by Abigail Owen
No matter what, Delaney seemed to be at the center of whatever was going on. Again, that hard kick of protectiveness slammed through him, but this time, he wasn’t as inclined to ignore it. That need to keep her safe aligned too closely with the next steps he knew he needed to take.
“Gather the men,” he instructed Aidan.
“You got it, boss.”
Five minutes later he stood in front of all but one of the men who made up his team. His family.
Each member had been handpicked by his king. They’d started out as individual dragons from different clans—blue, white, red, gold, green, and black—but after centuries working together, they’d become more. They shared a bond of brotherhood that transcended clan and came first.
Always.
Only Fallon was missing. No. Finn paused. Not just Fallon. One other face was absent, though he’d been gone longer.
Rune.
Finn shook his head, hating that he still looked for that face, as familiar as his own, among the group.
Sticking to the facts, Finn laid out the situation concerning Delaney. When he came to the part about the note on the door, everyone except Aidan and Levi, who already knew, stiffened and swore.
“How the hell did he get that close without one of us sensing him?” Drake actually levered off the wall he was propping up to snarl. With his training as one of High King Pytheios’s guard, he especially would take that fact hard.
“Exactly what I asked,” Levi drawled.
“Right now, what we need to worry about is protecting our home, protecting Delaney, and trying to find this fucker,” Finn said.
Immediately the room settled, all eyes on him. “What’s the plan?” Drake asked.
Less than an hour later, Finn walked the grounds of the winery on silent feet, every one of his enhanced senses attuned to the world around him, searching for a sign, any sign, that Graff had dared to show up here again.
He walked through the rows of thick, leafy vines sprouting from the ground and winding their way up to the long wire forming the row. The scent of ripe fruit surrounded him, the purple-colored grapes hanging in heavy clumps. These must be later harvest grapes. At least the fire hadn’t taken everything.
Off to his right, the welcoming glow of Sera and Delaney’s white stone house, the lights on in the downstairs floor, beckoned him. Finn ran a hand around the back of his neck. Less than a full day, and Delaney had a pull on him like the tide following the moon. A force he fully intended to ignore.
Done with his check of this area, he moved to the woods beyond. Shifting in the vines would destroy the plants and only leave Delaney and Sera more worried, so he moved to the clearing where they landed when they’d come here for the fire.
Aidan and Drake, also walking the grounds in human form, checked other areas. Titus remained at the war room. The other four were in the air already. He pulled out the 2-way radio they brought for when they weren’t dragons. “Aidan, Drake, shift and rendezvous with the others.”
After receiving back affirmatives, Finn put away the radio, inhaled and summoned the dragon lurking inside him. Given how close to the surface his animal side already was—had been since Delaney Hamilton burst into his world—the shift went quickly, something he did by rote.
In total silence, everything human about him disappeared, absorbed into a newly emerging form. He didn’t feel pain, or twinges, or even a tickle as his body realigned. The sensation that accompanied the shift was more along the lines of how it felt to stretch after a long sleep. That and the change in perspective. The trees around him appeared to shrink as his perspective changed, as his body adjusted to its huge size and pitched forward so that he stood on all fours, rather than upright.
His senses sharpened sounds, even tiny ones like the buzz of insects among the grape vines, bombarding him as the details of his animal form finished forming. The leathery creak of wings sounded as he folded them against his back. Large spikes formed out of his backbone, protruding along the ridge of his spine and down to his tail. The soft ground, the bright scent of the tilled earth strong in his nostrils, gave under his weight and the curve of his talons.
His blue scales mimicked his eyes, darker at the edges and lighter in the center. Thankfully, clouds covered the small sliver of a moon, giving him and his team the cover they needed.
“Report,” he called out to his men as he took to the sky.
“Nothing, boss,” Rivin and Keighan came back in stereo.
“Me neither,” Aidan said.
Levi, Kanta, and Hall also returned negatives. “It’s like he materialized inside that barn, lit a fire, and disappeared,” Levi said.
“No signs on the monitor,” Titus reported from headquarters.
Which was impossible. Dragons didn’t have the ability teleport. Very few supernatural creatures did. Witches maybe, but no sign of magic lingered here either.
Hell. They’d gone over all of it with not a single clue.
“On me.” Finn flew farther north into the less settled regions of wilderness, scarred land still recovering from the King fire years before. That one hadn’t been caused by dragons, and Finn gave the human crews all his respect for how they’d handled that blaze. What he and his team did was dangerous, but fire didn’t hurt them easily. Humans, however…it took balls and a hell of a lot of courage to face down those monster infernos.
He landed on a massive granite flat on the side of a mountain, his claws screeching as he dug into the hard rock for purchase. Minutes later, each of his men appeared out of the dark, flaring wings to slow their approach before touching all fours to the ground and digging in as he had. Hall and Titus were the last to appear.
“I hate to say it, but I’m starting to wonder if a dragon is involved,” Levi said.
The others rumbled an agreement.
“Boss?” Kanta’s wings flared slightly, almost as if he was raising his hand. “Has anyone considered Delaney might be a dragon mate?”
He hadn’t explained everything to the men earlier, giving them only the basics before they took to the air.
“Hell, yeah,” Rivin, piped up. He clanked tails with Keighan, his fellow white dragon.
The two men were the Sawyer and Swamper of the team, working together in fires in tandem, the way they worked in life. Best friends since childhood, they practically shared a brain, and, more often than not, they shared their women. They’d been joking for years that they’d find a human woman showing dragon sign, both mate her, proving the Alliance and Mating Council wrong about there only being one mate for every dragon, and make a permanent threesome with her.
“She is not up for grabs,” Finn snarled at the two, baring his teeth before he could stop himself, then directed a stern gaze around the group, making it clear that stood for everyone. “And she’s not a mate. We checked her for a brand.”
“Damn,” came stereo comments from Rivin and Keighan.
“Go home, get some rest,” he ordered. “We’re going to take guarding our home in shifts starting tomorrow. Levi, we need more on Graff.”
“What are you going to do?” Levi asked.
“Stay here. Wait for morning. Then I plan to bring Delaney back with me to stay with us, under our protection.”
Eyes of various colors glittered in the dark as every dragon before him went starkly still, muscles tensing, expressions serious.
“For her protection and possibly to facilitate the investigation,” he continued.
“A woman living with us?” Levi said slowly. His tail whipped around behind him, the mace-like barbed tip coming close to Kanta. “A human? Boss, is that a good idea?”
Finn held himself still, already prepared for the arguments. He knew the concern behind that question.
While the “headquarters” was useable space, it was also a ruse to fool any humans who came by. The building the world saw was a facade for what they’d built into the mountain behind it. Dragons thrived inside mountain caverns. He and his team were no differe
nt. Through a hidden panel, and various other entrances elsewhere on their property, they accessed their true home.
Twelve suites large enough for twelve dragons, their mates and families in residence, had been built into the natural caverns. Large communal rooms, including a kitchen and family room with all the modern conveniences, were set up to accommodate more than the twelve of them.
The fates hadn’t been kind when it came to mates, so, except for Deep and Calla, they’d never used it for more than themselves. Hell, most of the time Finn felt as though he was rambling around in a tomb, like an Egyptian mummy with his hands out in front of him, groaning for his missing other half of his being.
“Not in our home,” he said. “We’ll sleep in the bunk rooms for now.”
Behind the wall of lockers in the training room a door led back to another large space filled with eighteen bunks, an attached kitchenette, and a bathroom. Also a ruse, but a handy one in this instance, as luck would have it.
Hall, his snakelike green eyes just human enough to fool people in human form but fully serpentine when dragon, pitched forward, claws clacking on the granite. “All of us in there with her? Or just you?”
No way could he allow himself to be alone with her like that. His self-control was threadbare as it stood. “We can take it in shifts, three of us at a time, to pretend like we’re going off to our own homes. With two out on patrol, and two ready to swap out with them in the middle of the night, that leaves two in the war room to monitor.”
Levi grinned, though in dragon form, with massive spiked teeth, it came off more disturbing than fun. “You always wanted a roommate. Right, Drake?”
Drake grunted, and the guys laughed. The guy didn’t share anything—rooms, food, supplies, jokes. Nothing.
“What about her job?” Titus asked. “She doesn’t strike me as the type to quit while things go down.”
The oldest of their group, including Finn, Titus hadn’t done more than sit next to Delaney in the truck while he drove. How’d he come to that conclusion?
Shit. Now he was jealous of Titus’s observations? He really needed to find some way to keep this woman out of his system. The other dragon had a point, though. Finn doubted Delaney would put up with being caged. “We’ll work out a bodyguard situation for when she’s out of the house.”
“You sure she’ll agree to all this?” Levi asked.
Why wouldn’t she? That was the least of his worries. “She’ll be grateful not to be dealing with it alone.”
Chapter Eight
The darkness of night sat inky over the western slope of the mountains. Tonight, the moon should’ve illuminated the landscape, casting everything in a blue-gray light, but a blanket of clouds that would become a thick fogbank by morning obscured the light.
Not that Rune needed it. All dragon shifters had enhanced vision and senses, but as a black dragon, he was particularly adapted to the night. His dark coloring hid him in shadows. During nighttime flights, he didn’t even need the camouflage his scales provided—his belly mirrored the sky above him.
The snap of a twig caught Rune’s attention, and he zeroed in on the direction from which it had come. He listened.
Sure enough, another rustle indicated he wasn’t alone in these woods. Another few minutes, and the unmistakable sounds of a man walking in the woods reached him.
Amazing. He shook his head at the ruckus his guest was making. Looks like Finn’s training had gone to shit after Rune left the team.
True, other dragon clans weren’t as stealthy as his kind. Black dragons weren’t called the ninjas of the dragon shifter world for nothing. Leaner than many of their more brutish counterparts, they could move in near silence, both in dragon form and in human form.
Still, elephants moved with more grace and quiet. Hell, bear shifters, with their inferior, lumbering ways, were quieter than the man he’d convinced to come meet him tonight.
A figure appeared between the trees, and Rune easily identified the person by his shape. He’d lived with the enforcers long enough to know them that well. Long enough to call them brothers. Still, he did not make his presence known, waiting to see if his old friend had been followed, tuned now to the sounds and sights beyond the man.
“Rune,” came a hissed whisper.
Damn.
He’d told his informant to wait, he’d come to him. Apparently waiting meant speaking his name. For that, Rune remained silent longer, again waiting to identify any other creatures close by.
“Rune.”
By now his informant stood not ten feet from where Rune leaned against a large pine tree. If he wanted to, Rune could step out and tap his shoulder. But again, he waited. He couldn’t afford to be caught here alone. Coming to talk to this man might be folly, but the info he could potentially provide about the Huracán Enforcers would be invaluable, allowing Rune to stay one step ahead of Finn and the other men.
Brothers they might be, but they were now also his enemies as long as they continued to serve their kings.
He waited another few minutes. Satisfied they were alone, Rune stepped out of the shadows. His informant jumped, his eyes igniting for a moment in the dark, a blaze of fire in the gloom. “Fuck. You scared the shit out of me.”
“You might want to work on your stealth skills, my friend,” Rune said. “I heard you a mile away.”
That pulled a scowl from his old teammate. “You sound like Finn.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Rune crossed his arms. “You’re late.”
Even in the dark, he could see the man twitch a shoulder. “Sorry. We were patrolling a winery that had a fire yesterday. I can’t be gone long or someone will notice and send up an alarm to the boss.”
Rune nodded. “I won’t waste time then. Have you thought about what I told you?”
His friend’s jaw clenched. “Fuck, Rune. I’ve thought of nothing else.”
“And?”
The man in front of him shook his head. “I think you’re right. The old ways aren’t working anymore. We’re losing more mates than we’re finding, it seems like.”
“Exactly. Every man on a throne is old, beyond his time. They can’t see that dragons are evolving, and the Council is failing as a result, or corrupt. Now the fates are punishing us, otherwise we’d find more mates and have more successful matings. We have to change the rules.”
“You’re talking about revolution—”
Rune slashed a hand through the air. “I’m talking about the survival of our species.”
Glittering eyes stared back at him. “Tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“Tell me this isn’t sour grapes, having never been chosen for a mating yourself?”
Dark anger clenched down hard inside him. “You know me better than that, brother.”
“I thought I did.”
With more effort than it should have taken, Rune pushed through the pain that caused. This man, like every other on the team, had once been among the closest people in his life. His family. “This is, and has only ever been, about separating from the clans so that we can find our own way and claim our own mates instead of sending them to the clans to be killed.”
Rune waited while the man before him looked away, deep in thought. After a long silence, he blew out a heavy breath. “I’m with you.”
Triumph slammed through Rune, though he gave no outward sign. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“And I have information.”
Rune stepped forward, his footfall silent despite the crunchy pine needles covering the ground. “Oh?”
“Yes,” his man said. “We’ve had two fires. We believe they’re dragon caused, and the same instigator, but not one any of us can place.”
Rune frowned. “I didn’t set them.”
He wouldn’t unless he had no choice. Not so close to the headquarters. He might be leading a revolution, but part of that was keeping far from the teams enforcing the laws of the land in this region. Even more, he still l
oved the men in his old team like family. He had nothing against them. They just happened to be on the opposite side in a war.
A hard stare met his own. “Didn’t think you had.”
“Good.”
“What about your men?” his new informant pressed.
“No. We’re busy dealing with a…separate issue. Right now, all of my people are far from here.”
His friend lifted an eyebrow. “Okay. Well, while we don’t know who’s responsible, we believe he is tied to the second development. A woman who Finn is moving in with us, for her protection.”
Rune absorbed that in silence. They’d never had a female move into the headquarters before. Not even when he was there. Drake’s sister Lyndi stayed over every once in a while, but that was about it. Most of the men had private homes—mostly cabins in the mountains—not to live in but as a getaway and where they took any casual hookups. All except Finn. Losing Phoebe changed the man. He used his cabin only as a place of peace when he wanted time alone. “Is this woman a dragon mate?”
“No brand on her neck…” The man trailed off as though there was more, but he wasn’t sure how to say it.
Rune waited.
“Fires are being lit around her. However, she blacks out and doesn’t remember them.”
“Why doesn’t she remember?”
“She says she was in a car accident with head trauma, and now she has epilepsy. Blackouts. But Finn thinks there’s a dragon shifter after her, and that person is taking her memories before each fire.”
“I see.” Rune ran a hand over his jaw, smoothing the thicker growth of beard around his mouth as he considered the situation. “Still sounds like dragon sign to me.”
“Without a brand?” his counterpart’s voice filled with skepticism. “Impossible. I’ve never heard of that happening.”
Rune shrugged. “Two thousand years ago, mates showed several brands, instead of one. Why couldn’t this be another evolution of the magic that drives how we survive as a species?”
“Maybe.” But skepticism filled the word. “She has a stalker. One we believe has followed her across the country.”