Geoffrey sighed heavily.
“Will you look at us,s'il te plaît, monsieur dragon?”
Perhaps it was nothing more than a trick of the light or fatigue wearing on Matthieu’s vision, but he thought he saw a faint glow surrounding Ian. If anyone else noticed, they said nothing. Ian, as instructed, turned. His face was full of a terrible kindness that reverberated through Geoffrey and, strangely, through Matthieu. Ian frowned and tucked his arms over his chest. “Is this what you want, really, Matthieu? I need to know that it is.”
Beside him, Geoffrey trembled internally, and it made Matthieu both frightened and angry. He glared at Ian. “You said you’d make it better. You promised me. You promised both of us.”
“And what if it turns out that it’s not in my power?” Ian asked.
Matthieu stood up. Geoffrey, in contrast, slumped further, his limbs as ungainly as some sort of exotic waterfowl. “My dream,mes dragons, was to study law at the Sorbonne. With my education, I could fight for the rights of omegas and betas who are victimized systematically by dragons, yet here I am. Me bearing a clutch has gone from a near impossibility to a practical certainty. I will never study law at the Sorbonne now. I may, if luck and circumstances hold, study in one of the universities here in Aurora. There are many fine ones, if perhaps not as fine as l'Université Panthéon-Assas. Still, I shall persevere. But I cannot if you break him.” Matthieu flung out his arm and gestured to Geoffrey. “I can feel you destroying him, and I demand that you stop it this instant.”
Ian stared at Matthieu, but said nothing. Matthieu looked down at his sad Geoffrey-bird and saw him huddled in on himself as if he wanted to disappear. It made Matthieu wish to do violence. “Fix this,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
“I’m not sure I can.” Ian scowled. “Not in the way you seem to think.”
Geoffrey’s sense of abandonment threatened to drown Matthieu in its depths. “Yes,” he pronounced, “you can. And will.”
Ian looked pained. “By having sex with you? By taking you to bed? Don’t be absurd.”
Matthieu crossed his arms over his chest and scowled back at Ian. “Non. By taking us to bed. Not me.Us. It is an important distinction,monsieur dragon. We are indivisible.”
“I’m aware,” Ian said stiffly.
“Arrête çatout de suite!” Matthieu ordered. “Think, dragon, and don’t make things worse for all of us. Forget what you know, or think you know. Focus on what you feel. Do you love him? Do you want him?”
Ian looked pained. “Of course I do.”
“And do you then object to me?”
First Ian glanced at Geoffrey, who still huddled on the floor, his long arms wrapped around his even longer legs, then he looked back at Matthieu. Mutely, he shook his head in the negative. “I have already told you I do not.”
“What you said,” Matthieu reminded him, “was that you loved Geoffrey, and if he loved me, you would find a way to love me as well. So find it!Alors c'est simple. You take me and that dragon,” he pointed at Geoffrey, “into your bed and you cherish him until he believes it. And then we sleep, and then we find a way forward. All of us. In bed and out.Compris?”
Ian seemed to reach some sort of breaking point. “I told myself I could do this, and that I had to do this, but I can see how you are together. You can read each other’s thoughts. In no time you will be each other’s skin and blood and bone.”
Matthieu shook his head. He could feel fear and unhappiness roil off both dragons. It made him clench his fists at their obstinacy. “What do you think will happen tomonsieur dragon grincheuxif you pull away from us? Fromhim?”
Ian looked uncertain. “He has you. His mate. That should be all—”
“Imbécile.” Matthieu shook his head. “A month ago, what would have happened tomonsieur dragon grincheuxhad you repudiated him? Ah,oui, I can tell by the look on your face that you know what such a thing would mean to him. Look at him now. That is your doing,monsieur dragon stupide. Now fix it, because I alone cannot. Is that plain enough for you?”
Ian dropped down in a squat next to Geoffrey and reached out a tentative hand. “Are you all right, Geoff?”
Geoffrey took in a deep, shaking breath. “I will be. I mean, I have to be. For Matthieu. But… it’s just that… bugger it, Ian. I hate this. I hate all of it. I need you, dammit. The whelp is right. I can’t do this on my own. I don’t want to. There is a bond between us, too. Can’t you feel it?” he asked imploringly. “Because I can. It’s not as strong, perhaps, but I swear it’s there and it’s real.”
Ian opened his mouth, started to say something, then stopped and shut his mouth and thought for several seconds. “Yes. I do feel it, Geoff. That’s why this hurts so much. I love you. I couldn’t bear it if you stopped loving me.”
“I feel the same,” Geoffrey confessed, sounding forlorn.
Matthieu huffed out his disgust. “Then don’t stop. We will go to bed and love each other.” He let out a sigh of frustration. “I don’t love you,” Matthieu added stiffly and, perhaps, a little too defensively, “but he does. I can feel it. You are very handsome, and I find youtrèsséduisant.Sex with you is not exactly a hardship. But throughmonsieur dragon grincheux,I do feel love for you. Is it borrowed love?Oui, but it’s no less valid for all that. Perhaps it might not be good forever, but I believe it will be good for now, and that will have to do.”
“There will be implications. We’ll have to be careful. So very careful,” Geoffrey said darkly. Worry welled within their mate bond, but in its murky depths were gratitude and relief. Matthieu could almost, but not quite, hear the wordsthank yourepeated over and over within him.
And then, from elsewhere, a faint, displaced sorrow. The nebulous nature of it drove Matthieu crazy, like a hair stuck in his mouth that he could feel, but couldn’t locate. All he wanted to do was find it, but as much as he searched, he couldn’t.
“But you want this? Me?” Ian asked. “I need to know, and from your lips, not our Mattie’s.”
As much as he disdained the name, Matthieu smiled to hear Ian say “our” and not “your.” It was, he thought, a victory. He didn’t need to see Geoffrey’s nod to know it was so.
