Hadyn was looking at maybe the most legendary of all rogues. Why did her parents trust him?
“You said the Alaz team took your parents?” His voice slid out of the dark, sending unaccustomed shivers across her skin that had nothing to do with the winter chill.
Most dragon males had gloriously deep voices. Her own father had a bass to him that could either soothe you to sleep or scare you straight. But this was…
Not what she’d come here for.
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She blinked. Of all the scenarios she’d imagined as she’d made her way here, this was not it. “Excuse me?”
“About your parents. You’re lying to me.”
…
Rune studied the woman across from him. He stayed in the shadows deliberately, keeping his distance.
The grainy image distorted by ice and rock and weathering hadn’t done her justice. Even now, awareness tightened in his belly as he took in a gamine face made more piquant by the short cut of her dark hair. Like a human-sized pixie had magically poofed into his domain. He practically expected to see a trail of glitter in her wake. Large peridot-colored eyes gazed back at him, light green and shockingly vibrant against lightly tanned and freckled skin, putting him in mind of new leaves in the spring.
Hadyn… The name suited her. It meant little fire, and she had to be a firecracker to come chasing him up here alone.
Her reaction to him was anything but normal. Most humans couldn’t stare down a dragon shifter, that little built-in voice of instinct screaming at them of danger. Predator. She didn’t break eye contact at all. He knew Chaghan and Qara, but what he knew of them involved a son, not a daughter, and certainly not a human one.
This could be a trap.
Others had tried to lure him out with a dragon mate before, using human women to appeal to his supposed sense of honor or protectiveness. He still had a scar from the first time that happened, and it took a hell of a lot to scar a dragon, given how quickly his kind healed.
Only this one came to you alone, risking her life on the mountain.
He ignored the voice in his head…and the smaller one in his pants that was still half-hard with interest. She wasn’t off to a great start. The lie about her supposed dragon shifter parents. The suspect timing, showing up here at the same time he had.
This mountain had been abandoned months ago.
He’d risked returning by himself to shut it all down and destroy any remaining evidence of his dealings. Hopefully, the important stuff that he’d taken care to hide hadn’t been discovered.
His old mentor’s voice echoed in his mind. “Never leave evidence where prying eyes can see,” he’d say.
Deep had been talking about keeping humans from discovering their kind. Would he be proud of the way Rune had used that advice lately?
Probably not. They hadn’t talked since Rune had abandoned his team and gone rogue.
He and the people he’d collected to help him since that day hadn’t had time to do a thorough scrub of this place when they’d had to abandon it this spring. The man now the new King of the Black Clan and his phoenix had shown up out of nowhere, bringing the people chasing them down on Rune’s head. He’d had to scatter his team and send the mates he’d been protecting away.
No surprise that, once he returned, he hadn’t had to tunnel his way in through what had been collapsed corridors and entrances when he’d left. Rubble left by intruders breaking through the defenses of what had been his hiding place for a solid decade.
Someone, or probably many someones, had already broken back in, no doubt looking for him and especially the mates he’d been protecting. But they’d been long gone. Whoever had come later, no one remained in the mountain by the time he’d returned.
Only by coincidence had he been in the ancient war room when this sprite-like woman had shown up, boldly waving at the camera and calling his name.
He’d already scented her on the mountain, but now inhaled long and slow, catching no hint of smoke or other telltale signs of supernatural creatures, still having trouble placing what she was exactly. Not a dragon shifter, as she’d said. Human.
Only humans weren’t supposed to know about dragon shifters, let alone seek them out.
His dragon gave a hum of approval. He liked her moxie. Anyone who dared scale a mountain like this one on her own in early winter, let alone come deliberately searching for a rogue dragon shifter, had to have tons of it.
That, or he was right, and she was the bait for a trap one of the many people after him had laid, hoping he’d come back like he had.
She crossed her arms. “Why don’t you believe me?”
The question was more curious than offended, with not a scrap of worry in her tone. Interesting.
“Because the Alaz team couldn’t have done that.” The biggest hole in her story had stood out like a neon sign saying, You’d be a fool to believe this bullshit.
Rune was not a fool.
Her green eyes narrowed. “Is this some sort of enforcer solidarity thing?”
This little human knew about enforcers? Which meant she was aware of more than just the existence of dragons. How?
“Your information is a bit dated. I haven’t been an enforcer since—”
She waved an impatient hand, cutting him off. “Since you left the Huracán team a decade or two ago. Dad was fuzzy on the timing.”
Hell, she even knew which team he’d been on. Curiouser and curiouser, as Louis Carol would have said. Centuries ago, Rune had been hand selected—actually he’d volunteered, but he tended to keep that to himself—by the King of the Black Clan to take a position on the first enforcer team heading to the so-called “new world.”
Rune tipped his head, forcing his body to remain loose and easy. “What do you know of enforcers?”
Hadyn sighed. “What is this? An inquisition? Are we really going to do this?”
He said nothing.
“I guess we are.” She crossed her arms, not an inch of give in her. “Enforcers are often the best fighters in dragon shifter society.”
Unwanted, unwarranted amusement tugged. A reaction he ignored as she continued.
“They are appointed personally by the kings of each of their clans—blue, green, gold, black, red, and white, before you ask—to uphold dragon shifter laws in the colonies. How am I doing so far?”
The sweetly couched question had a bite to it, and Rune allowed himself a mocking grin. “Top marks. Keep going.”
Beyond a brief squeeze of her lips, she didn’t protest. Merely marched forward with her recitation. “The Huracán team was the first to be placed in the Americas. You were once sworn to keep dragon shifters safe. Safe from discovery by humans. Safe from other shifters and paranormal creatures. Even safe from other dragon shifters, who tend toward volatile natures and light a lot of fires.” She paused to shoot him a glare that clearly said she resented his wasting her time. “Happy?”