Chapter Six

Lyndi hated being separated from her boys. Every time she drove or flew away, she worried that she was leaving them vulnerable. Attor was there, or someone else, always. But still…

Despite “traditionalists” not being happy about them, technically her boys weren’t rogues. They lived with a large group of their kind—basically a colony by themselves. They should be safe, but the inherent biases demonstrated by the Alaz team and the Alliance didn’t make Lyndi feel safe. Not by a long shot.

It scared the hell out of her that someday, someone might come for them.

What if she wasn’t here when it happened? She’d agreed to join her brother and the team, training to acquire all the skills of an enforcer, just so she could protect her boys better when this was all over. But if she was away doing her job, what if she failed the most important people in her life?

“Hey.” Levi—driving them both home in the truck this time, leaving Attor, as well as Mike and Coahoma home with the boys for the night—swept a hand up under her hair to give her neck a light squeeze. “They’re going to be okay.”

How did he know?

Lyndi turned her head in the dimming light of oncoming evening, bathing them both in a soft golden glow, and caught his swift smile.

“I have no idea what goes through that stubborn head most of the time,” he said, “but your boys will always come first. It doesn’t take a genius to guess your worries, Lyndi-Loo-Hoo.”

“Don’t call me that,” she grumbled.

He blinked, though he kept his eyes on the road. “Why not?”

“That’s what my boys call me.”

“And?”

“You’re not one of my boys.” Why was she making a big deal out of this? If anything, the protest would give him a little too much insight into where her head was at.

Levi was quiet for a moment. “I’ll just have to come up with my own name for you,” he finally said.

He hadn’t taken his hand from her neck. Now he wound his fingers into her hair and across the base of her scalp, the action almost hypnotic, and she leaned into the touch.

“Such as?” She shouldn’t be encouraging him. Should make him stop touching her.

“Hot Stuff?” he suggested.

She snorted. “Only if you want a hard slap.”

“Lolli?”

“What?” She wrinkled her nose.

“As in lollipop, because I want to suck you like one.”

“Um…gross.” She should not get wet at the thought, but she was just the same. He’d scent her need any second.

“No to Lolli,” he murmured to himself. “What about Duchess? You do come from a royal line after all.”

“And I’d rather not be reminded of that fact. It took me a full decade to convince Pytheios that I wasn’t worth using as political currency. That I’d make any mate’s life a living hell. It’s part of why he didn’t demand I return when I came here with Drake. But he could change his mind any time.”

Levi frowned. And no wonder. She’d never, in two hundred years, shared that information. “He wanted to use you as a pawn?”

She shrugged. “The Chandali name is apparently the only thing of use about me.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped, his hand in her hair clenching suddenly, giving her a stinging tug, and she gasped.

Immediately he let up. “Sorry,” he muttered, soothing her scalp by returning to the massage. “I hate it when you describe yourself that way. The boys would hate it, too.”

“I know. I don’t do it around them.” It really upset the little buggers, she’d learned over the years. But Levi? He knew the lay of the land as well as she did, so why should he be bothered?

“So no to Duchess.” Suddenly he grinned. “I know just the thing.”

She shouldn’t be curious, and she definitely shouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking. Lyndi clamped down on her lips to stop herself. Then sighed. Curiosity had always been one of her vices. “What?”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head as he pulled the truck into the spot reserved for this particular vehicle, around the back of the training facility. “You’ll have to wait to find out.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re annoying?” she asked. But the usual bite was missing from the question, because, for once, she couldn’t make herself be annoyed.

That realization simmered inside her, like a kettle put to boil just about to whistle. Getting annoyed with him hadn’t been hard to do before. Why? Just because they’d finally scratched an itch? Sex shouldn’t make this much difference.

Which means it’s worse. Just like you knew it would be.

“Only you.” His copper-colored eyes, always a point of fascination for her even when she couldn’t stand him, twinkled at her. He deliberately held back whatever nickname he’d come up with. Just to tease her, she had no doubt.

“You realize I can come up with a nickname for you, too. Right?”

A slow grin that had her stomach flipping over in her tummy, like a dog exposing its belly for a rub, took over his expression, eyes turning darker as his gaze dropped to her lips. “You can call me whatever you want to call me. Although a few things I hope you’ll call me top the list.”

Just to escape the tension clotting the entire cab of the truck—either that or jump his bones—she popped the handle and hopped out. “Tempting,” she mused as he got out and walked beside her. “There are so many ways I could go.”

He said nothing, obviously waiting for her first shot.

Normally she would’ve started listing out slightly mean words like dickhead, or… She bit her lips as nothing came to her other than dickhead. Okay. So suddenly her mind was shutting down, because, for some inexplicable reason, she didn’t want to be mean to Levi. Lyndi scoured her imagination, but that wasn’t helping much.

“I mean there’s the obvious, like…dickhead.” Dammit. She had not meant that to come out.

“Be nice,” he admonished gently. Then chuckled. “Although, now that you’ve experienced that particular…errrr…part of my anatomy, I guess I could take it as a compliment.”

Heat flared up her neck and into her cheeks, because now she was thinking of exactly how that word could become an endearment between them.

She shook it off. “I could call you clown.” Of the members of the Huracáns he was the one with a solid sense of humor. Not goofy like Rivin and Keighan, though. More like he refused to let his being a hard-as-nails warrior change his personality, which seemed to lean toward naturally optimistic. And a big fat tease. At least clown was a nicer, less suggestive term.

“What? Funny how? Like I’m a clown? Like I amuse you?” Levi immediately asked in his best Joe Pesci impersonation. He held open the door to the training room and waved her inside.

Lyndi chuckled despite herself. “Or I could go with something embarrassing like monkey butt, or sparkles…or nugget.”

“Nugget?”

They passed behind the lockers, through the bunk room that never got used, only there as a prop for the humans who might happen by, and into the kitchenette. “You know, like a gold nugget.”

He scrunched up his face in distaste. “You’re right. That’s way worse than dickhead.”

She slapped her palm on the scanner, opening the sliding door into the mountain, and grinned. “Hey, you started this.” She let a sly expression slip over her features. “Or maybe I’ll treat you like one of the boys. Call you Rowtag.”

“No thanks.” Immediate and definitive.

Good. She didn’t want him being one of the boys, either, though she wasn’t willing to examine that need any closer. “Hmmm…I’ll have to think about it more.”

“Think about what?” Rivin popped out of his door, the first at the top of the stairs, to ask as they entered the foyer. Like a freaking jack rabbit.

“A nickname for Levi.”

“I didn’t say nickname,” he protested immediately. “I said endear—”

“What do you think of Nugget?” She hastened to cut him off. The last thing she needed right now was everyone knowing they were together.

Sleeping together, she mentally corrected, then just as swiftly mentally adjusted that to fucking.

Fucked, she altered it again. Once. That was it. He’d be gone in a week and it would be over.

But do I really want that to be it? a small voice whispered. When all I have is a few more days with him?

Who knew if, once he was back in the bosom of the clans, he’d ever return? Hell, he could be killed in the fighting. Reports of battles and losses had been vague, but not good. Her dragon pushed her to grab on to the man with both hands and not let go.

If she wasn’t standing in front of Levi, Rivin, and now Keighan who’d come from Rivin’s room where no doubt they’d been getting up to something kinky, as it suddenly smelled like sex in here, she would’ve dropped her head in her hands at the mental contortions she was putting herself through. What is wrong with me?

“Nugget!” Rivin crowed. “Love it.”

“Classic,” Keighan said. “Gold dragon, totally get it.”

Levi lifted a single eyebrow. Though his expression remained pleasant, there was no doubt that was a warning.

“Maybe not?” Keighan looked to Rivin who just shrugged.

“I’m surprised Lyndi didn’t come up with something meaner,” he said.

“She did start out with dickhead,” Levi mused, sliding her a glance filled with teasing trouble. “But we both agreed that wasn’t…”

Oh gods, what was he going to say?

“Appropriate.”

She let go a silent breath and gave her head a miniscule shake that only Levi would catch. The way his grin widened just slightly, he definitely did.

“Huh. Okay.” Rivin and Keighan both frowned, glancing between them. “Well, Deep showed up right before you got back. We’re headed to the kitchen where he’s meeting with Finn.”

Lyndi and Levi both straightened. “Why didn’t you say so?” Levi asked, all business in a blink, grin gone and shoulders tense.

“I just did,” Keighan tossed back as they descended the stairs then walked through the family room, now empty. No doubt everyone in the mountain wanted to hear from Deep.

They were the last to crowd into the oversize kitchen. She was going to make her way to Delaney and Cami who sat at the long table with Deep, Finn, and Drake, only Levi snagged her by the wrist and tugged her sideways to stand directly in front of him.

He let go immediately, but she didn’t argue or move away. Couldn’t. Her dragon wouldn’t let her, as though she wanted to be around the gold goliath. With way less reluctance than she was willing to cop to, Lyndi stayed where she was, horribly conscious of him at her back. His heat, the smoke and brandy scent of him, his size—like gravity pulling her into his orbit.

Then Deep, who sat right where she could see him, nodded at something Finn had been saying as they entered, and she focused, instead, on him.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat this,” he said. “It’s rough out there and getting worse.”

…

Levi shifted his gaze from Lyndi’s stiff back and the strange urge to hook a finger through hers where her hands remained loose at her sides. Instead, he focused on the man who’d been the original alpha of the Huracán enforcer team, now semi-retired.

A familiar ease settled over Levi, despite Deep’s unsettling words.

With his craggy dark skin, reddish-brown eyes clouded with age, a shock of white hair, and steady demeanor, his old mentor was familiar in a way that bred a certain air of trust. Even now, if Deep had decided to issue an order, the original Huracáns—Levi, Finn, and Rune, had he been here—would no doubt have snapped to obey. Drake, too, though he’d joined the team a little later.

After retiring, Deep and Calla had moved to their cabin. All the men had private cabins. The pair also lived and worked among the humans in whatever role gave Deep the most chance of helping the enforcers. These days, that was as the California State Fire Marshal. He directed the Huracáns from behind the scenes at larger fires where human crews were involved and helped cover their tracks when needed.

But since Drake’s mating, Deep had been doing something else.

“How ugly?” Finn demanded.

Deep cleared his throat. “From what I can tell, a group—or a few different groups—claiming to be enforcers is hitting settlements throughout our territory. The way they deal with each group is different, but the results are the same—growing distrust for us, beyond what the upheaval in the clans would cause.”

Drake’s snarl from the corner he’d stuffed himself into echoed Levi’s dragon who set to rumbling inside him.

“Any idea who?” Finn asked.

Deep canted his head. “I have yet to see them in person. But they are cracking down on everything—mates, the setup of living quarters to fool humans, orphaned dragons. And…”

“And?” Levi asked, voice all dragon. Can’t shift in here, he warned his animal side. The creature, with Lyndi’s scent in his nostrils, was turning dangerously protective.

“Many I spoke with have caught a single name. Roan.”

The beta to the Alaz team? Or another dragon by the same name? What would the Alaz team—who were supposed to be out hunting down Rune—be doing stirring up trouble and making it worse? Like the Huracáns, they were sworn to uphold law and order. There seemed to be no sense to it.

“Fuck,” Finn muttered, running a hand through his hair.

In front of Levi, Lyndi crossed her arms, no doubt thinking of both her boys and the new one they’d been trying to track recently. If these dragons were after orphans, that wasn’t good.

“In the settlements that haven’t broken any laws, these imposters are claiming to be sent by the Alliance, planting stories about how our team is no longer sanctioned, all of you rogue. Seeds of distrust that I can’t un-sow. Not as the former alpha of the team. The distrust runs too deep.”

If trust was eroding, they were fucked. A descent of dragon shifters into lawlessness—or worse, having the people they were sworn to serve come after them—was a no-win situation.

Drake shook his head. “If Roan is with the Alaz, this will either get worse or better.”

“Why?” Deep asked.

“The Alliance has ordered them to step up their hunt for Rune,” Drake said. “Maybe they won’t have time to keep fucking with the people in our territory.”

“Or, if this is them, they just got permission to be here more,” Levi muttered.

Deep, as exhausted as Levi had ever seen the man, traced a long gash in the kitchen table—one put there when Hall and Drake had one of their misunderstandings—with the tip of his finger. “My going to each group to tell them our side of the story and warn them away from the Alliance or the other two enforcer teams isn’t going to work at this rate. Not with the distrust already out there. It’s our word against whoever is going behind our backs, and we all still answer to the clans. If we go against the Alliance…”

Damn.

Deep’s idea of touching base personally with each individual family and colony and working his way through their territory had seemed brilliant. At the very least, they could warn their people to batten down the hatches and prepare for a shit ton of uncertainty as the kings and clans were clearly working through a massive coup and organizational overhaul. The colonies would be the last to benefit from their attention, which meant holding strong until then.

The Huracáns had no intention of abandoning the people they’d sworn to watch over. Had watched over for centuries. This was who they were.

“What do we do?” Finn asked.

Bushy white eyebrows lowered over a blaze of red in Deep’s eyes. “We don’t quit. I don’t quit. I’m going to keep reaching out. I don’t give a fuck what clan they hail from…”

Different than the clans, dragon color here in the Americas had come to matter less and less over centuries of blended communities. Some of the settlements did stay true to clan and color, but most found benefit in the different skills and perspectives each offered. Like his team, each group was family. Levi couldn’t picture a world without these men and women—not a single other one from his clan—in his life.

Gods, without Lyndi in his life…

How the hell can I leave them in the middle of this? The betrayal of what he was being forced to do cut deep in a thousand different slices.

Deep slammed a fist on the table. “These are our people. Those we’ve sworn to protect and defend.”

And police. Not always making them popular.

They all nodded, silence turning into another presence in the room. Even Rivin and Keighan remained solemn.

“What else can we do?” Drake asked.

“We keep watching for fires from here,” Finn said. “Start sending more of us out to the groups closer to the mountain. In pairs, just to be safe.”

“How about we try to find the group that attacked us last night?” Lyndi said. “If we can find them, maybe they can tell us more.”

Deep looked at her, gaze suddenly deeper red. “What group?”

“They set a fire, a trap for enforcers. But we got the sense that we weren’t the ones they were after because they scattered.”

Their old alpha looked to Finn and Drake, who nodded. Then Drake shot a look at his sister. “You said you caught the direction they were headed?”

She nodded.

Levi came off the wall, which brought him closer to Lyndi, his hands going to her hips without thought. Not to move her, though. Almost to keep her closer. He didn’t like where this was going.

“Good,” said Deep. “I want you out there come nightfall, Lyndi, showing me the way.”

Levi hooked one finger in her back belt loop, as though tethering himself to her, and opened his mouth to protest, but Finn cut him off with a sharp glance. “Take Levi with you.”

“But—” Lyndi’s protest was also cut off at a glance from Finn. “Fine.”

Deep nodded, seeming satisfied with the plan. “Which brings me to a related item… I’d like Calla to go stay with Rune.”

Levi went rigid, as did every other person in the room. “Whoa. With Rune? That seems like a perception issue. We’re the only ones who don’t see him as a traitor.”

It had to be fucked up out there if Deep was contemplating a move like that.

Deep pinned them with a blazing look that said he’d made up his mind. “Officially, she’s going back to Everest to get word directly from King Pytheios, so don’t worry about perception.”

“Why Rune? Why not here?” Drake asked.

“Because Rune will keep her hidden. Here she’s exposed, and it would give the Alliance one more reason to wonder at our allegiances and actions.”

All true.

But sending Calla so far away when the devoted mates hadn’t separated since their finding each other almost a thousand years prior? Hell, Deep’s decision—from a man who had dared to bring her over to an unknown land, but now wouldn’t risk her sticking around their territory—said more than enough.

Levi glanced over Lyndi’s head, his gaze connecting first with Finn, then with Drake, and knew they were both thinking the same thing. Should they send their mates away, too?

Then Drake shot a silent, pointed glance at Lyndi before cocking his head in a barely there move that Levi still caught. Levi gave the same pointed glance to Cami then Delaney, and Drake’s mouth flattened. Message sent and received. No telepathy needed.

None of the women would allow themselves to be shuffled off to relative safety. They’d fight, too. No way would Cami leave her human family behind. No way would Lyndi leave her boys. And neither Cami nor Delaney would want to leave their mates, or, for that matter, let the team risk their lives while they hid and waited. That was for damn certain. They shouldn’t even bother to bring it up as an option, or they’d risk getting their balls chopped off.

He didn’t realize he’d dug his fingers into the soft flesh of Lyndi’s hip until she shifted subtly under his grip.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

Forcibly, he tried to relax, though he didn’t let go. His dragon was wound too tight to do that. One tussle in her bedroom, and the creature side of him had claimed her as theirs, marked his stamp of possession on her metaphorically, since they couldn’t physically. She was his.

And you’re leaving like an asshole. Desperation was starting to set in around that reality, sinking its claws in deep. He couldn’t leave her. Couldn’t leave the team, either.

Needing to settle the beast inside him, Levi snuck his thumb under the gap between her shirt and jeans, whispering the pad over her bare skin.

His dragon curled up, content.

Levi’s dick, on the other hand, now pulsed in time to his heartbeat. In time to hers. This close, he could hear it, higher pitched than his and slightly faster than normal.

“I need to rest before I go back out.” Deep stood from the kitchen table, and everyone else moved with him.

Except Levi, who froze with the realization that he’d been so intent on that tiny touch and the sound of her heart that he’d missed the rest of the conversation. A serious conversation with immediate impacts. He’d never allowed anything to distract him from his duty in his entire long life.

A stupid move with potentially disastrous results.

Fuck. Maybe Lyndi’s hesitation to pursue anything—for so many reasons—wasn’t the wrong instinct to follow. Maybe his was…

With a grunt, he jerked his hands from her body and strode out of the room, following Deep as he headed up to the suites. Deep and Calla had given up their rooms in the mountain, so he stayed in one of Finn and Delaney’s guest rooms when they were there.

“Can I ask you something?” Levi asked as he caught up with his old mentor and friend just as he entered the suite. Was Deep moving slower?

Wizened eyes crinkled at the corners. “So you finally claimed her? About damn time.”

Shock jolted through Levi, emphasized by the slam of the door to Finn’s suite which closed automatically behind him. “Finally?”

Deep’s eyebrows twitched. “I remember the first time you got a good look at Lyndi Chandali, son.”

He did? Deep always did see too much.

The older man chortled. “Hard to miss the way you turned tail and ran.”

No doubt that’s how it had appeared. “Or the way she hated me from that moment on.”

Her message had been more than clear after that day. Several messages, actually. Not interested. Stay away from me. Don’t get in my way. Everything you say is wrong.

He’d respected her signals and done his best to keep out of her way, except those occasions when his protective instincts kicked in so hard, he couldn’t remain quiet. Those moments only served to make her angrier with him. But her antipathy wasn’t the only thing that had shut down his dragon and any moves he might have made. In fairly short order, Lyndi had made it clear that she’d never mate. Plus, she was Drake’s sister and a Chandali. The powers that be would never sanction his claim on her, even if she was willing.

More to the point…Lyndi wasn’t willing.

But he had his foot in the door now, or, perhaps more accurately, they’d both got a taste of each other. Damned if he was going to waste this chance. Knowing Lyndi, he’d never get another.

“Your dragon took one look at her, and that was it. Am I wrong?” Deep asked.

“You’re not wrong.” No use denying it.

“But you’ve kept your distance until now. What changed?”

He was tempted to say Lyndi’s ultimatum, but that was only part of the truth. “I’ve watched Finn, Aidan, and Drake reach for what they want and be damned the consequences. Their mates are the most important thing in their lives.”

“Which is as it should be.”

But Levi shook his head. “For a long time, I thought the team should come first. Always. Lyndi puts her boys first, too. We have responsibilities and obligations.”

“Sounds like excuses to me.”

“Maybe so. But now I’m leaving.”

Deep jerked at that. “The hell you say?”

Levi grimaced. “My king is recalling all loyal gold dragons older than two hundred.”

“Fuck me.”

Levi could almost hear Calla saying, “Language.”

Deep crossed his arms. “So you got the push you needed, but now you’re going to be separated. It’s a conundrum.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

Deep shrugged. “What’s your question?”

Right. His question. “Assuming I can convince Lyndi to go against every other obstacle against us, does my claiming her put the team at greater risk? You’ve talked to the people we defend. You know the Alliance better than even Finn. You even know some of the kings, though it’s been centuries. That tells me that you, more than anyone else, can evaluate how big a problem this is going to be.”

Deep sat in silence for such a long time, heavy lids drooping over his eyes, that Levi wondered if he’d fallen asleep standing up.

“We’re in the middle of a tectonic shift in our world,” Deep finally said, his accent turning thicker, a sure sign he was dead serious. “Not just the kings. The way things are happening with mates and their signs. The number of phoenixes supposedly now in existence. Something bigger is at work here.”

An accurate picture in Levi’s opinion.

“I could easily feel like a boat adrift with no anchor and storms on the horizon. Except I have Calla to anchor me. Because of her, I know what is important.”

“You’re saying that nothing should stand in my way because Lyndi is too important?”

Deep shook his head. “I’m saying if she’s not your mate, don’t pursue her. Not right now.”

Fuck.

“But if you believe she is your fated mate—though I’ve only heard of one other instance that has happened with a female-born dragon—nothing should stop you. Because what mates bring for each other is the only stability we’ll find in life. Everything else is fire and violence. Mates are peace. The rest of the world…” Deep waved a careless hand. “Will sort itself out.”

Knots untied in Levi’s belly, tension draining out of him. Not all of it, but the pressure he’d put on himself to make the right decision.

Deep grinned. “Now, the bigger problem will be convincing her.”