Luc held on tight to Anya’s hand. Perhaps a bit too tight. He forced himself to loosen his grip on her human hand. They might have consummated the bond, but that didn’t mean she was invulnerable. He still couldn’t believe she’d accepted him. It was a turn he hadn’t seen coming. Something had happened behind the GOE facility doors that changed her mind. She didn’t tell him what, but whatever happened he was grateful.

In turn, Anya bumped her shoulder against his to show that she was there for him. Isaac had finished decrypting the files Anya had stolen from the facility. The documents were still redacted, pieces of information missing since Isaac could do nothing about a marked-up photocopy.

The screen in front of them displayed a number of open files, the images and documents displayed one over the other like little steps. Anya scanned the screen, her lips and the tip of her nose twisted to the side. Finally, she used the trackpad to pull up the file she’d told him about the night before.

Marc stood behind him, his anxiety rising like smoke from his still skin. While Luc paced when he was nervous, his twin would grow still. His twin would turn into a statue while his beast and his conscience screamed. This was one of those times.

The face that looked back at them, no matter how unhappy, how disheveled, was a familiar one. Luc’s grip on Anya’s hand tightened. He couldn’t help it, but she didn’t say anything.

“That’s Mama,” Marc whispered.

“It is,” Luc said through the lump in his throat.

It was an ancient picture, the edges of the photo yellowed with age. She held a letter card in her hand, displaying the initials of her name beside a number tag. Luc didn’t know if he wanted to see any more of the pictures. They weren’t nice, from what Anya said. He didn’t want to see his mother that way. He couldn’t handle it.

Instead, Luc leaned forward and pulled up a different set of documents and photos. He would spare his brother from having to see their mother in any distress. At least, that’s what he told himself was the reason behind leaving her file. He did it for himself, too. If they didn’t look, it wouldn’t haunt them while they slept.

The next file held the photo of a young, female Asian dragon. She looked a lot like the grumpy Chinese dragon that lived across the way from the three men. Noelle, a fire dragon that came into the family a decade ago, had a little sister that she’d been looking for when she entered the family. It was what little bit of information the brothers had been able to squeeze out of her during her time in the family.

Had they found the sister Noelle spent twenty years searching for? Luc swallowed and clicked on the next photo in the round. He turned away from what they were doing to the young dragon girl in the photo. Luc dreaded having to tell Noelle what happened to her sister.

“I’ll tell Noelle,” Marc said behind him. “Maybe not today, but eventually.”

Luc twisted in his seat. The look on his brother’s face was unlike any he’d seen before. Marc’s jaw was tight, the muscle twitching at the corner. His eyes burned as he kept them on the screen. Marc didn’t look away. If anything, it looked like he was committing every detail to memory. He was fueling the fire burning inside him.

Anya wasn’t paying attention to what was happening between the twins. She pulled the laptop toward her, one hand on the mouse and her other thumbnail between her teeth. Luc’s hand gravitated toward her and rested on her lower back. The connection settled the uneasy feeling in his stomach. He glanced back, worry gnawing at the edge of his mind.

He really hoped that Marc wasn’t mated with the crazy Chinese dragon woman. Holiday dinners were about to get messy if he was. For years now, Noelle has been openly aiming herself toward Dane. The woman wanted to be in that position of power, wanted Dane to herself. When Liana, his lowborn Welsh mate came along, Noelle had been furious. Liana had to earn the respect of the firebrand by defeating a dragon man threatening the borders of their Territory.

Adding Anya and Noelle to the mix was asking for trouble.

“I’m wondering if there is an address anywhere in these files.” Anya continued to scroll through the files while she chewed her nail. Luc found it adorable, but he knew that it meant she was nervous. “These… experiments had to have happened somewhere. If we can find out where, we can maybe visit and learn more.”

“You mean we can visit and shut it down,” Dane growled as he passed the floor.

Anya looked up, her eyebrows high. She hadn’t been expecting that, Luc guessed. She hadn’t considered that this might mean war between GOE and the dragons if the facility where these experiments took place was still functioning. Dane and his family would stop at nothing to see their brothers and sisters were safe, even if that meant going against the international organization.

Anya lurched to her feet, trying to make a brave stand against Dane as her eyebrows settled into a stubborn stance. “You can’t expect to win if you make a frontal assault.”

Dane paused. Slowly, his gaze moved toward her. It pinned her to where she stood and made a growl rise through Luc. Normally laid back, his beast rose with a whirlwind of fury. The echo of his dragon form filled the room while Dane stared his mate down. The walls shook with the magic around him.

“Are you telling me not to attack your people?”

Anya didn’t back down. She had the dumbest streaks of bravery that Luc had ever seen in anyone, dragon or human. She could stand up to the leader of the American Territory, but cowered in the face of a weasel-like human.

“No,” Anya said as she shook her head. “I’m saying you have to be smarter than that. Don’t attack and let the media know you’re violent. Create a distraction and rescue your people while eyes are elsewhere. Then… destroy the facility if you have to.”

“What about your people? What would you have me do with them?”

“Stop talking like you’re separate from them. Stop talking like you don’t share the same world, the same country.  You want your position to get better? Then you need to show the country you’re part of the same world.”

Tendrils of smoke drifted from Dane’s nostrils. The thin, violet wisps of smoke drifted toward the ceiling, a power that Dane tried never to show unless he had to. Unless he was angry enough. Dane was angry at humanity, angry at this country for what they’d done to his people.

That was no reason to aim his ire at Luc’s mate. Luc rose in one, smooth motion and stepped over the coffee table so that he could stand nose to nose with his leader. Luc’s wind brushed away the wisps of gas that Dane had lost control of.

“Anya did not hurt anyone.” Luc’s gaze held Dane’s at point blank. “You’re angry. We all are. Don’t aim it at my mate, or else there will be problems.”

“Luc!” Isaac admonished his friend with a shout.

Isaac and Marc appeared on either side of Luc, poised to drag him away if necessary. Luc didn’t move. He didn’t raise a fist or let go of his beast. He simply remained as a wall between his angry leader and his innocent mate.

After a long moment, Dane gathered himself. The leader of the American Territory drew in a long breath, held it while the room was frozen in time, and then released it. The room sighed in unison, tension disappearing.

The evidence they were fighting over was from the sixties, an era that had long passed. There was no more information on these experiments after that. The chances of these dragons still being alive was slim to none.

Despite Dane’s anger, there would be no frontal assault. There wouldn’t even be a rescue mission. That chance was long gone. Noelle’s sister was long gone. Their parents were long gone.

A heavy feeling dragged Luc back down to the floor.

 

***

 

Most of the dragons had left long ago, the sun fallen below the horizon. All that was left were Luc and Anya. The cleaned fridge was full of Styrofoam containers that the dragons had brought with them and left behind. Anya sat on the couch, the computer still showing the garish images of dragons in various stages of distress.

She was trying to decipher what was going on. All of the documents had been redacted, important information blacked out with marker before being scanned and uploaded to the digital image. Huge spans of information were lost forever beneath that black ink and it was driving Anya insane. She was attempting to put together what little she could from what was left.

“What’s the damn point of redacting these documents when you left the horrid images with them?” She growled the words as she flipped through the documents.

Little by little, she was forming a story. It was neither an explanation nor an excuse. What it was an infringement on civil rights, on the kind of right that every living being should have.

GOE, as an international organization, took advantage of the loose structure of dragon culture in America as the shifters were not bound by any particular family or ties. The agents kidnapped dragons here and there and brought them back to their facility with almost no one the wiser. With dragon families being so small and separated, almost no one noticed what was happening.

The kidnapped dragons were brought back to the facility for rounds of testing. Some dragons without the dangerous breath weapons were used for weapon testing. Anya couldn’t help but think of the Taser that her father often had at his waist. That electrical weapon was part of their arsenal because of these tests.

Other dragons were systematically taken apart to see where their power, their magic, came from. Anya’s stomach rolled, but she forced herself to keep looking. There were no addresses she could lift, not even partials, but Anya wasn’t deterred. She was going to find something, anything the dragons could go on.

This was her family, too, now. Her father’s words had knocked some sense into her one-track mind. This was a bond that the universe had carved for her. Who was Anya to deny that kind of cosmic influence? Not even her father questioned it.

As she was flipping through the photos, something made her pause. There was a photo that stood out from the others. It wasn’t a kind of mugshot or a dreary doctor’s office. Instead, this photo had been taken outside. These were the faces not shown in the stomach-turning photos, Anya thought.

Four men were lined up outside a chain link fence. They stood at varying heights, some short with thinning hair and others tall with tufts of gray hair standing at attention. A shorter man with a bald crown smiled up at the camera, his spine perfectly straight with pride. Anya’s lip curled back from her teeth. Beside this man was another whose hands were clasped in front of him. The expression on the taller man’s face was somber. It was one of duty. He thought what they were doing was necessary, even if it was ugly.

It wasn’t the faces that made Anya pause. She tore her eyes away from the men staring back at her to look at the building behind the chain link fence. The shape of the building behind them was so familiar that it clawed at the edges of her brain until it hit her.

The building was a perfect replica of the GOE facility outside the Territory, the one where Anya had stolen these very files from. But, it wasn’t the same building. Not even in fifty years could the world around it change so much. This building was surrounded by dense foliage, as if it were stationed away from prying eyes while the doctors did their evil deeds. The hum of Déjà vu still vibrated in Anya’s mind.

Where had she seen this building before?

It couldn’t be the general architecture of the facility that was haunting her. No, Anya was convinced she’d seen this building before.

She shot up from her seat, the computer mouse crashing to the floor. She had seen it before. This wasn’t the facility where her father worked, but the one that had been shut down. It was a little north of the Territory, left empty and abandoned while GOE focused on other things.

Anya leapt over the table and shook Luc awake. He startled, leaping to his feet while an arm wrapped around Anya and lifted her so that his body shielded her. Her heart hammered for a moment. She gently tapped her mate on the shoulder. Luc’s wide eyes scanned the room before turning to her.

“Sorry for waking you,” she said with an apologetic smile.

His shoulders slumped and her toes touched the floor. He set her the rest of the way down and ran a hand through his hair. She didn’t blame him for being on edge. Protecting her the way he had was actually quite nice. Anya wrapped her arms around his middle and laid her head against his chest.

This was her life.

This was her dragon man.

Her fingers dug into him. No one would take him away from her.

His hand touched the back of her head, smoothing down her hair in a sweet gesture. “What’s wrong?”

Anya pulled her head back to look up at him. “I figured out where the missing dragons were. They aren’t there anymore. The facility was shut down twenty years ago.”

Luc frowned. “If it was shut down, why is the building still standing? Wouldn’t GOE have torn it down?”

Good question, Anya thought. Nothing about this felt right. She never should have had access to these files in the first place. If everyone had done their job correctly, the files from the sixties wouldn’t have been mixed in with the files she was supposed to transfer to the Embassy. They never should have seen the light of day again.

It was fate, Anya decided. That was the only way she could explain it. If fate bound her to Luc, it could have led her to those files as well.

“We should still check it out. There might still be something there, clues that could lead you to your parents. Isn’t that what this was all about?”

Luc nodded. His head fell forward until his forehead touched hers. “I’ve been a joker all of my life because I was happier to live in the moment than worry about the past or the future.”

Anya hugged him tight while the confession made its way out.

“Now, the past and the future are colliding together and I’m scared of everything.”

“What is there to be scared of right now?” Anya asked the question even as she knew.

Luc pulled back and raised his hand to her cheek so that he could take in every line of her face. He laid a soft kiss on her lips, there and then gone like a dream.

“Everything,” he said. “I’m afraid of everything. I’m scared to learn the truth about my parents. For the past fifty years, I’ve held on to the hope that they could still be alive. Now, I know there isn’t a chance in hell. I’ve seen the photographs. I’ve seen what they went through, at least what my mother went through.”

Anya pulled back. “Your father wasn’t in the file?”

Luc shook his head. “Part of me thinks he died protecting Mama. It was something he would do. If they put up a fight, Papa would have laid down his life for her. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Anya wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in the small space.

“More than that. The past is haunting, but the future is daunting. You tapped into files the Guardians don’t want us to know about. I’m worried about what that means for you. What if they find out and arrest you for divulging GOE secrets? What if they try to take you away from me?”

Anya’s chest tightened. She’d thought about these things, too. They were possible futures that haunted her when she tried to sleep. They were possible futures that threatened everything she’d been trying to save. It threatened her family, both human and dragon. Luc wouldn’t let them take her away. That put him in danger.

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Anya told Luc. “Dad will find me if a warrant for my arrest goes out. He’ll help me, let me know ahead of time so… so I can run or hide. Whatever it takes.”

“What about your dreams?”

“I wanted to help the dragon shifters in America. I’m still doing that. I’m helping you.”

Luc wasted no time. He brought her mouth to his with the gentle guide of his hand. His kiss was soft and passionate at first, then the strokes of his tongue became urgent. He kissed her like it was the last time he’d ever hold her.

Anya opened herself to him. Her hands slid beneath his shirt, feeling the smooth expanse of his muscled flesh beneath her touch. Luc lifted her feet from the ground with his hands below the curve of her ass. Anya thought they might go to the bedroom, but Luc dropped down to the floor instead.

His hands slipped down over her hips, fingers catching in the waistband of her loose jeans. Anya bit her lip as she watched him slip them over her hips and past her thighs. Luc laid a trail of kisses along her thighs, the scruff of his facial hair tickling along her skin. She writhed beneath him.

Anya wanted him inside her again. She wanted to feel him plunge deep inside her, connecting like they were one being. She couldn’t describe what she’d felt earlier, but she knew she wanted it again and again.

But, Luc didn’t obey her unspoken desire. His eyes raked over the orange lace of her panties with a hunger he couldn’t hide. His fingers slipped beneath the elastic of her panties and tugged.

“We already made love once today,” His head dipped low and kissed the soft flesh of her stomach. “What made you pick out such… fancy under things?”

Anya’s brain scrambled beneath Luc’s touch. Her back arched toward Luc when he pulled away.

“No more until you answer me.”

Anya groaned. She needed more. She needed to feel his skin on hers. She threaded her hand through her hair and tugged, trying to get ahold of herself. Need gripped her, but the pain helped clear her mind.

“Wishful thinking?” was all she could manage.

Luc’s face lit up an instant before he lowered. Her panties slid down her thighs, the brush of the lace overwhelming in that moment. She moaned, a slight sound that slipped out between her lips. Then his lips touched the folds of her womanhood and she let out a sound of surprise. His tongue parted her folds and her hand reached down to twine in his hair. His dark eyes rolled up to meet hers and a thrill rocketed through her.

Her head fell back when his tongue delved deeper. It slid over the most sensitive parts of her. She squirmed, unable to control herself. His thumb slipped between the top of her folds while his tongue dropped lower. His tongue teased her entrance, flicking and lapping up her pleasure. The thumb did lazy circles above her opening.

The heavy feeling of an orgasm started to build inside her. Then, Luc pulled back. She cried out, unable to bear it. He laughed right before two fingers slipped inside her. She arched her back while his other hand slid behind her. It cupped her ass and brought her closer to his mouth. His tongue danced between her folds while his fingers thrust in and out.

Anya didn’t hold back her scream this time. She reached for him, her nails digging into his skin, and cried out his name. He growled his approval as his body slid over hers. She could tell how badly he wanted her. She could see the long length of him trapped inside his jeans while he made sure she had her orgasm. It left a warm feeling inside her chest.

His hips rocked over hers. The feeling of rough denim on her overly sensitive folds made her squirm. Her hands worked furiously at the button that held his waistband together. Unable to get them open, she gripped the fabric and pulled. Her own strength surprised her when the button popped and flew across the room.

She moaned her pleasure when his cock was finally freed from their enclosure. Anya wrapped her legs around his waist, holding his cock between them. She felt it pressed against her stomach as she rocked back and forth. She grazed her nails over his back.

Anya had her life planned out since she was thirteen. She knew everything she wanted to do, everything she wanted to be. The last two days had turned her plans on their head and she wasn’t looking back.

Anya rolled them over, her hips pulling back once she was on top of him. Their eyes met while Luc angled his cock into her opening. Slowly, she lowered herself onto him. Her grip on his shoulders tightened. She left little, half-moons across his skin while the sensation of him filling her drove her wild. Little by little, Anya wrangled control over her body once more and began rocking back and forth. Beneath her, Luc groaned.

His head fell back and exposed the lone of his throat. Anya took the opportunity to graze her teeth along the skin while driving him home. Luc’s body spasmed beneath hers. His head rose to reveal the beast swimming in his eyes. The iridescent colors flashed along them, brilliant and powerful.

Anya held him back, one hand to Luc’s chest while she rode him. Over And over again, she brought him home. His groin rubbed against her most sensitive parts and brought the heavy feeling of climax back again. Beneath her, Luc rolled his hips so that each thrust became deeper, so that each thrust slammed her core.

Never before had she experienced anything like this. His hands danced up her waist, sliding her shirt up and over her breasts. He leaned forward and took her nipple into his mouth. She cried out in surprise and felt the heavy feeling grow. The tip of his tongue flicked her nipple before his teeth playfully bit down. His hand slipped behind her and pulled her close. He took her nipple deeper, suckling and teasing.

“Luc,” Anya whispered. She could barely hear her own voice over the thunder of her heart. She was close, so close.

Luc’s growl rumbled through her breast and into her bone. He gripped her tight and flipped them over. His hands slid down her waist to capture her hips. His thrusts became filled with need, faster and harder. Anya’s mouth fell open, but before she could scream her climax, he captured it in a kiss.

The climax washed over her, a wave of pleasure that set her body alight with electrical fire. She writhed beneath Luc, unable to control herself as the waves crashed into her. Luc was close. She could tell from the growls of desperation. She could tell from the sharp bites along her neck. As each thrust sent another, small wave of pleasure through her, she gripped his buttocks to drive him deeper with each thrust.

Finally, Luc cried out. His body went taut and he spilled inside of her. The sensation sent a series of small waves through her. Anya’s back arched beneath him. Luc panted, but there was his signature smirk on his lips as he looked up at her. She felt her own smile return in kind.

“Is it always going to be like this?” Anya asked, remembering how the sex in her previous relationships had started hot and steamy, only to fizzle and die out later. Her hands clung to him with a kind of desperation. She didn’t want this to be like those relationships.

Luc laid his head against her chest and listened to the pounding of her heart for a moment. “I couldn’t tell you. I would like to say yes. I would like to believe that the power of our bond will always make sex this intense, but I don’t know for sure. The only other mated couple I know are Dane and Liana and they’re still in the early stages.”

Anya loved the sensation of his bare skin against hers. Her breath throbbed after what Luc’s teeth had done to it, but it was a good feeling. It was a reminder of what they’d done, what they’d experienced.

“Then it’s up to us,” Anya said. “It’s up to us to make sure we never lose this flame.”

Luc smiled into her skin. She could lay like this forever. Anya was content to lose herself in Luc’s body for a while longer, letting her fingers play over the skin of his back. The world could fall on their heads, but at least they stood to brave disaster together. 

 

***

 

“This house is for sale, right?” Luc asked his mate as his fingers made soft trails along her skin. They still laid naked and bare on the living room floor where they’d made love.

Anya nodded and snuggled deeper into Luc’s body. His beast rose, making a triumphant sound. The beast inside of him was happy with the woman fate had given them. She was daring and brave and wanted to change the world for the better. She was the part of him he’d been missing for fifty years, the part that didn’t dare look toward the future.

Now, Luc had to look in that direction. He had to hold out hope, or at least have a plan in case there was a future.

“Do you think your father would sell me the house?” Luc knew, if he was going to earn his mate’s love, he couldn’t do it while living with two other men. It was about time that he moved out of the modular home he shared with Marc and Isaac and started a home with Anya. What better place than the one where they’d discovered each other?

It made such simple sense to Luc.

Anya grew stiff in his grasp. He feared he’d made a mistake. Had he once again assumed she’d given herself to him when she hadn’t? Had he misread what she wanted again? His heart was moments away from cracking when she twisted in the circle of his arms. She looked up at him with her honey eyes. 

“If you asked, he might just give it to you.”

She pulled Luc’s face to hers for a kiss. He lost himself in the taste of her. Then, her words struck home. He pulled back, eyebrows arching high over his eyes.

“Your father approves of me?”

“Shit,” Anya breathed. “I forgot to tell you. Perhaps it was the mind-blowing sex in the lake that made me forget.”

Luc snuck another, long, passionate kiss before letting her go on. “Mind-blowing? Was that what you called it?”

“Mhm,” she answered into his kiss.

Luc pulled back, breaking the kiss earlier than Anya wanted. Her words still resonated through him. “When did this happen? When did you learn that?”

“Inside the facility while I was downloading the files. Dad found me. He thought I’d run away just because you were my mate. It seems everyone could tell just by looking at us. Dad told me he would learn to deal with it for me. More than that, he would learn to understand, I think.”

Luc buried his head in the space between her breasts. The heat from her bare skin helped to comfort him. She’d been vulnerable inside that building. There had been no way Luc could have helped her without starting an all-out battle and even that would have ended miserably for someone.

“It was an eye opener,” Anya said into the room. “His words made me realize that I wasn’t taking in the whole situation. At first… I thought everything was in black and white and I had to make a decision. My heart or my family. Since I didn’t know you very well, I chose my family. I denied myself everything that I was feeling so that my family could continue to live out their status quo.”

She grew quiet. The vibration of her voice inside her chest stilled. Luc turned his head to lay a small kiss against her skin.

“I didn’t think about how the world would be willing to change for me. I was too busy trying to keep it the same. Funny, isn’t it? I wanted to change the world, but given the change I balked. I was such an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” Luc said into her skin. He wanted to hold onto her forever. He wanted this moment to never end. But, it would. Tomorrow, they would visit the empty GOE facility to find more clues to his parents’ disappearance. They would uncover the injustices made against dragons in America. “Would you… would you live here with me? When all of this is over and we change the world, will you live under this roof with me?”

Anya stilled. He couldn’t tell what was going through her mind. Had he scared her away? Was it too soon? Their souls had mingled twice now. He didn’t think it too forward, but what did he know? He lifted his head to look his mate in the eye.

“I’m not asking you to give up your plans. Go out and finish your degree. Go out and assault the world with your vision. But, I would like it, when you’re finished with those things, if you would make a home with me here.”

“I would love to,” Anya whispered.

Luc’s smirk split into a wide smile. He pushed himself up to lay a soft kiss on her lips. He’d come to terms with the past. There was no changing what had been done. There was no fixing it, but now he had a future.

At least, the chance of a future. Who knew what tomorrow held for them.

 

***

 

Luc woke and his mate was nowhere to be found. At first, panic gripped him. He feared the worst. He thought she might have ventured to the abandoned facility without him. He worried GOE finally caught up to her and took his mate away from him. All he knew was that she was gone and he’d slept through it. The thought was a punch to the gut.

Then, he heard voices trickling down the hall. Familiar and warm. Home.

The other dragons had arrived. Luc forced himself up and out of the bed, even if the scent of his mate begged him to stay and linger a while longer. They had a lot to do this day. There was a lot to be put to rest today. Memories and fears that he’d carried for fifty years would be laid to rest alongside his parents.

Marc appeared in the doorway, not quite the face Luc was hoping to see, but not the worst thing ever. Luc told him so, told his twin that his ugly mug wasn’t the thing he wanted to see first thing in the morning.

“Then I would advise you to avoid mirrors.”

They both laughed. Marc didn’t have anything Luc didn’t have, especially a sense of humor even if the other twin didn’t show it often.

“Just make sure you come back today,” Marc added.

Luc paused and turned toward his brother. They were all each had left when it came to blood. Dane and Isaac were their family by choice, but Luc and Marc had never come across another coatl dragon in their lives. They were the last of their line, last of their kind. It created another kind of bond. It made them vow to survive and keep the line going.

“Best find yourself a mate, soon,” Luc informed his brother. It was meant to be a joke, but the weight of it dragged the humor from his tone.

Marc snorted, like he knew something about mates and didn’t care. Luc raised an eyebrow in question.

“Let’s just say that you’re a lot closer to having children than I am getting close to my mate in the next decade.”

“You already… you know your mate?” This was news to Luc. He thought they shared everything. There’d never been a lie or a secret between them in their life. This news was a knife in his heart.

Marc looked away, his trademark distant gaze as his arms rose to cross over his chest. After a long moment, lips pressed together, he nodded.

“Why didn’t you think to tell me? Did I not deserve to share this information with you?” Luc was angry. He felt betrayed.

Marc released a long sigh. “It’s not about you or us. It was about her. My… mate doesn’t know yet and I wanted to give her time. If you return today, I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Tease,” Luc snapped.

“Just because you give it all away doesn’t make me a tease,” Marc retorted, an age old inside joke between them. “It reeks of happiness in here. Let’s go get coffee and breakfast in the kitchen. It reeks a little less of happiness in there if only because of the smell of bacon.”

“It reeks of sex, you mean.”

Marc waved him off. “For you and Anya, it seems to be one in the same.”

His brother had a mate and hadn’t told him. Luc worked through the rolling waves of emotions until he could nod. He understood. Marc did what he had to do for his mate’s sake. That was a feeling Luc was starting to understand.

Luc bent and grabbed his fallen shirt before pulling it over his head. All he wanted was to get to his mate’s side. The rest of the world would be fine as long as he could stand beside Anya, as long as he could keep her safe.

“Pants, brother? Why don’t you try to put some on?”

Luc paused, trying to think of the place he’d last seen them when he realized his pants were nowhere in the room. His face warmed as he remembered the night before.

Luc scratched the back of his head. “I think they’re in the living room.”

Marc rolled his eyes, even if a smile touched the corner of his mouth. Marc was happy for his brother, even if the twin was afraid of what the day might bring for them. This was just a simple expedition into an empty building.

They stepped into the hall. Luc saw the familiar head of golden brown curls and felt his heart surge until he saw his mate standing too close to Isaac. A growl trickled up his throat. The beast wanted to leap over his mate and tear out his friend’s throat. The sudden bloodlust made him pause and steady his wild heart.

He couldn’t go around, attacking his friends because they stood too close to his mate. Then again, he wondered what they were doing there. He’d never seen Anya and Isaac share more than a few words before. Now, they were immersed in a low conversation that Luc couldn’t pick up.

   Anya’s head perked up, like she could feel his presence. Perhaps she could, now, because her head turned and her eyes caught his. A smile danced across her lips and lit hope through Luc’s chest. This woman, this brave little human, was his mate.

Luc closed the distance between them and pulled her tight to his chest so he could lay a kiss on the top of her head. She was already dressed for the day, wearing a pair of loose jeans and a black top. In the chair beside them was a backpack loaded with tools, like a crowbar and a pair of flashlights.

What would they find today? The hope was that they might come across the full files and perhaps any death records that might have been kept. Luc’s highest hope was for closure. After he and Marc had the closure they needed, then the dragons could deliberate on what they wanted to do with the information they had.

All they knew right then was that Lucia Avila had been in that facility at some point in her life. The idea… the notion that their mother might still be alive was a tiny voice, screaming in the back of his mind. He knew they were both thinking it, he and Marc, but neither wanted to give sound to the screaming voice, neither wanted to believe it possible after what they’d seen. Lucia’s greatest hope was death after that.

“I was just giving Isaac… some last minute directions,” Anya informed her mate.

Luc’s brow furrowed with confusion, but she didn’t offer any further explanation. He turned his gaze to the man he considered a brother and felt his beast grumble in response, the growl of a threat rising through him.

Isaac took a step back, his eyes downcast. Luc felt bad. The beast didn’t.

“Let’s get out of here before you and Isaac tear the house down.” Anya tossed her mate a pair of pants and waited somewhat impatiently for him to pull them on. Once he’d donned pants and shoes, she dragged him out of the house.