“Dette siblings?”
“I had two but we weren’t allowed around one another. We’re separated young.” Gatlin cleared his throat.
Gaspard swore under his breath. “Clueless fucking Drakes.”
Teige and Gatlin glanced at one another with a halfhearted shrug, but Teige spoke first, “Why?”
Gaspard rubbed his nasal bridge, pinching it for a moment before sighing deeply. “Viraj is Hijada, correct?”
They glanced at one another and nodded sheepishly. “But that doesn’t make him any less of a Dr—”
“He’s a Dette.” Gaspard’s brow fell flat as he stared the two down. “A hormonally stunted one, intersex yes, but with the correct treatment…”
The two stared at Gaspard, eyes wide.
Gaspard exhaled sternly, muttering about Drakes needing sexual education before turning them loose on dragon society at large. “I, personally, like being fuckedbyDettes more than I likefucking them. I have zero tolerance for ignorance. How you two failed to notice was beyond m—”
“But Dettes don’t have… In dragon form. He does.” Gatlin’s brow clenched.
Gaspard rubbed his nose bridge and sighed so hard, he nearly choked. “Dettes have pseudophalluses in dragon form. They’re small. Around the ventral slit, Drakes have a canal that serves to store their flaccid phallus. Dettes never develop that fully, so there’s a prepuce that has encapsulated their reproductive nerve endings there.”
Teige blinked. “So, you’re telling me he’s a well-endowed Dette?”
Gatlin reached up to take Teige’s hand. “But in his human form—”
“Probably undeveloped. Nothing to be done about it this late in his life, but a Dette finds their pleasure in other ways, I assure you. And you never wondered why he doesn’t have a knot?” Gaspard crossed his arms. “I’m telling you this before I tell him. Bastien is seeing what he can heal with magic, and we’ve injected him with an isolate from nestblossoms. Bastien, himself, had strange heats until he got enough nestblossom—one of the compounds is an analogue to a precursor to the very specific type of estrogens that make Dettes fertile.”
Either due to his Hijada nature or by sheer dint of hissize, Teige had never questioned Viraj’s lack of a knot.
Gatlin raised a hand as if it were a class and frowned. “Why did… Should we say something?”
“No. Ordinarily, yes, I’d like to say something, but he’s lived his life as a Drake. And Ireallydon’t think we should say anything unless we can make his body function once more. Once done, we can go from there, but until his baseline biology is corrected, I don’t think telling him would make him feel better. How would he take it if he found out he were a Dette, and notonly a Dette but a broken one? So close to what you two want but so far away?” Gaspard huffed. “Even worse, I’d imagine. A Dette that can’t even get slick?”
Teige raised his hand, cheeks on fire. “So…”
Gaspard heaved a short breath and froze. “He gets slick, doesn’t he?”
Gatlin and Teige nodded.
Gaspard reached up, grasping them both by the hair and knocked their heads together with a firm smack. “Idiots!”
A soft set of footsteps plodded into the room, and Teige glanced up to catch sight of Viraj’s great-nephew with that same annoyed expression on his face. “They didn’t know?”
Gaspard shook his head.
Bastien took a deep breath. “I did what I could. I’ve left the medicine here and gave him instructions. Pepas must be back by the end of the week, what with spring coming. If he truly does have anamorousperiod often, he should go in to a true heat.”
“Then do we tell him?” Gatlin frowned.
“No, then you come visit us and we see what happened. If he’s expecting blanks, we say something.” Gaspard rubbed at his face. “Clueless fucking stags.”
Chapter Three
Gatlin
It’d been almost two hundred years ago when he’d first met Viraj. A scared Drake clinging to the side of his mate when he returned from business up north.
Their relationship had been an open one, so the union wasn’t surprising or offensive, but what had shocked Gatlin at the time, was the instant attraction he shared with the male. He knew to expect a Vritra Drake to stay with them awhile, but not how lovely he was. All dark-clay skin and eyes like gold on fire. And his scales? In his shifted form, he shone like rubies, a beautiful creature that had slotted between Gatlin and Teige every night for two centuries.
