Chapter Eighteen

Levi stared at the satellite phone clutched in his hand and willed it to ring because all he’d been getting over three days of trying to reach his team was nothing. No answers. No one calling back to check in.

No way was he leaving Lyndi in her defenseless state. The team needed to know. Informing the king…he’d figure that out later.

“If you’d stared at me with the same intensity all these years, I might have given in sooner.”

At Lyndi’s teasing he raised his head, sending her a quick smile even as he scanned her face. In the days since their mating, she’d turned wan, dark circles bruising the underside of her eyes. Just this morning, he’d woken to the sound of her retching in one of the chambers too small to use as a bedroom.

Her eyes narrowed. “But if you keep looking at me like I might shatter into a thousand pieces before your eyes, I’ll snap your well-muscled arm off and beat you senseless with it.”

Levi managed a chuckle. For her.

But this was his fault. He’d just assumed that his fire wouldn’t do anything to her. A symbolic and instinctual need to claim her, and that was all. But for three days her dragon had remained silent inside her, her eyes still human, and no marking had returned to her neck or the back of her hand.

He was the asshole who did that to her. Stole that from her.

Pushing away from where she sat propped up against the rough wall of the cave in their shared bedroom, Lyndi crawled over to him and straddled his lap, taking his face in her hands. “I know you’re worried.”

That was putting it fucking mildly.

“But I need to ask you something…difficult.”

He couldn’t help the way his hands clenched her hips tighter but forced himself to loosen up at her wince. “What?”

“Are you disappointed?”

Disappointed? Levi searched her gaze for why she’d use that word and got nothing back. Those darn walls could go up at will with her. Which meant this question was serious. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“That I’m not… I can’t…” She shook her head, hardly able to get the words out.

Fuck. That’s what this was about? Her being human now? Levi wrapped his arms around her, getting right in her face. “Never,” he growled. “I love you, dammit. Nothing about you could ever, ever be a disappointment.”

If he hadn’t been holding her so tightly, he would’ve missed the way her muscles relaxed ever so slightly. “Okay then.” She planted a soft kiss on his lips. “In that case, stop watching me like I’m broken. Got it?”

“But I’m the one who broke you—”

She kissed him again, harder, longer, then pulled back. “Don’t,” she whispered. “I need you to let this go, or I’m not going to be able to deal with it.”

Levi dropped his forehead to hers. “Anything you need from me, you’ve got it.” Although he had no idea how he was going to live up to that promise.

“I need you to go to your king. I can’t be worrying about you turning rogue or him putting a hit out on you for disobedience. Not on top of everything else.”

“I—”

A massive boom reverberated through the halls and caverns, followed by a long roll of crashing sound, seeming to shake the mountain itself. Immediately, he and Lyndi were up on their feet.

“Levi!” The shout didn’t come from any of the boys on patrol but from inside the caves. “We’re under attack.”

He whipped his head to stare at Lyndi. His now vulnerably human mate.

“Go,” she said with a shove. “I’ll stay with Vilsinn.”

Unable to voice any of the thoughts swarming his mind, drowning out everything but her dark eyes, Levi leaned down to plant a hard kiss on her lips. “Stay safe, mate. That’s an order.”

Her derisive snort followed him as he sprinted out the door and to the main chamber leading outside.

The second he entered the room, he discovered Marin crouched beside a pile of boulders now blocking the entrance. He sat at the head of a dark green dragon crushed by the fall of rock and already turning the gray color of ash as his body consumed itself with flame from the inside out.

Marin lifted his head, face wet with tears but trying to be brave even as his chin wobbled. “Levi, Elijah is dead.”

“No!” Lyndi’s scream came from directly behind him.

She sprinted past him to drop down beside Marin, next to Elijah’s body. Levi could still remember the day she’d taken the kid in.

“He saved me.” Marin’s voice trembled. “The big dragons hit at once and he tried to blast them with fire, but they hit higher and started the rockslide. The entrance to the cave started falling, and he jumped over me until they crushed him. He pushed me out from under him.”

Lyndi’s head dropped forward, her eyes closed. “He was supposed to go live with his colony. They said yes. He could’ve gone but wanted to help keep his brothers safe.”

“It’s my fault—”

She wrapped an arm around Marin. “No. He died knowing he saved you and tried to protect the rest of us. He loved you.”

Levi dropped to a knee beside them both and squeezed Marin’s bony shoulder. “Honor his sacrifice. Live for him.”

Marin turned his head to frown up at him, confusion written in his white-blue eyes, and Levi jerked his chin toward Lyndi. “Protect her,” he mouthed.

After a lingering glance at Elijah, his brother by action if not by blood, Marin drew his shoulders back, suddenly looking older. “Come on, Lyndi. You shouldn’t be here.”

Slowly Lyndi turned dazed eyes to the child, blinked once, then choked back a sob even as she nodded. She leaned forward and whispered something to Elijah, then got to her feet and allowed Marin to pull her out of the room.

Levi, still kneeling beside the body, put a hand to Elijah’s snout, sending a quick plea to the gods to grant his soul a warrior’s welcome, a place of honor.

But he had other boys to defend now. His mate. His family.

He forced himself to walk around the body and the slide of boulders that blocked the entrance and platform. Luckily, a sliver of moonlight flittered in through a gap at the top. Shifting, he used the bulk of his body to shove the debris away. With a crash of rocks they tumbled over the ledge of the platform, giving away his position, but that couldn’t be helped. Carefully he checked the skies. All clear so far, but that didn’t mean shit. As soon as he emerged fully, Levi spread his wings and hurled himself skyward.

“Report.”

“Nine dragons that I’ve seen.” Attor’s voice came first. As the dragon on patrol at altitude, he’d have a better idea. “But I’ve lost them.”

Nine? Couldn’t be the Alaz team unless they’d recruited a few more into their ranks. Like the Huracáns, they’d never had the full contingent of twelve, and in the last year they’d lost three—the one in Yosemite, the gold dragon Lyndi and Deep took out, and Roan, the black dragon who almost killed him. “Recognize any?”

“One.” Mike’s voice was grim. “Tineen.”

The leader himself. Here to claim his mate? Or avenge the deaths of his men? Was it a sanctioned hit? No way would the Alliance go for that, even given the deaths. Others might be afraid of orphans, shun them, but killing so many kids?

If this wasn’t sanctioned, the Alaz team had just gone rogue.

No way. Not possible. Like he had once upon a time, the Alaz team abhorred rogues. None of this made any damn sense.

“What’s the play?” Coahoma asked.

“I’m headed for the peak. Attor, Mike, Coahoma, on me. William, hold your position at the perimeter. Report any movement. Stay out of the fight.”

“Sir,” the four came back.

“Everyone else gather together in the troll’s cave.”

As he ascended, Levi hugged close to the mountain, scanning the skies. No way could he take on the entire Alaz team with just the three trained for combat and William on lookout. But damned if he’d bring the rest of his boys into this fight. Not against the Alaz, even if his numbers beat theirs. They were adult dragons, skilled warriors, and lethal.

“She’ll never be your mate because I have already claimed her by fire.” Levi shot the challenge directly at Tineen’s mind. If he could draw him out, cut the head off the snake…

One shadow, then another and the three rookie enforcers gathered above him, settling around the stony peak in a circle. Just like he’d taught them.

Damn he was proud of his and Lyndi’s kids.

“Watch it—” William’s warning came at the exact same time a mint green dragon slammed into him from around the side of the mountain. Dammit, he’d been too focused on the boys and not paying enough attention to himself. Talons dug into his scales, but not all the way under, because he was bigger. Beating at Levi with his wings, the green dragon tried to drag him off the more defensible mountainside and into the skies.

Levi dug his own talons into the rock, sending fragments tumbling below. Then waited for his window. Sure enough, his attacker lifted slightly with his effort, creating a small gap between their bodies.

Wrong move, asshole.

Levi forced the spikes along his back, which had lain flat, to pop up, then pitched himself backward, flipping them both. The second they hit rock, he impaled the fucker with a crunch of scales, smaller and relatively softer at the belly, followed by a rush of hot, thick blood.

He let their motion flip them over, then dug his talons in again, arresting their momentum with a screech of metal on granite. Greenie screeched in agony, jerking against Levi as he tried to escape the spikes. After two tries, he managed to slide off and fly away, blood spraying from him and covering Levi as he took to the skies.

Another screech sounded from a different direction, and Levi jerked his head up to find five other assholes going for his three boys at the peak. Greenie had been a fucking distraction, taking the only real threat out.

Exactly how Levi would have planned it, dammit.

Abandoning the safety of the rock, Levi took to the skies, shooting upward with a hard stroke of his wings. One more stroke and he hit the speed he wanted, then pulled his wings in tight, aiming straight at the smoky gray dragon at the heart of the group attacking his boys. Tineen.

He should have killed the asshole inside the Huracán mountain when he announced Lyndi would be his mate. Now he absolutely had to take him out.

With the force of an explosion he lowered his shoulder and rammed into the one on top of Attor while taking out another with his tail on the way by. His velocity took him up and over the peak and he tumbled down the other side in a snarl of limbs and wings, both he and Tineen snapping at each other, going for the jugular.

Pain starburst inside him as one of the black dragon’s talons found purchase at his hip. Tineen flared his wings, gaining the advantage and lifting Levi only to slam him back into the rock once, twice.

The third time he hit, Levi slung his tail into the rock, finding purchase. The makeshift anchor held, slamming them both to a hard stop before flinging the black dragon away, taking a hunk of Levi’s scales with him.

With a grunt, Levi disconnected his tail from the rock and flipped to his belly. Rage had him searching for Tineen, who’d disappeared into the night, even as he knew he needed to get back to his boys at the top. Now.

A roar reverberated through the air. One that didn’t come from the mountainside. Immediately Levi pinpointed a gold dragon grappling with a blue at altitude. Attor.

The kid managed to clash and retreat without getting caught. Then back in with a snap of his jaws and out. Quicker than most gold dragons, with their bulkier bodies, could usually move. He was holding his own, with no one else around him. Levi couldn’t do anything else to help him, so he returned to climbing up the side of the mountain.

“Below you—” Marin’s voice cracked into his thoughts.

What the fuck? Why did Lyndi let him out of the mountain?

“Watch out,” Marin yelled again. Levi jerked down to find Tineen already on top of him.

Except, to the right of the black dragon, a tiny brilliant white form materialized from out of nowhere, bobbling and slipping in the air.

Marin. Holy fuck, the kid had shifted. Too young. Too small, but there he was.

Levi swallowed a roar, needing to keep his kid safe, but he couldn’t get between them. It all happened too fast. Marin slammed into the black dragon from the side.

The unmistakable crack of bone sounded followed by a howl of pain. The two tumbled together briefly, a yin-yang blur of black and white. Then, suddenly, somehow with the gods on his side, Marin managed to disconnect and lifted away—hovering awkwardly in the skies, dropping down in jerks then raising back up—and the boy watched as the black dragon fell. Tineen’s wings flung out, caught at the wind, and inches from striking the mountainside, he flared back into the sky.

“Go,” Levi commanded.

Marin launched away, and soon it was difficult to pick him out of the myriad of glittering stars in the black sky.

Ignoring the pain of the gash in his belly, Levi took off. But the second he was in the air, fire swirled with bile in his gut. The rest of his boys were gone. Not a single one to be seen. Not a damn sign of them anywhere. He reached out with his mind. “Report.”

The silent, lonely peak of the mountain taunted him with failure.

…

Lyndi had every intention of staying deep inside the mountain with Vilsinn and the rest of her boys, still hollowed in shock at seeing her youngest shift for the first time and, against her yelling to come back, shoot out of the cavern on his own.

Levi. Oh gods, keep Marin safe. Keep them all safe. Unable to shift herself, her dragon silent inside her, she’d stayed where she was so that Levi only had to think about himself and their boys. But she just couldn’t sit here and wait.

Hiding in a hole in the ground, listening to crashes that rivaled the thunder gods from outside, and not knowing what was happening to her family.

“Stay here,” she ordered the younger boys gathered in the room with her.

Two of her youngers whimpered, and she pulled them close to her. “I need to see if I can help. Can you be brave?”

Another boom from outside shot through the mountain, like the sound poured down the tunnels to where they huddled.

You have to go.

The thought was her own and yet not. Heart quickening, she closed her eyes and reached for her dragon. Felt for her through the darkness of the void the animal had left inside her.

Nothing.

She listened to that part of herself anyway. “I’m so proud of all of you,” she said to her boys. “Be brave.”

The others jumped to their feet, grim-faced. Not with the eager light in their eyes of boys who’d only dreamed of the glory of war and never experienced the horror for themselves. These boys had, in one way or another.

“Until Levi orders you to join the fight, you stay here,” she said. “He is your commander. Do you understand?”

Subdued, determined faces gazed back at her, but gradually they all sat back down.

“Vilsinn?” She tipped her head and glanced at her other boys.

The troll nodded his understanding.

Right. She turned and ran down the twisting system of caves and corridors to the front room.

There, she looked up over the fallen rocks still in place above the bulk of Elijah’s body, blocking most of the way out. All she could see from the outside was a sliver of night sky. The silent, empty sky.

“Report.” Levi’s voice echoed through her head so loud, Lyndi flinched.

Silence.

Lyndi shook her head. Were they talking to him and leaving her out? Silence in response to an order to report was not good. Attor, Mike, and Coahoma were out there. Her mate was out there. William and Marin were still out there.

Images flashed in her head. Horrible scenarios. One of her boys or Levi crushed and bleeding, or burning from the inside, torn apart by talons and teeth. Lying out there in the trees or on the mountainside somewhere. Where she couldn’t be with them. Dying alone.

Be damned if she could just sit here like a useless lump.

She climbed higher, out of the mouth of the cave where she’d be vulnerable, able to be seen. Because this man and these boys were her life. The most precious things to her, and fuck all if she wasn’t going to try.

Not that she had any idea what she was going to do.

She crawled and clawed her way over the rocks, avoiding the parts of her child that had yet to turn to ash. Luckily, she was tiny and managed to squeeze through that small gap. Balancing on an uneven rock, Lyndi looked to the skies. Where’s Levi?

The waiting was maybe even harder than inside. Silence and dark skies surrounded them, ominous and treacherous.

“Fuck.” Levi’s voice hit her like a sledgehammer. “Found them. Marin, William, get down here.”

“Sir.” The response from her boys was like an echo bouncing around in her head.

Lyndi flattened herself against the rock as the wind generated by her boys’ wings buffeted her, threatening to blow her right over the cliff.

What’s wrong? She didn’t dare voice the question or risk distracting them all.

“Attor, Coahoma, and Mike are down here, all three of them are out cold.” As though he’d heard her, Levi’s answer came back for her to hear as well. “Still breathing, but—”

Why leave Mike, Attor and Coahoma alive? If the advantage in a fight was to take out more of the other side before they took you out, why not kill them?

Unless the Alaz team was using the boys…

Lyndi sucked in sharply. “They’re bait,” she yelled, knowing Levi would hear her. So would everyone else.

“I know,” came his ominous reply. “But I won’t—”

Four forms dropped from the sky to the forest floor in formation, coming from each direction. The blast of Levi’s unmistakable roar of challenge echoed off the mountains, followed by the bright glow of a stream of golden fire glowing from between the trees in flashes.

Her mate was in trouble, and her boys were in the thick of it.

An answering roar thundered up from within her and a searing pain lit up the back of her neck and the spot on the back of her hand at the same time. Staring at the flesh between her thumb and forefinger, a design formed, glowing bright white as though she was being branded from the inside out.

Not the symbol of the King of the Red Clan that had been there before. Instead, the symbol of the new King of the Gold Clan appeared in stark, twisted lines.

In one single, glorious, relief-slamming instant, her dragon unfurled inside her, and the bond with her mate clicked in hard. Suddenly, Lyndi could feel Levi. Sort of like her dragon. As though he were both her and not her. Part of her, but separate.

Including being able to sense where he was.

His desperation and determination pulsed down that connection like an electric signal down a telegraph wire. Along with his will came the absolute, unhesitating intention to lay down his own life for her and for any one of their boys.

Lyndi didn’t have time to explore this new part of herself, of them.

Instead, she loosed her irate dragon upon the world, shifting so fast her grip on her control slipped, but she didn’t care. She and her dragon were of the same mind.

No one fucked with her family.