Chapter Eight

 

Nox leaned over the first-class seat and shoved a list in front of Vyr’s face. “I’ve made an itinerary for our trip.”

Riyah giggled to herself. Oh, she couldn’t wait to see what he’d added to it.

Vyr scrunched up his face as he read it aloud. “One, cheese factory. B, see Oregon’s grade-A, grass-fed moo cows. Three, kill and eat moo cows. Four, I’m a bear shifter, stop looking at the list like it’s weird. E, apologize to Remington, Juno, and Ash for being mega-dicks and trying to kill them and their mates. Six, make Nox Second in the Crew. Seven, lose Torren in the Oregon mountains somewhere because he is boring. Eight, give Nox all your beers on the flight.”

“Ow,” Nox muttered as Torren smacked him in the back of the head.

“All the drinks are free in first class, you idiot,” the grumpy silverback shifter pointed out. “And I’m not boring. I’m just sick of all of your perverted jokes today. If I hear you say ‘that’s what she said’ one more time, I’m going to break that window and shove you through it. I keep thinking if I just ignore you, you will stop trying to annoy everyone and be quiet. But no, the more we ignore you, the more obnoxious you are.”

“I’ll never give up,” Nox muttered. He turned to the passing flight attendant and smiled sweetly. “Can I have two Bud Lights?” He leaned over Vyr and Riyah’s seats again. “Why didn’t you get our seats all in a row so we could look at each other?”

“So I don’t have to look at you,” Vyr muttered, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

“Want to play I-spy?” Nox asked.

Vyr was currently giving Riyah very vivid imagery of him helping Torren throw Nox off the plane, and the smile growing on his face was a little disturbing.

Hoping to save Nox’s life, Riyah asked Nox, “Aren’t you supposed to be buckled?”

“I can’t figure out the Wi-Fi,” Nox murmured, poking at his phone. “I promised Nevada I would send her a dick pic from the plane, but it won’t let me buy service.”

“I’m sure Nevada will survive,” Vyr said without opening his eyes. Now he was imagining eating Nox whole while he was a dragon.

“Clearly, you don’t understand our dynamics. Nevada is seven levels out of my league, and the biggest thing I have going for me is my dick. I have to keep her addicted to it, even when I’m traveling, so that she never feels neglected and only thinks of me and what I can do to her body twenty-four-seven. I even manscaped.”

Riyah had turned in her seat, watching Nox through the crack between their chairs. She whispered to her mate, “You’ve never sent me a dick pic. I feel a little cheated.”

“There, I got the internet.” Nox started unsnapping the top button of his jeans like he would take the picture right then and there, but Torren slapped his hand away from his crotch and confiscated his phone. They broke out in a scuffle, but mostly were just slapping at each other like two giant, tattooed, grown-ass siblings in the back seat of a long car ride.

Riyah faced forward again. She reached for his mind. I think I want a dick pic!

The little headache that said Vyr was deep in her head started just behind her eyes. Most people didn’t like headaches, but she did. She liked being this close to Vyr.

You see my dick all the time.

But I want pictures. So I can bring it up and stare at it and miss your dick when you aren’t with me.

Vyr opened his eyes and rolled his head toward her. The fight behind Nox and Torren was getting louder, but they both were professionals at ignoring them. Seriously? Most girls don’t want dick pics.

Riyah gave him her sexiest crooked smirk. “Well, there’s your first problem, thinking I’m like other girls.”

“Oh, woman, I would never mistake you for that. You are one of a kind.” You want a dick pic? You got it. I’m gonna send it to you at some random time when you are supposed to be serious, though, so you blush and stutter and get busted with a naughty grin on your face.

Riyah giggled and pulled her knees up to her chest. “I like this game.” I’ll send you boobie pics, too.

The wicked expression on Vyr’s face vanished. “Yes, please.” You are the best wife and the best mate and have the prettiest tits in the whole world, he said loudly in his head.

And now heat was creeping into her cheeks. That was the best compliment he’d given her in a long time, so she rewarded him with touch because Vyr did better with affection now. She wrapped her arms around his stony bicep, rested her cheek against his shoulder, and smiled at the chick-flick movie he’d let her choose for them to watch together.

The rest of the flight went by fast. The boys quieted their arguing when they had beers to occupy them, and Riyah fell asleep against Vyr’s arm. When she woke, the pilot was instructing the flight attendants to prepare for landing, and then it was only another half hour before they were earthbound again.

Vyr had rented them the biggest SUV he could, thank goodness, because Torren needed space from Nox by the time they were an hour into the drive to the mountains near Tillamook, Oregon. He took up the entire third row, sat right in the middle, massive arms draped over the seats, glaring straight ahead. In the middle seat, Nox kept swatting at the back of his own neck, but that was probably because of the rumbling noise coming from Torren and his bright green gorilla eyes. Riyah tried to help by turning the music up louder to drown out the aggressive animal sounds, but their snarling ramped up even noisier. He was getting her inner polar bear all riled up, too. She was only a couple years Turned, while in the same shifter prison she’d met Vyr, and sometimes she didn’t have the best control.

“Torren,” Vyr growled, ghosting a glance at him in the rearview mirror, “if you make Riyah Change, I’m gonna burn you.”

“Need. Food,” Torren grunted in a gravelly voice. Hangry wasn’t even a big enough word for what happened to these boys when they got their hunger pangs.

So they pulled over and got lunch at a hole-in-the-wall burger joint.

“Have you let Grim know we’re coming?” she asked as they sat down with their food.

“No,” Vyr murmured. I would rather catch them in their natural habitat.”

“He means he would rather catch them fucking up than warning them the boss is coming so they pretend to be working like a well-oiled machine,” Nox called across the room around a giant bite of food in his mouth. He and Torren had opted to sit at a different table, as far away from Vyr as they could get.

“I’ve always respected that about you, you know?” she said softly, tearing one of her French fries into tiny pieces.

“What?” Vyr asked.

“You were never one for perfection. You prefer real. Your father reacts well when he sees professionalism, but with your mountains, you don’t put pressure on the Crews.”

“Pressure on them won’t turn these shifters to diamonds. It will just crush them,” Vyr said.

“But you recognize that. You let them improve on their own. Or not. Their future and how far they get is up to them. You just provide a safe place for them to recover.”

He was so handsome in this light. They were sitting by a big front window, and the sunshine was hitting his face just right. His bright silver eyes were made even brighter by the saturated light. The tendrils of tattoo ink that curled out from under the sleeves of his T-shirt were stark against his smooth, pale skin. The light and shadows highlighted and smudged the curves of his muscles like some charcoal drawing in a gallery. He was soooo…Vyr.

“That was the compromise I could live with,” he murmured, staring at his food. This was an admission. She could feel it. They hadn’t talked much in the last six months while they were both spiraling in their own little worlds.

“The compromise you made with the Red Dragon?”

He nodded. “I don’t have much control anymore. He wants to claim everything, but if I put a Last Chance Crew on the mountains I claim and give them a shot at recovering, I can feel like I did something good, you know?” He looked up at her with those striking silver snake eyes.

“You’re a good man, you know?”

Vyr huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Woman, you’ve been drinking.”

“Oh, please, I had one glass of wine on the plane, and that was hours ago. I know you, Vyr Daye. I know your heart. I can see inside your head whether you’re quiet and thoughtful or the dragon is raging. You never stop trying. You never have that ‘fuck it, just go burn everything’ moment. It’s not in you to quit. Torren is your guardian. And I’m your guardian. That’s what people say. But they don’t realize the real guardian of the Red Dragon. The one who does all the quiet work and saves the world every day? It’s you, Vyr. You’re a badass. And I know you get tired. I can feel it now. You’re exhausted. But I’m here. You can lean on me.”

“I’m also here,” Nox said from across the restaurant.

Vyr twisted in his seat to look at the boys, the legs of his metal chair scraping the tile floor.

Riyah waited for the punchline to Nox’s joke because he always had a punchline, but the blond-haired, beefed-up, tattooed jokester stared back at Vyr with the most solemn expression she’d ever seen on his face.

Torren was leaning on his elbows, hands clasped in front of him, empty plate pushed away, frowning as he studied Vyr. “I didn’t know that was why you’ve been putting those fuck-up Crews in the territory you claim.”

Vyr shook his head. “It’s not some big honorable thing—”

“Yes, it is,” Torren said so softly she almost missed it. “I thought it was part of your need to control people, but I was wrong. This whole time I thought you were just making more Crews to put under you.” Torren swallowed hard. “I thought we weren’t enough.”

Vyr huffed a breath and stood. He hesitated a moment and then grabbed his and Riyah’s plates before making his way to their table. He sat by Torren and then waited until Riyah took her seat next to Nox before he spoke. “The Sons of Beasts have always been enough. The dragon wants territory, not Crews. My dad keeps tabs on every shifter in existence. It’s always been his instinct. He stopped trying to claim territory a long time ago, but he still watches everyone. For me, I do that on a smaller scale. I watch the outcasts, the ones I relate to. The ones who struggle like I do, or like you, Torren, or like you, Nox. Like Candace and Nevada.” He looked at her and gave a small, crooked smile. “Like Riyah, the ones who have trouble finding their place in this world. It feels good to give them homes. The dragon doesn’t give a shit about that part, but I do. There’s good and bad in all of us, but some have to fight harder against the bad. I want those to succeed so at the end of my life, I can look back and not just see the fires I set. I want to be able to look back on the fires I put out, too.”

For every bridge Vyr had been burning, secretly, he’d been building new ones.

Torren cleared his throat once…twice. “I’m here, too.”

Those three words welded together one of the many cracks in the Sons of Beasts Crew.

Oh, the scar would still be there, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore.

Under the table, Riyah slid her ankles against her mate’s. Good Alpha.

Vyr offered her a slow, crooked smile. Her favorite.

There he was—her Vyr.

And this was the moment she knew he’d been right.

Everything would be okay.