The Protector (Fire's Edge #4) - Abigail Owen Page 0,82

into a ball and tucked himself into the wall of the cavern, looking, suddenly, like just another boulder. Levi would be checking all the other boulders a little more closely now. Given that dragons lived in caves, maybe this explained how he’d never encountered one before.

“Sleep now. Talk later,” the troll’s voice rumbled out from under his rounded form.

At a signal from Lyndi, the boys moved farther down several different passages, going about their business of exploring the natural cave system, which is what they’d been doing to start. Levi canted his head at her to follow and led her into one of the smaller chambers he’d passed in his sprint to save his mate.

The second she walked into the room behind him, she was already scowling. “Don’t lecture—”

He yanked her into his arms and crashed his mouth down on hers. And his dragon, mostly mollified by their friendly new troll friend, settled completely at the touch, even if Levi’s body stirred to have her against him again.

“I’m not going to lecture,” he said against her lips. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“Then what is this about?” she demanded.

“It’s about keeping my sanity.” Because if he could touch her, she was still real, and safe, and still with him.

He didn’t say that. Instead, he rested his forehead against hers. “I have news from your brother.”

…

Lyndi glanced up as a new light joined the camping lantern currently illuminating the small chamber where she squatted beside Marin. The room where Marin and Elijah would bunk down. She glanced over her shoulder to find a dancing glow of orange on the wall of the tunnel leading away.

Someone must’ve lit a fire farther inside the mountain.

And no wonder. It might be coming on to spring, but this far north winter definitely still had its claws dug in, though the deeper parts of the caves were more temperate. Still, even running naturally hotter by her nature, a fire was appreciated.

She turned back to what she was doing. They didn’t need their tents any longer but still had to set up the “rooms.” They’d been busy all day getting a kitchen of sorts in working order, including where to store food so that other animals wouldn’t be drawn into their cave for it.

Bedrooms of a sort for everyone had to be arranged, most of the boys doubling or tripling up given the size of the spaces, but also for safety in numbers. Bathrooms, unfortunately, remained outdoors, requiring them to fly down to a spot in the woods and shift so they weren’t creating dragon-sized waste. They still had to bury everything or the stench, even from there, would eventually become overpowering. Not to mention a signal to any passing dragon.

Levi had also set up a system of safety and defense. Buddying up. No one went anywhere alone. Hard rule. Along with set rotating patrols both inside and outside the mountain, and rotating sentries at the only point of entry big enough for anything to come through.

It meant that at any given time six of their group, a third of them, were vulnerable. Each shift lasted four hours, so they all worked two shifts a day, leaving plenty of time to rest in between.

Lyndi would have known to do some of that, but Levi, with his centuries of experience, also showed them other things that wouldn’t have occurred to her. Places to hide both inside and outside that provided the best points of view while minimizing exposure. Three separate plans should they be attacked. And he’d scheduled training sessions to start tomorrow. He’d do one round and then he was leaving. It seemed as though they kept getting only one more day together. But this time, nothing was going to give her a reprieve.

This was it.

Finished pumping the thin air mattress up with more gusto than the task required, she sealed off the cap and laid it down along with the sleeping bag and small camping pillow.

“Levi says we should sleep with our heads to the center,” Marin informed her.

Levi says was becoming a favorite opening line for all her boys.

“All right.” She flipped the sleeping bag and pillow around, then rocked to her feet, stretching out limbs that had turned stiff with activity followed by squatting for at least ten minutes.

That was the excuse she gave herself. The truth was, she was exhausted in a way she’d never been before. Bone deep. As though dragging her carcass around this earth and keeping her eyes open had become a battle