life.”
The way his tone changed around the word honor had Lyndi’s scales prickling. “What does that mean?”
Though she thought she had a fairly good idea. Deep had come here for the same reason Drake had. Being shuffled off to nowhere.
Following Levi’s motion, they both tipped their wings, turning to the south.
Deep took another few beats of his wings before he answered. “As a skilled fighter, and being from one of the older families in the Red Clan, I could be considered a threat to the High King. Politically.”
She watched Levi’s steady strokes, the way his body rippled with the movement, the strength of the muscles under the scales apparent even this relaxed. She’d witnessed him in action, formidable and powerful. Had he also been sent here not as an honor but as a way to get him out of the way?
Only…the approach he took to his role as an enforcer, as an important responsibility he’d never shirk, told her maybe he’d had a different experience. Though, they all took their roles seriously. Even Rivin and Keighan had a serious side to them when it came to the job.
“Were female-born dragons treated any differently before?” she asked.
Deep cocked his head, surveying her from one large faded red eye. “No. But there didn’t seem to be as many then as there are now. Though I’m ashamed to say I didn’t pay that much attention.”
Lyndi huffed a chuckle, both she and her dragon used to it. “That’s okay. Interesting about the numbers, though. There aren’t many of us now. By the time I left Everest, there were only a handful of others in the Red Clan. Four in total at the time, including me. I didn’t have much to do with other clans, so I don’t know about them. I’ve heard the new King of the Blue Clan has a sister who flies with him.”
“Hmmm… Well, when I was a younger dragon there were only one or two in each clan, if that. I don’t think the Gold Clan had any. Assuming there’s as many as five in a given clan, that’s more.”
“The question is why?”
“Time will tell,” he replied more easily than she could’ve. “Change is never simple.”
Lyndi shook her head. She’d always loved how Deep and Calla both took everything life tossed at them in stride. In his lifetime, he must have seen amazing things, not only among dragon shifters, but the crossing of the oceans, the advent of modern technology, the invasion of humans into their domain of the sky. Few other dragons were so easygoing.
When she was his age, perhaps she’d be as calmly laid-back. She eyed the gold dragon flying in front of her, unease niggling at the back of her mind like a worm working its way through a rotting apple.
Maybe not. Relaxed wasn’t really her style.
“We’re dropping,” Levi warned a beat before his body flowed like a river of gold, transitioning easily into an angle guaranteed to bring them to the ground quickly.
Lyndi and Deep followed.
She’d already argued, and lost, that she should arrive beside their escort, to be seen as less of a threat. At almost six foot seven in human form, his dragon had closer to a fifty-foot wingspan. He was the biggest of all the enforcers on the Huracán team. Most every creature, if they were smart, remained wary of him.
But Levi was having none of it.
Instead, deliberately, she made sure she was visible behind his bulk, sort of fluttering around in the sky so he couldn’t block her. Seeing a female with the group might make them second-guess themselves.
They made it to the ground without sighting a single one of the black dragon’s people. On purpose, trying not to alarm them, they hadn’t flown directly into where they lived, instead choosing to land farther out and walk in.
The mountains out here were truly high desert with hardly a tree in view. Barren, brown, and bald in the moonlight. Now she was in her more vulnerable human form, the chill felt lovely against her skin.
Lyndi scooted up to Levi, touching his arm to get his attention, trying to ignore how the muscles jumped under her fingers. “I’m not a fan of being so exposed.”
“Me neither,” Levi muttered. “Stay close.”
Their escort in the lead, they followed a small creek the long way around the bases of the mountains, scrub trees and some stubby pines finally taking over the landscape, though still not providing much cover. He moved them deeper into wilderness, and Lyndi inched