Chapter 26

Fraser

The youngsters I took up here every year had longer attention spans than the adults I was surrounded by.

"It's not much longer, right? The hike wasn't this long when we were in school." Lorne seemed to think I was making it longer just to torture everyone. "Has someone messed up the trails too?"

Yes, but—

"I fixed the trails." Carrick sounded like he was on his last bit of patience when dealing with his mate. "But you know that because we've had this conversation three times already."

We'd also had the why did he have to come too conversation three times, but I wasn't throwing that in his face.

I was just doing my best to ignore the fact that Lorne had promised him a wonderful blow job in exchange for company on the hike.

"I'm distracted and grumpy." Lorne's perfectly manipulative pout was obvious in his voice even though I didn't turn around to look. "It's too far. I think they're still broken. What if we've been walking in circles?"

Before I could point out that I was not a terrible guide, he kept going. "I heard that the last group got so turned around they didn't even make it to the portal. They didn't get to have story time and I bet there are a thousand sticks."

His dramatic delivery had several other littles sighing. "Can I ride on your back, Daddy? I'll be little and you won't even notice me."

Bullshit.

Wait, which group hadn't found the portal clearing?

How long had the trail been fucked up?

Would—

"No, it's not too private to ask." Kenzie's too-innocent voice finally weaved its way through the other ridiculousness and I realized the mate bond was suspiciously quiet. "Honest."

Good grief.

Turning around on the trail, I frowned and searched through the crowd to find my mate.

Yep. Wide eyes and blushing.

There he was right beside that naughty dragon who was doing his best to look entirely too sweet.

Where was that troublemaking dragon's Daddy?

There.

Glaring at the man who was trying not to laugh, I gestured toward the next turn in the trail. "Alright, we're almost there. You guys go up and make sure it looks perfect. We want Paxton to see it pristine, right? I'll keep him here for just a second so you can make sure it's ready."

We'd all grown up going on field trips to pick up the sticks around the area and then hear the story of the portal, so there were only faint grumblings about forced marches and not enough snack breaks as they kept going. With kids, I would've never left them on their own, but the nuts in question were all technically adults and most had their Doms and Daddies with them.

Okay, a few of the other locals we'd somehow picked up when Kenzie had gone to the diner for breakfast were single, but they were well-behaved and trying not to giggle at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

I was hoping that meant they'd be good, but I wasn't going to hold my breath. I'd just been grateful Kenzie hadn't dragged Mr. Kennedy along with him, so I hadn't classified the extras as naughty or nice…that had clearly been a misstep on my part based on their grins.

"Kenzie? Talon?" Glaring at the two men who were suddenly both looking guilty, I didn't break my stare as I gestured for them to follow the rest of the group. "I'm sure you're not deliberately making my mate squirm, are you?"

Paxton was just too cute and too polite. They probably couldn't help themselves. I'd always thought Talon was the one with the common sense between the two of them, but I was starting to see why they were mates.

"No." Kenzie shook his head, giving me wide eyes that were not believable at all. "We're keeping him entertained, but now we're going to get the portal ready. I'm very good at clean-up games."

Just look cute and play dumb.

Yep, the old men definitely had a point.

As Kenzie dragged Talon off with whispered instructions not to look so guilty, I reached my hand out for Paxton. He wasn't too startled and brushed off whatever they'd done as he hurried over to me. "I…I didn't ask enough questions. I forgot. You mentioned it, but I forgot to ask."

I was going to kill those two.

"Next time anyone asks to walk with you and keep you company, I'm going to tell them no." Paxton's immediate nod said I needed to keep a closer eye on him when we were in public. "Alright, what was Kenzie torturing you with?"

"Um, well…" Paxton nearly tripped over his own foot and almost went down, so I swept him up in my arms and kept walking as he caught his breath. "Thank you, Daddy."

He rested his head on my shoulder and sighed instead of telling me that he needed to walk on his own like he normally would have, so I knew I was right to worry. "Is your hoard naughty toys, Daddy?"

Dragons above.

"No." My firm answer had him sighing in relief. "What made you think that?"

Telling myself that I shouldn't jump to conclusions, I tried not to immediately call out Kenzie.

"Kenzie said he didn't know what your hoard was and he said that dragons usually kept that private when it was silly or naughty ." Petting my chest, Paxton paused and took a deep breath. "It would be okay if it was silly."

I should've jumped to conclusions.

Paxton was trying to sound like a good grown-up but he sighed. "I think I'd prefer silly, Daddy. I'm sorry if it's naughty, though. I don't want to hurt your feelings."

Trying to decide if I was going to laugh or groan, I kissed his head as we walked. "It's more practical than anything, little bug. My hoard is the books in the living room. The ones on the bookshelf. I was very frustrated when I was younger that it wasn't cooler."

I had a mix of childhood favorites and actual antique books, but the closest thing that came to fascinating or weird were the dirty bookmarks I'd found.

Paxton didn't mind that it was boring, though. His relief flooded through the bond as he let out a deep breath in a rush of air. "Thank God. I was worried you had a hoard of toys under the bed. Kenzie was…he was so…"

Kenzie was a menace…and so was his Daddy.

I had every intention of telling both men that when a shocked cry echoed down the mountain and cut off my mental threats.

Fuck.

Picking up the pace, I held Paxton tighter and double-timed it to the portal. I didn't like the quiet that had descended on the mountain and it didn't take long for me to realize even the birds had gone silent.

"Is someone hurt?" Paxton held on tight as he whispered, but I could feel his worry, so I kissed his head and tried not to get him more worked up.

"They're all drama queens. Someone probably got scared by a bug or a snake." Fuck, someone probably got scared by nothing. I was overreacting. "Lorne keeps asking why he can't bring the bugs home and Kenzie just tried to convince you that my hoard was sex toys. They're not geniuses."

They were a bunch of pains in the ass.

Well, except Alick and his mate…and Stefan was polite and hadn't traumatized Paxton yet.

But my stomach sank when we broke through the trees and saw the two most rational members of our troop staring at something in shocked horror.

How big was the fucking snake?

The mages had to stop messing with shit.

"Oh wow, Daddy."

Fuck…I'd have preferred a big snake.

"You didn't tell me it was alive." The awe in Paxton's voice and the horror on everyone else's face had my heart nearly stopping as I finally realized what I was seeing.

"Because it's not supposed to be." Great dragons above. The portal that had just been a stone circle my entire life, and for as long as anyone living could remember, was filled with a shimmering swirl that looked almost like the blue-black darkness of the deep ocean. "It's not supposed to be."

"What the fuck did the mages do this time?" Boyd's growled-out question had half of us nodding in response without even thinking about it.

"For fuck's sake. Most of them can't figure out any spells beyond fucking with the flowers. It's not us this time." Carrick's words started out with a bark but gradually quieted until he was almost whispering. "This was definitely not us this time."

That didn't make me feel any better.

"Goddamned fucking alien space portal." Talon's words echoed a lot of what was in my own head, but I kept it to myself.

"Um, if one of you guys had started randomly repeating old spells out of those books in the library, now would be the time to confess it." Grady's tone wasn't quite as tense as everyone else's but he was staring in shock the same as the rest of us.

"The old books mostly have recipes for weird stuff no one eats anymore and dirty stories about their love lives." Stefan's eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger as he inched closer to his mate. "Oh, by the way, if anyone from here has a mate that's from here as well, they should really get a DNA test done before having kids."

For fuck's sake.

Paxton dropped his voice and whispered in my ear. " Everyone was naughty back then, Daddy. Not just your relative."

Unfortunately, with all the excitement, he'd forgotten the better than human hearing part and everyone around us nodded.

"It's probably fine by this point." But it would explain some of the nonsense. "This is not fine."

"I should've never let you guilt me into doing this hike, Kenzie. I just wanted pancakes on my day off." Patterson, one of the random locals we'd picked up, was probably right to blame Kenzie, but Talon's glare said he didn't appreciate it. "How did you get me dragged into the apocalypse?"

Talon kept his thoughts to himself, mostly because we were all just staring stupidly at the portal and we kind of agreed with Patterson. We could've been standing there dumbfounded for thirty seconds or thirty minutes, but we were all stunned silent as we took in the sight.

The portal was active.

Eventually, my brain started to churn again and questions started popping up.

"There was an earthquake about six months ago." Something like that. "I…I don't remember exactly. Does anyone remember the last time we actually did the usual hikes? I did the one at the beginning of the last school year."

But that was almost a year ago.

Stefan's mouth opened but it took a few tries for words to come out. "I…I heard a woman…one of the mages…talk about a hike that they were supposed to do right after I got here. She said they'd canceled it at the last minute, but she said they weren't going to tell. I think she said they were going shopping? I don't know. It was a while ago and there was so much weird stuff going on at that point."

That'd probably been the most normal conversation our new librarian had overheard.

"Melinda. Someone must've scheduled her to do the hike on the same day that pottery festival is on." She was slightly rabid about that. "We need someone else to set up the schedule for this."

I wasn't even sure who was in charge anymore, but it wasn't me, and they'd done a piss-poor job of it.

"Um, last spring someone at the diner was talking about the hike and said they got turned around." Lorne shrugged as the details got vague. "They said they felt like they were going in circles and just gave up. I thought they were just lazy because I'd have been lazy and it'd sounded like a good excuse."

Several other people nodded, so I knew it wasn't just something random he'd put together.

"They probably were lazy but that doesn't mean that they weren't going in circles." I wasn't going to say they were wrong because things had gotten fucked up around that time. "Are we saying that no one has been up here to check on the portal in nearly a year?"

For fuck's sake.

The bobbing heads around me didn't make me feel any better.

"There was a smaller earthquake last fall after your hike." Kenzie's voice was soft and still filled with awe as he stared at the portal. "I think…I think it was the weekend most of you went to that teaching convention thing. It…it was small and everyone ignored it. My toys barely even wiggled."

Clearly, something had done more than wiggle the portal.

"Is this where the bugs came from, Daddy?" Paxton didn't seem to care that everyone could hear or that he was still being carried, but his death grip on my neck said he wasn't going to agree to being put down anytime soon.

"I…I don't know." I had more questions than answers and the list just got longer as a colorful butterfly I couldn't remember the name of slowly made its way across the meadow and then through the portal. "Great dragons above."

"Did…" Grady took a moment and swallowed before he dragged Alick farther back from the portal. "We all saw that, right?"

"Wow." The awe in Kenzie's voice was understandable but the way he took a step forward was not.

"Mackenize. I'm not going to another planet." Talon started mumbling something about fucking aliens before he got back on track. "I have work tomorrow and you have that train set to fix. We're not going into that portal."

He had a point but it would've sounded better without all the fucking aliens mixed in as he kept muttering to himself.

"It's shiny." Lorne hadn't moved closer, but his mates each took an arm to keep the impulsive dragon from doing anything ridiculously impulsive. "I just want to pet it, Daddy."

For fuck's sake.

Paxton held me tighter. "I don't want to touch it."

Well, at least a few of us had common sense and self-restraint.

But that might've been because he had bigger things on his mind. "Daddy…you…you're not going to leave me, right? You said…you said your people came through the portal. Will they want to go back?"

My people couldn't be trusted to meet strangers without setting off alarm bells. No one in town should be allowed to make a decision like that.

Oh wow.

Everyone in town.

Shit.

"This isn't just an issue for the local council." Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. "This is a problem for every council."

Paxton's fear coming through our bond and the way he hid his face against my neck had some of my brain clearing.

My mate.

Taking a deep breath, I forced my feet to take us away from the portal and over to the edge of the woods where logs had been laid out to form a seating area. I picked out the largest one and sat down in what I'd always considered my spot, Paxton perched on my lap. "Hey, no hiding. Look at me, little bug."

He huffed and shook his head. "No."

Smiling at my dramatic cutie, I kissed his head. "Yes. Look at Daddy."

I got a few more sighs and wiggles, but eventually he sucked in a breath and eased back just enough to be able to say he'd obeyed. When I could see his eyes, I gave him a big smile. "Good boy. Thank you."

He must've realized things weren't as bad as he'd feared because curiosity and something lighter came through the bond. "I…"

That was it but it was enough.

"You're my good boy. That's right." Kissing his nose, I opened the bond as wide as I could and there was almost an audible pop in my head.

"Hey, little bug. Can you hear me?"

The answer to that was clearly yes because his eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open.

"Picture the mate bond in your head and make it brighter."

I'd never had to explain it to anyone so I wasn't sure that would be enough until Paxton seemed to fill my mind.

"Daddy?"

Bingo.

"There we go."

Kissing his nose again, I leaned my forehead against his and looked deep into his eyes.

"I love you, little bug, and I'm not going anywhere."

Paxton threw his arms around me as happiness and pleasure flooded through me.

"You're my mate. My boy. There isn't an adventure big enough or a world interesting enough to take me away from you. You're my world, little bug, and that will never change."

No matter what was in store for us.