Dammit. I should have been here. “You saw him?” Levi asked.
Finn nodded. They’d all met Brand Astarot, the new King of the Gold Clan, in person a while back. If his alpha had seen the man, he couldn’t be an imposter.
“Is the war over?” Lyndi asked.
“No.” The grim expression, even for Finn, only worsened as his eyes ignited again. “He’s calling all gold dragons loyal to the throne back to the clan.” His eyes shifted to Levi.
If Levi hadn’t been standing in front of his entire team, he might have stumbled at the impact of those words, like taking a dragon tail to the gut. As it was, a sensation of falling from a great height slammed through him.
Recalling all gold dragons? Holy shit.
Trying to contain his own reaction, Levi crossed his arms and happened to catch a glimpse of the king’s mark on his right hand, the magically tattooed emblem of the house of Astarot. A mark of loyalty to his king and his clan.
Fuck. The word went off like a series of grenades in his head.
Everyone else must’ve hit the same reaction after the initial shock, because the room erupted in sound, a cacophony of voices protesting loudly, astonished, and under the stunned anger, fearful. No one had ever been called back since being assigned here. Never. Not in centuries.
What the hell did this mean? If the king needed dragons on his side, the war was escalating. What if all the kings started recalling the dragons scattered throughout the world? Hell, the clans were already split down the middle, with the Gold Clan’s allies being the Blue and Black Clans. Was Finn going to be next?
How can I leave the team? That thought, more than any other, carried the bitter tinge of panic, a sensation he didn’t encounter often. Like swallowing his own bile.
The Alliance barely tolerated the Huracáns. The neighboring Alaz team of enforcers straight up hated them after what happened in Yosemite last winter. The dragon shifter colonies were in disarray, teetering at the edge of full-on rebellion. All of that, and the team was barely functioning, at the weakest they’d ever been. Vulnerable. Half their numbers were currently made up of newbies. Many of their trained, experienced enforcers had scattered or died. Deep, the former alpha of their team, was off doing gods knew what. Rune, the former beta who had gone rogue, was still in hiding. Aidan and Sera were on the run. Titus was dead.
Fury followed the fear and shock, as if he was passing through the stages of grief in rapid succession. Damn the gods. No. I won’t go.
But he couldn’t refuse an order from his king. It would mean going rogue, and that would force him to have to leave the team anyway. He served as an enforcer at the pleasure of the king.
Lyndi.
Her name whispered through his mind on a tidal wave of every other thought hitting him at once. He didn’t dare turn to look at her.
“When?” he demanded, the word a harsh bark.
Finn clenched his jaw. “You need to leave within the week. They have no safe way to get you there, so you’re on your own for travel.”
A week. All he had was a week. Nothing.
Levi wasn’t remotely in a place to start thinking through the logistics. The political situation, not to mention the fact that dragon shifters couldn’t fly across the oceans, the distance too far for them, made getting from California to Norway a nightmare. What the fuck was Brand Astarot thinking?
“What about me?” Attor, one of Lyndi’s boys, asked from where he stood beside her.
Finn shook his head. “Only dragons over three hundred years old.”
“Screw that,” the younger man blurted out, but Levi blew out a silent breath of relief.
Three hundred in dragon years was essentially early to mid-twenties in human years. At least the king was keeping kids out of the war. So far. None of the orphans would be impacted. Thank the gods for small mercies, because Lyndi would be beside herself if she lost even one of them. They might be part of the team, but so far Finn and Drake had made sure to use them only in situations that wouldn’t be dangerous. War was a different story.
Unable to stop himself any longer, Levi searched for Lyndi’s smaller form behind the wall of bigger men. He backed up a step and collided with a gaze so full of desolation, all red banked fire and heartache so raw, that he had to look away for a second to get his own violent reaction under control. When he looked back, Lyndi had dropped her gaze to the ground, hiding from him.
Confusion drowned out every other emotion rioting within him, so loud his head almost buzzed with it. What had that look been? Because if it was even a hint of what he hoped it could be…
The gods had shit timing.
Until this second, with the way she constantly sniped at him, and had from the moment they met, he’d believed she hated him. Carried a grudge for that first misunderstanding, and all the misunderstandings that followed. She’d always taken his need to protect her the wrong way. He hadn’t wanted her to build her orphanage in a human home, so unprotected and vulnerable, not because she wasn’t capable but because he expected the Alliance to show up unexpectedly and wipe out all the boys they felt were stains on the dragon world—and she’d be caught in the crossfire. He hadn’t wanted her to join the team because the reason they needed more bodies was because they kept losing team members. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, too.
Her temper had always been a little quicker, a little sharper with him than the other guys. Even his jokes. Mike called her Lyndi-Loo-Hoo all the time, but Levi had tried it once and she’d about taken his head off for it.
But other moments slowly began to coalesce in his mind. Small moments he’d written off. A look filled with heat that had suddenly cooled. A smile just for him when she never sent him smiles. Even a few of her frowns had held a different meaning.
Had all her sharp edges been like a hedge of thorns, built to keep him out? Had that one dance at Drake and Cami’s wedding reception been more than he’d let himself believe? A gap in the hedge, letting him glimpse the true heart of her before she’d closed it over with sharper thorns?
He’d relived that moment over and over every day since.
Lyndi had caught the bouquet and then headed across the dance floor to her brother. Levi, to this day, had no doubt she wouldn’t have gone in that direction if she’d seen that Drake was standing beside him.
When she’d got to them, she’d ignored him and flashed her brother that easy smile she gave to everyone but Levi, waving the flowers in her brother’s face. “Nervous?”
“That you’ll be the next to mate?” Drake had lifted a single eyebrow.
“He’d have to be nuts,” Levi had muttered darkly, thinking of ripping some nameless man’s face from his head if he tried it. He might have to leave the team.