3. Henry #2
“Hi Anna,” Maya offered softly, her eyes darker than before and filled with caution.
Anna didn’t attempt to reach out, just nodded to both of us and sat down.
Larry and Edmund greeted Marco and offered us head nods, not bothering to try to touch Maya either, which was smart because I would have probably snapped their wrists.
“The news was pretty heavily saturated this morning,” Lucas commented, looking amused, and then met Maya’s gaze. “You are causing quite the stir in the human world.”
“Well, she is a fugitive, so…” Anna drew out. Maya tensed slightly but took a sip of her water, keeping her expression rather blank.
“Anna, I didn’t know you had looked into Maya’s situation so much. Seems like you would have other shit to focus on,” I offered evenly. Anna let out a growl, looking down at her brunch menu as the waiter came by to take our drink orders.
I watched with amusement as Maya ran a finger down the extensive set of options, Lucas and Marco’s conversation about the media completely taking away from the uncomfortable tone that Anna and the other two attempted to set with their off-putting personalities.
“What would you like, miss?” The waiter’s voice held a slightly different tone to it while addressing Maya, and when I looked up, it was impossible for me to not let out a dangerous sound from my throat. His eyes moved from her chest to my face while his entire face paled to a sickly shade.
“Hmm?” Maya looked at me with concern before I shook my head.
“Just do two glasses of champagne,” I offered evenly, my eyes narrowing.
“Right away.” He scampered away and left me with a seemingly content Maya, who seemed to be not nearly as focused on the others at the table now. Which was exactly the way I preferred it.
“Could we get to the point of why we are here exactly?” Edmund asked, his voice filled with distaste at Lucas and Marco’s friendly discussion.
“And what is the point?” I mused, my fingers brushing through the pink streak in Maya’s hair that seemed to shimmer against her skin.
“I want to know why you are returning to the realm,” Larry all but blurted out.
“We have some business to attend to,” Marco explained evenly.
“After all this time?” Edmund frowned. “I find that unlikely.”
“Afraid of what news we will bring back?” I chuckled. Lucas made a sound of agreement, taking a sip of his bloody mary, clearly finding all of this funny as fuck… which it was. Extremely so. I loved making Edmund and Larry uncomfortable.
Fear flashed through Edmund’s thoughts, making me realize that was very much the case. Which hadn’t been the goal, but now that he mentioned it… Maybe we needed to look through their actions with a fine-tooth comb.
“I just assumed we all shared the same goal on why we left,” he amended.
“We don’t share any of the same goals,” Marco leveled. “But if it makes you feel better, this has nothing to do with you.”
“It has to do with her,” Anna bit out, taking a sip of her martini as Maya offered a small thanks to the waiter who was delivering drinks.
“You are telling them you have a phoenix mate?” Larry frowned. “You understand the problems that will cause, right? She isn’t fully marked.”
“You didn’t seem to care about that last night,” Lucas added.
“But the realm is different, you know that,” Edmund argued.
“Why do you need to go to the realm for her?” Larry demanded.
Maya took a sip of her drink and set it down before Marco shared a look with her, our mate clearly completely comfortable with whatever we wanted to tell them.
It was funny, in a way, because Maya cared about so much and to such an extreme extent when it came to those she loved…
but those she didn’t? There was a reserved coolness to her attitude that was completely unintentional.
An indifferent and apathetic sense of examination she applied to them, like right now.
I could almost see her phoenix watching the group of them struggle with what to do. Almost in a predatorial fashion.
“None of your business,” Marco mused. “Besides, we won’t be long.”
“They probably want to know if she can have dragon babies after all the shit she went through.” Anna grinned as Maya’s body tensed, clearly not having expected Anna to have known about the abuse she went through.
Then again, the media paired with the pictures Becky Ash had taken really painted a picture of what Maya had gone through.
Not including the assumptions she was no doubt making.
“Is that true?” Larry shot back. “Are you checking the viability of her being able to breed?”
A low growl broke through my throat at his words as Maya shrank into me, her eyes darting around the table uncomfortably.
“Enough,” Marco snapped, his magic wrapping around the table and tightening. Anna smirked, looking down at her drink. “What happens between our mate and our flight is none of your fucking business. If we don’t have anything else to talk about, I am perfectly happy with ending?—”
“We need to talk about something else,” Edmund added.
I pulled Maya onto my lap, no longer caring about their words and wanting to comfort her.
Without a fight, the woman relaxed into me, her head resting on my shoulder as she narrowed her eyes at Anna just slightly, the woman unaware of the discomfort she was causing my mate.
Or maybe extremely aware of it. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the problems I knew it would cause socially, I would have killed her by now.
Simply making Maya uncomfortable was enough of a reason for me.
“Anna?” Maya asked, drawing the woman’s attention as her eyes flashed with something that looked a bit like fear.
“What?” she snipped.
“How do you know about what I went through?”
“The news story,” she leveled, something sliding behind her gaze.
Maya straightened and frowned, not saying anything but suddenly looking far more cautious. I could feel her magic searching Anna for lies, and I had a feeling whatever she found there wasn’t good. It made me want to end this brunch now.
“What did you want to talk about?” Marco asked Edmund, sounding ready to end this conversation.
“We have a younger flight coming from the Dreki realm that we need to send up to Washington to stay with you, or at least in your territory.” Edmund’s face was filled with caution. Lucas offered confirmation.
“The oldest is only around sixteen, but they recently had a mission that turned bad in the Elven realm… they need a place to lay low for a bit. Good kids, but obviously too inexperienced,” Lucas grunted. “Normally we would keep them in California, but they need better security than that.”
“I am pretty sure we have enough to deal with right now,” I bit out, annoyed they were trying to put this on us.
“They are just kids, but they need out. The realm is trying to blame them for a few deaths that had nothing to do with them,” Lucas explained. “Plus, we don’t trust the targets from the Elven realm to not seek vengeance for the part of the mission that was completed.”
“We can figure something out,” Maya offered softly before turning to Marco, her eyes filled with understanding and concern. “They seem like they need help, Marco.”
Anna scoffed as I snarled, her eyes darting away. Marco examined Maya’s face before he nodded. “When we get back, arrange for them to take the portal with us.”
I immediately made a mental note to figure out lodging for them and to talk to Atlas about maybe putting them on some type of security rounds for smaller clients.
I wasn’t against taking a younger flight under our wing, especially because it sounded like they’d been sent on a goddamn suicide mission, but it wasn’t fantastic timing with everything going on.
The concept of failed missions and the pressure put on young teams had me transitioning into a place in my subconscious that wasn’t nearly as welcoming as my present circumstance, where Maya was curled up on my lap.
My blood boiled as I recounted the hundreds of times I’d been put in dangerous positions purely because of the possible ‘benefits’ it could serve for my future.
How it would make me stronger. Better. It was also how I had ended up with this fucking eye injury to begin with.
A low growl broke from my throat at that concept.
The worst part? I knew the crown wasn’t completely to blame.
Sure, they had allowed the military culture to thrive, but dragons in general were aggressive, and it was only made worse by the lack of ‘true mates’ to balance out all of it.
There was a rough hardness to the entire situation that didn’t foster a healthy environment for children.
Most dragon shifters, by the time they were thirteen, were mentally and emotionally as capable as human adults, and physically it was about fifteen when they were far stronger than even the strongest Earth realm shifters.
We were born to be fighters, and it made it all that much more difficult to change the pattern that had been occurring for so long.
Suddenly, and jostling me from my thoughts, Maya squirmed on my lap, her ass rocking against the bite mark that she had left on my thigh.
I felt my entire body tense as everything hardened.
My cock was practically begging me to slide into her, to push up her dress and bounce her up and down on me until I was buried completely into her tight heat.
I let out a small groan, looking at the stunning vixen in my lap, her pupils dilated as she watched me with a concerned and heated expression, her teeth biting down on her plush lip and making me want to do the same.
“You’re growling,” Maya whispered softly.
Shit.