“What’s going on?” Tori asked, trying to lift his voice above the noise while not disturbing the other hotel guests. Essentially an impossible task.
Mathilda whirled around sharply, her eyes narrowing on him as she pointed. “You! This is all your fault! You led them to us. You betrayed the clan, and now they’ve stolen three mages.”
Shock slammed into Tori, sending him stumbling back a step into Baldewin. His mate wrapped a supportive arm around him and tried to place his larger frame protectively in front of Tori.
A low growl rumbled through Baldewin so that his body was vibrating. Fearful that his mate was seconds away from shifting into his dragon form and eating the offending mages, Tori straightened and planted his feet so that Baldewin was forced to remain behind him.
“What are you talking about? We’ve been here all night. We would never have kidnapped anyone,” Tori shot back.
Okay, so he wasn’t entirely sure that was one-hundred percent true, but he believed with all of his being that not one dragon in their party would steal a mage against their will. His experience with Warin and Baldewin were proof enough of that.
“Three of our most precious young mages—Panu, Tanja, and Markku—have gone missing. You’ve obviously taken them. You knew dragons couldn’t be trusted! And yet—”
“In here! Now!” Alric snapped.
Tori looked up at the king of the Fire Dragons and gulped. Never in his life had he seen Alric looking so pissed. Even from some distance, Tori could see his normally dark blue eyes had gone shiny gold, and his voice was a deep rumble. The dragon was not going to put up with anymore shit from Mathilda and Tori’s old clan. She was talking about mages and dragons in the middle of a hotel hallway, risking the dragons’ secret and potentially exposing them all to the Jaeggi threat.
A glance at Rodrigo revealed that the ice dragon wasn’t in much better shape.
Tori and Baldewin were the last to enter the room, and Baldewin quickly ushered Tori over to where the dragons were gathered on one side. Cameron shuffled out of the bedroom wearing a pair of flannel pajamas covered in flying red dragons. His hair was standing up at strange angles, and he was holding his glasses in one hand while rubbing his eyes with the other.
“Is there a problem with breakfast?” he asked sleepily. When he plopped his glasses on his face, he stopped and blinked at all his unwelcome guests. “I’m guessing there will be no breakfast.”
“Mages were apparently kidnapped,” Tori said as a way of explaining the consort’s sudden guests.
“Oh shit.”
“Like you don’t know!” Mathilda started again. “You stole them. You stole our most precious young mages.”
It was on the tip of Tori’s tongue to point out that two of the three missing mages were males, making them expendable in Mathilda’s eyes, but now was not the time for such bitterness. He didn’t know the mages well, just faint acquaintances, but they were all in their late teens or early twenties at most. He wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they’d decided to run off on their own like he had, just to get away from her maniacal control and venom.
“We have not kidnapped any mages,” Rodrigo said sharply, his arms folded across his chest. The air around him seemed to drop twenty degrees, and Tori shifted a little closer to Baldewin and the fire dragon’s natural warmth.
“You have. Where else could they have gone?” Kirisi demanded. She was Mathilda’s right-hand mage and had always made it a priority to harass Tori at every opportunity.
“Of course. It’s not like anyone would ever want to escape such a warm and nurturing environment,” Cameron muttered, each word dripping with sarcasm. Tori bit his tongue to hold in a laugh. He hadn’t thought he could like the spunky young mage any more than he already did, but Cameron had just proven him wrong.
“Enough!” Alric snapped, holding both hands up.
Cameron was at his dragon’s side in an instant, his expression apologetic and worried. One hand rubbed across Alric’s left shoulder and down his arm in a loving massage.
“I want details,” Alric continued. His golden gaze remained pinned on Mathilda. “We need to move quickly. If we are lucky, the missing mages are like Tori and decided to leave on their own accord. If not, we can assume the Jaeggi have kidnapped them, and we need to find them now.”
Mathilda hesitated, her gaze searching each face from the Burkhard and Valerii Clan before looking at her own advisors. Tori could almost see the doubt growing like a dark cloud in her brain. What if Alric was right? What if the dragons hadn’t stolen the mages? What if the Jaeggi did start the war and were now attacking their own kind?
“Was this supposed to be a supply run?” Tori prodded, just to get any of them talking. They couldn’t afford to wait another second.