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Bertram nodded, and Peterson closed the door. There was a click as it locked followed by a moment of thoughtful silence, then another click as Peterson decided better, and the lock came undone.
Everard must have been to visit recently.
How sweet of Peterson to spare Bertram the effort of picking the lock.
But Bertram did not take advantage of the unlocked door. He was a gentleman, and while danger lurked just around the corner, it seemed it had yet to arrive. Peterson, Bertram wagered, would not have been half as calm or as personable had any harm befallen the masters of the house, and that meant Bertram still had time to stop this madness before it happened.
The worst would not come to pass.
Everything would be all right.
Peterson returned a minute or two later and opened the door, not quite managing to mask his surprise upon finding Bertram waiting for him on the landing. “Mr. Drake and his mate shall see you,” he said. “Please, after me.”
Bertram nodded and followed Peterson into his brother’s lair. It wasn’t half as dusty as he’d remembered, which he took as a sign that the clutch had done his brother good. A dirty lair was useless for nesting. Five hundred years later and Bertram still knew it. Perhaps now that he was a father, Reynard knew it as well.
“Mr. Bertram Drake,” Peterson said by way of introduction upon their arrival, throwing open the bedroom door. Bertram took a step forward in anticipation that Peterson would show him into the room, but Peterson surprised him by doing no such thing. He froze in the doorway, color draining from his face. “Sir, what’s wrong?” he asked, horrified. “Where are the eggs? Where is Master Drake?”
Bertram froze internally as panic took hold, but Frederich was never afraid. He glided past Peterson into the room and approached the bedside with confidence.
To his surprise, Reynard’s mate, Misha, was there, blood weeping from his eyes. The field team must have run into trouble during the rescue mission and only been able to take the eggs. It was a dire situation indeed, but Bertram did not lose hope. Provided he moved quickly enough, he could reunite Misha with his eggs, stop the Vanguard, and save both his family and his mate before the council caught wind of what was happening.
But to do it, he’d need to move fast.
So when Misha, pale and bleeding, looked up at him with heartbreak in his eyes, Bertram didn’t falter. He went straight to business. “Come with me,” he said with all the charm and grace Frederich could muster, “if you wish to live.”
* * *
A black SUV waited for them outside. Sebastian sat behind the wheel while Everard climbed out of the back to greet Bertram on his way to the car. No doubt he’d spotted Misha, who Bertram carried in his arms. The poor thing was too weakened from his bleeding heart to walk.
Bertram gingerly handed Misha over to Everard, knowing he was the dragon most likely to be able to help, then went to speak privately with Sebastian. He needed to be brought up to date with everything that had occurred.
“The eggs are gone,” Bertram told him, nodding in Misha’s direction. “The situation is dire. The omega is already presenting with signs of a bleeding heart—without his eggs, he will die.”
“Do you know where they are?” Sebastian asked.
“Yes, I think I do.”
“Then you drive.” Sebastian climbed out of the driver’s seat. “Get us there in one piece and I’ll rip whoever is responsible to shreds.”
“No murder,” Bertram warned.
Sebastian grunted noncommittally. It was not the kind of sound that inspired confidence, but Bertram didn’t have time to argue. Every second they delayed was a second wasted, and could mean the difference between life and death not only for Reynard and his mate, but for Sorin as well.
While Sebastian hoisted himself into the passenger side of the SUV, Bertram went to make sure Everard and Misha were settled and ready to go. What he found surprised him. There was a third addition to their party—a messy-haired, bespectacled young man who hovered by Everard’s side, eyes bright and ever-curious, watching as Everard funneled healing magic into Misha.
It was Everard’s mate, Harrison Lessardi-Drake.
Anger cracked with whiplike speed through Bertram, so sudden and powerful that Frederich’s cheerful disposition slipped. His fingers twitched, then curled into fists, and scales plunged down his neck.
He had been in Harrison’s presence before, but it was only now hitting him that this was the man responsible for the mating experiment. The one whose thirst for knowledge would cause countless omegas untold suffering. How could he stand there smiling and unaffected when his actions were about to doom an entire subset of people? A terrible, dark part of Bertram longed to lash out and rip the smile off his face.
But it’s not his fault, said his logical inner voice. He doesn’t understand what happens to an omega who is separated from his eggs.
The voice was right, and Bertram knew it, but he also knew that this was the man who’d seen no problem with shipping off nine young men and women to strangers to be bred. The experiment wasn’t only wrong for what it would do to its omega participants—it was a moral abomination.
Why hadn’t he seen that?
Why did none of them see that?
