“I am sorry,” Liu Wei told Geoffrey. A handsome, hulking man stood silently behind him, his face solemn and his eyes worshipful. “I regret much, but love can make us brave and, at the same time, very afraid. I think, perhaps, you might understand.”
Geoffrey inclined his head. “Some might not.” He gazed at Ian, fierce as a tiger, dancing with Matthieu, brave as any lion. They were his heart and his soul, and he would do anything to protect them. Anything at all. “But I do.”
Liu Wei bowed his head in acknowledgment, then drifted off, his large, muscular shadow in tow.
Geoffrey stood alone, but surrounded by family and friends. He smiled, still not sure how he’d arrived at this point, but happy to be there. It was perfect, perfect, perfect.
Then Matthieu stopped dancing and looked up. Ian halted beside him, a frown on his face. The nestler Geoffrey had strapped over his chest gave a sudden jolt.
“The twins,” Matthieu cried out.
The music in the ballroom stopped as the room filled with surprised murmurs.
Geoffrey felt it again. The nestler jumped. Everard appeared at his side out of nowhere, almost as if he had literally flown across the room.
“They’re hatching,” his brother said.
“They can’t be. It’s too soon.”
“Doesn’t matter, little brother.” Everard took the nestler away from Geoffrey and held it out for Matthieu, who also seemed to fly across the room, followed closely by Ian. “It seems these two are impatient to join the party.”
“Non.” Matthieu opened the nestler and put his hand inside. “It’s too soon,mes trésors.You need to stay inside for a little bit longer. That’s what youroncleEverard said you must do. Please, for me, for your papas,restez.”
“Darwin says they’re ready to come out,” Harry announced, his whelp on one shoulder and his lizard, complete with a very tiny top hat, on the other. “Steve and Darwin are very excited to meet their cousins.”
That was, of course, if the twins were strong enough to break free of their shell, and if they were strong enough to survive without it. Everard had gone over and over with them how crucial it was that the twins develop as long as possible. Hatching early was a risk to one of them, perhaps even both.
We could, Geoffrey thought numbly,lose them. His knees wobbled, but Ian was there, steadying him.
Matthieu slipped to the floor, unheeding how his knees cracked on the marble. He gently laid the nestler down and there, in the huge glittering ballroom filled with dragons from all over the world, he began to cry.
42
Ian
A small, pastel-green whelp nimbly cut his way through the crowd, weaving between legs and around lavish gowns. His claws clicked on the marble, and his tail swished behind him like a train. It took Ian a moment to place who it was. Madhav, Snorre and Aruna’s newly hatched whelp, who was as kind and docile as he was curious, had heard Matthieu’s cries and come to help.
He was not alone.
Two larger white whelps tumbled across the floor, clumsy in their haste. When the light of the crystal chandeliers struck their scales, they glistened like freshly fallen snow. It took Ian no time to recognize them—Dmitry and Nikita, the sons of Snorre and Vadim, were impossible to forget.
Next, three Amethyst whelps darted in from the next room, one of them losing his footing in his mad dash and slamming face-first into the doorway. Alistair, who stood not all that far away, cringed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Chaucer,” Alistair muttered. “Why is it always Chaucer?”
Chaucer shook his head, hopped up from where he’d collapsed, and followed his brothers. He seemed fine.
Darwin, who had been glued to Harry all evening, jumped from Harry’s shoulder, slowed his descent with his wings rather gracefully, then made his way to Matthieu’s side.
One by one, Perry and Sebastian’s children made their presence known as well. They stood around Matthieu, all of them, as if to shield him and his hatching egg from onlookers.
The babies closest to Matthieu nuzzled his side, his thighs, or his arms—whatever they could reach—and Madhav, the smallest of the bunch, scaled Matthieu’s side and came to sit on his shoulder. He bumped his head against Matthieu’s and chirped in a small and slightly sad but reassuring way. Matthieu lifted a hand and stroked the soft scales on the side of his face. Tears tumbled down his cheeks. Abelard, Alistair and Nate’s boy, laid his head on Matthieu’s lap and purred.
Ian wanted to tend to his mate—to sink to his knees and wipe the tears from Matthieu’s eyes—but he dared not move. There was no record of so many whelps being present at the time of a hatching. What unfurled before them now would be remembered forever by history, and he could not bring himself to intervene.
If the look in Harry’s eyes was anything to go by, it would be immortalized in science, too.
Once all of the whelps had assembled, Darwin stepped forward and nuzzled the nestler. He looked at Matthieu, his kaleidoscope eyes begging for something Ian couldn’t understand. By then, Harry had arrived. He crouched within arm’s distance of the ring of dragons, but did not attempt to join their ranks. While the gleam in his eyes could have belonged to a child on Christmas morning who’d come downstairs to discover overflowing presents beneath the tree, his expression was quite serious.
