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“Ah. That makes more sense.” Evora frowned at the tunnel. “Hmm. I think we need to come up with a good plan B.”
“Earth dragons?” Vasily suggested.
“That’s my first wish. We need to pull in the Sodalicium for this.”
“The who’s-whatzit?” Amaru had never heard of this group.
Sweet Luka immediately explained for his benefit. “Things have changed a lot since you went to sleep, Amaru. We’ll catch you up on all of it, but the short answer is the Sodalicium is a nation of dragon clans and mages. All types. The earth dragons are part of them.”
Amaru didn’t think he was joking. He looked perfectly serious. Still… “You’re telling me multiple dragon clans are all sharing the same territory?”
“Yup.”
“Voluntarily?”
“Yup.”
“And no one’s died?” His voice rose incredulously because he just could not picture this. At all.
Luka’s expression turned sad. “As I said. A lot has changed while you slept. Dragons don’t fight each other anymore.”
Uhhh. Amaru rubbed his temple because that whole thing threatened a headache. He could not wrap his head around it. You know what? That would be a later him problem. He had quite enough on his plate already.
“Right. Um, so that’s a thing, I guess. Well, if you can call in earth dragons to help, that would honestly be the easiest method. It’s not like we can get everyone awake and out of here according to the original plan. Let me check one more thing.”
“Sure.” Evora encouraged him to go on.
Irany’s platform had been rather like his, a fail-safe to his fail-safe, so he wanted to wake him up if at all possible. Plus, he owed the bastard a good reaming out. Not to mention several vigorous I told you so’s.
He found him without trouble, stomped over there, and resisted the urge—again—to punch him, although that last part was the hardest. He’d kept his mates waiting because this moron couldn’t think a simple design through. Or create good enough fail-safes in case something went wrong.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. It would just piss him further off and then he’d not be able to think straight.
Drawing in a breath, he forced himself to calm down and reached once more for the controls.
Unfortunately, with the same outcome.
“Goddess of luck, why do you fail me so?” His head dropped as resignation filled him.
A large, warm hand came and rubbed between his shoulder blades in a soothing way. He looked up, comforted by Vasily’s concern. How’d he get so lucky to have two sexy, sweet mates like this?
“No good?” Vasily looked over the table. “I can offer dragon’s breath if you want to try again.”
“No point, but thank you, sweets.”
Vasily almost looked flustered at the endearment? Which was cute. It made Amaru want to call him all sorts of names to see which reactions he could garner. Why yes, teasing was his love language, why do you ask?
Luka joined him on his other side. “Who is this?”
“Irany. The inventor of all this.” Amaru waved a hand to illustrate his sleeping clan. And the Tupã. “If anyone can help me figure out what went wrong and how to undo it, it should be him. Maybe. Honestly, I have dwindling faith on that score, but at the very least he should be awake to fix the problem he started.”
He sighed again, aggravated. So typical that it fell to Amaru to fix what had gone wrong. Forget inventor, his role in the clan should be fixer.
Amaru looked around again, at friends and family, at his whole clan. It felt wrong to leave them down here like this. He was the guardian, after all.
As if he was able to read this thought off his face, Luka put an arm around his shoulders in comfort. “We won’t go far. We’ll pitch an encampment right on the lake’s banks and be a stone’s throw away if something happens. With the right reinforcements, we’ll be able to wake everyone up in no time.”
Amaru leaned into the hold, taking comfort in it. “Thank you. It just feels wrong to leave them like this, even though I know there’s nothing I can do in this moment.”
“We’ve been down here over an hour.” Evora made a ‘come hither’ motion with her hand. “We need to go before my mate loses his mind up there.”
Oh, she had a mate waiting on her? Poor dragon, he probably was pretty unhappy. “Then let’s go. I’m more than happy to see the sun again.”
“I bet.” Evora reached into a bag tied to her waist that rustled strangely. What was it even made of? “I’ve got the spell ingredients to create an air bubble, if you’d like one? Bit too far to hold your breath.”
She really was nice. “Please and thank you.”
Amaru looked up at Luka. He didn’t want to part from either of his mates for long, and he was shameless when he asked, “Will you swim me up?”
