Page 68 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

Marco shook it, giving her the quick public charm he reserved for people he hadn’t decided mattered. “Legal team. Rafe does love surrounding himself with specialists.”

“I find competence useful,” I said.

“Don’t we all?” His attention dipped briefly to Max. “And the dog?”

“Maximus Decimus Aurelius Bradley,” Quinn said. “Max for short.”

Marco laughed as if she’d made a joke, then looked at me. “You brought a dog to a gala?”

“It is an event for a service-dog charity,” I said.

“Medical service dogs,” Quinn added, still pleasant. “Max is retired military, not a service dog in the legal public-access sense, but he was invited because he tends to make dog people happy and rich donors less scary.”

Marco blinked, clearly unsure whether to be amused. I would have been amused under different circumstances. Instead, I felt the old fatigue settle through my shoulders.

There were men in my father’s pack who wanted to stand close to me because I was Rafael Virelli’s son. There were men who wanted to measure themselves against me for the same reason. There were others who believed, quietly or not, that I was a temporary inconvenience. An heir in name, perhaps, but not in truth. Not wolf enough. Too much of my mother’s blood. Too old-world in one direction, not old-world enough in another. A dragon housed in a pack structure, expected to inherit a language of belonging I could never fully embody.

Marco clapped me on the shoulder.

I allowed it.

“How is your mother?” he asked.

“She is well today,” I said.

“Good. That’s good. Your father worries. We all do.”

We all do. As if his passive concern, invoking my mother’s illness in the middle of a ballroom, connected him more closely to the alpha and his family.

Quinn’s smile faded by a fraction.

Marco continued before I could redirect him. “You know, your father and I were reviewing the Newark routes last week. He still has the best instincts I’ve ever seen. Makes a man wonder how anyone can follow that.”

It wasn’t a direct challenge. Marco was too experienced for that. Just a weight set down gently enough that rejecting it would seem rude. A reminder: my father was a beloved, proven wolf. I was something else, and everyone was waiting to see whether I would fail.

My mother’s voice came back to me then, vivid as if she stood beside me in the ballroom in one of her old silk dresses. “When men wish to feel tall, they often stand on nonsense.”

She’d said it when I was sixteen, after a visiting pack elder spent an entire dinner asking whether dragon flight made me feel disconnected from the ground my father’s people protected. I’d been furious and too young to hide it well. My mother had tapped my wrist under the table until I looked at her.

“You needn’t win every room, Rafe,” she’d murmured later. “Some rooms are badly built.”

At sixteen, I hadn’t understood. I’d wanted to win every room precisely because so many seemed constructed to exclude me.

At thirty-three, I understood better. But understanding didn’t always help.

“My father’s instincts are excellent,” I said.

Marco smiled. “That they are. Big shoes to fill.”

Quinn shifted beside me, a subtle repositioning, Max’s leash changing from one hand to the other.

“Of course,” Marco said, taking another sip of wine, “you’ve got advantages your father never had. These days, a man can hire lawyers for everything.”

Quinn’s voice came in bright and smooth. “Oh, absolutely. We’re very useful. Like dentists, but with worse lighting and more PDFs.”

Marco looked at her. I did as well.

She smiled at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught what part of the Virelli business you’re involved with?”