She’d prove herself to all of them eventually. Even Mr. I-Don’t-Think-Lyndi-Should-Do-This. He didn’t think she should do anything. Leave the mountain by herself. Run away from her clan to come to the Americas. Even start her orphanage. But where would her boys, many now men, be without her?
Dead. That was where.
Following her brother, she shot through the inky night sky, aiming for a higher altitude and the lazy clouds floating by overhead. After a while, nearing the location of the fire, Levi popped up beside her, misty cloud clinging to his body then falling away in a swirl of white.
Irritation was like a hot lance through a boil. Levi was supposed to remain behind with Rivin and Keighan. Breaking formation was going against their set plan, something he usually didn’t do. Which meant he was up here to keep a closer eye on her.
“Go away,” she said. “Drake’s dead ahead of me. I can handle myself and don’t need you flying in my shadow. I sure as hell don’t need a babysitter.”
The scales on his neck rippled, like a wave of living copper, in visible displeasure. “I am not your babysitter.”
“You think you’re being protective. I call it annoying and stifling.”
“And I call it the only way I can be.” The snap to his voice had her scowling even before the words sank in. Levi didn’t snap. He was always reasonable. Even when she yelled, the louder she got, the calmer he got.
Before she could reply, something grabbed her by the tail, sending shards of pain shooting from that point up her spine, and yanked her down. In an impressive maneuver, Levi leapfrogged over her in time to take the brunt of the impact from a second dragon who would’ve flown straight into her with the speed of a freight train.
Except Levi, copper scales glittering against the black scales of their almost invisible attacker, managed to flip, flinging the fucker directly between Rivin and Keighan. The two white dragons went at it like a pair of rabid dogs, one with his teeth sunk into its neck and the other on its tail, rendering the mace-like tip ineffective. The black dragon bleated a call for help as they drove it straight down, toward the rolling mountains below. Whatever, or whoever, had grabbed her let go and disappeared into the night in a whisper of shadow.
That call for help brought an answering series of blasts from north of their position. Ten at least. But who?
The sound must’ve distracted Rivin and Keighan, because the dragon they’d been pummeling shot away from beneath them. The two went to go after him but pulled up sharply at Drake’s command.
“Dive,” Drake ordered. “Take cover on the ground.”
A smart move. Outnumbered and against attackers they knew nothing of—potentially all black dragons, whose stealth made them deadlier than most—it was better to disappear and return to fight another day. Lyndi had obeyed before her brother had finished the first word, tucking her wings in close to her body and elongating as she pointed her nose at the ground.
Levi appeared in her periphery, aligning his descent with hers, side by side, his soft belly turned toward hers so that they were both equally protected. The man was diving upside down, inverted to her.
“Show-off.” She flung the thought at him. Gold dragons weren’t supposed to be the trick fliers. That was green dragons, or even blue, though they were known more for speed. Gold, on the other hand, were the brute force—bigger, pure muscle, and damn scary with it.
“If you’ve got it…” came an even smoother, sexier version of his deep voice, sliding through and doing unfortunate things to her body.
Her dragon shuddered at the sudden slash of need. A need she’d been alternately fighting and ignoring since the day she’d arrived. One that scared the hell out of her because she knew it could go nowhere.
“Hold,” Levi instructed, thankfully oblivious to her momentary lapse into lustful recklessness.
Irritation had always been her best defense, and she didn’t even have to conjure it up now, managing to not respond, focused on landing. Timing things so that they slowed at the last minute while still avoiding misjudging the height of the taller pine trees or slamming into the earth at over a hundred miles an hour required concentration.
“Now,” Levi said even as she peeled away, pulling her head up and flaring her wings wide, tipping them to catch the air like giant sails, her body jerked to almost a full stop midair, just in time to touch lightly down.
Already, Rivin and Keighan had shifted. They huddled under the cover of dense bushes at the base of a fall of boulders. Pushing her body to the edge of pain, Lyndi shifted quickly as well, then ran on light feet toward where they waved at her, doing her best not to cause any sound one of the dragons above them could catch. Only each step produced a shock of pain that lanced down one leg from her back.
That asshole tail-grabber had hurt her more than she’d realized.
Without warning, a thick arm banded around her stomach and yanked her right off her feet and under a different bush. She landed with a grunt she managed to only make in her head, swallowing the sound down.
Levi put his lips to her ear, his whisper barely audible. “Don’t move.”
Barely, she kept from wiggling, going as still as a mouse in the jaws of a cat. Only he didn’t let her go. They sat on the ground, her between his legs, which were bent at the knees on either side of her hips, his arm still solidly around her, his hard-as-steel chest pressed tight against her back.
She never allowed herself to get this close.
Damn if instant heat didn’t swamp her, molten at the junction of her thighs, setting her to pulsing in time to her heartbeat and pushing the pain in her lower back clean out of her head.
No. No. No. No. Now was not the time to let this unspoken, unacknowledged, lethal thing she felt toward him hold sway.
Lyndi forced herself to remain motionless, closing her eyes and reaching for calm. Control.
But his own heat surrounded her along with that sweet scent of cigar smoke and the smoothest brandy, like earlier in the war room, just like his voice. Is that what his skin would taste like?
Not the first time she’d wondered.
“Are you okay?” he husked.
“Fine.” Or she would be as soon as she could get away from him.
Her wound wasn’t her biggest concern right now. All shifters had accelerated healing, part of what allowed them to live so long. By the time Drake gave the all clear, she wouldn’t be lying about that.
A low grunt told her Levi didn’t believe her anyway, but for once he didn’t push her. After a pause, his arm relaxed against her and he uncurled his fisted hand, his fingers flattening against her belly.
“Stay where you are,” Drake ordered. He must still be dragon to be communicating telepathically. Where was he anyway? “I’m going to check whether they’ve gone.”