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Sorin walked to the door. As he opened it, he said, “The dragon will take them home himself. After I’ve finished sending the council a message, I’m going to set him free.”
* * *
While Sandrine assembled the field team, Sorin dressed and masked his scent with a honeysuckle perfume, then let himself into Reynard’s holding cell. It was small for what it was—barely large enough to fit a man, let alone a fully grown dragon—so Sorin pressed himself into the corner and crossed his arms over his chest while he waited for Reynard to wake.
At least, he thought, it would give him some time to figure out what he was going to do.
In the heyday of his youth, when his hatred for dragons had burned as hot as dragon fire, he wouldn’t have had an issue with ending a dragon’s life. They were monsters, after all. Beasts without a moral compass who reveled in taking what didn’t belong to them, whether it be gold or an omega’s body. But now the thought of killing a dragon made Sorin sick.
Love and fatherhood had softened him.
He would never forgive dragonkind for what they had done to their omegas—or for what they had done to him—but the situation was more complex now. He had matured, and his goals had matured with him.
But what was he to do now?
There was no way he could drag the Vanguard back into the shadows after what Sandrine had done. The Vanguard had liberated omegas from their cloisters for hundreds of years without arousing suspicion, but that was only because dragons saw omegas as disposable—a simple means to an end. If a few disappeared, so be it.
The same could not be said about their eggs.
They would tear the world apart to find them.
And once they knew they had an enemy skilled enough to snatch them right out of their nest, they would stop at nothing to make sure that enemy was destroyed.
The only way to stop them from coming at the Vanguard with their claws out and their teeth bared was to prove that they were a force even dragons should be afraid of.
Something dark and malicious.
Human, but cut from the same cloth as a monster.
A dragon by any other name.
Sorin glanced at Reynard from his corner and brushed the last of his tears out of his eyes. The pain in his head was terrible, and all he wanted to do was find somewhere small and safe to be—somewhere he could suffer on his own until the worst of the pain went away—but there was no time for himself right now. Without his intervention, more omegas would be taken and forced into dragons’ beds for the purpose of producing eggs.
It was up to him to save them.
Up to him to spare them a lifetime of pain.
So as Reynard stirred and began to fight his restraints, scales plunging down his neck as he launched into his transformation, Sorin peeled himself off the wall and pretended he was someone he wasn’t.
An aggressor.
A dragon.
A monster.
It was an act, but his tongue had never had an issue finding its way around a language, and now it molded itself to this new persona like it had always been a part of him.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” he said in a singsong voice, tapping into the pain that had lived for hundreds of years inside of him to help him come across as unhinged and insane. “You’re only alive because you have something we want, but it won’t keep you alive for long if you decide to become a problem.”
Reynard growled, and Sorin heard his dragon in it.
On the inside, he cowered. It reminded him too much of what had happened to him years ago—of Sebastian, who had almost killed him over custody of his omega, but also of Unwin and all the dragons before him who had never seen an issue with resorting to violence in order to get their way.
But on the outside, he feigned confidence.
When Reynard told the council about what had happened to him, he wanted them to be afraid.
“Cute,” he cooed facetiously, and came to stand over Reynard. “How ferocious of you. What a big, scary dragon you are. Oh, I’m shaking.”
