Sigric’s eyes turned dark. “Words mean nothing, boy.”
“Words are all I will offer you,” Ian retorted. “Now please, leave. Not only do I have a plane to catch tomorrow, but I have an injury to heal. I have no more time for cyclical conversations.”
Sigric’s temple twitched, but he turned and headed for the door regardless. Ian stood and watched him go, waiting until the door was closed to drop his shoulders and slump forward, audibly gasping for breath.
It was over.
He hadn’t died, and somehow, he’d kept Matthieu alive, too.
“Ian?” Matthieu asked cautiously. In the time since Sigric had left the room, he’d risen from the floor to stand behind Ian’s shoulder. He laid a hand gently on Ian’s back. “Will you be okay?”
“Yes.” Ian hobbled to the bed and sat, doing his best to ignore the crippling pain of his burn wound. His dragon, typically silent and inactive, paced restlessly in his mind, propagating one string of thoughts that looped ad nauseam in Ian’s subconscious.Murder. Maim. Revenge.
Ian didn’t listen.
He never did.
That way led to madness, and it was a path Ian refused to follow his sire down.
What he needed now was to focus on what was in his best interest, and right now, that meant fixing his leg, then finding a way back to Aurora and to the lover waiting for him there.
Us. He’s waiting for us.
“However, I do need your help, Matthieu.”
“Yes?”
“Assemble your things,” Ian instructed. “Secure and arrange your travel documents, and make sure that you’re ready to leave. I’ll arrange for seats on the next flight out—we can’t stay here any longer.”
“Where will we go?” Matthieu asked uncertainly.
Ian smiled, but it was small and tired. “Home.”
9
Matthieu
Home.
Matthieu hadn’t had a proper home for more than half his life. As the firstborn—and only—omega in his family, it had been Matthieu’s duty to join the Pedigree. To that end, at age eleven he’d left his small village in Southern France to travel to an even more remote area in the mountains. There, he was housed in the cloister and educated, although Matthieu considered it to be a joke of an education. It was, from what he could tell, not dissimilar from the omega finishing schools that had existed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, except in a few key areas. He’d been taught deportment, manners, dragon history and genealogy, how to dance, art appreciation, and how to speak several languages. In addition, the cloister taught physical fitness, metallurgy, gemology, and how to suck an alpha cock without choking. While they had not touched upon how to handle two dragon cocks in one’s ass, he had been instructed that histrouwould easily accept even the largest of dragon knots, and it seemed that knowledge had not been incorrect.
The cloister had not taught him how to deal with dragons waking him from a sound sleep only to spread his legs wide and gawk at his crotch. It had also not prepared him for dealing with the smell of burnt flesh and the sight of a blackened and charred limb. What he wanted to do, more than anything else, was vomit up the food he’d eaten the previous evening. He held on grimly to his eggs and toast, however, and made himself be calm. Ian deserved that after saving Matthieu’s life.
“How are you?” Matthieu asked. “Is there anything I can do?”
Ian shook his head. “Take a shower, Matthieu. Wash my sire’s hands off your body. I need to rest and try to repair my leg.”
Matthieu’s dragon sire had never been in his life, having discarded Matthieu’s mother after she fell pregnant with a human child, but compared to Ian’s father, Matthieu realized how lucky he had been. Simple disgust and disappointment in having sired a Disgrace looked sweet and loving when contrasted with the Brands’ dynamic.
“Is it possible?”
Ian grimaced. “I think I can mend it enough for travel, but it’ll take much of my magic. Go shower. Let me see what I can do.”
Matthieu nodded and fled, and in the shower he scrubbed his skin to try to rid it of the feeling of Sigric’s intrusive fingers. He’d been touched in even more intimate ways by people who were not his lovers, but this had been different. Worse in every way. It made Matthieu stay under the spray of the hot water longer than was strictly necessary.
After coming out of the shower, Matthieu saw Ian lying on the bed, breathing shallowly and moaning softly. Matthieu approached with caution.
“Monsieur dragon,are you quite all right?” he asked.
