As we left the windowless, soundproofed room we had tucked away on the upper level for unwanted guests, Snow approached us. “I brought Verity, figured she could help your new woman get adjusted. Can’t be easy being thrown into our world when she’s been on her own for so long.” I nodded my appreciation to him. Snow turned to Knox afterward asking, “Do you think this might have something to do with the group who took my sister?”
“Too soon to tell. All we know about the others is that one was a leopard, the other a vulture, and they probably weren’t acting alone. It’s possible. We have Aces on it, but need you to gather as much info as you can. We’re putting Thian with Aces to get us everything we need on the Council members too.”
Snow, being the SAA, and a no-nonsense kind of guy, took off to get busy doing his part and hunting down the leads we would need to take the bastards out. I turned to Knox and Brace. “Chantal isn’t going with them. We’ve already been bonded and she’s taken the leopard form to match my animal. There’s nothing they can possibly use to undo that, right?”
“Not that I know of, Gray. Don’t worry, your woman isn’t going anywhere without us fighting the whole damn way.”
“I’m going to check on her, make sure she’s settled with Bomber and Verity.” I took off and got about three steps away before I turned back. “Do not hesitate to get me if something pops or if the council jerkoff shows. Can’t believe that fuckwit was trying to send someone else to claim a woman for him. What the fuck kind of alpha does that?”
“The kind that hasn’t been challenged in a really long time and doesn’t know how to handle his business any longer,” Brace surmised. I couldn’t disagree with him. It took a fuck-ton of ego, and just as much stupidity, to send someone to claim a mate for you. “I’ll head down with you,” Brace told me as he jingled a shiny little gem on the end of a gold chain. “I want to see what dragon-breath does when I dangle a shiny in front of him.” He chuckled to himself, and once again I wondered if Chantal hadn’t hit the nail on the head. Brace and Bomber definitely had a weird chemistry. Looking at it one way, they were like close siblings who pranked one another, fought, squabbled, made up, and defended one another fiercely. Then again, there were the looks too, or more notable the times when they looked away too quickly so as not to get caught. It made me wonder why I’d never inadvertently picked up on something.
I shrugged off the thought as we made our way down to the lower level of the clubhouse in order to find Chantal making enough food to feed an army. “Holy shit, when you asked if she was any good at cooking, I’m pretty sure she didn’t think you meant to turn her into the club’s personal chef,” I scolded Bomber as if he were a child and not my club brother.
“Calm your tits,” he hissed at me, eyes narrowed, before turning a beaming smile back to my woman. “She wanted to do this. I told her to help me make sandwiches for everyone.”
“And I said that all these strong, capable men running around doing all of this work for me, needed to be fed better than just sandwiches.”
“Moonbeam,” I hummed out as I approached her and planted a kiss right over the mark I’d left during our claiming. “Love that you want to take care of my brothers, but they would have been ecstatic with sandwiches they didn’t have to make themselves.”
Bomber chuckled. “I tried to tell her that.” He was distracted as he got to the last word, and I saw his eyes continuously flicker off to Brace who was busy twirling the gold chain with the green gem attached to the end of it around on his finger as he whistled a little tune. Damn if he hadn’t been right. The dragon couldn’t manage to look away for any length of time. It was like he was mesmerized.
Brace glanced between me and Bomber and chuckled. “Told ya,” he laughed out. While his attention was on me, Bomber reached out and snatched the chain mid-arc in another swirl around Brace’s finger. He plucked the gem and gold chain out of the air and deposited it straight into his pocket. Chantal just stared at the scene in awe of what just took place.
“If anything shiny of mine ever goes missing, I want you to know you’re my number one suspect,” she told Bomber. Brace burst out laughing while Bomber failed to contain the blush of embarrassment on his cheeks.
Chapter Three Hundred Eighty-Three
“It’s just some pasta and meatballs,” Chantal whispered to me as we sat and ate what she made for all the guys.
“Sweetness, we would have been thrilled if you poured a can of soup in a pot and heated it up. This is going above and beyond,” Brace explained around a mouthful of pasta. Bomber slapped him in the back of the head, causing him to damn near choke on the noodles.
“You even had this lovely salad made up for those of us who aren’t heathens,” Bomber added to everyone’s amusement. You would think a dragon would be all about the meat and eating heartily. Not our resident dragon shifter. No, he was a damn
