Or Matthieu’s.
It didn’t stop any of them from jumping to action regardless, Harry the most agitated of all, followed closely by Matthieu, who had five eggs to protect and had seen, firsthand, the damage Sigric could cause. He frantically started zipping up the nestlers. Ian and Geoffrey jumped to help him. When the nestlers were secured, Matthieu took all five and brought them out of the room to hide behind an armchair, and Ian wished that he could drop everything to stand by and keep them safe, but it was an impossibility.
With his father in Amethyst territory, things were personal.
To keep his family safe, Ian needed to confront the threat head-on.
“Darwin!” Harry cried in panic, but his son continued to bask in the sunlight while fast asleep, the large glass windows of the sunroom insulating the back yard against the commotion going on inside the house. The lizard on Harry’s shoulder scurried off his shoulders and hopped onto the table, then skittered onto a chair and slithered away. “DARWIN!”
Chairs fell over. Bellamy, who was still on the table, screamed and squawked, his patchy tail feathers fully spread and his blobby body bouncing. Clothing tore. Fabric ripped. Leather snapped. In the chaos, Ian and Geoffrey stood guard over their mate and their young, making sure none of them were trampled in the melee. Ian gave Geoffrey a significant look.
Stay. Guard. Protect.
Sebastian, the largest and most impulsive of the Amethysts, burst through the window, partially transformed. Ian barely saw him do it—he followed a fraction of a second behind. Transformation gripped him along the way, reshaping his bones in painful ways and pulling his muscles so taut, they snapped, only to be replaced by new tissue. Scales tumbled like copper dominoes down his neck and back, along his arms, then around his wrists, and black, fearsome claws pushed his fingernails aside.
The whelps were not his, but it didn’t matter. If Sigric laid a single claw upon any of them, Ian would rend him limb from limb.
Sigric did not stop walking when Ian crashed through what remained of the glass window, nor did he stop when Sebastian roared and jetted across the lawn, half-sprinting, half-flying. The whelps, who’d caught on to what was happening, hissed and sent short puffs of juvenile flame in his direction, but missed at worst, and only managed to singe his trousers at best. One of Sebastian and Perry’s whelps cried out in terror, finally waking Darwin from his slumber, but it was too late. Sigric bent down and scooped the pink whelp up, then wrapped his hand around the child’s neck right beneath his jaw and dangled him in front of the approaching Amethyst dragons. Everyone, even Sebastian, as prone to rash behavior as he was, ground to a stop.
Darwin keened and wiggled, flapping his wings uselessly.
In the distance, Harry sobbed. Ian was not his mate, but he felt Harry’s anguish resonate in his soul.
A dragon—not a man—bellowed, and a plume of flame shot by Ian’s ear that was so hot, sweat didn’t drip from his skin—it evaporated upon formation. The flames didn’t reach Sigric, nor did they reach the whelp he used like a shield. Quicker than Ian had ever seen him move before, Sigric dodged to the side, and the dragon fire ignited the yard’s privacy fence.
“Amethysts, begone,” Sigric commanded.
Everard, now fully transformed, snarled and bypassed Ian. His sunset scales gleamed in the afternoon sun, his claws sinking deep into the lawn, tearing out chunks of grass with each step.
“Begone,” Sigric repeated. He extended a claw from the index finger of the hand not holding Darwin, then wedged it beneath Darwin’s jaw. Darwin wiggled and wheezed with fear.
Everard stopped, but the tip of his tail flicked with unspoken rage. Steam curled from his nostrils.
The rest of the whelps had run, leaving just one purple youth behind—he stood an arm’s length away from Sigric, growling. Sigric paid him no heed.
“This is my property!” Nate yelled. He stood near the house with Harry gathered in his arms, two of his sons nuzzling Harry’s calves, the third perched on his shoulder in the place of his lizard. “How about you fuck off, you bronze bastard?”
“You speak as though the Amethyst clan has not trespassed into what is mine,” Sigric replied. His hand tightened, causing Darwin to squeak. “I will not leave until I am granted audience with my son and the abomination he’s been bedding for the last hundred years. Enough is enough. The insanity ends here.” Sigric’s gaze bore through Ian, and a chill ran down Ian’s spine he couldn’t keep at bay. “And Ian? Don’t get any bright ideas. If you refuse to cooperate, I will end the whelp’s life.”
35
Geoffrey
It had been a long time since Geoffrey had transformed into his dragon form. Months, possibly. There never seemed to be enough time, somehow. It was impractical. The form was unwieldy. It was a bother. But now, after one of the quickest transformations of his life, as his dragon roared with fury and utter rage at his family being threatened in any way, it also gloried in being set free. It was a bit like standing up after being in a small vehicle for a very long time and being able to stretch one’s legs.
I should do this more often,he thought.
Yes!his dragon agreed.Kill. Maim.
But later. It’s time for words, not claws.
There was a slight feeling of regret as he slipped back into being fully human, and he promised his draconian self that he wouldn’t wait so long next time to let that part of himself just be, with no other agenda than to stretch his wings and then sleep with the sun on his scales.
Geoffrey squatted down on his haunches. “Love, can I trust you to stay here and keep the eggs safe? I have to go and talk with Ian’s father. He has Darwin.”
Matthieu looked up with a snarl on his face. “Go. Just let that monster try to get through me.”
Sigric, if he made it past all the dragons present and then into the house, would make short work of Matthieu and the eggs, but it wasn’t a thought Geoffrey would allow himself to dwell upon, because Sigric wouldn’t get near Matthieu. Not in Geoffrey’s lifetime.
