Chapter 32
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Tori fumbled the shoe in his hand a second time.
He’d never thought watching someone brush their teeth could be sexy, but then he’d never had a half-naked Baldewin bent over the sink brushing his teeth in their shared hotel bathroom.
Yeah, he could watch his mate brush whatever the hell he wanted.
He was lucky his brain remembered to pump the blood through his body, because it was currently enjoying the Baldewin show.
“What are you thinking for breakfast?” Baldewin asked after rinsing his mouth out.
“Huh?”
Baldewin grabbed a hand towel and wiped his face off.
He grabbed his glasses off the counter and looked up in the mirror as he slipped them on, meeting Tori’s gaze over his shoulder, and grinned, as if he knew Tori was utterly lost in the sight before him.
“Breakfast? First meal of the day? For you, it’s typically served with a vat of coffee large enough for me to swim in. ”
Tori frowned at the man for a second before picking up his shoe and shoving his foot into it.
“I don’t recall ordering a mate with so much sass and snark.
” He finished tying his sneaker in time to see Baldewin looming over him.
He tried to jump to his feet, but it was already too late.
The dragon wrapped an arm around his waist and tackled him back onto the bed, covering him with his larger body.
Baldewin had to be an Olympic-level cuddler. The man knew how to hold him with the perfect amount of pressure while snuggling his face against Tori’s neck like it was made to be placed there. His mate was warmth and safety and sexiness all rolled into one loving package.
“Are you dissatisfied with your mate? Would you like to trade me in for another model?” Baldewin teased.
Tori couldn’t even joke about it. Baldewin was perfect for him in every way. “Nope. You’re mine completely. I dare another mage to come near you. I’ll make every strand of hair fall from their body and flip their skin inside-out.”
Baldewin lifted his head and stared at Tori, blinking wide-eyed at him in surprise.
Placing his hand to Baldewin’s cheek, Tori leaned up a little. “I feel like I’ve been waiting a lifetime for you, never really believing that you could exist. I never want to lose you.”
His mate closed his lovely, grey-green eyes briefly, but not before pain flashed through them.
He turned his head and kissed the palm of Tori’s hand.
“Nothing and no one will ever take me from you. You’re my mate.
And when we return to Burkhard, we will be officially bonded together in front of the entire clan. ”
Tori closed his eyes, sinking into Baldewin’s reassurance.
Calm fell over him by slow degrees. Logic clearly stated that Baldewin loved him and they were mates.
There was no threat to their bond. But logic didn’t always rule his brain after living so much of his life buried under anger, fear, and loathing.
But time and Baldewin’s love would help to mend that, he had no doubt.
“I can’t decide whether I want food or to remain just like this for another hour,” Tori murmured. He was hungry, but this was so nice, too.
“Food and then meeting. After that, I can hold you until you are sick of me,” Baldewin countered.
Tori opened his mouth to argue that they skip the meeting entirely when raised voices in the hall stopped the words in his throat. They nearly moved as one. Baldewin snatched up his shirt from where he’d draped it over a chair and pulled it on as he hurried to the door with Tori.
Jerking open the door, Tori turned toward the noise to find Mathilda and three other Taavi Clan leaders shouting at Alric and Rodrigo in the narrow hallway.
Ravi, Gunter, and the Valerii bodyguards stood in front of the kings, and they looked ready to tear through the mages for even daring to shout at the kings.
“What’s going on?” Tori asked, trying to lift his voice above the noise while not disturbing the other hotel guests. Essentially an impossible task.
Mathilda whirled around sharply, her eyes narrowing on him as she pointed. “You! This is all your fault! You led them to us. You betrayed the clan, and now they’ve stolen three mages.”
Shock slammed into Tori, sending him stumbling back a step into Baldewin. His mate wrapped a supportive arm around him and tried to place his larger frame protectively in front of Tori.
A low growl rumbled through Baldewin so that his body was vibrating. Fearful that his mate was seconds away from shifting into his dragon form and eating the offending mages, Tori straightened and planted his feet so that Baldewin was forced to remain behind him.
“What are you talking about? We’ve been here all night. We would never have kidnapped anyone,” Tori shot back.
Okay, so he wasn’t entirely sure that was one-hundred percent true, but he believed with all of his being that not one dragon in their party would steal a mage against their will. His experience with Warin and Baldewin were proof enough of that.
“Three of our most precious young mages—Panu, Tanja, and Markku—have gone missing. You’ve obviously taken them. You knew dragons couldn’t be trusted! And yet—”
“In here! Now!” Alric snapped.
Tori looked up at the king of the Fire Dragons and gulped.
Never in his life had he seen Alric looking so pissed.
Even from some distance, Tori could see his normally dark blue eyes had gone shiny gold, and his voice was a deep rumble.
The dragon was not going to put up with anymore shit from Mathilda and Tori’s old clan.
She was talking about mages and dragons in the middle of a hotel hallway, risking the dragons’ secret and potentially exposing them all to the Jaeggi threat.
A glance at Rodrigo revealed that the ice dragon wasn’t in much better shape.
Tori and Baldewin were the last to enter the room, and Baldewin quickly ushered Tori over to where the dragons were gathered on one side.
Cameron shuffled out of the bedroom wearing a pair of flannel pajamas covered in flying red dragons.
His hair was standing up at strange angles, and he was holding his glasses in one hand while rubbing his eyes with the other.
“Is there a problem with breakfast?” he asked sleepily. When he plopped his glasses on his face, he stopped and blinked at all his unwelcome guests. “I’m guessing there will be no breakfast.”
“Mages were apparently kidnapped,” Tori said as a way of explaining the consort’s sudden guests.
“Oh shit.”
“Like you don’t know!” Mathilda started again. “You stole them. You stole our most precious young mages.”
It was on the tip of Tori’s tongue to point out that two of the three missing mages were males, making them expendable in Mathilda’s eyes, but now was not the time for such bitterness.
He didn’t know the mages well, just faint acquaintances, but they were all in their late teens or early twenties at most. He wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they’d decided to run off on their own like he had, just to get away from her maniacal control and venom.
“We have not kidnapped any mages,” Rodrigo said sharply, his arms folded across his chest. The air around him seemed to drop twenty degrees, and Tori shifted a little closer to Baldewin and the fire dragon’s natural warmth.
“You have. Where else could they have gone?” Kirisi demanded. She was Mathilda’s right-hand mage and had always made it a priority to harass Tori at every opportunity.
“Of course. It’s not like anyone would ever want to escape such a warm and nurturing environment,” Cameron muttered, each word dripping with sarcasm.
Tori bit his tongue to hold in a laugh. He hadn’t thought he could like the spunky young mage any more than he already did, but Cameron had just proven him wrong.
“Enough!” Alric snapped, holding both hands up.
Cameron was at his dragon’s side in an instant, his expression apologetic and worried. One hand rubbed across Alric’s left shoulder and down his arm in a loving massage.
“I want details,” Alric continued. His golden gaze remained pinned on Mathilda. “We need to move quickly. If we are lucky, the missing mages are like Tori and decided to leave on their own accord. If not, we can assume the Jaeggi have kidnapped them, and we need to find them now.”
Mathilda hesitated, her gaze searching each face from the Burkhard and Valerii Clan before looking at her own advisors.
Tori could almost see the doubt growing like a dark cloud in her brain.
What if Alric was right? What if the dragons hadn’t stolen the mages?
What if the Jaeggi did start the war and were now attacking their own kind?
“Was this supposed to be a supply run?” Tori prodded, just to get any of them talking. They couldn’t afford to wait another second.
“Uh…y-yes. Not far. Only down to Inari.”
“Tori?” Alric asked.
“Inari is about two hours by car from here,” he quickly replied.
“Southwest from here. It’s the closest town with something that resembles a bar and nightclub.
Lots more stores.” Trips to Inari were viewed as a special treat and given only to those who had won favor with Mathilda or one of the other clan elders.
Or in Tanja’s case, Mathilda was likely hoping the female mage would end up sleeping with one of the others and get pregnant, forcing them to marry and produce more mages for the clan.
“When did they leave? When did you discover something was likely wrong?” Cameron asked.
“They left in the afternoon yesterday. Their plan was to stay overnight and be back early this morning. All three properly checked in upon reaching Inari and later when they got to their hotel rooms,” Mathilda explained.
“But Tanja hasn’t contacted anyone this morning. None of them have. Tanja is responsible. She wouldn’t have forgotten to call, especially if there was some kind of problem.” Kirisi’s voice shook, and Tori could easily guess that Tanja was her daughter.
“We’ll find them,” Alric declared, and Tori believed the dragon.
“I need you to return to your clan and work with your seekers to locate any sign of them.” He turned his gaze, which was now deep blue rather than gold, over to Rodrigo.
“Will you and your clan accompany the mages back to Nuorgam? Be prepared to take to the air, should they get the slightest hint of their location.”
“Of course,” Rodrigo agreed.
“Cameron and Tori will work here, trying some different spells with guidance from Lisette and our clan’s mages. Ravi, Gunter, and Baldewin will be ready to fly on a moment’s notice. Tori, Cameron, and I will travel by ground as needed. I will call you if we discover anything.”
“My kings,” Evora spoke up. “May I remain with Cameron and Tori? There’s much I can learn from the Burkhard mages that could greatly benefit the Valerii.”
Thiago grasped her hand in both of his, worry filling his eyes. “Are you sure, my love?”
Smiling, she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I trust the Burkhard Clan with my life. I will be perfectly safe.”
“Evora would be a welcome help,” Cameron said.
“We’ll protect her as one of our own,” Alric added.
Rodrigo nodded, but there was still worry etched on his face. Tori didn’t know how many mages the Valerii had, but if it was anything like the Burkhard Clan, this was not an easy decision for the ice dragon king. They couldn’t afford to lose a single mage.
Tori took a deep breath, eager to start working magic with Cameron and Evora.
Old fears and doubts had evaporated since finding his place among the Burkhard Clan.
While the Taavi mages would focus on trying to find the three missing mages, he had an advantage that would help his work with Cameron and Evora—he knew exactly what the Jaeggi magic signature looked like.
While the Jaeggi might be able to mask the magic signature of the Taavi mages, he didn’t think they’d be able to completely mask their own signature because of its distorted, broken quality.
His blood ran cold at the thought of the three missing mages. He’d already witnessed how the Jaeggi had drained Cassie of her power. That same fate waited for these young mages, and Tori was not going to allow it.