Uther recoiled a bit. “I was just asking.”

“These surcoats are like the capes and have the crest of a royal family that hasn’t chosen sides one way or the other. It should keep you safe enough on these roads.”

After the clothes, Rhona handed out swords and short daggers for eating, expertly crafted by her and her father. Once done, she gave Uther a big ax, Caswyn a medium-sized hammer. And Aidan she gave a long-bladed dagger. All these weapons would change size when the wielder did.

Aidan held up his long-bladed dagger. “What am I to do with this, Rhona the Fearless?”

“What you do best,” she replied with a wink.

Then she handed Brannie an ax, a war hammer, and a gladius. All for her and her alone.

“But me stick?” Brannie asked.

“Looks like a stick. Use it when they least expect it.”

With a yawn, Rhona pointed at the meat over the fire. “Is that done? I’m starving and we need to get some sleep. We start early tomorrow.”

Uther and Caswyn pushed past Rhona, the triplets, and the dragon protectors traveling with them to be first in line for food. Then Rhona had to pry a hammer from one of the triplets, who tried to use it to crush the pair’s heads in.

Chuckling, Aidan slipped the dagger into its sheath.

“What did Rhona mean?” Brannie asked. “What do you do best?”

“When I first came for training, I was known for my skill of sneaking up on the other trainees and slamming their heads against walls.”

Brannie smirked. “Give you a hard time, did they?”

“I was the only royal in that class. They thought I was easy prey. I enjoyed pointing out how wrong they were. Sadly, my trainers didn’t appreciate my . . . reluctance to stop my reign of terror against my enemies.”

“That’s how you ended up in the Mì-runach?”

“The queen thought I’d be better suited in small groups of dragons who enjoyed sneaking up on others and smashing their heads into walls.” He held up the sheathed weapon. “Eventually I moved from smashing heads to a quick flick against the throat. A little messier but faster. Unlike you, I don’t need to revel in the destruction of others.”

“I don’t revel,” she lied, walking away in hopes of getting food from the cold, dead hands of Uther and Caswyn. “I just like to make sure they’re really dead. Nothing worse than when they pop up behind you. Still breathing.”

* * *

They ate their meal on large stumps, no one saying much.

When a large burp filled the silence, they all jumped a bit and everyone looked over at little Breena.

Picking venison out of her teeth with the tip of her finger, she stopped when she realized she was being stared at. “Wha’?”

“A little class, sister,” Nesta chastised.

Breena leaned in close, her nose against her sister’s cheek, and unleashed a burp that went on for a good two minutes.

Brannie saw Uther’s and Caswyn’s mouths drop, stunned as they gawked at the triplets. It wasn’t merely that Breena was still midway in her burp display or that Nesta, her jaw tight, was sitting there, silently raging. But that Edana had continued to shovel food into her mouth as if it was her last meal, completely ignoring or oblivious to her sisters’ antics.

As Brannie glanced over at Aidan, their gazes caught, held, and both ended up turning away, their stifled laughter shaking their bodies and causing tears.

When Breena finally finished, she kissed her sister on her cheek and went back to putting food in her mouth. Nesta’s brutal glare should have engulfed her sister in flames but, sadly, life didn’t work that way and she, too, eventually went back to eating her meal.

Once everyone had finished eating, it was Edana who pulled out a flask of Cadwaladr ale. She had the stopper pulled and the flask to her lips when Rhona snatched it from her hands and tossed the entire thing into the fire.

“You mad cow!” Nesta and Breena screeched in unison, the pair united in their need for ale. Edana just kept looking at her empty hand as if she expected the flask to reappear.

“We were drinking that,” Nesta barked at a steely-eyed Rhona.

“No. You weren’t.” Rhona looked over all of them. A sergeant in Her Majesty’s Army. But a general in the Cadwaladr Clan. “We are not on holiday. We have duties. Important duties that need to be accomplished quickly and efficiently. Can’t do that if you lot are drunk off your asses, now can we, Branwen the Awful?”

Blinking, Brannie looked up at her cousin. “What the battle-fuck did I do?”

“How many times have you gotten drunk one night, only to wake up the next day someplace else, with no idea how you got there?”

Brannie opened her mouth to argue that, but Aidan leaned in and whispered, “Let it go.”

He was right. Nothing Brannie said would convince Rhona that she was wrong on this point. She was a firm believer that the Cadwaladrs, as a whole, drank too much. And it was one thing to drink when you just had to get up the next morning to perform some basic army duties or handle guard duty. But when on a mission . . . there was no excuse for “that,” as she liked to call the Cadwaladr Clan’s love of heading out to a local pub and indulging in a few pints.

“You lot going off to do that again?” she’d ask with that tone.

Not that Rhona didn’t drink. She did and she did it well, but it’d better be the right time. And traveling on an important mission for the queens was not, in her mind, the right time.

“Now”—Rhona pointed at the triplets—“you three take first watch.”

That was met with eye rolls that had Rhona walking over to them, but the She-dragons were off the log and disappearing into the surrounding trees before their older sister could launch into one of her famous tirades.

“The rest of you get some sleep,” Rhona ordered. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time for your watch.”

“Are you going to get some sleep?” Brannie asked her.

“I will. But you know me.”

Brannie did. Her cousin slept like a house cat. Waking up the instant she heard a sound that she knew wasn’t normal. And as soon as she woke up, the dragoness was ready for battle.

Although Brannie often woke up swinging, she wouldn’t say she was necessarily ready for battle or even really awake. One time she was halfway through a battle before she realized that she hadn’t been dreaming but had actually been knee-deep among the enemy.

Brannie tossed the bones from her meal out into the woods so that the local animals could eat and gratefully took one of the bedrolls that Rhona provided her and the others. Sleeping on hard ground was not one of her favorite things. Unless, of course, she’d been drinking with her kin. Then, wherever Brannie landed would be her bed for the night.

As Brannie yawned and dropped her bedroll on the ground, she noticed Keita standing off to the side, staring up at the sky.

Brannie would never call her cousin pensive. Far from it. This was usually Keita’s time to shine. Flirting with the males and joking with the cousins. But she’d been of few words for hours now.

At first, Brannie was just going to get some sleep and leave her cousin to whatever her problems were, but . . . that simply didn’t feel right. She didn’t dislike Keita. She was annoyed by her. And some days she wanted to punch the little twat in the throat, but they were still kin.

Leaving her bedding, Brannie walked over to Keita, standing next to her.

“You all right, cousin?” she asked when Keita didn’t acknowledge her.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re worried about Ren,” Brannie guessed.

“Concerned.”

“We’ll do our best . . . to find him, I mean. Promise.”

Keita glanced at her, forced a smile. “I know.”

Keita headed to her own bedroll, which was placed near Uther and Caswyn because Brannie knew that pair would destroy anyone or thing that came too close to her cousin.

Brannie returned to her own bed and as she snuggled down, she saw that the always observant Aidan was watching her, his brows raised in question.

She only had to tilt her head a bit, shoulders giving a tiny shrug for him to understand her perfectly. Of course, they’d been in battle together for years now and Aidan had been protecting his Mì-runach brethren from her since the beginning. The dragon knew how to read her.