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Now all that was left to do was see it through.
* * *
Leaves crunched beneath the rolling tires of a sleek black limousine as it moved smoothly up the private road leading to 1511 Dragon’s Head Drive. The property—once a luxury subset of Geoffrey’s rental empire—now sat empty, waiting.
The deed had traded hands, and its new owners were on their way home.
Three minutes at a modest speed carried the limousine past grounds thickly planted with ancient sycamores to the estate’s residence—an East Coast inspired mansion bordered by neatly maintained hedges, approachable via a pavestone driveway leading to a motor court with a modest six-car garage. A skeleton staff had been keeping up with general maintenance, so everything was neat and tidy, not a shed autumn leaf to be seen, but as the limousine slowed to a stop in the motor court and admitted the most elusive Drake and his mate onto their new property, Sorin couldn’t help but notice how different it was from their home in Scotland.
Different, but just as beautiful.
All it would take was a little time before it, too, felt like home.
“What do you think?” Bertram asked. They stood side by side not far from the limousine, a good ten yards from the garage. All three of its doors were open, revealing a few new cars parked inside. “Geoffrey arranged to have it furnished for us, and the staff received a grocery order earlier today. I hear one of the rooms is even equipped with an egg bed, and Harrison was quite insistent he set up a snake room for you. I assume it will be quite luxurious. Unless you can think of something I’ve missed, we should have everything we need to be comfortable. Does anything come to mind, love? Is there something you’ve missed desperately during our years apart?”
Sorin couldn’t think of anything. He’d been prepared to live out the rest of his life in their ancient Scottish manor, fetching water from the well and scrubbing clothing by hand, so the fact they now had central heating and electricity was already more than he ever could have hoped for. But then someone cleared their throat.
Someone who wasn’t Bertram.
“I can think of something,” said an unseen voice, and from a place behind the garage wall just out of Sorin’s line of sight, there came a man with coiffed black hair and midnight purple eyes. He was of medium build—not as muscular as Sebastian, but not slender, either—and was dressed in a beautifully fitted suit, the topmost button of his shirt left playfully open.
And he was not alone.
Three other men emerged from the garage, all of them dark-haired and purple-eyed. None of them were quite as well-dressed as the first, but they weren’t slovenly, either. They wore respectable button-downs and well-fitted slacks, leather shoes polished to a shine, and were clean-shaven but for the most muscular of them, who sported immaculately maintained stubble.
No one man was the exact double of the other, but they shared a family resemblance.
And they were hauntingly familiar.
Where did he know them from?
Sorin narrowed his eyes, flipping through his mental Rolodex of dragons.
They weren’t Bertram’s brothers, but they were clearly Amethysts. Which other dragons was he acquainted with? Could they be Perry and Sebastian’s boys? They’d had their clutches around the same time, and their children—
Their children.
Realization struck, and Sorin gasped out loud.
“Piers?” he choked out. “Edmund? Waryn? Owyn?”
“Hello, Papa,” one of them said. He was tall compared to his brothers, but slightly more daintily built, and had the kindest eyes. “It’s me, Owyn. Is it okay to hug you now? We’ve been waiting for it to be safe, but it’s been such an awfully long time…”
Sorin could not speak. He clasped his mouth with both hands in disbelief, then, with a startled sob, sprinted the short distance separating him from the men who had once been his baby boys. The one closest to him—Piers, whose topmost button was undone—caught him in his arms and spun him around, and when Sorin’s feet next hit the ground, his boys had surrounded him from all sides and tackled him in a group hug.
“Babies,” he sobbed, then through his sobbing, laughed. “But you’re not babies anymore, are you? Look at how handsome you all are. You grew up so well. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you, but I had to keep you safe. I couldn’t let what happened to those other dragons happen to you.”
“We know, Papa,” Owyn said. “Father told us, and we know you did what you had to do. But you don’t have to keep your distance from us anymore. Piers told us you conquered your magic, so it’s safe to be near you again.”
“Piers?” The group hug ended, and Sorin took half a step back to look his most cunning son in the eyes. “How did you find out? We’ve been off the grid this entire time, so it couldn’t have been your father who told you.”
Piers arched a roguish brow. “You learn all kinds of interesting things when you are part of a family who talks as loudly and as often as ours, Papa. As a whole, we’re a compassionate bunch, but we’re not the best at keeping secrets. After everyone got back from being ‘kidnapped,’ all I had to do was listen in to figure out what was going on… and from there, the rest was easy.”
“He’s always been sneaky like that,” Waryn grumbled. He crossed his thick arms over his chest in a move far too reminiscent of his uncle Sebastian. “The rest of us never stand a chance with him around… but at least he’s no longer framing us for mischief we had no hand in creating. Not that I would be mad to be framed for mischief like this.” His tone lightened. “Welcome home, Papa. We missed you.”
Sorin had missed them, too. More than he could say. Wanting to share the joy of their reunion with the one he loved the most, he turned to face Bertram, who was leaning casually on the limousine. He had his arms loosely crossed and was smiling as he watched the reunion unfold. He did not seem in the least surprised to see the boys, and as Sorin came down from the high of getting to see his sons again, it occurred to him that there was likely a reason for it.
“You did this,” he accused. “Somehow you got in touch with them and brought them here. Piers is covering for you.”
