Page 171 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

Despite myself, I huffed a laugh.

My father smiled into his glass. “Sit, Rafe.”

I sat.

For a while, we drank in quiet. The library smelled of old paper and the faint smoke of my father’s bourbon. Above the mantel hung a portrait of my paternal grandmother, severe and beautiful, her wolf eyes painted too accurately for comfort.

I looked away from it.

My father noticed. He always noticed more than he admitted. “Is this about the pack?” he asked.

“It is always, in part, about the pack.”

He nodded once, no argument. That was one of the things I valued most about him. Rafael didn’t rush to defend what didn’t deserve defense, even when it belonged to him.

“I have never fully understood what they want from me,” I said.

“Which faction?”

“All of them.”

His mouth tightened, but he didn’t say anything, just waited patiently for me to continue.

“Some want me near because I am your son. Some want me diminished for the same reason. Some will never see anything but the dragon in me. Some insist it doesn’t matter, then ensure I notice that it does.”

The bourbon burned warmly down my throat.

“I am too much dragon for the wolves,” I said. “I’m your heir, but the pack treats me as a complication. The Olden Folk courts treat me as useful when they need influence and suspicious when they do not.”

I hadn’t intended to say so much.

Perhaps that was what Quinn had done to me. Made certain truths less patient about remaining unsaid.

“And what do you think?” he asked.

I looked at him. “About what?”

“About yourself.”

The question irritated me because I had no clean answer. “I think I’m tired of proving I belong in rooms not built for me.”

My father was quiet for a moment. “You take after your mother.”

I looked up sharply.

“She never belonged neatly either,” he said. “Too bright for the people who wanted her to be merely ornamental. Too sharp for the men who preferred women agreeable. Too fond of strange music and old stories for the committees who thought culture should be curated by the dull. What is there in that to be ashamed of?”

“I am not ashamed of Mother.”

“No. But sometimes you treat the parts of yourself that came from her as though they require defending.”

I stared into my glass.

My father continued, gentler now. “The pack matters. Blood matters. History matters. But those aren’t the only measures of belonging. I have run with wolves who would abandon a brother for status, and I have broken bread with humans who would die before betraying a friend. Species is a poor substitute for character.”

I thought of Quinn asleep on my shoulder. Max at my feet.

“She is human,” my father said.