The Enforcer (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  He received a round of “yes, sirs” as he stalked out of the building, needing to get out of sight before the numbness spread and became more obvious.

  Far enough away, he stopped and looked at both his hands. The mark of his king, black against the back of his hand between thumb and forefinger, stared back accusingly, as though his thoughts had alerted his king of his intentions. The mark of Pytheios Chandali, the Rotting King of the Red Clan. Drake’s clan. The same mark showed on the back of his neck, where a dragon’s family brand showed as well. The same mark in both places only because Drake was also a Chandali.

  When he left the team, when he made that choice, the design on his hand would disappear. Marking him a traitor, a rogue.

  If he’d found his mate sooner, he could’ve reversed his degeneration, or kept it from happening at all. Definitely not when his team, the men who were more brothers to him than his own blood, needed him most.

  He couldn’t think like that, though.

  Even if he found his mate now, he wouldn’t act. Because he’d waited too long. No way could filling in the other half of his soul fix the damage already done, already destroying him. Instead, he’d mate her only to die and take her with him. Which was not a risk he’d ever take.

  Not that he’d find her after waiting almost eight hundred years.

  A pair of soft brown eyes filled with awe, trepidation, and defiance flashed through his mind.

  Cami.

  His little human who’d fought him hard during that wildfire last summer. He shoved the idea of her down deep, shrouded in darkness.

  Though, when he left the team, he’d have nowhere to go. Finding her and getting a little enjoyment out of the time he had left was tempting. A sweet notion that drew him like gravity.

  Except, by then, he probably wouldn’t be able to use his dick, either. Drake clenched his teeth and forced his shift, needing…too many things he couldn’t have.

  Damn.

  “Drake.” The snap in Finn’s voice told him his Alpha was in get-shit-done mode.

  “Yes, boss?”

  Drake craned his long neck to find Finn coming through the garage door. “Stay shifted,” he ordered.

  The rest of the original team emerged from the shadows behind him. Levi, their Beta and the only gold dragon on the team, massive with his shoulders and height, a big motherfucker as a dragon, too. Kanta and Hall, the two green dragons though nothing alike in personality. Kanta’s persona reflected his forest-green color with a deep, unshakeable calm, while Hall’s lime-green color came out spicier, and more annoying. Finally, Rivin and Keighan, the two white dragons, who were practically joined at the hip and horny all the time.

  There should be more of them. Fallon. Aidan. Titus. All gone in one way or another. Drake clamped down tight on emotions that had no place in an enforcer’s life.

  Titus wasn’t just gone. He was ash.

  As he waited, the team shifted. The second they were all in dragon form, Finn took off. Without hesitation, the team followed.

  Drake’s stomach plummeted as it took him a second to get steady in the air. Fuck. Not good if he couldn’t control his own flight.

  “What’s going on?” Kanta asked, broadcasting his thoughts to all of the team.

  “I’ll tell you when we get closer,” Finn’s voice came across grim.

  That combined with Deep’s sudden appearance, not to mention how Deep had remained behind with the newbies—to lead them if things went sideways?—had every mental alarm in Drake’s experienced head ringing loudly.

  They flew for a few hours, darkness descending like a blanket rolling across the sky, snuffing out the sun. Based on the position of the constellations, they were heading farther south, though Drake didn’t miss how Finn had circled back a few times. Searching for spies?

  Finn flew ahead of Drake, his steel-blue form appearing more navy and black against a dark sky illuminated by a half moon and a trail of stars starkly white against the blackness of space. They were laid out like a trail before them. The snap in the air would have a human’s teeth chattering but felt fantastic to a dragon.

  Drake followed behind his Alpha with Levi to his right, his dark gold, almost copper-colored scales rivaling the stars as moonlight glinted off each movement he made.

  But Drake wasn’t watching Finn, or Levi, or any of the rest of the team surrounding them. Ever since they’d taken off from the field outside their home base, he’d been battling to keep airborne with every downstroke of his wings. His left arm threatened to quit on him entirely, not wanting to come back up, and instead hang like a limp fucking appendage. He kept having to use the rest of his body to sort of snap it back into place.

  Pain radiated up and down the nerves along his spine in searing bursts, like wildfire spreading, a residual tingling radiating from there, eventually blending to a numbness that was causing all sorts of fucking problems.

  He bobbled in the air like a newbie before straining every muscle in his left shoulder to force that damn wing out and steady.

  They’d better be close, because he was about to fall out of the sky as though his body had been dipped in solid gold.

  “Drake?” Kanta’s voice penetrated.

  Based on the lack of other minds buzzing, Drake could tell the dark green dragon had directed the question only to him.

  That became more obvious as Kanta dropped back from where he’d been flying on Finn’s other side to glide next to Drake, casting him quick sideways glances.

  “Yeah?” he answered.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” he snapped.

  But a dawning dread added weight to his burden with each passing second. Usually, once he started flying, the problems his degenerative disease caused went away, or at least let up enough to allow him to function. Not this time. This time, the problems were getting worse. Fast.

  He wasn’t sure, after they got where they were going, if he’d be able to fly home.

  Which means it’s time.

  He’d known for a few weeks that leaving the team was on the cards; he just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. He hadn’t even said goodbye to Lyndi.

  Too late now.

  Kanta didn’t keep at him, which was part of the reason he tolerated the guy. He pushed back up to fly beside Finn.

  “Almost there,” Finn said finally.

  “Almost where, boss?” Hall’s voice pinged through Drake’s head, the telepathic question on stereo for all in their group to hear.

  The lime-green dragon skated over the top of Drake’s head, barely missing him with the tip of his barbed tail. Usually Drake would snap. Hall, for some idiotic reason, showed his brotherhood by pushing Drake’s buttons. All the damn time.

  But Drake was too busy not plummeting to the earth to bother getting annoyed.

  Hall arched his neck to shoot him a quick look which Drake also ignored.

  “What’s up, Hall?” Rivin’s voice broke in.

  Keighan chimed in a heartbeat later. “Getting tired, old man?” The two white dragons on the team did everything in tandem—fighting, tackling fires, fucking.

  “This is unusual, boss,” Kanta spoke in his soft, thoughtful voice.

  “We’re going to meet an old…friend,” Finn said.

  Rune.

  Rune was the only man Finn talked about with that edge to his voice. Once upon a time he’d served as the team’s Beta. As Finn’s best friend, Rune turning traitor and going rogue had cut the Alpha deep.

  Except, after this summer and everything with Aidan and Sera—proof Rune had been right about the Alliance all along—as well as Rune’s help with that situation, things had changed.

  Maybe this meeting, and the timing with Drake’s body falling apart, was the fates’ way of giving him a sort of third option.

  Less than five minutes later, Finn
angled their trajectory toward the ground. In a long, slow descent, Drake had plenty of time to ascertain their destination. Moonlight glinted off the black waters of a small pond up ahead, a decent-sized clearing beside it.

  No dragon or human waited for them there, but this was Rune. The fucker was scary brilliant at stealth, much like many of his black dragon brethren. Which meant they couldn’t assume he wasn’t lurking around, undetected, in the dark.

  “Rune…” He sent the thought telepathically, focused so that the word only ended up finding Rune’s mind, and no one else’s, holding an image of the man in both his forms, in case Rune was already landed, shifted, and was waiting. “I need a favor.”

  Rune didn’t answer, but Drake relayed his message regardless.

  As soon as he finished, he focused on the next part. Landing without snapping a wing, let alone embarrassing himself in front of his team, was going to take a miracle.

  Bobbling like a rookie pilot on his first landing, Drake fought the winds coming off the tops of the mountains, the calm air just below those peaks, and his uncooperative body.

  The lower they got, the more he tried to tip his body back, hanging his feet. It popped him well behind the others, slowing his rate of descent significantly. Then he fixated on the spot he wanted to come down on, timing critical. This was like dead sticking an airplane that had lost its engines. Only one wing kept trying to fall off, too.

  Not yet.

  He homed every sense on his objective.

  Not yet.

  Not yet.

  Now.

  Pain wrenched through his shoulder as he threw back both wings, flaring at the last second to catch the wind. A grunt ripped from his throat, the only weakness he’d allow himself.

  His gambit worked. Mostly. He managed to touch down with his back legs. Only when his front talons made contact with the compacted earth, the numb one went out from under him.

  Drake kept himself from tumbling by hopping along on three legs. That and running into Hall, who hadn’t got out of the damn way fast enough.

  Both of them grunted at the impact, but Hall remained upright, which meant so did Drake.

  “Hey.” Hall shouldered him off. “What the fuck was that for?”

  “For being a dick.” Drake couldn’t exactly say “thanks for helping me not crash.” Weakness like that was unacceptable.

  Besides, Drake didn’t crash. Ever. Hall, especially, would find that odd and start in with the questions. Hall snorted and a lime-green tendril of flame slipped out one nostril before disappearing. “Fair enough.”

  For once, Drake appreciated Hall’s weirdly easygoing nature. The guy could be a sarcastic ass, and not always serious enough, but he didn’t hold grudges.

  “Everyone shift.” Finn’s voice rang through his mind.

  Almost as one, they each changed form. Drake wasn’t entirely sure he could, but after a tension-filled instant where nothing happened, his perspective started to adjust, narrowing, dropping lower in relation to the ground. His body realigned, coming upright, talons pulled back to fingernails, scales to skin, his usual black utility pants and shirt, which had absorbed into his animal form, magically reappearing.

  Only his arm remained a fucking useless lump attached to his torso at the shoulder.

  To keep it from swinging weirdly, or smacking into shit, Drake turned his body away to shield what he was doing from the others and used his still working hand to tuck the useless one into his pocket.

  It still hung awkwardly, gratingly off kilter, but hopefully less noticeable. The way his body stayed exhausted and weak, no matter how much he slept, or worked out, or took breaks, or ate right, or any of that shit, was a slow form of torture. A betrayal of the worst kind.

  Drake hung back as Finn led them into the woods surrounding the pond, the dark pines towering above them like faceless sentinels. Not a hundred feet in, Rune materialized in front of them, stepping out of the shadows without even a crunch of pine needles under his feet.

  Damn black dragon shifters.

  Red dragons might be the scariest, blue the fastest, gold the strongest, but black were definitely the stealthiest fuckers. Hell, even their bodies were built to fly in silence, the wings attaching to their bodies differently.

  Rune nodded to each man in turn, but when he got to Drake he paused, eyeing him with those lifeless eyes of his. Had he heard Drake’s mental request?

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Rune demanded.

  Every single member of the team turned to stare at Drake.

  Well…shit.

  Chapter Three

  Ogun Zheng sat casually in the antique French chair in his study, fingers steepled beneath his chin as he waited for the information he’d asked for.

  The man in front of him, the Alpha of the Alaz Enforcer team, had better have more than a dead end. As one of the members of the Alliance, representing the Green Clan, Ogun had no intention of failing the kings and clans who depended on him and the other council members to govern the Americas colony.

  “The trail has gone cold,” Tineen stated with a cold straightforwardness.

  Ogun Zheng stared the man down, barely concealing his sneer of displeasure. “Explain.”

  The black dragon shifter didn’t even blink under his gaze, but Ogun had no doubt he felt his irritation just the same. “We found a cabin in the Montana woods with a faint trace of Sera Morrison’s scent,” Tineen reported. “We also scented Aidan Paytah and Rune Abaddon. However, the trail from there was erratic, leading south. About twenty kilometers away, we discovered ashes.”

  “Remains?”

  Ogun sat forward, gripping the arms of the chair. Golden sunlight spilled in through the two-story windows that gave him one of the best views in the Alliance’s headquarters. The snow-dusted Rocky Mountains rose in jagged peaks, pine trees like the bristles on an unshaven chin scattered across them, broken periodically by bursts of yellow aspen groves.

  He’d brought Tineen here today to close out matters relating to Sera Morrison, the dragon mate he’d been so sure was intended for High King Pytheios thanks to the mark on the back of her neck. The Rotting King of the Red Clan desperately needed to find his mate. He needed her to stop his rate of decay and elongate his life. That he wasn’t dead yet was already a miracle.

  Except Sera had disappeared before they could send her to Pytheios. When she disappeared, so did Aidan Paytah, an orphan-turned-Huracán Enforcer who’d insisted he was her fate, not Pytheios. An unworthy man for a new dragon mate. Laughable.

  No trace of those involved in Sera’s disappearance was unacceptable at best.

  Tineen’s long tapered fingers tapped out an erratic rhythm on his own armrest. The tall, broad black dragon shifter kept moving like he couldn’t get comfortable in the high-backed chair meant for humans much smaller than he. “We believe the ashes to be the remains of Titus Nar.”

  Ogun frowned, thinking. Absently, he fingered a long, slender scar along the side of his neck, a habit since he’d acquired it over a thousand years prior. “Titus was the one to lose Sera to Rune in the first place.”

  He murmured the words more to himself than Tineen, who sat across Ogun’s mahogany desk table regarding him with lifeless gunmetal gray eyes. Ogun held in his impatience. “Do we think Rune killed Titus?”

  Tineen regarded him blandly. “Impossible to say.”

  Ogun stilled, irritation snapping over his skin like ants crawling over him. All of these Huracán Enforcers turning rogue, dying, stealing mates. Could the rest of the team still be trusted?

  “I suppose you want to be the one to bring that information to Mathai?” he asked Tineen. No telling how the leader of the Alliance Council would react to the news.

  The other man’s fingers stopped their tapping. “I suggest further investigation before we bother Mathai.”

  Ogun m
asked his annoyance with effort. The Alaz leader should be more scared of him than Mathai. The Green Clan was the closest to the Red Clan, thanks to proximity, and his king the most loyal to Pytheios. If the political situation continued, Ogun fully expected that he—not Mathai—would soon lead this council.

  But he’d been playing the long game for centuries. A few more weeks or months wouldn’t matter either way.

  “Do you have a plan?” he asked.

  Based on the slight tension around the man’s eyes, Tineen didn’t appreciate the doubt that laced the question.

  “I’ll send one of my men to the Huracáns’ region. I’d like him to inspect Rune’s most recent fire separately from their investigation.”

  “The fire from this summer?”

  Tineen nodded.

  Excellent. Mathai may have given the Huracán team, and particularly their leader, Finn Conleth, leniency. Too much leniency in Ogun’s opinion. Especially in light of all that had happened recently—Finn’s brother Fallon running from his mating ceremony and joining with the new King of the Blue Clan, Finn’s own mating without permission or the Mating Council even being involved, and now the situations with both the Huracán team’s old Beta, Rune Abaddon, and with the new mate, Sera Morrison joining with that…that…orphan. Not to mention the suspiciously timed death of Titus Nah.

  But Tineen was right. He’d need dirt on the team, evidence that they’d betrayed their oaths as enforcers, before he could go to Mathai with his suspicions.

  “Send Nidhogg.” Ogun’s words weren’t a suggestion but an order, and he had the brief pleasure of pulling a small frowning response from the otherwise immovable Alpha across from him.

  After witnessing Nidhogg torture members of the Huracán team when Sera had disappeared and they’d suspected the team’s involvement, Ogun trusted the Alaz enforcer. Nidhogg would follow every lead he could.

  After a long, considering silence, Tineen nodded brusquely. “I’ll send him out tonight. He’ll be eager to determine if that team is as dirty as we suspect. Particularly Drake.”

  Ogun tipped his head. “Why Drake?”