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“You’re not saying you believe Papa approved of the eggnapping, are you? You told me yourself that he wasn’t responsible—it was Sandrine.”
Bertram lowered his gaze, miserably contemplating his scotch. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think your father would agree with something like that, but after what he did to Reynard, I’m not sure what to think. Had he truly not been in agreement with Sandrine’s plot, he wouldn’t have done what he did. He would have come to me. We could have worked things out together, found a way forward as we always have—but now, he wants nothing to do with me. The last time we saw each other, he ran, and now he is targeting Sebastian. I fear, perhaps, he has had a change of heart. He was a different man before I met him, and there is a part of me that worries he has become that man again.”
Piers made a face. “Behavior like that isn’t within Papa’s character. I don’t believe for a second that he is suddenly our enemy. Something else is going on.”
“Perhaps.” Bertram drank deeply, distracting himself with the burn of the scotch as it went down. He expected that Piers would want to change the topic of conversation when he finished drinking, but when he parted the glass from his lips, Piers was looking at him expectantly. “Yes?”
“It seems to me,” Piers said brightly, “that the best way to get to the bottom of what is going on is to find Papa and ask him ourselves. I’ll look for him in your stead while you and Uncle Sebastian are away.”
It was far from an ideal arrangement, and Bertram did not enjoy the idea of Piers tracking Sorin down in person since Sorin’s unchecked magic would put him in harm’s way, but Piers was a man now, and old enough to make his own decisions. Even if Bertram forbade him from following through with his plan, there was nothing stopping him from doing it anyway. He was not a whelp who could be put in a corner anymore. He was his own person, and unfortunately, that person happened to be a hardheaded Drake.
“I’ll allow it on two conditions,” Bertram conceded, meeting Piers’s gaze. “Firstly, if you find him, you must contact me as soon as it is safe for you to do so—this is not a situation you should be handling on your own.”
“Understood,” Piers said. “And the second condition?”
“No matter how much you wish otherwise, you must not spend a prolonged amount of time around him.” Displeasure soured Piers’s face, but Bertram did not relent. “There is unchecked magic inside of him,” he warned. “Magic that has killed dragons before, including an agent of the council. I know he is your father and that you love him, but I would never forgive myself if anything were to happen to you, and I know he feels the same way. It’s why he left all those years ago, and why he hasn’t been able to see you since.”
“There is ongoing discourse within the community that Disgraces are dragons,” Piers countered, as Bertram knew he would. “In light of this revelation, the council has been discussing abolishing the Pedigree entirely. Do you think Father is a Disgrace? I’ve heard it said he resembled some awful old Onyx swindler. If that’s the case, then his magic must be dragon magic, and can therefore be tamed. I’m not much of a magic user, but I could—”
“You will not,” Bertram said firmly, echoes of Grimbold in his tone. “When the time comes, I will be the one to take the risk, child. It is not your place. I have lost too much already to think of losing you, too.”
Piers’s face fell, but through his sorrow, Bertram saw that he understood.
“I will respect your wishes, Father,” he said quite somberly. “And I will do my best to find Papa for us. Even if we must keep him a secret all our lives, I don’t care—it is high time we bring him home.”
* * *
Grimbold did send Bertram off on a mission, and had Sebastian accompany him as he sometimes did when extra muscle was required. Ian Brand, the recently appointed head of the Topaz clan, had voiced his concern to the council that a group of Topaz dragons were plotting to band together in a bid to seize control from him, and the Amethyst clan, as the Topaz clan’s newest and most unexpected ally, had volunteered to look into the matter.
Sebastian was irritable the entire time and engaged Bertram in conversation far less than usual, which was saying something, as he was already a dragon of few words. When he did speak, it was always of Peregrine.
Of how he was doing, or news of his pregnancy, and sometimes, very rarely, of his fear that the mad omega who was targeting them would win.
It was not like Sebastian to be pessimistic. He was a dragon of action, and when something was not to his liking, he fixed it right away. But this was different. It was, perhaps, the first time he’d been faced with something that could not be easily solved with teeth or claws or coins, and as stoic as he strove to be, Bertram could tell it bothered him. No amount of grinning and bearing it could hide the dull exhaustion in his eyes.
“If he tries anything,” Sebastian grumbled on their flight home, having quietly ended the insurgent group bent on overthrowing Ian Brand’s rule, “I will gut him from one end to the other and enjoy the view as he bleeds, and should he do anything to harm Peregrine or the babe while he’s at it, I will have Everard heal him and I will do it again, and again, until his pain has well and truly broken him. Until he truly understands what suffering means.”
“Do you think, perhaps, he understands what it’s like to suffer already?” Bertram asked conversationally, doing his best to seem unaffected by Sebastian’s desire to torture his mate. “I hardly think an individual who has not known an extreme degree of pain during their lifetime would attempt anything like this.”
Sebastian’s brows knit together. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “But I fail to see how that is my problem. It is simple—if he harms me, I shall harm him.”
“Fair enough,” Bertram relented, but he did not find it very fair at all.
The cabin doors closed, and the plane rolled across the tarmac for the runway. They were in the sky and on the way to Aurora no more than ten minutes later, and went their separate ways upon landing, Bertram to the city streets in hopes of learning Sorin’s whereabouts, and Sebastian to his pregnant mate.
But their separation was short-lived, as a few weeks after that, Bertram received a phone call.
It was Piers.
“I’ve found Papa,” he said in a rush before Bertram could even say hello. “He is infiltrating Uncle Sebastian’s lair as we speak. You must stop him at once before the worst comes to pass.”
Bertram did not hesitate—not even to end the call. He dropped the phone and ran, consumed by a terror more dark and bleak than he had ever felt before, for he knew what would happen should Sebastian get his claws on Sorin.
… and what Sorin might do to Sebastian should his magic misfire during the fray.
14
Bertram
