Chapter Two
The first light of dawn was brightening the sky when they arrived back at the Huracán headquarters. Landing at a slightly reckless speed, Levi forced Rivin and Keighan to jerk out of his way.
“Steady on, Maverick,” Rivin called as he swooped by, low to the ground, bleeding off speed.
Levi timed it exactly right to land closest to the hotshot crew building, shifted quickly, and marched inside.
Gods, this woman. Tough and stubborn as hell. Bright and animated with everyone…except him. The moment under that bush that he’d realized she was turned on…
He’d gone hard as a fucking rock, then fucked it up, as usual, by admitting way more than he’d wanted with that line about not feeling the same thing. He’d crossed that invisible, unspoken line that she’d kept firmly between them since they’d met.
And look where that got him.
She’d beat him back to headquarters, but the team still needed to debrief, so he knew exactly where she was going. Levi took off after her, his long legs eating up the distance as he strode around the side of the stairs, down a hall, and into the massive family room area, then past the doorway into the kitchen to a spiral staircase that reminded him of medieval castles, hewn into the stone of the mountain. Down two levels, the patter of Lyndi’s feet ahead was hardly discernable, even this close.
Levi stepped off the stairs only to see her shoulder and a wisp of her long black hair that swung out as she disappeared around the curve. He put on a burst of shifter speed and reached her just outside the door to the war room.
“Hey—” He snagged her by the wrist and swung her to face him, at the same time backing her into a natural dip in the cavern wall.
Lyndi’s chin went straight up. Except, now that he was looking for it, he caught the flash. So brief no wonder he’d missed it before. Need. Raw and hungry and tempered by something else that he might’ve labeled cold terror if it hadn’t been gone so quickly.
Holy fuck.
“Levi,” Finn barked from inside the room. “Get in here.”
Lyndi ducked past him and into the room. He could pass for a ballerina en pointe the way this woman kept him on his toes and dancing to her tune, that was for damn sure.
Grinding his teeth, he followed. “We’re not done with that conversation,” he shot at her on the way by.
A solid wall of monitors stared at him from the opposite side of the room, technology they now used to track dragon fires and to communicate with dragon leadership. But what was on the screens—the usual stuff—wasn’t what threw him. The people gathered in the room did. He found not only the team members from tonight’s patrol, but everyone else currently staying in the mountain gathered inside.
Finn’s mate, Delaney, stood beside Drake’s new mate, Cami. Rivin and Keighan, along with the team’s two green dragons, Hall and Kanta, created a wall of muscled flesh behind the women. Three of Lyndi’s boys, now training as enforcers, took up space at the back of the room, Lyndi beside them.
With their recent losses, the Huracáns had been forced to fill the gaps in their team with some of Lyndi’s orphans, as well as with the team’s new mates. That decision had been a brawl of a fight. The women, in the end, took the decision out of their hands. Or Lyndi did, when she started training Delaney in the same self-defense techniques Drake had taught her.
That, more than anything, had brought home the fact that their world was turning upside down and might not right itself.
Finn—still the boss, but only as far as the team was privately concerned—stood at the front of the room, speaking quietly with Drake, in profile only. A glow flickered over their previous alpha’s face, casting blue shadows over pale skin inherited from his British ancestors.
The man was pissed.
As beta, Levi should be in there with his alphas, so he moved to stand at Finn’s back, arms crossed.
“Drake, why are we all here?” Rivin asked.
They wouldn’t have called the entire mountain for a debrief. Just those on patrol and Finn.
“Yeah, boss,” Keighan tacked on. “What’s up?”
“I’m not the boss,” Drake turned from Finn to snarl.
Still so weird that the Alliance had taken the leadership of the team away from Finn and given it to Drake thanks to his blood tie to Pytheios, the High King. Politics.
As the kings and clans remained eerily silent on the other side of the world—not a good sign in Levi’s opinion—the dragon shifters in the colonies were left with only the Alliance to look to for leadership, corrupt assholes whose only goal seemed to be ducking and covering until the winner of the Kings’ War was determined. They’d been the ones to decide the leadership change.
“Alpha?” Rivin tried.
“Oh exalted one?” Keighan followed up with.
“Shut up, boys,” Levi said. Ordered. “Now’s not the time.”
In unison, they gave him a silent salute.
Ignoring them, Finn turned to face the room. “We’ll get to why we’re here in a minute. First, what happened tonight?”
Drake’s expression went cold. “Black dragons. At least ten of them that I counted. Attacked, then ran.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“Nothing that isn’t already healed,” Lyndi muttered from the back of the room.
“I’m not sure we were who they were after,” Levi put out there. “They seemed surprised that white dragons and a female were involved. Just a gut feeling, boss.”
“I have an idea of the direction they came from,” Lyndi piped up.
Levi frowned. Of course she would be the one to sight them. Keeping her safe was becoming a full-time job.
“When the one who had my tail let go, he took off to the east, slightly south,” she said.
Finn nodded. “Let’s keep an eye on the region, see if another fire breaks out tonight.”
No one objected.
“Right,” Finn said. “With that out of the way… I’ve called everyone in because I’ve just heard from the Gold Clan.”
Levi stilled. His clan?
“You mean the Alliance has?” Kanta asked in his scratchy voice, like he’d inhaled too much smoke every day for thousands of years. Methodical and logical, the green dragon was the rock of the team. He’d always reminded Levi of an ancient forest, all ebony skin, deep green eyes, and still, unwavering peace.
Finn shook his head. “No. I mean directly from the king himself.”
A ripple of disbelief passed through the room as they all shifted on their feet at the news, though no one spoke. The entire purpose of the Alliance was to be the conduit the kings used to communicate with their people in the region. Kings didn’t just bypass that governing body to speak directly to smaller groups. Even enforcers.