AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“However, I am not the dragon I was in my youth.” He flicked his gaze to Bertram, who now sat at Sorin’s side. “None of us are, and the world is more complicated than it used to be. You are not good, little omega.” His lips tightened. “But you are not evil, either… and I have become aware that perhaps I am much the same way. I am not the hero I have made myself out to be. No dragon with half a mind would call himself such a thing after what we have learned. Like you, we are not evil, but we have not been good, either, and I cannot help but think”—for the first time, the ice in Sebastian’s voice cracked—“had you been successful in your mission, had we listened when you and Bertram first spoke up about abuse within the Pedigree, would my Peregrine not have been made to suffer? When I found him, he was skin and bones, a few missed meals away from death’s door, but I said nothing. I simply removed him from his cloister and made him mine. But how many omegas did I doom with my silence? How many were not as lucky as he? It did not even cross my mind. Not until Peregrine told me about what had happened to you.”
Sebastian flung his ruined shirt aside, inadvertently striking Everard, who remained standing nearby. Everard gagged and held the shirt at arm’s length, but surprisingly said nothing. He seemed to know this was not a moment he should interrupt.
“There is no forgetting what you’ve done,” Sebastian said. “You have put my family in danger and terrorized us… but worse, you have made me realize the wrongs I have done and the harm I have perpetuated. The damage you have done to me has cut me to the very core of who I am, and for that, I hate you, omega. You have ruined me. Yet I find myself needing to thank you as well.”
Sebastian sank to one knee before Sorin like a knight before his sovereign, and while his expression remained guarded, a hint of humility shone through.
“You and I are not friends,” he said, “but I recognize what you have done. I do not forgive you, and I may not for some time, but I am not so proud as to withhold forgiveness forever. In the meantime, I will be watching you, seeing what you do now that we have welcomed you into our family, and perhaps in time, how I feel about you will change. For now, consider us uneasy allies.” With a grunt, Sebastian climbed to his feet. “That is all I wanted to say.”
“Are you not going to have it out with Bertram as well?” Everard asked, sounding peeved. He brandished the bloody shirt in Sebastian’s direction as one might a sword. “He held you at gunpoint, for heaven’s sake.”
Sebastian snorted. “As if a gun could stop me.”
That said, he turned his back on them and left the room.
“Your shirt,” Everard called plaintively after him, but Sebastian did not return.
Harry entered instead.
He was dressed in a lab coat, under which he was wearing a graphic t-shirt and jeans. There was no sign of his iguana, but he did have with him a small gift bag. It was green, decorated with darker green glitter shaped to look like lizards and snakes. Sorin was no retail expert, but the misshapen look of some of the reptiles and the way the glitter was merrily shedding onto his expensive and previously glitter-free floor screamed DIY.
“Hello, Sorin,” Harry said, smiling with his whole heart. “Oh, and hello, Bertram. Sorry I’m late. The glue on this gift bag took longer to dry than I thought it would, and I had to wait until it was travel-ready. Is the appointment over?”
Everard chuckled. “I’m afraid it is.”
“Drat.” Harry frowned. “Well, at least I made it in time to say hello. May I come in? I promise I won’t stay too long.”
An inquisitive sensation suffused the mate bond. Curious, Sorin turned his head just enough to spot Bertram out of the corner of his eye, and found Bertram doing the same. He nodded subtly toward Harry as if to ask, “Are you okay with this?”
Had it been anyone else, Sorin didn’t think he would be, but Harry was a sweet soul and not one to cause drama, and Sorin didn’t have the heart to turn him away. “Sure,” he said to Harry. “Come on in.”
Harry entered without further preamble and came up to the bedside, leaving a sparkling green trail as he went. Had it not felt like a semi had just finished doing donuts in his brain, Sorin might have commented on the plague Harry was inflicting on his household, but he barely had it in him to remain upright. If there was one good thing he could say about the last few hundred years, it was that they had taught him to pick his battles. A war on glitter would not be waged today.
“This is for you,” Harry said, presenting Sorin with the bag.
Sorin accepted it as gingerly as he could, but glitter still rained down on his thighs.
“Thank you,” he said and, mustering up the vestiges of his Pedigree training, added quite politely, “You mentioned something about waiting for the glue to dry… did you stick the glitter on yourself?”
Harry’s whole face brightened. “Oh, yes. It was a whole debacle. You’d think glue would keep the glitter in place, but somehow it went everywhere. Darwin even found some in the fridge of all places, and after that Ev made us take everything outside. Now both our house and our yard sparkle. I hypothesize it’ll attract female lizards onto our property, since flashy colors are a mating signal, but we’ll probably have to wait another month or two until things warm up to confirm. Either way, it’s pretty neat.”
Everard’s suddenly vacant expression and dead-eyed stare suggested it was not as neat as Harry purported it to be.
“Anyway, I think it turned out all right, don’t you? Look at all the reptiles I was able to include.” Harry came around so he was standing next to Sorin and began pointing to different clusters of glitter, showing off his handiwork. “This one is a desperate leaf chameleon, and this one is a dunes sagebrush lizard. Then there’s the jewelled gecko, and the Canterbury grass skink, and Gray’s monitor lizard. The only bags I could find online with reptiles on them had one or maybe two species at best, and none of them were very anatomically accurate. Mine are a little wonky because I’m not a great artist, but at least I didn’t make my common house geckos the same size as my blue-tongued skinks.”
He chuckled, and Sorin, practically on autopilot at this point, smiled to be polite.
“But I guess the bag doesn’t matter so much in the long run,” Harry admitted. He scratched the back of his head awkwardly—almost shyly—as though he’d realized he’d gotten carried away. “Having a nice bag is, well, nice, but the important part is what’s inside it, and what’s inside it is for you. It’s from all of us in the Dragonet Club. We wanted to welcome you to Aurora, and say congratulations on your new home.”
He stepped away, coming to stand in front of Sorin once more.
“We hope you enjoy them. You and Bertram both.”
Upon mention of his name, Bertram moved closer so he was thigh to thigh with Sorin. Glitter rained down on him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He put a hand on Sorin’s lower back and leaned in, kissing the top of his head. “Would you open it for us, love?”
Sorin’s cheeks heated.
He tucked himself into the safety of Bertram’s arm and, careful not to disturb the glitter, he did.
