’ve met everyone, correct?” My eyes flicked quickly to Azaran, but I didn’t say anything. Toby didn’t miss it, though. “Az,” he said reproachfully.

  Azaran came and moved Toby up toward me as he squished in behind him and the back of the couch, then Toby settled back into his arms. “Hi, Slash.” He saluted over toward my sister. “Hi, Kyla.” She waved back, totally bewitched by the dragons crawling all over her and Malachite. “I’m sorry if I’m scaring you, Slash. Eeli’s usually so responsible; he follows all the rules, and I’m having a hard time understanding why I got a message through”—his eyes twitched toward the dragons, then back to me—“why I got a message that he’s let you see Bo, and you’re all coming here for you guys to stay indefinitely.”

  Eeli stared at his brother for a minute before squaring his shoulders. Then he whispered, “Mate,” like he didn’t want to be heard.

  Malachite breathed out, “Wow,” at the same time Toby said, “Are you sure?” and Zale launched into his story about Eeli calling and saying to bring rope. That part made Kyla squeak, “What?” while Malachite started laughing, and Toby had a coughing fit. To add to the confusion, the dragons started hopping around chirping, feeding off the chaos.

  “Enough,” Azaran growled, kind of sounding like the Aslan I’d thought they were referring to. I really am losing it. As soon as everyone quieted down, the dragons settling back onto Kyla and Malachite’s laps, Azaran rested kind, compassionate eyes on his youngest brother. “Are you sure, Eeli?” he asked softly. Eeli gave one sharp nod of his head. Azaran turned back to me. “Okay, unfortunately, we are going to need to ask you to stay here for now. Not that I would have kidnapped you.” He cast a glare at Zale and Davis.

  Davis threw his hands up in the air. “Hey, I didn’t even take rope. Slash came all on his own. He just asked that we get his sister first.”

  Kyla spoke up, “Slash, what are they talking about?” Her eyes darted nervously around the room. “I thought you said he was your friend from school.”

  Thinking quickly, I said, “Something happened at school today that backed me into a corner. Eeli decided to help, but that meant we had to come here.” There, that was a reasonable sounding version of the truth. Kyla narrowed her eyes at me, but when Bo hugged her, she was easily distracted.

  Toby sat forward. “Well, okay, so this isn’t like when you guys wouldn’t let me leave or when Davis kidnapped Zale. We can’t just take children.”

  “So you guys make a habit of this?” I directed my question at Eeli who shrugged as his face contorted as if he was in pain.

  Azaran said, “No, believe it or not, until recently I can’t even tell you the last time we had company, except ma
ybe the doctor.” He rubbed a hand over his head. “Toby’s right, first we need to call…” He raised an eyebrow at me expectantly.

  “Actually, there’s no one you need to call. I take care of us.”

  Toby leaned forward, placing his hand on my knee. “Slash, where do you live?”

  “Until three years ago we lived in Shimmerside...” I hesitated, not sure how much to tell them.

  “Shimmerside, you say?” Davis asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, have you been there?”

  “I have. Several times. I haven’t been back there in a couple of years myself, but it’s a nice little town.”

  “It was,” I said. “Anyway, our parents… passed away a few years ago, so we had to move here to live with my uncle.” Suddenly, Bodhi was in my lap again, wings stretched around me as her head burrowed in under my chin. Glancing over at Kyla, I saw that Malachite had moved closer to her, and the other four dragons were smothering her in hugs. All the men frowned, sorrow reflected in their eyes, and Eeli and Toby’s eyes swam with tears. As crazy as I still found this whole ordeal, and as mad as I was at Eeli for kidnapping us over something I still didn’t understand—he just kept saying mate like that explained everything and the brothers apparently agreed—I had to admit it was sort of nice having people look concerned for us.

  Gently, Toby said, “Okay, well, I’m sure your uncle will be worried if we don’t contact him.”

  Kyla snorted. “I doubt that. Unless he gets hungry and wants to ask Slash why he hasn’t bought any food, he won’t even notice we’re gone.”

  Azaran asked with an edge to his voice, “She’s exaggerating, right?”

  I shook my head, shame coursing through me having to admit our only living family member cared nothing for us. “He’s never had a family or anything, so I guess it’s hard for him.”

  “It’s true, Doc,” Zale said. “We took them by their uncle’s place for clothes. The place is barely habitable, it certainly doesn’t cater to having teenagers in the house.”

  “And there really was no food in the kitchen,” Davis growled. “Slash buys stuff for him and Kyla out of his paycheck, and they stash it in their room.”

  Toby’s mouth twisted with disgust. “There’s no excuse to not take care of you. And you’re buying the food?”

  “Well, I work at the grocery store, so I guess…”

  “Az.” He turned to the man behind him.

  While Azaran studied me, I surveyed the room. Zale had dropped down into Davis’s lap, which would have been amusing if they didn’t both look like they were fluctuating between wanting to kill someone or wanting to cry, Malachite was whispering softly to Kyla and she’d leaned into him as if she’d known him her whole life, and Eeli was blinking back the tears swimming in his eyes. Were those for me?

  Before I could ponder that further, Azaran said, “Here’s the deal, Slash. We really do need you two to stay here for now. You’ve seen our dragons and we can’t take the chance you’ll tell anyone. That being said, I can’t even let you go to school which is an issue in itself. But I’m not sure I’d let you go home, anyway, if your uncle isn’t taking proper care of you. So instead of treating this like a forced visit, how about we all make the best of it and act like it’s a vacation. You’ll have nice beds to sleep in, no worries about food since Toby’s an excellent cook, and you kids can just relax.”

  I took my time to turn his words over in my mind. I wasn’t happy about being forced here, but until recently, Eeli had always been a normal, adjusted person. His family was odd with their pet dragons, but Kyla was so happy with the little beasts all over her, and they didn’t seem to be dangerous. Well, except for Bodhi back at the school earlier, but now here she was snuggled up to me. It was like she’d understood what I’d said about my parents and wanted to comfort me. “Okay, I guess we can do that. But uh… you don’t have to worry about the school. They arranged for me to be able to call Kyla and myself out not long after we moved here when they noticed my uncle was… yeah, anyway, they had him sign something so I can call in for us.”

  Toby snorted, his face filling with color. “If they knew your uncle couldn’t even be bothered to—” Az wrapped his arm around Toby’s shoulder and kissed his head, stopping his tirade. “Sorry, Slash. You know what? I’m going to start dinner. I want to make you guys a nice meal. What do you like to eat?” he asked as he stood up.

  “What do you have?” Kyla asked from the floor, all ears at the mention of dinner.

  Toby reached down and grabbed the untouched platter of snacks. “Why don’t you come with me and help me decide? I’ll bring these and you can snack while I cook.”

  “Can they come with me?” she asked, hanging on to the dragons in her arms.

  “Of course,” said Malachite. “I’ll come, too.”

  The three of them left the room; Kyla didn’t even spare me a second glance she was so comfortable with this bunch of strangers.

  “What about my job? I can’t risk calling in until who knows when and lose it.”

  “You let me worry about that,” Azaran said. “I know Mr. Udine. I’ll call and talk to him personally.” I nodded, then he added, “Eeli, why don’t you take Slash to your room so he can see where he and his sister will be staying. Zale, Davis, and I will try to figure out what to do next.”

  “My room?” he asked, his voice squeaking.

  Zale and Davis chuckled, while Azaran said, “Unfortunately. It’ll give him and Kyla the most space and let them stay together.”

  “Uh, okay. If you say so.” Eeli smiled at me timidly. I thanked Azaran—for keeping us kidnapped?—and returned the chin nods from Zale and Davis before following Eeli down the stairs to what had to be underground and to his room. When we stopped in front of a door, he put his hand on the knob and shuddered before opening it. Nervousness radiated off him as he stepped back for me to pass. The sight before me stopped me in my tracks. His room was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, unlike anything I ever hoped to see again in some ways. The room itself wasn’t a mere room, but more resembled a small apartment. There were different areas and I could see through a door opened to one side that it even had its own bathroom. As shocking as the sheer size of a bedroom this big for one person was, though, what got me was it was covered in trash, and not just any trash, every surface was littered with shiny remnants of candy wrappers. “Sorry about the mess,” he mumbled. “Bodhi’s obsessed with, uh, candy wrappers, as you can see.”

  “Your pet dragon is obsessed with candy? Like, she’s addicted to sugar or something?”

  He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, surveying the room with me. “No, actually, I don’t think she cares if she gets to eat the candy or not. She’ll take anyone’s wrapper. She loves how shiny it is. She’s, well, you know, a dragon. She collects pretties.”

  “Your dragon thinks old candy wrappers are pretty?” I asked incredulously. Maybe Kyla and I did need to figure out how to get out of here.

  Eeli huffed. “Well, not any wrappers. The shiny ones. She kind of hoards them, I guess.”

  “And we’re staying in here?” I asked.

  Eeli nodded, then turned away.

  11

  Eeli

  My heart went out to both Slash and Kyla for everything they’d endured since their parents passed away. I remembered the day my parents made us run from our home while they stayed back to give us enough time to escape. It was burned in my memory, and it hurt every time I thought about it. But I’d had my brothers after our parents were taken. I’d always had Azaran, Malachite, and Zale; no matter how often they pissed me off, they were there for me and I was there for them. From the sound of it, Slash hadn’t had anyone at all. He’d had Kyla, but he was the one that’d been taking care of her. I could hardly take care of Bodhi, and I didn’t even have to feed her since she took care of that herself; I couldn’t imagine needing to care for a human kid.

  And now I’d gone and freaking kidnapped him and his sister.

/>   He was going to hate me forever.

  Running a hand over my face, I went into my closet to find an old sleeping bag. I knew there was one somewhere in there, but it was probably buried under Bo’s candy wrapper shrine. If I thought my room was covered in her “pretties” it was nothing compared to my closet. She hid her favorite and most precious wrappers in there, and apparently, she had a lot of favorites.

  “Um… Eeli?” Slash’s voice was broken, and hearing it sound that way was like a stab to my chest. I felt absolutely horrible for everything I was putting him through. I was such a terrible person and a worse mate—not that he would ever forgive me and actually do the mating ceremony with me. I so shouldn’t be thinking about that right now.

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for my sleeping bag.”

  “Oh…”

  I looked behind myself and found him standing in the middle of my room with his hands in his pockets. Even from here, I could see how uncomfortable he was. “You can sit down.” I waved my hand toward my bed and desk.

  He glanced at them, then shrugged. “There’s kind of a lot of… trash all over the place. I don’t know where to sit.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. See, Bo? This is why we don’t leave trash all over our bedroom. Now he thinks I’m gross—grosser than before, anyway.

  Pretties!

  Ugh. Rolling my eyes, I stepped out of the closet to face him. “You can move it, Bo won’t mind.”

  His brow furrowed. “What do you mean Bo won’t mind? Why would I even think that?”

  “Since it’s her hoard? Trust me, I know it’s super gross that she likes trash, but that’s her thing, so…” I shrugged. “Anyway, she has them organized a certain way, but if you move them, she won’t mind. Now if one of my brothers touched her stuff, she’d probably attack them and bite off their head, but…” I trailed off when he paled, and I realized that he thought I was serious. “I was joking, man. She would be angry, but Bo would never hurt a fly.” Unless it was attacking her family.