“Throw me the blue piece,” Marcus told him after setting the drums down nearby.
“Why?”
“Just toss it to me, will you?”
The Dragon growled, very low. But he picked up the blue cloth and tossed it to Marcus.
“They still don’t really get along,” I whispered to Riley as I handed her more candles.
She grinned at me. “You should hear what’s going on in my head. For every sentence they say out loud, there are at least three along the link.”
I raised a brow. “Do I want to know?”
She shook her head. “Let’s just say I am picking up profanity I had no idea existed.”
Marcus stomped closer to where the ocean lapped over the cave’s inner beach, and pointed to a stretch of gravel beyond it. “I need your Dragon to dig here.”
Havoc straightened. “What the fucking hell for?”
“We need a bathing pool,” he replied.
The Dragon shifter pointed to the water. “We have one.”
“We need one minus the freking carnivorous eels.”
Havoc snorted steam, but a few minutes later he’d shifted to his beast and was digging. When he’d gone down about a foot, the water started flowing into the hole. Filtered by the gravel, it was crystal-clear.
“Nice,” Marcus said. “Keep going.”
The look Havoc shot him could have fried eggs, but Marcus ignored him. While the Dragon resumed digging, Marcus gathered together four long sections of wood from a pile along the cavern wall. He used rocks to hold them steady, and draped the blue cloth between them to form a canopy over the nest piled by Havoc. Then he fussed with that too.
“Goods enough for yous?” Havoc stepped back to survey his handiwork. Marcus stomped over to him and held up a stick that he’d wrapped a scrap of cloth around.
“Light, please,” he said.
Havoc glowered at him before he breathed a gout of flame that, along with his torch, almost set Marcus alight. The two glared at each other, and Riley grimaced at me while rubbing her temple.
“Now unless you want to experience shrinkage at a key moment,” Marcus said, “I suggest you breathe fire on the pool, too.”
Havoc growled, but he pointed his snout to the water, and opened his jaws. The flames that issued from it had the water steaming in moments. He broke off to lift a lip, before saying, “Goods enough?”
Marcus nodded. “Perfect.”
“I’ms so happy.” Havoc hissed.
Despite the apparent hostility, I sensed a connection between the two men that hadn’t existed before. And the glances they shot to Riley—full of longing and lust and a sense of anticipation—set my own body on fire. She was clearly the center of their world.
Working alongside the three of them, I felt part of it, and yet, apart. My heart ached, but what worried me was that my scent had intensified. The cave was large, but without much air movement—the enclosed space would fill with my pheromones.
Riley had paused in her placing of a candle, and Marcus came from behind to wrap his arms around her.
“She’d be happy for us,” he said, and I realized they were talking about Vali.
Riley placed her hands and arms over his. “I know. I just wish… I miss her.”
When Marcus tightened his arms and placed a tender kiss on Riley’s neck, the depth of their emotion threatened to unhinge me. Being here was a bad idea on so many levels. I needed to be gone, to make a clean break. But as Riley puttered happily alongside me, I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t stand to see her expression when I told her I’d changed my mind and had to go.
So I continued, placing candles on every flat surface I could find, including the rocks that Havoc, under Marcus’s direction, moved to frame the bathing pool. Marcus then drifted around, lighting candles with his torch.
