Chapter Eight

As Tineen stalked down the hallway, an unbidden snarl escaped his throat. No doubt his gunmetal gray eyes would be filled with flame and ire. He’d been fucking summoned.

No one did that in his mountain. He was the one who summoned, who remained in charge, in control. Rounding the corner, he stopped in the doorway to the war room, expecting to see Mathai’s face on the screens. Only every screen showed the usual shit.

“Galib called and said the Alliance wished to speak to me,” he snapped at Xi, one of the green dragons on his team who happened to pull night duty.

A hard face turned to him with zero emotion. His man knew better than to show either surprise or concern. “Not through me, sir.”

Tineen frowned, then realization struck with all the subtlety of a black dragon in daylight. “He’s here,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck.”

Mathai’s reputation of cold calculation hadn’t been exaggerated. Tineen had enough experience with the red dragon leader of the Alliance to know that. His arrival here could be neither good nor a coincidence.

Xi, who knew better than to ask, turned his attention back to the screens he was monitoring.

Without another word, Tineen whipped around and stalked from the room, retracing his steps back to the upper levels of the mountain where he had no doubt he’d find Mathai waiting in one of three possible locations. The foyer, Tineen’s office, or the more formal entertaining room which was the only space that wasn’t strictly utilitarian in the mountain.

Unlike the Huracáns who’d made their mountain into a ridiculously cozy little home. Not that that was important right now. He had bigger issues. What was the leader of the Alliance doing here?

Not that Mathai had far to come. The Alliance headquarters was housed in the same region: Long’s Peak in Colorado, centrally located, giving them easier access to all the dragon shifters in their region.

The foyer was empty when Tineen reached it. So was his office, which led Tineen, now quietly containing a rage that had his dragon thrashing inside him, to the receiving room.

There he found Mathai comfortably settled on the stiff-backed sofa, arms sprawled along the back of the formal piece of furniture provided in this space for visiting dignitaries. Beyond a red flicker in his eyes and a certain rigidness to his posture, the Alliance leader appeared perfectly at ease.

Tineen had no intention of underestimating this man, or assuming this visit was anything resembling casual.

“Mathai,” he greeted with a formal nod, hands clasped behind his back. “To what do we owe the honor of a personal visit?”

The older dragon smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. It never did. Mathai used smiles as though he’d been told he needed to in order to fit in, almost like the movement was a learned reflex. “It never ceases to amaze me how quiet a black dragon can be, even when he’s not trying.”

Tineen remained silent. He had been trying. Catching any person off guard provided a wealth of information in nuances of expression, posture, and reaction that they wouldn’t otherwise give up.

“I understand you’ve discovered an unusual mate,” Mathai said next. “I’ve come to see her for myself.”

Fuck.

No one, not one fucking soul, should have known about her. Not yet. Only because he’d practiced for centuries to show no emotion did Tineen keep his reaction minimal.

The question was, what to do about the man in front of him? How had Mathai learned of her, and what else did he know?

The woman was bound and gagged, tied up in Tineen’s own suite of rooms as he determined what to do with her. Kill her had been his first thought. A human turned by a female-born dragon was unheard of. Impossible. Much like the multiple brands that had showed on the back of Sera Morrison’s neck. Anomalies that they would do better to eradicate, rather than upset a system that had been working for centuries.

“We did run across a…curious case,” he said, no trace of emotion in his voice.

“I would be interested to see her.” A reasonably worded command.

“Of course. Follow me.” Tineen led the way back through the twisted labyrinth of halls and chambers in his mountain.

Unlike many other dragon mountains that had been smoothed out and forced to conform to more human standards of cultivated beauty and civility—to appease human mates—the Alaz mountain had stayed true to the original caverns, only carving out new spaces as chambers needed to be connected. Even then, they’d tried to minimalize the impact. The result was a rougher, truer form of a dragon shifter home.

At the door to his suites, Tineen paused to explain. “She’s given us some trouble, and I also didn’t want her presence widely known. I’ve been keeping her in here.”

Mathai merely waited.

The woman, Bree, was in one of the smaller bedrooms, secured in dragonsteel cuffs that would slice off her hands and head if she tried to shift, and bound to the headboard of the dragonsteel bedframe. She was going nowhere.

The second he opened the door, she opened her eyes, glaring at both him and Mathai. Her dark eyes changed color, turning silver an instant before flame sparked in them.

Mathai stilled. “She’s already mated?” he asked quietly.

The danger underlying those words should’ve had Tineen ducking his head to avoid the other man’s eyes. It didn’t.

“That’s what is so unusual,” Tineen said. “She was turned by a female-born.”

If he’d thought the leader of the Alliance still a moment ago, now the man could’ve been hewn from the granite of the mountain they stood in.

“I see why you found the need to bring her to our attention.” The tone of Mathai’s voice and his expression were innocuous, but the words were passive aggressive, and his stillness remained disturbing. A warning that he was well aware Tineen had had no plans to tell the Alliance.

The need to defend himself surged through Tineen, tensing his honed muscles one at a time, his dragon curling up in his head like a rattlesnake, ready to strike.

“You did the right thing hiding her from others,” Mathai said. “Until we know more, this should not be widely known.”

Like sludge oozing from a sewer, the tension bled out of Tineen, his dragon uncurling slightly.

“She must go to the Mating Council,” Mathai said. “For study. Along with her mate.”

Tineen turned his head to stare at the woman, hiding the doubt likely reflected in his expression. “Her mate?”

“Yes. The female who turned this one. The council will want to examine both.”

“Taking the mate may be…difficult.”

They’d stolen this woman before her small settlement really knew what was happening, giving him and Roan the advantage. Granted the mate was a mere female, so clearly less dangerous than a male dragon, but the rest of the group they lived with were male, and black dragons. Tineen had already increased the defenses and patrols around his own stronghold in case they figured out he and Roan weren’t from the Huracán team as they’d said and decided to try to retrieve Bree. A stupid move, but dragon mates didn’t separate well, and he wasn’t fool enough to not be prepared for all contingencies.

“Difficult?” Mathai came as close to a genuine smile as Tineen ever saw. “Yes. I imagine it will be.”

…

Lyndi sat in the family room letting the conversation—the usual back and forth of the Huracán team—flow around her. Like she’d been doing for the last few days since they’d met with Shula and her small colony.

Afterward, Deep had gone off to convince yet another group of what was happening. She and Levi had returned to headquarters. When they’d got home, she’d half expected Levi to drag her upstairs and pick back up where they’d finished. Instead, after they’d met with Finn and Drake and the team to debrief, the alphas had sent Levi back out to see if he could track down where Tineen had taken Bree.

And she’d almost gone after him, dammit.

Instead, she had been left behind with all her chaotic, twisted thoughts. And a loneliness with an ache that had surprised her.

I like him. Genuinely.

She’d said it and she’d meant it. Somehow this seemed like a huge discovery and yet something she’d always known deep down. She’d been around Levi Rowtag for centuries and, in all that time, had only allowed herself to be annoyed by him, frustrated by him, or generally ignored him.

A defense mechanism to keep them both from making a huge mistake.

Any attraction she held for him, she’d stuffed down under all that, along with any appreciation. Sure…she’d respected the way he was loyal to the team. He’d have their backs no matter what. If she was honest with herself, every time her brother had gone out to do what he did, if Levi was part of the group, she felt…better. Like Levi would make sure nothing bad happened.

But what did liking him mean now?

“Nothing,” she muttered to herself.

Because she liked Hall, and Kanta, and Rivin, and Keighan, and Finn. They were essentially all her brothers in a way. They’d all taken care of her and she’d taken care of them. They were a family, more than her other brothers by blood, still residing in Everest, ever had been. That was for damn sure.

Except you don’t want to sleep with any of them. Only Levi. And you don’t care much about what they’re thinking. That small voice was slowly growing louder.

She didn’t let her mind move beyond the sex part. Because giving herself to him beyond the physical was out of the question.

He’s leaving.

The uncertainty surrounding that fact was something she kept trying to forget, having to remind herself.

He wants a mate.

That part she’d never ignore. He’d been straight up about that. Impossible to misinterpret or ignore. A mate was something she could never be, could never give to him. Female dragons mated, but not in the same way humans did, because they didn’t need to be turned. Their mating couldn’t be a bonded one. Just in name only. Female dragons took mates for political reasons. That was it.

She wouldn’t do that to him. Because, knowing Levi, he’d stop searching for the woman who he was truly meant to find. His mate was out there waiting for him, and Lyndi sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to ruin that for him.

Mating was out, and love was out, and going back to the way things had been was out. Which meant holding herself in check until he was gone. Then picking up the scattered pieces he left behind.

Seven hells.

“Levi better get back with the groceries by lunch.”

Delaney’s voice snapped Lyndi right out of her thoughts, or more particularly, woke her up from them to find herself with an answer staring her in the face.

“He’s getting groceries?” she asked, proud that the question came out sounding perfectly normal, at least to her ears, even while her heart tripped over a crack and her dragon unfurled in eager anticipation. “When did he get back from tracking the missing dragon?”

“Late last night.” Delaney didn’t even look up from the computer she’d been buried in lately. She’d decided to put her human education to work and had been investing the team’s finances. “I offered to go for him, since he didn’t get much sleep, but he insisted today was his turn.”

That sounded exactly like something Levi would do. He took his responsibilities seriously. Even the little ones.

“I told him now that he was leaving, he should just use the time here with us. He didn’t need to stay on the chore rotation.” Delaney winced. “I think that just made him sad.”

“Yeah.”

“Cami thinks we should do something. Like a going away party. But Finn says that’ll just make it worse.”

Lyndi tried not to think about that growing ache. “I think Finn’s right.”

If it was her leaving, she’d want to just go. Staying and pretending like it wasn’t happening, like her entire life wasn’t being upended, would be so much harder.

“When did he go?” she asked, trying to hold on to that casualness.

At Delaney’s raised eyebrows, Lyndi rushed to tack on, “I need printer paper, so if he hasn’t been gone long, I’ll text him and see if he can add it to the list.”

“Oh.” Delaney stopped watching her with curiosity and shrugged, turning back to her computer. “About half an hour ago.”

Which meant he’d only just be getting to the store in Placerville. It took some time to drive from their mountain to the highway and then down into town, the closest urban area to them that sported a large grocery store. Even dragons had to eat, and humans, over the last century, had made that much easier. Less hunting, more prepared foods. Though they did have their own garden out to the north side of the training building up top. Kanta’s project.

Without even deciding to do it, Lyndi was up and out of her seat. “I’ll text him,” she tossed over her shoulder to no one in particular.

And she did go up to her room to grab her phone. Drake had drilled it into her that she didn’t go off alone without a way to contact him, something that also become easier with the advent of human technology that dragons were more than happy to use as well.

But she didn’t text Levi. Instead, she headed topside and grabbed a car to drive down the mountain into town. Hopefully, she’d get to the grocery store before Levi checked out and was on the road home.

Ignoring him hadn’t worked. Holding him back with anger hadn’t worked. Maybe talking would. She’d explain her position to him and hope like hell that he’d understand and help make this easier by agreeing they should both drop it.

After all, he only had two more days until he had to leave. He had to understand.