The Protector (Fire's Edge #4) - Abigail Owen Page 0,18

mind working through the arguments to be made for the proposal he had presented to the Alliance.

A mating that would be to his political advantage. He needed the council’s blessing.

This plan was the last positioning move of a carefully played chess game—a critical step in his plans to take down the Huracán team. A multipronged approach of disinformation, escalation, and lies that he’d had his team quietly enacting since this past winter.

But the mating he’d proposed…this would weigh the game in his favor. He’d make the Huracáns lash out. Make them tip their hands and show their true characters. Then the Alliance would have no choice but to disband and punish them.

Finally. Something they should have done months ago—years, really—before he’d lost one of his men.

Tineen hardly heeded his surroundings as he walked. A solid fortress of rock. The headquarters of the Alaz team of enforcers. His enforcers.

He had led and fought beside these men for almost two centuries, since the creation of the team, established at the same time as the Alliance. Losing even one of his men was unacceptable in his mind. That was an unforgiveable blow that he laid at the feet of the Huracán enforcers.

He and his team had been doing their duty, and his man had paid with his life.

The Alaz team had been sent to help deal with the traitor Rune Abaddon stealing mates. Worse, the woman the Huracáns had been protecting had illegally been mated by Drake Chandali anyway. Putting aside the other mates the Huracáns had illegally claimed, everything about that fight in Yosemite last winter, that entire situation, had been tainted. Stank with the putrid scent of lies and cover-ups.

Only he couldn’t argue his case. The Alliance had “orders” from the High King himself to keep the Huracáns intact and put Drake in charge.

Fucking cowards.

No way had Pytheios dealt with this personally. The council was hiding behind trumped-up orders as an excuse not to have to punish a blood relation of the High King. If the Alliance weren’t going to disband and punish the Huracáns for the results of their decisions, not to mention every traitorous action they’d taken these past few years, then someone had to step up and show them the way.

He had taken the mantle of that responsibility upon his own shoulders. Unsanctioned and in secret.

Rounding the corner, Tineen stopped in the doorway to the war room. Every screen showed the various maps of the region his team watched over, monitoring for dragon fire heat signatures anywhere in the central strip of the north American continent. His territory.

“Leave,” he commanded the enforcer on duty.

Only the two of them were currently in the mountain, working under a skeleton crew while the rest were on special mission at the Alliance’s orders. Without question, his man obeyed, and Tineen closed the door behind him. Then he punched a series of codes into one of the computers, joining a secure virtual meeting room.

He was the first to arrive on purpose, allowing him time to stand himself prominently in the screen, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders straight, ready to state his case again, if needed.

Five minutes later, he hadn’t moved by so much as a twitch when the screen flickered and a room appeared, taking up several screens. The Alliance Council was already assembled around an oval table, facing the camera on their end.

Comprised of one dragon from each of the clans, no way could he miss the fact that Ogun, the member representing the Green Clan, was missing. Had Mathai figured out that the green dragon was after his position as the leader of the Alliance? Ogun had been arrogant, though loyal to the old regime of kings. He’d been Tineen’s biggest ally in terms of how the Huracáns were handled.

“Where is Ogun?” he wondered aloud, because not commenting would raise red flags.

Mathai said nothing.

“Called back to his king,” Zhuron finally answered. The representative of the Black Clan, Tineen’s clan as well, looked as though he wanted to shift uncomfortably in his seat, face pinched.

Ogun seemed to have played himself out of the game. Interesting. And possibly a warning for me.

“Tineen,” Mathai greeted him coolly, as though he hadn’t spoken at all. The tall, lanky man with a shock of white hair at odds with red-tinted dark eyes showed zero emotion as usual.

Tineen nodded in return. Then waited. He wasn’t going to start by asking what they had decided. That put him in an immediate position of lesser power. The beggar