“Finn also got word from Levi…” He paused, gaze moving to her, and she knew without even a twitch of a change to his expression that whatever came next was bad. “They lost most of their volunteers there as well.”
“Cowards,” Drake muttered from where he sat at a different table.
Cami squeezed his hand. “They have family and people to think of, like we do,” she pointed out.
“Who’s left?” Delaney asked.
“Our people—Aidan, Sera, and Blake. Rivin and Keighan. Levi, Lyndi, and all the boys. Vilsinn. Shula and the people with her stayed at least. That’s something.”
“So what does this mean?” Hadyn asked, glancing around.
Rune turned his head to stare at Finn, who’d remained silent. Finn tipped his head, almost in a “you tell them” kind of gesture.
“It means we have more decisions to make,” Rune said. “Do we try to hold two mountains—one with more than half of their people being children, the other with a skeleton crew—especially with all these damn secret passages? Or do we attempt to fly one group to the other, knowing that they’d probably be attacked on the way?”
…
Leaving Hadyn, even in the capable hands of her parents, went so hard against the grain that Rune was chafing. Between his emotions, usually not a thing for him, and his dragon pushing to take over, Rune was raw from the insides out.
Not that he had any damn choice.
No way was he letting her fall into an enemy’s hands ever again, and that meant fortifying this place even more now that they’d decided to stay.
Several calls to Zhuron had gone nowhere. The man either wasn’t picking up or was in the middle of his own shit. In the meantime, Rune and his people were shoring up their own defenses by closing off as many spaces as possible, forcing anyone trying to get into the mountain down only one possible path. A gauntlet of death. Hopefully.
Those fucking secret hatches, though, that was an unknown. Searches in the computers and library turned up nothing. Not a map or even a reference to their existence. Secretive fucking dragon shifters.
At least he’d found human-made explosives. Dragons could easily collapse larger tunnels, but the human sized ones were harder because they couldn’t shift to do it, and not all dragons could only partially shift.
Usually, using weapons of this sort was anathema to their kind. They were, after all, the ultimate living weapons. That said, it made sense to use the stuff on construction. That’s what they’d all said to justify it in the past, so he wasn’t surprised the Alaz had reached the same conclusion. Black powder had been invented centuries before in China, not too far from the Red Clan’s only mountain. Dragons had caught on to the explosives about a century later and had been using them ever since.
Rune double-checked the placement of the C-4. Blow up the wrong spot, and he could collapse the tunnels on himself and others. Satisfied with his setup, he flipped the trigger switch to “on” and walked his ass back to where they’d deemed it safe, only to find Finn waiting for him.
He raised his eyebrows in question.
“I came to help,” Finn said.
“Thanks, but I got this section. Maybe go help Hall and Drake. Make sure Drake hasn’t killed Hall yet.”
“I didn’t mean with the explosives.”
“I know what I’m doing,” he said automatically.
Hadyn. There could be no other possible situation that Finn would want to talk about. The mountain, his mates, the bounty on his head, all of that was what it was. Her parents seemed both accepting and not remotely thrilled. And she hadn’t answered him, a fact which bore repeating, even in his own head.
Had she even heard him when he’d sent her that telepathic question? He’d been as romantic as he was ever likely to be. Hell, he couldn’t remember most of the words he’d used, anyway.
But if she heard… What if she’d changed her answer to no?
Letting her go with her parents last night, knowing she needed that and so did they, had made for the longest damn hours of his life. Because she was…different…around them. Quieter maybe. More distant. He couldn’t put a finger on the change, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right. Rune’s jaw ached from clenching it almost nonstop since he’d found her with that rat fuck on top of her.
“You need to settle things with her…and her parents.”
Rune shot him an irritated frown at the advice. “I know.”
He was trying to give Hadyn the space to handle that side of things. After all, if he was in Chaghan and Qara’s place, he’d be worried sick if the woman who was fated to mate his dead son suddenly got attached to another dragon shifter. Especially him.
“Then what are you doing here?”
Hiding. In case the answer she had yet to give him wasn’t the one he wanted to hear.
Rune stared at him, deliberately blank. “Fire in the hole.” He clicked the button. The explosion blasted around them, dirt and debris blowing up the hall to cover them both in filth.
Finn crossed his arms. “If you want her, they have to be on board.”
“I. Know.” Rune was growling now.
“And you are miserable to be around at the moment.”
Rune crushed the remote in his hand without realizing he’d gripped it that hard. The crunch of the small, though flimsy, metal box filled the hallway. “What the fuck do you want from me, Finn? I can’t make her want me. I can’t make them approve. They have to work through it on their own.”
While he waited like an asshole for an answer.
“I know,” Finn said. “You’re giving her space.”
And hating it. Right now, if he had his way, he’d have her with him. Right where he could see and touch her. Smell her. Know for sure she was safe.
“Why is this one so important to you?” Finn asked. Almost too casually.
“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Because she was his. The answer was obvious. Only she wasn’t his. Not yet. Helpless was a feeling he was starting to despise.
Was every single important relationship to him going to be ripped from his hands when he tried to do the right thing? Almost as though he couldn’t hold on tightly enough.
He’d asked his king for his assignment as an Enforcer, against the will of his parents, who refused to speak to him until the day they’d died, an ocean and a few continents between them. He’d lost his team when he’d gone rogue to help those mates and fight a corrupt system, one day at a time. And now Hadyn—
This was what he’d been reduced to. For love.