Corin’s attention snapped back to his cousins. “You sayexcuse me,” he growled.
Braedan rocked on his feet. “Excuse me, Miss Flores—”
“Mama!” Tomás finally completed his promenade and raised his arms to be picked up.
Maya swung him onto her hip. “Hello, sweetpea. I think these idiots are trying to ask me if they can say hello to you.”
“Idits!” Tomás crowed happily.
To Corin’s surprise, the Dans pulled themselves together. They were looking at Tomás the same way Corin himself found himself doing: slightly wary, slightly hopeful, full of wonder and excitement at seeing a tiny dragon no matter what form he took.
“This is Tomás,” Maya said, as Tomás chewed on one fist and stared wide-eyed at the triplets. “He’s my son. And—”
She met Corin’s eyes, and he nodded. “Maya is my mate,” he announced, putting his arm around them both. “Which makes Tomás part of our family, too.”
The Dans all said hello. They noticed the hum of gold, too, and Corin straightened a little with draconic pride that Tomás was carting around gold stolen fromhishoard.
“Dragons RAAR,” Tomás growled happily, waving his arms, and his sleeves slipped to reveal not Corin’s stolen watch, but a confection of pearls and gold.
He stared in dismay.
“It’s such a pleasure to finally welcome you to our familyproperly, Maya and Tomás.” His mother’s expression was pure smugness. No need to wonder where the pearls had come from.
But he wasn’t the only one who looked like he’d had the rug pulled out from under his feet.
The Dans were staring at the pearl bracelet as though it had grown legs and tripped them at the last hurdle of a race. Tomás noticed them looking and shook his sleeve back down over it with a possessive grumble.
His mother noticed, too, and the gleam in her eyes had become decidedly … suspicious.
“Aw,” Aedan muttered. “That’s Auntie Igraine’s bracelet? But—”
“Shh!” Caedan jabbed him in the ribs.
“Do you three have something you’d like to tell me?” Corin asked icily.
Maya nudged him gently, and he glared at his mother, as well. “Youfour?” he corrected himself. “Mother—”
“Well, what did you expect us to do, with you sitting around like a dark cloud, refusing to hunt down the woman you loved?” Igraine huffed.
He turned back to his cousins. “You stole from the vault?”
“It’s not stealing when it’s ours!”
“Yeah, Granddad practically threw it at us when we told him—” Braedan foundered under Corin’s gaze.
“Told him what?” he asked. “That you intended to send treasures tomymate?”
“What? No, we sent them to the kid! He’s our nephew.” Braedan rallied, his shorter brothers bolstering him on either side. “Kind of. If we’re your cousins and he’s your kid, then he’s our … Anyway! It’s our right as his uncles to give him stuff!”
“Yeah!” Aedan backed him up eloquently. “Even if we couldn’t remember his name!”
Those shredded parcels. All addressed to Somebody Flores. He’d filled in the gaps thinking they were meant to read Maya Flores.
Baby Flores.Now it made sense.
“You knew about this?” he asked his mother. He was still glaring, but the emotion building in his chest didn’t match his expression.
“Of course I knew,” Igraine said primly. “Well. Not that they’d forgotten the name of their own cousin once removed. If I’d known that—”
