“You and Clary, huh?” Pras asked, hugging me tight.
“I’m shocked too,” I nodded.
“I’m not,” Pras shook his head. “I’ve been saying for years we should’ve brought him in, but that bloody fucker wouldn’t have believed us about Ferrick and Roster. Poor chap had to hear the words from their mouths otherwise I was just a jealous fucker.”
“Did you ever try to tell him?” I stepped away and met Pras’s gaze.
“No, like I said, I’d have sounded like a jealous fucker, or worse, a bloody lunatic shouting out conspiracy theories,” he said.
“I had to double-check. I want to love that dragon but…”
“Clarence has never been one of them,” Pras sighed. “He’s tried to act like them. Act like what he thought they were anyway, but he doesn’t have enough rotten scales to be a monster. He was what every monster needs, though. Someone who believes the world is a good place and will fill in all the blanks and questions with answers that say it is. He knows now and it’s changing him. You’re changing him too. He just met you and I can already tell the difference in him, Smokey.”
“Do you think his parents will notice?” I asked.
“No, they’d have to pay attention to him to notice. Roster might think he has some piece of ass he likes, but you know Roster Moonscale. He wants his line to spread far and wide. That’s his version of seed bombing. Thanks for not asking what went wrong.”
“I figure once everyone is here… It’ll be easier to tell everyone at once.”
Another scratch at the door brought in Haen. He’d been downtown like I was. All of us who weren’t at the castle needed alibis. He made a scene at a local restaurant while I babysat his notoriously alcoholic younger brother, Earl. It was a miracle that downtown wasn’t burning to the ground.
Next came Volex, swearing under his breath with big, fat trembling smoke rings wafting from his nose. Volex Moonscale was the grandchild of Frost and Juda. His sire was their firstborn son, Cyrus. Unlike most of his siblings, Volex ventured to Earthside and concerned himself with the ongoings of their lineage over here. He was not the ancestor that Clarence and his family directly descended from, but he was the one who caredthat Roster Moonscale was a serial rapist and that his mate had smashed more eggs than any other dragon he knew of in lore or recorded history. That’s what drew him into our little group. So many people he knew were trying to be born into Moonscale London only to be smashed out of their eggs before they even hatched.
Under normal circumstances, there were about a dozen of us, but now we were eleven with Alrick dead. The four of us starred at each other for several long minutes. The others might show up. They weren’t dead. They were merely scared out of their minds. Ferrick’s assassination on the night of Clarence’s heir coronation had been planned for a long time. Alrick’s death made everything that much more real. Some of them could walk away without a care in the world. I wasn’t one of them. I never had been. Even before I met Clarence Moonscale I was in this for the long haul. That’s how I met Volex.
Five years ago, my best friend, Hanmitch, killed himself because of Roster. So, I singlehandedly planned to storm the castle and castrate him. Volex happened upon me trying to sneak in and dragged me off like an unruly hatchling. Standing here with him now, he was the tallest of all of us and his belly glowed hot with his fire. Most dragon shifters never stopped growing and Volex was no exception to that rule. He stood at nearly eight feet with hair that fell to his shoulders. His eyes were big and the color of a stormy sky. If he hadn’t dragged me away that day, I’d either have a crush on him or be dead. You can take your pick of which you want to believe would’ve happened.
When it was clear that the others weren’t showing up that night, we moved into the kitchen and I made coffee. We all gathered around my kitchen table and Pras, who had been at the castle as planned because he and Delin were regular sightsthere, told us what unfolded. Delin was now in hospital because a piece of wall had crushed his leg. The healers expected him to make a full recovery in just a few weeks. Poor Delin. He didn’t know what was really up. He adored Clarence. Practically hero-worshipped my mate. He’d always been too close to him for us to tell him the truth. He was one of the people who really thought Pras and me were romping every night.
Alrick, who was Ferrick’s clutch mate, was the only one able to slip in through the shields Ferrick had on his family’s living quarters because he feared someone would assassinate his only son. Only, Ferrick wasn’t as drunk as he thought, and their battle didn’t go to plan. Now, Roster and Ferrick were blaming traitors for killing him. Dirty, rotten traitors had broken in and tried to kill Ferrick. His fearless brother gave his life to save him.
Haen sobbed at the table and Pras rubbed circles on his back. I hadn’t planned on telling the others the exact relationship between me and Clarence Moonscale, but it was all over the link Volex had forged for us years ago when we decided it was time to take this seriously. At the time, we assumed that Ferrick would have to die first because despite all his jealousy he was derangedly devoted to Roster. It was as if he hoped if he smashed enough eggs that Roster would get the hint and love him again. I wasn’t convinced that Roster Moonscale had ever loved him or anyone else for that matter.
“Well, now we have two reasons to trust the heir,” Volex said, leaning back in his chair, my little floral print coffee mug was comically small in his big hand. His knuckles were marked with vibrant orange scales that were black around the edges as if they had been burnt to a crisp. “Pras vouches for him and you’re twice as likely to kill him if he’s like them.” Volex’s stormy eyessettled on me as he sipped from the dainty mug. “You have too much honor to let him get away with such things, Smokescale.”
Volex wasn’t wrong. If my heart had to be carved from my chest and tossed into the forge, I’d rather do it myself. There was no excuse to protect a predator like Roster. None. Not love or blood or fear. Every day that he walked Earthside was another day he was here to harm good people without consequence. We were determined to be that consequence for him and his loose-screw mate.
***Notes from Clarence: If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of Volex he has lived under various aliases. To the best of my knowledge, he’s currently back in the Other World awaiting his true-mate’s rebirth. We have no reason to believe that he will be reborn anywhere other than Earthside, but since we’re not fate nor the sort to trust the Book of Possibilities, we don’t really have a clue. If by chance, you’re reading this, Volex, send us a postcard and let us know what alias you’re going by these days.
Chapter 5
Clarence Moonscale
Moonscale London Under the Reign of Roster and Ferrick Moonscale
My parents went away on holiday to our home in Spain after Uncle Alrick’s funeral. Before construction crews could descend on the castle, I took advantage of their absence and searched the house twice over. There was no evidence of any strange scent in the house – anywhere! I knew each and every scent here by heart. One of my parents had killed him. The only question was as to why. They hadn’t even bothered to have someone come in and clean up the blood splatter. Roster and Ferrick simply moved to another bedroom as if that erased what happened that night. Both of them refused to answer any questions I had about that night.
“It upsets your carrier, Clarence. Sometimes you just have to accept that you’re not entitled to all the details,”Roster had told me while a driver loaded their luggage into the town car.
For days, I couldn’t get ahold of Pras, and the hospital kept telling me that Delin wasn’t ready for visitors. His parents wouldn’t answer their phones either. No one answered when I went around to call at his house. It was as if everyone had bloody-well gone and disappeared on me. The radio silence fucked with my head. Had I imagined my parents’ confessions? Meeting Medwin? The whole assassination story? Had I made the whole ordeal up while I was inebriated?
“Of course, not. Something foul is afoot,”my dragon huffed into my thoughts.
He was right and there was only one place I could go for answers. So, I waited for the cover of night before shifting and taking off into downtown London. I was anything but chained to the house but leaving for Medwin’s felt like some sort of crime. Except I was desperate for answers and to see him again.
I didn’t knock on the front door. With a little wiggling around, I managed to land on the balcony. It was the dead of night but the light in the corridor was on and shined through under his bedroom door. The curtain wasn’t closed, revealing that my mate wasn’t asleep, dreaming of me. Quiet voices whispered from inside the flat.
“Finally come to see him, huh?” a voice said from the shadows and a second later the hot, cherry tip of a cigarette burnt brightly. Volex. He was on my parents’ watch list because they couldn’t fathom why a dragon as old as he would want to be on Earthside. At least that’s what they told me at the time.
