AllFreeNovel
Share Us
* * *
From the foyer, Perry walked into the sitting room and went to peruse the books in its small library by moonlight. The titles in it were eclectic, to say the least—the bottom shelves were occupied by picture books and novels written for beginner readers while higher shelves were filled with pulp fiction, the kind that sucked you in and refused to let you go. Perry traced his fingers along spines of books Sebastian had gifted him years ago—ones he’d read and loved and kept for nights like this when real life was too wretched to bear. But none of them spoke to him, and so he continued on his walk.
Perhaps he’d have better luck in the study, where their older books were kept. Perry seldom touched them for fear their old bindings would give, but if damaging a book meant he might sleep tonight, it was worth the sacrifice. Ignatius, he was sure, could refer him to someone who specialized in repairing “antiquarian” titles. Not that he approved of the designation. The books were a few hundred years younger than he was, after all, and Perry did not consider himself an antique.
Perry was halfway to the bookshelf when he came to an abrupt stop.
There was something moving behind the drawn curtains of the window across the room.
Had it been any other time, Perry wouldn’t have thought much of it. Yes, the boys were good sleepers, but there was always the chance one of them had woken up and decided to brave the dark on a late-night adventure. Likewise, sometimes the servants did walk around after hours, whether to chase off insomnia or indulge in moonlit trysts—or sometimes perhaps both—but in all his years, Perry had never seen an affair that looked quite as insidious as this. There was no rhythm to it. The curtains swirled like they were being disturbed by a breeze, but that was impossible—the windows were shut and locked, and no other set of curtains in the room were acting in the same way.
It was, Perry knew, quite foolish to approach a potential threat while unarmed and pregnant. The proper course of action would be to return to the hoard room, wake Sebastian, and allow him to deal with it. With claw and tooth and scale, he could defend himself against attacks that Perry couldn’t. But there were things Sebastian was hiding from him. He’d hidden the truth for hundreds of years, disappearing on business of his father’s design only to come home and never speak of what had transpired, even when Perry had asked. And now there was this business with Bertram and his omega. Sebastian had known about it, but hadn’t told Perry until he was directly in harm’s way. If he went to his dragon to tell him about the strange happenings in the room, it could very well become another mystery—yet another piece missing from a puzzle Perry was eager to solve. So he approached the window, steeled himself, and yanked open the curtains.
There was nothing there.
“It’s all in my head, isn’t it?” Perry muttered to himself as he dropped his arms to his sides. “Maybe Sebastian is right to hide what he does from me—the stress is eating away at my brain.”
But as he spoke, a breeze teased its way inside of his robe and ghosted along his skin. Perplexed, Perry stepped into the space in front of the window and discovered two things at once.
The first: the window was unlocked and remained open by a sliver.
The second: there was something there after all, and he’d gone and stepped on it.
To keep from making a sound, Perry clamped a hand over his mouth and quickly backed away from the window. There, on the floor, heretofore unseen, was a small dragon scale. Much like the hardwood, it gleamed in the moonlight and was so thin and flat that Perry hadn’t noticed it until it was too late.
With eight rowdy boys who oftentimes transformed into eight rowdy young dragons, accidents weren’t uncommon. Perry had kissed better gashes made by clumsy claws and accompanied the children on visits to Everard’s office to heal varying degrees of burns. From time to time, the boys did get nippy and sometimes that meant scales were shed, but the longer Perry looked at the scale, the more a feeling of wrongness prickled in the back of his mind.
The scale was too…
Too something.
Too thin, too small, too abnormal.
Young dragons had thick scales to help protect them from themselves, and as a dragon grew older and larger, those scales tended to thin somewhat, but never as much as this. The scale in front of him looked flimsy, and would do little to ward off claws, teeth, or flame.
It was almost like…
No.
No, he refused to entertain the notion. That couldn’t be it.
But what other explanation could there be?
Heart in his throat, Perry eyed the window for signs of danger and found none. When he was sure no harm would come to him, he stepped forward, locked it, then stooped to pick up the scale. It fit neatly on his palm and was so thin, it had started to curl slightly at the edges. When he tested it with his finger, it flattened under the pressure, then popped back into its original shape. Flimsy, just like he’d thought.
Such a scale couldn’t belong to any of the children, nor had it been shed from an adult dragon.
There was only one time Perry had ever seen scales quite like these.
“Heaven help us,” he uttered, then clutched the scale to his chest and hurried from the room to make a phone call.
22
Peregrine
1509
Heaven could not save Peregrine—not now, and perhaps not ever—for hell had risen up to claim him, and from it, there was no escape. Consciousness meant pain, but the endless black of the oblivion he fell into when he shut his eyes was worse, and Peregrine feared it with all his heart. If he gave in to it, he knew that he would never come back out. He would die and so, too, would the eggs. For them, he had to push through.
