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No matter how bitter the taste in his mouth, it was the right thing to do.
Perry tuned back in to the conversation in time to hear Harrison ask if Finch would like Cleaver to show him to the door.
“No need,” Perry said, cutting seamlessly into the conversation. With a tinkle of the bangles on his wrist, he rose and placed a gentle hand on the small of Finch’s back. “I’ll show our friend out. I’ll be back shortly.”
Perry steered Finch from the room. Once there was a door separating him from Harrison, he leaned in close and said, “Loving a dragon isn’t always easy, especially when one isn’t marked.”
Finch flinched. “That really isn’t any of your—”
“It’s also hard to dream of children when you know, when you are certain in the deepest part of your heart, that you will never have them. That you will never have anything.”
A shiver ran through Finch, whose posture tightened. There was silence for a moment, disrupted only by the sound of their footsteps. Out of the corner of his eye, Perry thought he saw a door farther down the hallway close, but it may have been just a trick of the light.
At last, with a tiny shake of his head, Finch said, “But you’re mated to Sebastian and have been for half a millennium. You have everything.”
If only he knew.
Perry smiled, but there was little joy in it. “Perhaps not everything. But my situation is neither here nor there.”
“I don’t think I can bear it,” Finch admitted in despair. They reached the staircase and began their descent.
“Bear what, darling?”
“Seeing his disappointment. Seeing it reflected in his eyes every day that he sees me. I… I just can’t.”
Pain arrowed through Perry anew. “I think you sell yourself short,” he said as they crossed the marble floor of the grand foyer. “And Hugh. You sell him short as well.”
“My best-case scenario,” Finch said bitterly, “is to be carrying a human Disgrace.”
Perry took a moment to compose himself so he wouldn’t lash out. Finch was only repeating what draconian society had believed for so long to be true, and lessons so deeply ingrained were difficult to shake. “Hugh can only father dragons and dragonets. There’s no such thing as a Disgrace. A dragon’s offspring, no matter what form they take, are never human. A dragon can only sire more dragons.”
“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Hugh doesn’t want a Disgrace or a dragonet. He wants a clutch. All he’s ever wanted was a clutch.”
It was, perhaps, the truth as Finch knew it, but it wouldn’t be the truth forever. Hugh’s heart was larger than that.
He brought them to a stop by the mansion’s large front door and smiled at the footman, Gerald, a Topaz transplant who’d yet to warm to life in Amethyst territory. “Gerald, please get Finch’s coat and hat. He wishes to go home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gerald bowed his head and went to fetch Finch’s belongings.
When he was out of earshot, Finch shook his head. “I can’t believe you know the names of servants that aren’t even your own.”
It seemed that Gerald was not the only one in need of warming to life as an Amethyst. Perry smiled. “I wasn’t always the mate of a dragon. But never mind that. I think that you’ll find Hugh doesn’t really want a clutch.”
Finch snorted. “I can assure you he does.”
Perry squeezed Finch’s hand. “I think that what Hugh wants is to be a father.” Gerald reappeared, carrying with him what Perry could only assume was Finch’s outerwear. “Oh, and look. Here’s the very efficient Gerald now with your hat and coat. Think about what I said, Finch.”
Finch nodded but said nothing and was gone shortly after, but in his absence, Perry’s pain only grew. He wished he could reach out to Finch and tell him that he wasn’t alone, that his pain was valid, and that there was a brilliant future ahead of him, but he couldn’t. His was a suffering he shouldered alone, as it had been since the very first time he’d fallen pregnant all those years ago.
But maybe…
Perry slid a hand over what could—would—one day be a baby bump.
Maybe one day soon, that would change. He would see what Harrison had to say. The only way forward was to speak the truth and do away with the pretty lies he always told about his past. Hopefully it would be enough to save the babe.
* * *
