“Father will never help. The subject is too distasteful.” Sebastian stole a glance at Ian, his lips pressed thin and his eyes accusatory. The disdain on his face made Matthieu’s blood boil, but the feeling didn’t last long—love flooded his heart through his twin mate bonds, and through one of those bonds, a presence made of gentle strength and limitless understanding assured Matthieu without words that everything would be fine.
Ian.
Matthieu glanced at him from the corner of his eye and was met by a subtle smile. Even in the lair of the dragons who despised his kind, Ian was compassionate. Matthieu, taken by Ian’s silent strength, looked down at his lap and tried to hide a smile of his own.
What wonderful mates he’d found, and how lucky he was that they were his.
“I don’t see what’s so distasteful about love,” Harry quipped. He stopped twisting his chair and put his elbows on the table, leaning forward. Steve flicked his tongue in agreement. “The mate bonds are in place, so it kind of feels like a no-brainer to me. They can test these things, can’t they? They did it with you, Iggy, right?”
Nate turned pale. “Yes.”
“Then they can devise a test to confirm a three-way bond.” Harry smiled. “Why is that so hard?”
“Darling, it’s simply not done,” Perry replied. He brushed his fingers through his hair, then smoothed the golden head chain that crowned it. Matthieu had never seen such an exquisitely beautiful omega before. “I know it seems tremendously barbaric—”
“Itistremendously barbaric,” Matthieu interjected.
Perry smiled at him prettily, not a single feather ruffled. “You’re right, of course—itis.I have long abhorred the council and all of its outdated practices, and have a history to prove it, but that will be a story for another day. For now, our focus must be on the matter at hand. As I was saying previously, no matter how much we wish otherwise, our stubborn dragons are stuck in their ways, and they are as resistant to change as Everard is to knocking.”
“Oh, no,” Harry corrected. He tapped his index finger rhythmically on the tip of Alistair’s claw. “Everard isn’t resistant to knotting at all. Just this morning, he—”
“Harry,” Nate uttered, aghast. “Perry saidknocking.”
Confusion clouded Harry’s eyes, then turned to embarrassment. His cheeks went pink. “Oh. I misheard. Sorry.”
“Knotting or knocking, it doesn’t matter.” Sebastian shook his head. “The fact of the matter is, after the Topaz attack on my lair and Alistair’s—”
“Sky shack,” Everard volunteered.
“Condo,” Sebastian continued, “and the subsequent attempt to murder my whelps and destroy my brother’s eggs, Father will never fight for a Topaz life.”
“And if, by refusing to fight, his son dies?” Geoffrey asked rigidly. Fear laced his connection with Matthieu, and Matthieu did the best he could to soothe it, channeling positivity to alleviate Geoffrey’s worry. “If his actions cause the end of not one, but three woven lives and their six offspring?”
Sebastian pursed his lips. He didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to—the answer was plain to see. The Amethyst clan would not fight for a dragon who’d sided with the enemy, no matter his relation to the head of the council.
Misery mushroomed within both of Matthieu’s mate bonds, speckling his connection to his dragons until they became so infested, it was all he could feel. Ian knew that no one would fight for him—not his mate’s family, and not his father—and Geoffrey had come to understand that there was no hope.
The battle was lost.
In vain, Matthieu tried to weed those unwelcome thoughts from his dragons’ minds, but each time he made progress, it was dashed by a new wave of despair. Worse, the longer it festered in their bonds, the more Matthieu believed he was the one to blame for it. If he hadn’t encouraged Geoffrey and Ian to share him, none of this would have happened. If he’d been a good, obedient omega and respected the teachings of the Pedigree, his dragons wouldn’t have lost all hope. He’d swung into a century-old relationship like a wrecking ball, smashing Ian and Geoffrey’s future. Now their choices were to go up against the council and accept death, or flee dragon society entirely and wait for death to find them.
Not even Snorre, who meant well, but whose exploits had led him to fall out of favor with the council, could help them. Until recently, he’d only been mated to omegas, not alphas… and even then, certainly not an alpha his clan considered the enemy.
Harry cleared his throat. “I think it might help to show the eggs,” he said. “So Alistair and Sebastian understand what’s at stake. Would you be okay with that, Matthieu? I know it’s scary to have others stare at your clutch, but I think this is a good idea.”
Matthieu blinked, then looked at Ian and Geoffrey, who seemed as taken aback as he. It hadn’t occurred to any of them to show off the eggs, and of course they were crucial to the whole business, but Harry was right. Matthieu didn’t like the idea of others getting too close to his clutch, but he agreed it would be necessary.
He looked up and caught the eye of the omega who was his cousin. Nate, or, as Harry called him, Iggy—the Disgrace whose mother had stolen herself and her son away from the Pedigree and all of dragonkind. How was it that the omega had still ended up mated to a dragon? It seemed highly unlikely, and yet Matthieu had found himself in the even more unlikely position of not being held captive by one dragon, but rather made strong and free by two.
The two dragons in question sent reassuring vibes to Matthieu. They also thought showing the eggs would be a good idea, but only if Matthieu was up to it.
Biting his lip, Matthieu unzipped the nestlers one by one.
“Well, I’ll be fucked,” the large, hulking dragon named Sebastian said.
Perry swatted him. “Seb, watch your tongue. There are babies present. And such beautiful babies they are, too,” he cooed.
“That’s amazing,” Alistair breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
