“Why do they call this football?” Ainsley looked around the room to everyone in general, as the question had not been posed to any one of us in particular. “Everywhere else in the world, football is a different game entirely. Even I know that.”

Klaus was sitting beside me on the sofa. He snickered. “Because Americans must do things their own way. What they call soccer is what the rest of the world knows as football.”

She exchanged a frown with Leslie, who sat across from her at the chessboard. “I’ve always found organized sports to be something of a waste of time,” Leslie shrugged. “Even the names are rather arbitrary.”

I shook my head. “Women.”

Klaus nodded.

“I’d watch myself, if I were you,” Ainsley warned him. Her eyes, which were so like mine, narrowed in mock anger. “You might not want to agree with him on all things, is all I’m saying.”

He shrugged. “You see what I’m up against. I must choose my battles wisely.”

“You’ll get no argument from me there,” I chuckled. My twin was a force to be reckoned with. I had been on the losing end of her sharp tongue many times.

It occurred to me at that moment that I was satisfied with the turn life had taken. No, I wouldn’t have chosen for Gavin or any of the other members of our clan to die so needlessly. I would rather he still be alive to lead our clan, as he had for so many hundreds of years before the terrible day when our enemies found our home.

There had been additional challenges since then, too. Life had not settled into comfort or peace in the aftermath of our return.

But it had been weeks since Kiera had joined us and since then, things had settled down considerably. We had fallen into our old roles, ensuring the clan’s safety and secrecy from the outside world.

Humanity had been through quite a lot in over a millennium, but there was little doubt they would still look unfavorably upon dragons. If anything, the improvements in technology would only lead to the truth of our existence spreading more quickly than we ever could have imagined.

Even my own dragon had been strangely quiet and contented in the days leading up to that football game. As though he could find nothing to rage and roar about. A small blessing, to be sure. In his silence, I could hear myself think when making decisions on clan business.

When Tamhas motioned to me from the doorway leading out to the corridor, I thought little of it. My guard was that far down. I joined him without thinking twice.

Only when I noticed the deep frown, the creased forehead, did the dragon stir to life and my instincts warn me of what was to come.

“What is it?” I asked, glancing over his shoulder to where Keira stood.

“It seems as though we have a problem,” he murmured. “We ought to have a meeting on it. Right away.”

“Everyone,” Keira added. In her hands was a beaded bracelet which she kept running her fingers over, turning it again and again. She seemed ready to explode with nervous energy.

“All right, then.” I made the announcement to gather in the round room, between the cave entrance and our living quarters. It seemed as good a place as any.

As I walked with Tamhas, I asked, “Is there anything you wish to tell me before everyone is gathered? You know I little appreciate being the last to know things.”

“We found something out in the woods. Signs of a struggle.” His words came out sort, clipped. “Keira believes it has to do with that friend of hers from home. The one who located our mountain.”

“You’ve proof of this?” I asked before remembering the bracelet she fretted over. It seemed a strange thing for her to carry as she did. If it belonged to the girl…

What? What did it mean?

Nothing good. I should have known the short-lived peace we’d enjoyed was too good to be true.

By the time everyone gathered, all eyes on me for an explanation as to why they’d been pulled away from whatever it was they’d been involved with, I was seething. The dragon all but roared, demanding answers.

“It seems we’ve had a visitor,” I announced, glaring at Keira.

It was her fault for leading her friend to us. If anything happened to her, if she lost her life or was tortured for information, it would be on Keira’s head and not mine.

I could only take responsibility for those in my clan. They were already more than enough for me to look after. Foolhardy friends could not be my concern.

“Another visitor?” Dallas chuckled, with several of the others joining in. “It seems our ranks are growing all the time.”

“This is not that sort of visitor.” I turned to Tamhas and Keira.

“My friend, Emelie,” Keira said with a tremor in her voice. “Her bracelet was in the woods.”

“Why would she be here?” Ainsley asked. She and Keira hadn’t gotten off on the best of terms, but they seemed to be warming up to each other quite nicely. Rather than an accusation, her question was one of concern.

“We went looking for any sign of her because she sent Keira a message of concern a week ago,” Tamhas explained. “Stating she was in Scotland and would be looking for her.”

“She might not necessarily have come here straight away,” Keira added. “She might even have become lost at first. But someone found her, and they left this behind.”

“Damn it!” I could control myself no longer. “I knew that as soon as we began bringing in outsiders, something like this would happen. This is why I was so unfair—I know you all thought I was,” I continued when mouths opened, as though my family was ready to protest.

My dragon would not be silenced. “This is why I was so unfair. This is why I did not wish for us to open our lives to the lives of humans.”

Of everyone present—including Tamhas and Keira, who were stunned into silence—it was Ainsley who spoke up. Naturally.

“To be fair, neither Klaus nor Keira are human,” she called out from the rear of the group. “Klaus is a shifter, same as us.”

I should have known she would take his part.

“He is not a dragon,” I reminded her before looking to him. “I mean no offense.”

“You spoke of humans,” she countered, her voice more strident than before. “I merely remind you that he is not one.”

The two of us needed to have a talk about undermining me while among the others. I expected no less from her when we were alone—she had always been one of rather strong opinions, to put it mildly—but my leadership was still fresh enough, still so new, that I feared what the effects of too much opposition might bring.

Doubts, whispers, perhaps the belief that one of the others might be better suited to leadership than myself.

“Neither is Keira, not entirely, she continued. “She is a Blood Moon Priestess.”

“Aye,” I growled, jumping on this fact. “And it is because of her relation to the Priestesses that her friend has disappeared. For if any of you believe this does not have something to do with the coven, speak now. I’m willing to listen if you truly do not believe the Priestesses have a hand in this.”

The silence was deafening.

I nodded slowly, more than a bit relieved. We had no time to argue the point if it was a matter of readying ourselves for war with the Priestesses.

“For all we know,” I added with a snarl, “this friend is one of the Priestesses, herself.”

“That is not true,” Keira spat. “She knew no more of them than I did before my arrival. These Priestesses aren’t exactly a viral sensation, you know?”

“You were not aware you were one of them,” I reminded her. “Who is to say she isn’t also an unknown member of the coven?”

“I’ve seen the back of her neck before,” she informed me with a smug smile. “She used to wear her hair as short as a man’s in the back. She doesn’t have the mark I have.”

Tamhas slid an arm around her waist, and she leaned against him. He shot me a look, as though asking me to take it easy on her.

I knew she was hurting, worrying about her friend, but that was hardly a concern of mine. My concern was with the clan, as always. This Emelie was not one of us. A mere human. Humans would gladly have hunted us down and murdered us until we were no more.

My dragon reminded me of something else—something even more insidious, something which would surely get through to her and Tamhas and my sister. All of them.

“What if this is their way of getting to you?” I asked. “What if they want you back, and this is their way of finding you? What if they thought she was you?” My anger grew with every word, like a cloud billowing larger all the time, until I was very nearly enraged.

She seemed to shrink beneath my suggestions, as though she had already considered herself at fault for whatever might be happening to her friend. And it would be her fault, all of it, because she had chosen to find Tamhas at all.

This pleased my dragon immensely. He pushed me forward, as though urging me to take one final shot which would render her silent for good. He wanted to hurt her for putting us in danger, for bringing the coven so intimately into our lives after hundreds of years of separation.

None of them knew the reason for the separation. None, except me.

Even so, I didn’t wish to make things any worse for the girl. No, I was not a beast, nor a demon, no matter the fact that I was a dragon. I would not purposefully hurt her.

“Well? What are we going to do?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”

“What am I going to do?” I repeated over the sound of my dragon’s roar. How the others did not hear it, I was uncertain, as it seemed to split my head in two. I would need to shift and take flight once this was over, most likely, or else risk bursting free of my human form and destroying everything around me with a snap of my tail.

I looked around, from one of my kin to another, searching for support. For at least one of them to tell Keira it would be madness to go out there and look for someone who meant nothing to us, who had nothing to do with us. We had already come close enough to danger too many times.

None of them spoke up, even if they agreed with me.

Betrayal! my dragon insisted, ready to dispense swift justice.

“I do not understand a single one of you,” I growled, my eyes still traveling over the faces I had known the entirety of my long life. “How can you stand there and say nothing to defend the protection of your clan? Do you all truly believe it would be a wise decision on my part to allow for such flagrant disregard for our safety? Why should I lead us down this path, when we all know what the certain outcome will be?”

“We do not know what the outcome will be. There is nothing certain about it,” my twin sister traitorously replied.

“It is my job, my entire mission in life to maintain the safety of this clan, in case any of you need reminding,” I called out. “It seems that safety has been the last thing on anyone’s mind. It’s as though you’ve all gone crazy! What happened to you? Why do you no longer care what happens here?”

“Perhaps we’ve seen how little it matters whether we’re cautious or no,” Tamhas muttered, folding his arms. “We were careful before, or we thought we were. We went along as ever, going through the same motions as we had for hundreds of years. Where did it lead us?”

“That was no fault of Gavin’s,” I was quick to remind him, shooting a brief glance of apology to his widow. Bonnie looked unfazed by everything swirling around her, as though nothing any of us said could touch the serenity which surrounded her being. She was by far the eldest member of the clan and, frankly, I could have used her support just then. But I would not go so far as to ask for it.

“As it would be no fault of yours if anything were to bring harm to us now,” Ainsley replied in a softer voice than the one she’d used previously. “We cannot keep the outside world outside forever. Perhaps we’ve opened the floodgates, and there is no way to hold back the rush of water now. What’s done has been done.”

Against my wishes. Not that it mattered. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Rather than leaving me with a sense of resignation, the knowledge merely infuriated me all the more.

It was time to bring an end to the conversation. I wanted nothing more to do with any of it. To think, the day had begun so well.

I cleared my throat, quelling my rising anger and that of my dragon, who was all but prepared to resort to violence. But then he was always prepared to make himself known violently if words did not work. “This is all very pretty, this wordplay we seem to have gotten ourselves caught up in, but it does not change my mind. We will not entangle ourselves with the Blood Moon Priestesses, as such involvement would surely come to no good end. My decision is final.”

I looked to Tamhas then, hoping to catch his eye, as well as Keira’s.

His was the only face I saw of the two.

“Where is she?” I asked.

His eyes widened when he looked about himself. “I don’t know. She was beside me a moment ago.” Everyone standing near him muttered and shrugged as though they had no better idea than he as to where his mate had gone.

As a handful of them left to look for her in the room she shared with Tamhas, in the communication center and the kitchen, I looked down the tunnel toward the cave entrance.

She hadn’t gone to her room. She’d gone out there, into the world, to find her friend.

If it weren’t for Tamhas’s stubbornness and the fact that Ainsley would certainly take his side, I would’ve bid Keira farewell without a moment’s hesitation. As it was, she had only served to complicate things even further.