Wait.
Holy fuck, I love her.
“There it is,” Finn said, a hand landing on Rune’s shoulder.
“What do I do?” Idiotic question. Part of him wanted to bite it back, the other part left it out there.
“What does your dragon want?” Finn asked.
Rune snorted, the sound as sarcastic as he’d meant it to be. “He wants me to sweep her up and fuck her hard, show her she’s ours, and then keep her forever.”
Forever. Oh hells.
Finn’s lips pressed together, but not in disgust or disagreement, more like in contemplation. “I’d listen to your instinctual side, then.”
Rune frowned. “He also wants to gut any man who comes near her. Chaghan included. Even you.”
“I’ll warn the others to be careful,” Finn said, laughter in the words.
“I’m serious, Finn. Don’t fuck with me right now.”
“I know exactly what you’re going through. I was the same with Delaney. She’s lucky I didn’t burn down Sera’s winery. Or worse.”
Rune stilled, thinking through that. “But Hadyn’s not my mate.”
“So? What is she?”
“Mine.” No hesitation. Pure bone-deep knowing.
“Then what are you doing here?”
What if she didn’t want him? Or what if she was only in lust? What if he ended up having to fight Chaghan to get anywhere near her? What if—
Finn huffed, a familiar sound of impatience. “Given the way things are going, who knows how much time you’ll have together,” he pointed out. “Are you really going to screw around waiting?”
Rune snapped his shoulders back. Finn was right. Fuck all the what ifs. They’d never done anything but get in his way. Usually, he didn’t even let them in his head. He didn’t have time. For creatures who could live millennia, time was still the one thing they needed more of, and Hadyn…time was what she didn’t have.
He glanced over his shoulder, down the hallway he’d collapsed. “You mind—”
“I got this. You go work things out with her.”
“Thanks.” Rune paused, eyeing the man who’d been his alpha and his friend.
Forgiveness, true forgiveness, was a funny thing. He pulled Finn in for a hug, clapping him on the back.
“Go,” Finn said, giving him a shove.
Purpose in every step, Rune strode down the tunnel leading back to the residence where Hadyn should be. He burst into the massive kitchen, so like the one in his mountain in Argentina, though more modern, to find Delaney working away at what she did whenever she got stressed—cooking—Deep across the counter “helping,” which mean stealing tastes. Qara and Chaghan were there too.
“Where’s Hadyn?” he asked.
The way every person in the room stilled, he knew immediately he wasn’t going to like the answer.
He zeroed his gaze on Chaghan.
The older man sighed. “She said she knew of an entrance from scoping out the mountain before. Locked, human sized, but small. She wanted to show one of us so we could collapse it from the outside.”
His dragon raked a claw down his insides. “You let her go outside?”
“Only for a second,” Delaney rushed to assure him when Rune started growling.
“Calla went with her,” Deep said.
Rage was usually a reaction he contained fairly easily, storing it up to unleash it when he fought. Right now he could happily snap that old man’s neck. “Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck were you thinking? I’m going to fucking have words with that woman.”
The women grimaced with each f-bomb.
He turned on her parents. “You were supposed to protect her.”
Chaghan snorted. “Have you met our daughter?”
“We’ve never treated her as fragile or locked her up for her own good.” Qara crossed her arms. “And if that’s how you’re going to treat her—”
“She wants to help seal this place up,” Chaghan cut off his irate mate, speaking slowly, carefully. Though from the way the nerve in his jaw was jumping he wasn’t much happier about it than Rune was.
A small part of him acknowledged the two were right. Hadyn was a force of her own. He was well aware. But the part of him that almost lost her just yesterday…that part was fucking pissed.
“We agreed that all of us couldn’t go with her—too conspicuous,” Deep explained. “She said a male dragon in human form wouldn’t fit, and Calla is the smallest.”
“Which fucking way?”
“Please don’t do permanent damage to my mate,” Deep said.
“I make no guarantees.” He went to spin away.
“Wait. I’ll show you,” Deep said, resigned now.
Right. Deep who could feel Calla. That connection mates shared…of course he was tracking her. His dragon still didn’t like it, but at least he wasn’t beating at Rune’s insides now. “You’re sure they’re sa—”
A boom blasted the mountain and Rune crouched defensively without even thinking about it. That was no small detonation to collapse a tunnel and cut off yet another section. That was—
“Everyone hit your stations. We’re under attack.” Finn’s voice sounded in his head.
“Oh my gods,” Deep whispered, face going ashen.
Calla and Hadyn were out there.
Chapter Twenty
Just my darn luck. Hadyn kept the words inside so that the dragons that blasted into the side of the Alaz mountain had no idea she was out there and hiding.
Calla had gone higher to get a better perspective, saying she might as well case the joint while they were outside, leaving Hadyn alone for only a few seconds when the strike came. She didn’t dare move from where she was at least partially hidden in the rockface. Small and wearing all black, she’d pulled the hood of the sweatshirt she was wearing up over her head.
One of them had almost seen her, because when the hit came, she’d been standing near the back entrance, and she’d been staring into nowhere thinking about Rune when she should have been extra alert. Now she pressed herself up against a massive boulder, her knees pulled into her chest as she sat wedged between it and the base of a pine tree, which would hopefully be all she needed to remain undetected.
Chaghan and Qara would be flipping the hell out.
So would Rune when he found out.