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I’d been to Ignatius and Doryu’s house before, but knowing a billionaire owned a mansion and arriving there while my brain was already overloaded were apparently two different experiences.

The gates opened before the car reached them, revealing a long drive that curved through immaculate grounds toward a sprawling stone house lit against the dark. It wasn’t gaudy in the way I’d always imagined billionaire homes might be, with gold fountains and statues of the owner standing naked in the driveway, but there was no mistaking the kind of money required to create that much privacy within reach of Denver.

The entrance hall alone was probably larger than my apartment. Pale stone stretched beneath our feet, a sweeping staircase curved toward the upper floor, and enormous windows at the back of the house looked across landscaped grounds toward distant city lights. The artwork on the walls had the unsettling quality of being important enough that I knew better than to ask how much any of it cost.

Doryu had somehow made the place feel like a home anyway.

A jacket had been dropped across the back of a chair that probably had its own insurance policy, several books were stacked on a table despite the library visible through an open doorway, and two coffee mugs sat beside a laptop on the enormous kitchen island. There were framed photographs mixed among the expensive art too, including one of Ignatius looking deeply unimpressed while Keegan grinned beside him and another of Doryu apparently attempting to climb onto the back of a dragon.

I stopped in front of that one.

Doryu followed my gaze. “There was a perfectly good reason.”

Ignatius continued walking. “There was not.”

“You were stuck.”

“I was resting.”

“You were wedged between two trees.”

“I had temporarily misjudged the available space.”

Max made a suspicious sound beside me.

I looked at him. “Is that a dragon thing? Selective interpretation of being stuck?”

“Apparently.”

Ignatius gave all three of us a look and continued toward the sitting room.

The brief absurdity helped more than it should have, and so did the food Doryu arranged before any serious conversation began. Somewhere between discovering Max could turn into a dragon and learning my father had gotten drunk, crossed a center line and died in a collision with a truck, eating had stopped making the priority list, and apparently Doryu had decided the appropriate response was to order enough food to sustain an entire hockey line.

We settled in a room overlooking the grounds, where the furniture was large enough to accommodate Ignatius without making him look ridiculous and the windows probably cost more than my car. Max sat beside me on one of the couches, close but not touching until I deliberately let my knee rest against his.

Ignatius noticed.

He didn’t comment.

Once I had food in front of me and had eaten enough that Doryu stopped watching my plate, Ignatius leaned back in his chair.

“Start at the beginning, Max. Tell me exactly what your father taught you about being lifebound.”

Max’s shoulders tightened beside me. “Most of it came after my mother died. He told me what lifebound dragons were, or at least what he believed they were, and explained that attraction could intensify around us. Some people became unusually attached, and if I wasn’t careful, I could hurt someone without ever intending to.”

Ignatius’s expression remained unreadable, although Doryu’s had already begun to change.

“My father said the safest thing was to avoid serious attachments,” Max continued. “If somebody started wanting more from me than I could safely give, I was supposed to leave before it became dangerous.”

Ignatius was silent for several seconds before setting his glass down. “What exactly did your father tell you about mates?”

“Nothing.”

Ignatius stared at him. “Nothing?”

“Not in connection with being lifebound.”

Disbelief gave way to something considerably closer to anger on Ignatius’s face. “You’ve known what you are since you were seventeen, and in fifteen years no one has explained what happens when a lifebound dragon finds their mate?”