He pushed the button to accept the call.
"You'd best be on your way back to the cathedral!" Nevair snapped
"Hi, hon. Um no, I'm staying with some friends for a few days." Lian knew Nevair wouldn't take that excuse but he had to try.
"You don't have any friends. You just got here. Where are you? I'm going to send Shean to pick you up," Nevair said.
"No. I'm fine, Nevair. I'll see you in a few days." He didn't need to get Nevair mixed up in his problems.
"You tell me where you are right now!" Nevair roared.
Lian disconnected.
"Are we going to be having your partner join us soon?" Milot nodded towards Lian's communicator.
Lian promptly shoved back into his pocket. "Not if he has any sense," Lian growled. "He's busy enough he doesn't need to be hunting me down."
"Come, sit down, my chef has food prepared. You can search it and see if anything looks poisoned and tell me all about your senseless beau."
Lian's stomach growled. He laughed self-consciously. "I guess it would be stupid to say I wasn't hungry."
"Indeed," Milot agreed.
"Come on, doc," Blaine said. "I bet you've got some kick-ass healing stories."
Lian laughed. "I might have one or two."
The table could have fed a family of twenty, instead the three of them huddled around one end.
Seeing his expression, Milot shrugged. "Sometimes the entire family comes for dinner. I like to have space for them."
"You have a big family?" Lian asked.
"Extended. I have four sisters and two brothers. None who've had more than one kid each. Blaine's mother, my sister, died in childbirth, so I kept him."
Milot talked as if Blaine were a puppy who followed him home. From the fond look Blaine gave his uncle, Lian let it slide. "That was lucky for you," he told Blaine. Memories of his loneliness after his parent's death gripped his heart.
Blaine shrugged. "Someone in the family would've taken me. That's how they are."
A servant put a loaf of hot bread on the table. Lian scanned it and shook his head. "The bread's not poisoned."
Milot sighed. "Great. I love my bread."
Since the man didn't have a spare ounce of fat, Lian supposed he must enjoy his exercise, too. Milot looked to be in his early forties but with dragonkin he could easily be a hundred and Lian wouldn't know.
Lian took a bite of a roll. "It's good bread."
Blaine nodded, his mouth stuffed like a rodent.
"Tell me about your man. What's he like?" Milot asked.
Lian shrugged. "Bossy."
Milot laughed, a big hearty sound. "A lot of guys are bossy."
"Yeah, but not the ones I usually go with. He's dragonkin and thinks we're mates. I'm still on the fence," Lian confessed.
Blaine dropped his fork. "When did you have sex?"
