“I don’t think anyone has seen anything like it,” Everard added. “That’s the whole point.”
“The fifth egg,” Nate ventured. “What is it?”
“They,” Matthieu said stiffly, “are twins. Geoffrey and Ian are their fathers. They are neither Topaz nor Amethyst. They are something entirely new. And theymustbe protected.”
“Duh,” Nate said, now sounding impatient and irritated. “They’refamily.”
“Indeed,” Perry said. He looked meaningfully at his mate, who studied the eggs with a puzzled frown on his face.
“This is going to make a large number of people very angry,” Sebastian said as his frown deepened.
Bellamy lifted his head from Geoffrey’s chest and twisted his neck around to look out one of the room’s many windows. Geoffrey, his eyes closed, stroked the bird’s feathers. The mask of impartiality he always wore while in public was gone, and raw emotion spilled across his face in its place. Sorrow, grief, and anxious fear—Matthieu felt it through the mate bond as clearly as he read it in Geoffrey’s expression.
“Geoffrey, don’t give up hope,” Perry said. He reached across the table and took Geoffrey’s hand. Sebastian bared his teeth, but settled down when Perry shot him a murderous look. “All of us at this table are together despite slim odds—Sebastian and I didn’t produce a clutch or successfully mate during our first heat, and yet here we are, mated and fertile. Alistair mated our lovely Nate by accident and produced a clutch with him, a feat previously unheard of. And Harry… do I need to remind you what a miracle Harry is?”
Everard smiled, and never had the expression been more full of simple joy. “My roast pheasant is quite extraordinary, isn’t he?”
Harry should have beamed, but his attention was diverted to the window, and the color drained from his cheeks.
“So what I’m saying is, your story will not be without adversity, but don’t let this hardship convince you that all is lost.” Perry squeezed Geoffrey’s hand. “You have found your mates. You have found your happiness. With us, you have found acceptance, and soon, you will find it everywhere. I know. In time, the other dragons will come to acknowledge your family. We will all see to it.”
Bellamy hissed and flung himself from Geoffrey’s lap onto the table between two of the open nestlers. His talons dug into the wood, scratching it irreparably. Alistair leapt to his feet with a pained gasp, as though a walnut table would be a hardship to replace. Ian also leapt up to try to make a grab for Bellamy, a fistful of raisins clenched temptingly in his hand. Perry, startled by the screeching bird, released Geoffrey’s hand and jumped back into his seat, gasping in shock. Sebastian, in turn, snarled and lurched for the offending fowl, but stopped before he made contact.
The room went still and silent.
Everyone had turned to look out the window at the man with the blond hair who strolled leisurely through the back yard, headed straight for the children.
34
Ian
“Topaz.” Sebastian, Everard, and Alistair growled in unison.
Geoffrey’s voice joined them, but the word he spoke was choked of life and trembled with fear. “Sigric.”
Ian wished with all his heart that they were wrong.
They weren’t.
Sigric Brand, Ian’s father and head of the Topaz clan, strolled across Alistair and Ignatius Drake’s back yard, his hands tucked in his back pockets and the sleeves of his Ralph Lauren dress shirt rolled to his elbows. He walked with an even, casual gait that would have fooled a typical bystander into believing that there was nothing unusual about him being on the property—but Ian was no typical bystander. He would have seen the simmering rage in his father’s eyes from a mile away.
The next words spoke cut through the room like a knife. “The children.”
Alerted by the bond they shared with their fathers, Perry’s eight children lifted their heads and looked toward the house in unison. Nate’s three children clued in a second later, unfurling their wings and fluttering anxiously. One of them—Ian didn’t know his name—puffed tiny jets of fire, setting a patch of grass alight.
Darwin, precious and pink, remained asleep.
None of them had seen Sigric yet.
None of them knew to guard themselves against him.
With a heart-wrenching cry, Nate dashed around the table and made for the back door. Perry called out after him, but it was no use—Nate bolted for his whelps, his parental instinct overriding his common sense. As dragons, short of being crushed beneath a grown dragon’s weight or clawed to pieces, the whelps risked less being out there with Sigric than Nate did. Their scales would insulate them against dragon fire, and their speed would keep them safe from attacks.
Nate’s skin and scrawny human legs would not.
Nor would Perry’s.
Or Harry’s.
