Page 61 of Blood and Bone
“It’s not her fault that she didn’t know about Champayne’s idiosyncrasies, Eoghan.”
“Still…she said she knew it felt wrong that the escort was a rush job. She’s right about us knowing in advance and since this was a mating ceremony, Beauregard’s family would have had to put in a request to have him escorted there weeks ago.” He ran his fingers through his hair looking worried. “I don’t like it. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this whole thing, Ari.”
Ari stepped close and pulled his lover into his arms before kissing him softly on the mouth. Eoghan hugged him tightly, seeming to be reluctant to turn him loose. When he finally did, Ari held him out at arm’s length. “Listen, I’m gonna jump in the shower and wash off this shitty day while you go in there and call Priest, repeating everything as if we didn’t already do all that.”
“Yeah, okay,” Eoghan agreed. When Ari went to brush past him, Eoghan grabbed his hand to stop him. “Hey, babe, I just want you to know—”
Ari waited, holding his breath and hoping his man was about to confess the three words which had been on the tipof his own tongue for weeks. When he just stared at him, Ari nodded, offering him the tiniest of smiles. “Me too, Eoghan.” Eoghan turned him loose and walked out of the room, but not before Ari caught the corners of his mouth turning up with their own sweet smile as he pulled the door closed behind him.
He took a good, long shower, washing away the day and thinking of the many ways in which they might have been killed had it not been for the restrained vampires who’d been attending the mating ceremony. Of course, the fact that warm, human blood had been at the ready with no consequences to the party guests, may have been what saved their lives. If someone really had been planning a gruesome end for him and Eoghan, at least they’d utterly miscalculated there. He honestly didn’t think Beauregard would have let anything happen to them. His extended family might not have had the same sentiments but Ari was the kind of guy who gave everyone the benefit of the doubt…even vampires.
By the time he’d washed up and climbed into his own clean boxers, Eoghan was fast asleep in one of the beds. He could do nothing but smile at the adorable lump under the covers across the room. So he walked over to the bed, shut out the bedside lamp, and crawled between the fresh sheets, snuggling up to his lover and closing his eyes. In seconds he was asleep.
“Wake up, sleepy head,” Eoghan whispered against his lips. When Ari’s eyes fluttered open, Eoghan was standing at the side of the bed smiling, fully dressed, and holding two paper cups with lids.
“What?” Ari sat up in bed, looking at the digital clock and blinking to make sure he was reading the right time. It showed ten thirty-five. He glanced at Eoghan, feeling the frown on his face and knowing he must look confused. “Where am…what time…where is—”
Eoghan laughed. “Get it together, Ari. It’s ten thirty-five in the morning. I waited for you to wake up on your own but I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I went in search of coffee. Here.”
He held out one of the cups, and Ari took it, still amazed that it was ten-thirty. The only thing that told him Eoghan wasn’t kidding about that fact was the feeling that his bladder was about to burst. He took a quick sip of the coffee and then put the cup down on the nightstand before getting out of bed.
“I gotta pee and then you’re going to tell me why we’re not on the road.” He headed toward the bathroom.
“On the road to where?”
Ari shut the door and did his business before washing his hands and returning to the room where Eoghan sat at the small table sipping his own coffee. He headed straight for his cup and walked over, leaning down to kiss him. “Thank you so much for the coffee. Now, tell me why we’re not on the road.”
“Like I asked…on the road to where?”
“Didn’t the chief say she heard back from the dragons or something?”
“In fact, she did.” Eoghan picked up a stack of faxes and waved them at Ari. “Last night after we talked on the cell, she texted me from her burner and gave me instructions to call her back in the morning when I was at the business center so I could wait for the file on the dragons. I guess she wanted me right there to collect them and then delete it from the fax’s memory, so none of the hotel employees had time to read it. I’m going to be really happy when we figure out who this mole is so that we can deal with the problem and go back to business as usual.”
Ari took several long sips of his coffee as Eoghan talked. “So, what’s the deal? You were asleep when I came to bed, so I didn’t get to ask. Why aren’t we already on the road?”
“We have to meet them somewhere else before they bring us into their kingdom. Apparently, it’s some secret place and we can’t know the location. Also, they’re too busy to make it a priority especially when they’ve had no contact with us for a few years. I get the feeling that this isn’t the typical shifter situation, and I really don’t like it.”
“Why?” Ari asked, looking over the top of his cup as he took another sip of coffee. “Do you think it’s dangerous?”
Eoghan nodded. “Yeah. I think these guys are very dangerous and from what I’ve been reading in this file, I’m pretty sure I’m right.”
“So, when are we going to meet?” Ari asked.
“They told her they’ll contact us. She gave them our cell numbers so, we wait.”
“Do you think we should go back to Tahoe and wait with Two Trees and Uwaite?”
“No, the chief and I are in agreement. That relationship between the dragons and the reservation is too sour right now. We’re going to be tackling this all by ourselves. No other marshals are available to spare right now.”
“So that’s it? We wait for some dragons to get around to calling us up and having us over for tea?”
Eoghan smiled around the rim of his cup. “Better than having us over for a barbeque, wouldn’t you agree?”
Ari laughed. “Okay.” He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. “Give me the damned file and let me read about them.”
Twenty minutes later, he was sorry he’d even asked. Severin and Invictus were actually the leaders of two separate dragon clans who’d eventually been driven into living secret lives when their world came under attack by humans. If Ari was reading this right, centuries before the Agency was even a blip on anyone’s radar, Severin and Invictus had been born into rival dragon clans. They’d roamed the North Americancontinent, settling and resettling in caves many times, having to move their settlements each time the human population began to encroach upon their hunting grounds.
Over two hundred years ago, during the early part of the nineteenth century, buffalo—a mainstay food source for the dragons—had once roamed the great plains in huge numbers and had been nearly wiped out by white men hunting them for their pelts. Not unlike the Native Americans who also relied upon the buffalo, the dragons had been forced to find a new place to settle, if they were to survive. The two clans had moved independently to the Shasta Mountain region, choosing one of the taller peaks around Mount Shasta where they were said to still reside. Though, the mountain had been explored many times, no one had ever found their cave systems nor located their clans which was probably why they yet survived.