I texted Zenya, telling her that I would need her assistance with something that had come up, and then mentally messaged Beth, Sam, and Zoey, letting them know that the initial meeting had gone well and that they should be fine to come downstairs. I didn’t text Cynthia — she had tried to insist that she had some sort of obligation to be here at the start as a neutral observer, which, frankly, I disagreed with for a multitude of reasons. She had eventually acquiesced and remained upstairs with my mates, but not before both of us were frustrated. So, I didn’t text her. Sam was with her, and she could relay the message, but for the moment, I was annoyed. Her insistence on overstepping, seemingly randomly from my perspective because it wasn’t ever explained, combined with the stress of having to interact with five other dragons and I snapped at her. What she wanted was probably for my good (and, more confidently, good for Sam), but since she wasn’t explaining why I needed her, I didn’t budge.

  In the end, I don’t think it mattered much. The only thing she missed was an incomplete discussion on what made dragons dragons. Given that she lived with one — and that the answers the dragons here provided didn’t even seem to be entirely correct for me personally — I couldn’t imagine she was missing out.

  I was a touch surprised when, after Zenya, Beth, Sam, Zoey, and Cynthia joined us, a trickle of other sharply dressed professionals followed them. It took only a few moments for me to realize what had happened. All of the dragons here had arrived with uncertain expectations. Like me, they had brought advisors and confidants with them to the hotel. Like me, they weren’t confident what the initial contact with me would involve. If I was genuinely someone’s heir, would conflict break out in the ballroom? The advisors had been kept outside, tucked safely away until any potential conflict was either averted or concluded. Now, it was time to capitalize on the assembly to negotiate, so the lawyers and advisors came out. Everyone besides Clement had at least one supporter join them as the talks began — presumably because Clement was his own legal representation. There was no need to have someone else give approval in pencil only for him to have to come back in a minute and trace in pen when he could simply do it correctly in the first place.

  Now, with the table set and the players assembled, while I scrambled to bring Zenya up to speed on how I wasn’t being asked the tithe from my meager belongings but that I instead was being offered an olive branch by the eldest dragon in a way that would introduce me to the perpetual game they existed in, Cynthia got to observe the others. She got to watch as Clement and Arjun discussed operations in Turkey and the Caucasus. She got to listen as Eleanor and Adriana talked about the little bits of drama they were able to collect about the powers in their regions. She got to listen as Adriana and Arjun argued over shipping interests that passed between Santos and Itajaí on Adriana’s end and Singapore and Shanghai on Arjun’s.

  That’s how the next two hours went.

  I watched, listened, and observed until my brain melted from boredom as the other five dragons discussed the absolutely most boring, trite, petty arrangements in the entire world. After about ten minutes, I wanted to shout that this whole meeting could’ve been an email. After an hour, when I had a better grasp on just how inconsequential the topics were, how small and insignificant they were in comparison to the combined powers sitting inside the room, I wanted to scream that it could’ve been an email between secretaries. There was nothing being talked about that required either an in-person conversation or the direct oversight of any of the dragons themselves. Maybe you could argue that the drama Eleanor and Adriana gossipped over was best done in person, but a coffee shop between the two of them would have sufficed — not a gathering of all six of us.

  In slightly more productive use of her eminently valuable time and experience, Cynthia got to listen to Zenya and I discuss how we wanted to handle Arjun’s offer. Zenya listened as I relayed the information and then Clement’s suggestions before posing the most potent question possible: what did I actually want?

  Because, to her, I didn’t need money. I wanted a house of my own for my family, to support Beth in going back to school, to raise a child with Zoey, and to allow Sam to tinker in the kitchen as much as she wanted, and, yes, all of those things did indeed cost money. But not an order of magnitude more than I needed, and I wasn’t yet actively doing anything to support us. A house, with a more precise mana dynamo placed expressly where it would collect the greatest volume of magical energy, would pay for itself in a year at most. A loan for land and construction could be paid with physical labor or mana or my saliva rather than pure currency. I had advertising offers, both for me, me and the girls as a group, and the girls themselves, if I needed currency quickly. And I had a host of other offers if I wanted to dip my toes back into them.

  In short, I didn’t need currency from Arjun, at least in her eyes. Did I want currency? Arjun had suggested it, and Clement had stuck with it as he manipulated his explanation simply because it was straightforward and clean as a demonstration of how I could alter the deal for my own benefit. A mundane resort would be profitable. It was, notionally, on my lands, so I should claim a portion of the profit and call it a day. To the other dragons, who had been pushed out of the magical world and stuck trading mundane resources instead, monetary currency was the only currency they could conceptualize anymore.

  I hugged Zenya when she said that. “Monetary currency isn’t the only form of currency.” She tensed at first, stiff as a board as my arms wrapped around her, before slowly relaxing. She smelled terrified for a second, but before I could withdraw and apologize, the smell shifted to overwhelming embarrassment, and she relaxed. Not entirely, and I ached at the reminder of what she must’ve endured. In hindsight, reactively moving quickly and wrapping myself around her probably wasn’t a great decision, but it came so naturally and instinctively that I did it without imagining the consequences. The fact that she still wasn’t fully comfortable hurt a bit, too. I mentally attributed it to her embarrassment to keep myself from visibly reacting.

  She didn’t seem to get it when I finally released her. “What? What did I do?” she asked.

  “Made it easy for me,” I replied. Because she had. She, apparently unintentionally, opened my eyes to what I actually wanted.

  Money was useful. That likely would always be true. But they weren’t the only form of currency, and, in my specific set of circumstances, there was another that was far, far more valuable. There were, as far as I could tell, only five stores of the currency that I wanted, jealously guarded and hidden away. All of them were in the room with me, besides one who was loitering in a room somewhere upstairs.

  Information was the currency I was after. What parts of me were draconic, and what parts weren’t? How did my saliva work on a fundamental level? How did my venom work? Was there any way to more precisely predict the outcome of childbirth? How did Sam siphon mana from me seemingly infinitely with far more efficiency than taking it from the crystals? Could the other dragons smell emotions like I could if they tried to, or was it truly unique to me? Did harnesses for my full form exist? Could I carry a passenger or two safely? Was the response to my shifting normal? Were the seemingly shared releases when I climaxed from the dragon or something else?

  For most of those questions, it didn’t actually matter. There were so few dragons in the world that all of it may as well truly have been unique to me. But, I was curious. I was curious how much of an outsider I was, even among the group of exiles I had been inexplicably inserted into.

  It took another half hour before Arjun reconvened with me. He left his assistant to bicker with Clement over the specific wording of some kind of agreement over the grazing rights of one type of livestock in Uzbekistan.

  “It doesn’t even matter,” he said with a smile as he sat down in a chair at my end of the table. “The agreement doesn’t matter either way. It’s inconsequential. They simply enjoy it. It’s a game. An exercise for the mind.”

  “I see,” I replied bluntly. I had surmised as such, but it felt grating, rather than amusing, to me, given my expectations for what the meetings would entail.

  “Now, you’ve had some time. What will my hotel on Hawaii cost me?”

  “How long are you staying in Philadelphia?” I asked in return.

  “Through the New Year,” he replied with a furrowed brow. “Might take a few day trips north. I don’t see snow much where I currently live, and seeing the landscape blanketed in white is a nice change of pace. Why is it relevant?”

  “I want to ask you for a nominal fee, something like 1% of your yearly profit, along with a complimentary stay for my family on a schedule that won’t bankrupt you — the numbers can be argued over later, if your assistant wishes to — but I want another meeting as the upfront payment.”

  An eyebrow raised, Arjun asked, “Another meeting? I was under the impression you found this one insipid and wasteful.”

  “Well, you’re not wrong. The discussions happening now don’t even come close to scratching my interest, to put it politely. For everything after I was identified as not an existential threat to any of you, my presence hasn’t been required. I can almost understand all of you capitalizing on the circumstances, but I feel a bit trapped here now, as the host but not a participant in any of the talks. Not that I want to be included — I’m rather content not getting involved, actually. I just wish I didn’t have to observe something that doesn’t involve me. It’s draining to sit here.

  “Anyway, I’d like to have another meeting, just the two of us — and your assistant, perhaps my mates, the details are up for discussion — because I want to know more about me. The answers I’ve gotten today haven’t entirely fit with my admittedly limited experiences, and I’d like to know why, or, at least, more of what normal looks like for a dragon. I have an idea of what normal looks like for me, but I have no idea what normal looks like for any of you. People here, the archivist who’s instructing me and some of the physical trainers, have an idea of what normal should be, but they don’t know like any of you do. They’ve got hazy pictures from interactions a hundred years ago, not a lifetime of lived experience.

  “So, in exchange for permitting your hotel development to continue, I’d like a nominal yearly payment and a meeting in which we discuss what being a dragon means, Arjun.”

  The elder statesman stroked his chin, eying me warily for several moments. Eventually, he responded, “And if there are topics that I don’t wish to discuss?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Let’s say, hypothetically, that there are things I don’t wish to discuss with you related to a dragon’s existence. If the discussion is meant to be payment, you may justly feel swindled if I halt any conversation onto the topics you wish to touch upon.”

  “Well, is there anything that needs to be explicitly off the table? I want to talk about dragons, their physiology and psychology and development in general terms. I don’t particularly care about the specifics of outliers — the who or the when — though, I suppose I do mind knowing about what is possible and what isn’t. I didn’t think that those would be off limits, especially if I’m not asking for names of those who experienced things.”

  “I’m not telling you about the culling,” he stated firmly. “That is off the table.”

  “The culling?”

  Both he and Zenya shook their heads as though I had missed something obvious. Arjun lifted his hand and pointed at people around the room, first to himself, then at several people, and finally at me.

  “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five dragons, with one more pretending to be a teenager in her hotel room throwing a tantrum over having to be seen here. So, six. Six dragons. Despite being immortal and not needing an equal mate to reproduce. Yes, there are challenges there. They alone do not account for why there are only five of us that have comprehensible origins, and then one, you, who does not. There should be more of us. There were more of us. I will not be discussing the specifics of the years that left us so few. Someone else can tell that story.”

  “I do feel as though someone should inform me of all of that at some point,” I muttered. “But, I suppose that’s reasonable enough. I don’t really need to know the history, at least from you. The caution you’ve expressed today should be enough. If I’m breaking Aisling’s rules, she better tell me herself first.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll describe an overview of the situation that led to it if you’d like. You deserve to be familiarized with the circumstances that caused our currently precarious position. Just not the specifics. I’m not going to tell you about how my friends were either pitted against each other or, later, they were hunted and executed for participating in things that were, at the time, deemed acceptable.”

  “I don’t believe that will be an issue,” I said quietly. “Having someone who actually understands draconic physiology, more than just reading old accounts and guessing, would be wonderful.”

  “Mmm. Indeed,” he replied, taking a sip of the cup of coffee he had poured earlier. “You have gotten the short end of the stick in many regards. Immense potential that you’re likely to be barred from using without anyone to instruct you on how to utilize it. For all our sakes, I pray that Aisling’s gamble in leaving you so unshackled pays dividends.”

  “Oh?”

  “You seem a decent boy, James. It would be a shame to see you led down a path toward inevitable destruction because one leader overplayed their hand. Likewise, selfishly, I hope you work out positively because it will pressure those who hold our leashes to let out a little slack. Maybe, probably, it will be another generation or three before we truly return to freedom. If you grow here without trouble, perhaps we will get some breathing room before then.

  “I think it likely you would be warned before you stray too far from acceptable territory. If I thought otherwise, I would swallow my bitterness and warn you of the specifics, because it is in my interest to see you blossom. Moving on from things that we can neither predict nor influence from here, if a discussion on being a dragon is what you want as payment, I can certainly provide that. I’ll not promise to answer everything, but I’ll try to be fair.”

  “Any information is more than I’ve got now. Even what you’ve already answered today is useful. It highlights that I’m not the same as you. When do you want to have it?”

  “Monday, if that works with you. Let’s save the contract for the hotel until then, too, alright? I may wish to renegotiate then.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your hints that you’re not the same as us — predictable enough, given that you aren’t any of our offspring and therefore something miraculous must’ve happened for you to exist — might tempt me into paying more to hear your side of the story. Until we have the conversation, I won’t know. We can handle it then, if you’re amenable to that.”

  “Monday sounds good, and handling the contract then sounds good, too. When and where?”

  “The ballroom isn’t available?”

  “I only reserved it for today, tomorrow, and Sunday. They’re hosting Christmas events next week and I wasn’t even sure how long I’d need it for.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to make do with somewhere else. Is there a place you’d trust to have the conversations?”

  “My apartment, I suppose. It would be private enough.”

  “And owned by the Seat,” Arjun asserted.

  I shrugged. “If you’re going down that route of paranoia, is there any place in the country you’d trust?”

  “Perhaps not. Your domicile will have to suffice, I suppose. How’s ten sound? Get the conversation out of the way, have lunch if you’d like, sign the contract, and I’ll be out of your hair?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Wonderful. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go ensure my lawyer doesn’t permanently antagonize our legally inclined compatriot,” Arjun said as he stood.

  “What’d you make of that?” I whispered to Zenya as we watched the eldest dragon return to where Clement was embattled.

  “He’s old. Seen a lot. Experienced a lot. Evidently, hurt a lot. Not wanting to speak of it is reasonable. He’s still willing to help you, and even if he says that’s mostly because it might help him, I don’t buy it. He’s not as indifferent as he wants to seem.”

  “Reasonable, period? Or reasonable because I’m still an outsider here and we likely won’t ever get closer than that?”

  She turned to face me, her icy blue eyes frosting over as she investigated me, guarded and withdrawn. She was aware that I had turned the question, asking about her rather than Arjun. It wasn’t subtle and I wasn’t trying to deceive her, but it did feel like she was one of the few people I saw daily I hadn’t made progress with. I couldn’t miss what felt like a safe chance.

  “Reasonable for now,” she eventually answered. “You’re still new to him. Eventually, if you work to prove yourself, he might tell you. The scars might be too deep for him to ever want to talk about them.”

  “As long as he’s aware that I’m ready to listen if he wants to talk.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’m sure he’s aware. He knows you’re not the one who caused them. He knows you’re not like them, too. He’s just set in his ways. Trained. Conditioned. Carrying much inertia.”

  “I can live with that for now.”

  “You’ll have to until Monday, at least,” she replied with a smirk. “That’s when your meeting is.” When I didn’t respond immediately, she added, “With Arjun.”

  “Right. With Arjun. Who we were talking about.”

  She smiled softly and nodded, and we settled back into silence, watching the various assembled people mingle. Beth had mostly stuck to Sam’s side the entire time — she had wanted to sit next to me but didn’t want to be a distraction while I strategized with Zenya or talked with Arjun — and Sam had mostly lounged with Cynthia. Beth did spend a few moments observing the various non-dragons who joined us with fascination as they arrived. While she had been with me when I made my announcement of arrival in Aisling’s court, and I distinctly recalled her having a reaction as the warding faded and allowed us to see through the glamor magic, she was still too freshly caught in my gravity to experience anything else. Even when we met with Zoey’s friends, there was something else on the agenda that took priority. Today, she could observe the weretiger talk to the centaur without other distractions impeding her observation.

  My redheaded princess wasn’t happy about some part of that arrangement. It wasn’t directed at me — I had taken a moment to check in when they first came down, and while I didn’t get the full explanation, I did understand that I wasn’t the problem. No, she seemed disdainful for something her mother was doing. Not that it stopped her from observing and shadowing Cynthia, it just seemed to leave her with a sour taste in her mouth.

  On the other hand, Zoey had stuck around for a few minutes after I asked the three of them to join me. She mentally evaluated the people who arrived, trying to determine if any of them were threats either to me or the realm as a whole. The unsurprising generalized answer was yes, at least potentially. None of them were acting like it, but there wasn’t much stopping them if they wanted to, either. She ended up splitting her time between sitting by the doors and refilling the coffee pot. I sighed when I realized that she wasn’t merely keeping an eye on it for her own desires but, rather, as a security precaution. I hadn’t intended for her to be working today, but she decided to do it anyway. Her lessons were too engrained, and the presence of so many powerful foreign agents in one room had hardwired that switch to on for the time being.

  When no one approached me in the ten minutes after Arjun departed to rejoin bantering with Clement, something that seemed would never actually reach a conclusion, I mentally nudged Beth, asking her if she wanted to come sit with me, now that my business seemed to be concluded.

  As she began to stand from the chair she had claimed by the windowside coffee table but before she responded to me, the entrance doors were flung open. A woman who, at least at first glance, was Adriana’s doppelganger walked in. That illusion was nearly instantly dispelled. First, her clothing contrasted heavily. Adriana wore modest professional attire, presenting herself like she was attending a business meeting. The reflection, who could only be Juliana, wore a loosely fitting hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, the waistband of which had been folded over to ride dangerously lowly on her hips.

  Second, her demeanor. When Adriana walked in, she was cautious, quiet, respectful of the conversation we were already having, and apologetic that she hadn’t quite been on time. Juliana, in contrast, tossed the doors open without a care in the world and strode into the room like she was the host, completely indifferent that she was hours late to a meeting that could have determined her fate.

  That was reinforced when she opened her mouth. “Sup, losers?” she brashly proclaimed as she walked over to the table. “Where’s the runt? Whose is he, and why are all of you just chilling instead of, like, fixing it?”

  I was already cringing internally before her eyes scanned around the spacious area, mentally dismissing people she didn’t find immediate value in when she locked eyes with me. There was a moment of something that clicked in her brain, but it wasn’t recognition.

  “Damn, who invited eye candy to the meetings this year?” came tumbling out of her mouth before anyone could prevent the obvious trainwreck from happening. “You ever played with a lizard before, studly? Wanna see if you measure up? Ditch this boring mess? I’ve got the VIP suite.”

  “That you’re sharing with me,” Adriana interrupted her, the first person to recover their faculties. “And that is the ‘runt,’ as you so eloquently put it. Would it kill you to show a bit of respect?”

  Juliana shrugged. “It might, and I don’t intend to find out. Not changing my mind, though. What d’you say, runt? Want to go see how well you fit with one of your own species?”

  “Juliana!” Adriana seethed.

  “What?” the oblivious newcomer asked genuinely. “I mean, it’s not like the lovers would let him try the housewife, so unless you’ve already sampled him, he’s never had the opportunity to play with another dragon. And these meetings are so boring, and it’s fucking cold and gross outside. We normally do them at a beach somewhere, and I can enjoy the sun and the water. I don’t want to be stuck in this dreary place any longer, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to listen to the old men argue about who’s managing their stinky cows for the next decade. Like, I’m like the one he has to have the most in common with because there’s no way he’s been tangled up in your obsession with numbers and money and bullshit human affairs.”

  “I’m not sure you and I have anything at all in common with each other,” I said, not particularly interested in letting the brat continue rambling about things that only existed in her own head. “And, need I remind you, until the second week of September, ‘human affairs’ were just ‘affairs,’ as far as I knew. Denigrating them in front of me isn’t exactly a great way to ingratiate yourself with someone you, evidently, desire.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Daaaaaaaamn,” she faux-whispered to her now boiling-over sister. “He’s hot and has a brain?”

  “Juliana, I swear to everything you hold dear, I am going to kill you,” Adriana declared. “Sit down and shut up and let the adults talk.”

  Juliana smiled, making me wonder if the entire entrance and provocation were just an act to antagonize her sister. The way her eyes lingered on me said that her proposition wasn’t entirely fabricated, merely capitalized on.

  “Fiiiiiiiine,” she responded, rolling her eyes and tossing her brown hair to the side. “But, like, for real, whose is he?”

  “You’d know that if you could be bothered to show up on time,” Arjun grumbled.

  “What do you mean?” Juliana replied with such a forced degree of saccharine innocence that I wanted to vomit. “I got up with the sunrise, like I normally do. It’s not my fault you picked a meeting place so far from the sunny beaches on the equator that we normally use.”

  “The sun came up at 7:18 local time,” Clement announced, catching me off-guard that he knew it offhandedly like that and yet leaving me completely unsurprised once I thought about it for a second. “That’s nearly two hours before we were scheduled to begin and almost five hours ago now.”

  “Well, the sun only feels strong enough now to match the sunrise at home,” Juliana replied instantly, overjoyed to have drawn Clement down to her level. “I just let my scales tell me when it’s time to get up, and it’s only now that it is time.”

  “No one’s,” I announced, holding up my shifted arm for what felt like the hundredth time that day, conclusively ending the game Juliana was dragging everyone else into. “I am, by means no one seems to understand, directly related to none of you. Which is why everyone else was having calm discussions about other topics.”

  She furrowed her brow, “So, are you saying we could head upstairs then?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s no fun,” she bemoaned, collapsing into a chair to sulk melodramatically.

  After a few seconds passed in silence, it became apparent that the spectacle of her arrival was complete, and people began returning to the original conversations. That did, less fortuitously, mean I was still without purpose for the time being. As the two sisters started hushedly talking to each other — or, instead, as Adriana tried her hardest to quietly scold someone far too old to be acting like a teenager without completely losing every sense of decorum — Beth worked up her nerves and joined me.

  “What’s up with Sam?” I asked as she sat down across my lap.

  She shrugged. “Nothing with us, fortunately. But, first, that girl’s a dragon, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Which means she’s, what, a hundred years old? At the youngest?”

  “Yeah. A hundred and twenty or so. I’m not asking for the actual date.”

  Beth exhaled forcefully. “Are you sure? Because she acts younger than some of the kids in Rosa’s book club. A hundred and twenty divided by ten, maybe.”

  I nodded, but added, “I could be wrong, but I’m getting the impression that it is just that, an act. A way to get attention from the handful of people with whom she’s allowed to interact.”

  Beth raised an eyebrow, “You pity her? Do I need to remind you how she came in and, were you anyone besides you, basically demanded you served on a platter? I mean, if you weren’t a dragon, could you say no?”

  “I would certainly want to, but, no. Pity isn’t the right word. Sympathize with the circumstances that pushed her to that, but it doesn’t excuse the behavior.”

  “Okay, well, Sam’s just bothered by her mom.”

  “I’m certainly a little bothered with Cynthia, too,” I grumbled.

  “Cynthia’s here observing in a semi-official capacity. Sam’s annoyed by that and hates that it’s basically confirming all of the reasons she was excluded by everyone as a child. Dislikes that it feels like she’s betraying you.”

  I nodded, following the train of thought. “Well, Sam has nothing to worry about. Cynthia only owes loyalty as far as I’m involved with Sam, so I wouldn’t ask her not to do her job just because I’m here. I figured anything said here had the possibility of getting to Aisling or, at least, the offices. No, I was content with the idea of Cynthia observing. I, personally, have nothing to hide from her, and she’s only protecting Sam, even if it’s a bit shady.”

  “Well, Sam’s annoyed. The dragon-bitch coming in and immediately trying to screw you didn’t help, either.”

  “That went over about as well as a fart in church. But, you guys don’t have to stay, if you don’t want to. It’s pretty clear at this point that we’re simply playing host to an irregular meeting for them. I didn’t think you needed to be here at all, but you were. If you’re bored and Sam’s annoyed, it might be best if you went, you know, almost anywhere else.”

  “And leave Zoey to watch you all by yourself? Hah,” Beth scoffed. “She’s really good at what she’s good at, but physical threats aren’t the only ones you have to watch for.”

  “What do you mean? What else is there to look out for here?”

  Beth screwed her face up, curling her lips into a frown as her green eyes looked to be on the verge of tears. She brought her hands together in front of her, clasping them as though she were praying. Her voice wobbled and wavered as she said, “Please, J. I just need a little favor from you. It’s nothing much for someone like you. But, if you can’t help me, I just don’t know who will. I’m at the end of my rope, James. You’d be doing a miracle if you could help me.”

  “Okay, okay, okay, I get it, Beth; please put that face away. It hurts to see you acting like you’re in pain.”

  “All I’m saying is that if Juliana had come in and asked for help and that everyone else had already denied her, she’d be well on her way to being wrapped around your body. You’ve got a little, itty bitty, teenie weenie, goddamn massive hero complex, James. You tried to tell Marjorie that you didn’t want any payment because she was a friend of Zenya’s, even though she was already uncomfortable because she knew she couldn’t afford your real value. She needed to pay you something for her own conscience. You missed that by trying to do something generous. Now, it doesn’t seem like anyone will, but someone could try to tug on your heart like that.”

  “And you’re going to protect me from that?” I asked.

  “Duh. That was how I survived, James. That was the card I played. It was the truth the vast majority of the time but that didn’t stop me from playing it up, too. You’re vulnerable to it. I’ll catch it before you fall victim to it.”

  “Well, if you’re content staying, I’m not going to force you to leave,” I replied, wrapping an arm around her waist and tugging her even closer to me. She tilted her head back, slumping softly against my chest, and I found my chin naturally coming to rest nestled in her auburn hair.

  She had pulled her lengthening bangs off to the side with a clip today, dressing demurely for her standards for the first meeting. It still made her look younger than she was, especially as the little scars and first hints of age lines on her face faded away, combined with her adding a few pounds of fat. She was still lean, just no longer quite enough to count her ribs in a hug. The little touches of softening in her face combined with the rejuvenated spark in her eyes to make her appear bursting with youthful innocence.

  She closed her eyes and settled against me. Somehow, in the center of a draconic get-together, she had conjured a spot of calm to share with me. The only downside was that we were inherently on a timer. Lunch was arriving imminently, according to the occasional updates I got on my phone, and I would want to help set it up. At the very least, I’d need to let the hotel staff know where to send the delivery. I was surprised at how much of the breakfast had been eaten — and more than just the coffee Zoey was watching like a hawk. The dragons, besides Juliana, had all made at least one selection personally, and all of the aides had eaten freely, which meant we had only a moderate amount of leftover breakfast instead of the contemptible mountain of waste I had been predicting.

  When I glanced at my phone again, seeing the notification that the restaurant staff were here to deliver lunch and needed directing, I moved to get up. Beth didn’t budge. I opened my mouth to whisper that I needed her to get up, and she rolled her eyes without moving anything else.

  “Sam’s handling it,” she whispered back. “You handled all the prep and made things simple for us, even though this shouldn’t have been your burden alone. Well, you and Zenya, and it’s not like it should’ve been hers, either. Sam needs a break from her mom, and handling the food will be good for her. She’s still going to be annoyed, because she didn’t get to make it, but giving her something to think about to break the focus on how we don’t have exactly the same goals as Cynthia will be good.”

  I nodded, not entirely convinced but willing to accept what she said for now, and indeed saw Sam step out of the room, an annoyed grimace fading from her face. A few minutes later, she rolled a monstrous, three-tiered cart into the room, thanking the staff member before closing the door. I hadn’t asked her to, but it did make sense to keep potential outsiders, well, outside. And the catering worker likely wouldn’t think much of it — Sam had just saved them the final tasks and gotten them out early, after all.

  Beth kissed me on the cheek, whispered, “Back in a minute,” and slipped off me to go assist Sam in setting the food out, leaving me to sit and watch and feel useless. I wasn’t a part of any of the discussions, as no one besides Arjun had any relevant talks for me, and I couldn’t even do my job as host, because both Beth and Sam were handling it.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sam announced that lunch was ready and that everyone could serve themselves as they saw fit, but they should get to it before the meat cooled if they partook. Beth mentally whispered that she was going to make a plate for the two of us to share, so I was able to simply sit back and observe.

  The steakhouse was slightly surprised that we pushed for such a side-heavy spread from them, figuring that any group with vegan or vegetarian-inclined members would look elsewhere. I didn’t get into explaining to them that we had both members who declined to eat meat and those who would voraciously enjoy their more typical fare, instead tailoring a menu that I thought would work.

  It ended up being essentially what I had expected. Zoey was mainly on her own at one end of the spectrum, collecting a dizzyingly full plate of different cuts of meat that still left her somewhat unsatisfied, given that she had tasted Sam’s infused cooking. Most of the aides and assistants took a wide variety from the selections we had chosen, taking one or two cuts of meat, a small salad, and then several of the more indulgent sides to enjoy.

  The other dragons, I noticed, avoided the meat entirely, just as Sam, Beth, and I did. Besides that, there was no connecting thread. Arjun confused me by simply taking a plate of fried pickles and nothing else. Eleanor and Clement both assembled their own garden salads, taking slightly different groupings of vegetables in the process, and Eleanor declined any dressing for hers. Adriana bypassed the greens entirely for all three different hot potato dishes (a garlic mashed potato, a cheese-covered au Gratin dish, and a Hasselback potato — a twist on a baked potato where they’re sliced most of the way through before being baked).

  Juliana watched her sister get a dish, sneered, and then went for her own selection. I found it unsurprising when she returned to her seat with nothing more than a slice of flan and a pile of fried bananas.

  Beth returned to me after the initial rush for the new food was over, a single plate in one hand and a single fork in the other. I had gotten hints of her plan in my mind, but I was still surprised when she placed herself deftly back in my lap rather than the chair beside me. She then wielded her fork skillfully, grabbing a small leaf of lettuce, a single piece of spinach, a sliced carrot, and a thin slice of cheese with one swipe, somehow managing to not disturb anything else on the plate, before she held the fork up in front of my face.

  I raised an eyebrow, and she wiggled the fork again, so I opened my mouth and took the offering from her.

  She smiled radiantly, before returning to the plate to grab a bite for her — including a cherry tomato and a slice of cucumber, things I wouldn’t have added to the salad in the first place. From there, she alternated, getting a selection of the mixed ingredients that I would like and feeding me before taking the ones she wanted for herself. It took a lot longer than just eating ourselves, but it was significantly more intimate. It felt almost risque doing it in such a large gathering of people, but I didn’t notice that until afterward. In the moment, I only had eyes for Beth.

  My inattentiveness might have contributed to what happened next. I can’t be sure that it would’ve made a difference, but had I been able to see beyond Beth’s green eyes, I might’ve been able to see that no one else was even slightly distracted by our display. While, in hindsight, it felt too personal and affectionate for the setting, no one else in the room seemed to share my qualms. No one else even batted an eye when Beth sat in my lap and fed me. That should’ve raised a question or two in my mind. Instead, I was distracted by the verdant orbs that were desperately trying to relieve some of the anxiety I had built in my mind throughout the day. They worked. She accomplished her goal.

  Which is why I was caught flatfooted when, after Beth whispered in my ear that she was going to get something sweet but that dessert would be waiting when we got home, Juliana stopped her and pushed the empty plate toward her.

  “I’ll take another serving of the bananas,” the dragon said, leaving Beth frozen in confusion. I wasn’t any better. The absurdity of the interaction left me frozen in confusion, too.

  It didn’t leave my dragon frozen, though.

  “You have functioning limbs, whelp, do you not?” came forcefully from my mouth. “You can get it yourself.”

  Juliana’s head snapped to mine as every other conversation in the room paused. “Uh, yeah, but, like, why wouldn’t the servant get it if she’s already going?”

  “Beth isn’t a servant,” I growled, feeling my teeth grinding in my mouth hard enough that, were they not constantly bathed in my saliva, I worried I might damage them. For once, the dragon and I were wholly on the same page. This fool of an invader had just insulted our first mate.

  Juliana stared at me dimly, visibly confused. “Sorry, are they not servants? I just, one of them has been watching the door all day as security, the other handled all the food, and then this one came and sat in your lap when you were bored and then fed you. I just assumed that, like, they were household attendants.”

  “Those are my mates,” I grumbled, “and they will serve no master they do not elect themselves while I still draw breath.”

  Adriana shifted slightly, seeing a potential catastrophe in the making. Unfortunately, she wasn’t quick enough, because Juliana was still in the room to respond. The juvenile-acting dragon’s eyes opened wide in surprise as she understood my words, but she answered before thinking through fully what I had said.

  “Oh,” she mumbled, “I didn’t realize they were more important to you. I mean, I get the blonde; she’s fit even if she’s getting on for a werewolf. I just didn’t realize the pudgy ruiva or the plain, mousey one would measure up for a dragon.”

  Adriana inhaled.

  “Out,” I roared. I didn’t scream, nor was I louder than any of the prior conversations, but my word reverberated throughout the room, pulsing with the disgust I was reeling with, dominating the entire space in the conspicuous absence of other noise. Roar is the only description that served my command justice. Juliana shivered involuntarily, and her eyes opened wide, her brain finally catching up to the shitstorm she had unintentionally brewed. Everyone else in the entire room remained frozen to the spot, seemingly unable to respond.

  “Out,” I reiterated. “Out before I do something I’ll regret.”

  Adriana moved first, grabbing Juliana’s hoodie like a mother cat picking up a kitten by the scruff. “Terribly sorry, James,” she said, pulling Juliana toward the door.

  It was only once they were out in the hallway that Juliana seemed to unfreeze, and I heard her ask, “What happened? What did I do? How’d that go wrong so quickly?” as the doors slowly closed behind the sisters.

  Everyone looked back to me to see what would happen next. I found myself sitting down, unaware that I had ever stood, and that seemed to shatter the stasis. Conversations restarted, people resumed eating, and one of the aides went out to the hallway with a cell phone in hand. Beth looked to me questioningly, unsure what had just transpired or how she should proceed. I asked her to rejoin me, if she wanted to.

  “I always will,” she whispered when she found her place in my lap after disposing of the paper plate we had used for lunch.

  “What?”

  “I always will want to be with you, J. I always will want to be at your side.”

  “I just—”

  “No, I get it,” she interrupted me. “You couldn’t just tell me to come back. Not immediately after what she suggested. But we’ve been over this. I want this, James. I want you and Sam and Zoey, and —” she trailed off, leaving her thought incomplete. She didn’t give anything away through the bond, either, telling me she was either intentionally withholding it or uncertain about how she truly felt, if not both.

  “What?”

  “And maybe another,” she concluded. I blinked in surprise for a moment, but followed her eyes to where she was watching Zenya exchanging contact details with Arjun’s assistant.

  “You want me to—”

  “No. I don’t want you to force it. If it happens, I’ll be happy. If it doesn’t because she isn’t interested, I’ll be happy. And Sam and Zenya get their own opinions, of course, but,” she turned to face me in the middle of speaking, locking her eyes with mine. “J, she lives with us. Eats with us. Has her future planned around supporting yours and you do your utmost to give her the normal experiences she’s never had. If it weren’t for whatever baggage she’s holding onto, wouldn’t it have happened already?”

  “I don’t know.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me, so I continued, “No, really, I don’t know. It’s not like I went out of my way to pursue Sam or Zoey. Or you. I seem to remember you simply clinging to me, including as I went to bed.”

  “Fair. No, you were shockingly reserved. Made me a little worried you didn’t like me. I climbed into your bed practically naked, and you just held me. Took until the second night for anything to happen and that’s only because I jumped you.”

  “I thought you were cute the entire time, Beth. You do remember that you climbed into my bed and started crying, right? Not exactly lighting a signal that you wanted something else.”

  She laughed, “Yeah, I know. I expected you to be any other guy. Climb into bed with me and I press myself against you and — Oops! — your hands are roaming all over me. They still did, a bit, but you just rubbed my back and tried to get me to relax. Then I ground myself in your lap the next day.”

  “I was a bit distracted with the whole being told I was a dragon experience.”

  “Yeah, that’s fair. Made me wonder if you were gay, though. Didn’t help that Sam came out of the bathroom when we stopped glowing and panting, giving you the deepest bedroom eyes I’ve ever seen. Made me make my play that night.”

  “And, happily ever after?”

  “Happily ever after,” she confirmed. “And the same for Sam. And the same for Zoey. So, why not Zenya?”

  For the first time in the discussion, I heard a flicker of what Beth was really thinking through the bond. Nothing she had said so far had been a lie. She really did feel the way she explained things. There was just a tiny additional mote of information she had left unsaid.

  See, she knew what I was just as well as I did. A dragon. An immortal dragon. With an elderly-for-her-species werewolf and two humans for lovers. Sam would almost certainly see triple digits because of the magic, and we had no idea how Beth’s lifespan would be altered by the strange shielding I had conjured on her, but neither of them would be forever.

  Evgenia, though, was a vampire. Undead. Unaging. Not a dragon but, at least in this aspect, similar.

  Beth cringed when she realized what I was contemplating. “I didn’t mean—” she started, making it my turn to interrupt her.

  “No, I get it,” I halted her explanation with. “That’s not the reason, but it’s not a downside, either. Have you talked with Sam or Zoey?” I asked.

  “I’m on board,” Sam answered for herself, sitting down with a huff beside us. “Long as I can still sleep in your arms when I need it. Zenya deserves to be loved. I’m not saying it has to be you, but, like Beth said, she’s already been in our lives for months, and the biggest issue has been accidentally making her embarrassed that she doesn’t remember her actual birthday.”

  I shook my head, “Why don’t we table this discussion until after Zenya expresses any interest? Until then, it’s meaningless speculation about things I’m not sure I’m comfortable with.”

  Beth and Sam locked eyes briefly before Beth replied, “Because she won’t ever do that, James.”

  “She’s going to live in whatever role you give her,” Sam added. “At least for the foreseeable future, if you give her a task, she’ll do it, exactly it, handling any irregularities relating to it, and nothing more. Ask her to dinner, and she’ll be there, have a drink, talk to you about whatever you’d like, smile and laugh as you walk home, and then go back to sit in her room alone.”

  “Because if you wanted more, you would’ve either taken it or ordered her to give it to you,” Beth concluded. “If it was a path you wanted to take, you could.”

  “I really don’t like the sound of that.”

  Sam slumped against the side Beth wasn’t occupying, her head falling against my shoulder, “Just what we’ve seen, James. Don’t have to like it any more than you had to like that bitch calling Beth and me servants.”

  “Are we going to talk about that?” I asked.

  Both women shook their heads. “No,” Sam replied, “you pretty conclusively handled it when you tossed her from the room. Everyone else wasn’t sure whether you were going to get physical or not.”

  Beth added, “It wasn’t a big deal. I could’ve just gotten her the food.”

  “It was a deal to me. She didn’t ask. She didn’t pay anyone in the room the barest minimum of respect. Showed up, ate our food, pissed in our faces with her attitude and willingness to distract the people who were trying to be civil, and then didn’t even ask. Didn’t ask if you were help, didn’t even make the assumption and then ask you to get her more food. Made the assumption and then made a demand. It pissed me off. The dragon didn’t take having another dragon trying to give you orders, either. We were in agreement that she wasn’t allowed to do it, even if he thinks I could and I don’t want to.”

  “You could,” Beth and Sam said at the same time.

  “If it was important. If I didn’t have the time to explain myself and needed you to do something, sure. Hasn’t happened yet. Doubt it will. It’s not like we’re getting into fights with people. We’re equals.”

  Beth laughed, so I bared my teeth mentally and continued, “I need your perspectives, and I need your input. I get that you’re saying that I could, and, should the need arise, maybe I will. But it hasn’t, and I don’t want to.”

  Beth turned and whispered directly into my ear, “No, J, I was just thinking that you didn’t have any hesitation giving orders to Zoey or me in the bedroom.”

  Clement saved me from dignifying Beth’s comment with a response by clearing his throat.

  “Well, James, this has been an experience,” he said neutrally. “Surprisingly peaceful, all things considered.”

  “I wasn’t too reactive?” I asked. “Not that I’m sorry for it, but…”

  He barked a laugh and shook his head. “No. Someone needed to tell her that the world doesn’t exist to serve her. Still needs to, probably. Adriana is stuck in the awkward position of being unable to give her any incentive or consequence that has any weight without hurting herself. Can’t exactly cut her out of her own bank accounts or remove her from the estate without cause, especially when no one else wants to get caught between two dragons. No, everything will be fine, here.”

  Eleanor nodded in agreement. “No, you were well within your right to expel her. That doesn’t take much justification. Had you drawn blood, perhaps we would have to talk.”

  “I take it you two are heading out, then?”

  “Indeed. We’ll be in the country through the new year — cross-Atlantic flights during the holidays are absurdly priced, and everyone I need to oversee is taking personal time regardless — but we probably won’t stay in town. You might have to approve a trip into Canada,” Clement informed me.

  “Are they still under my jurisdiction?” I asked.

  “Everything Texas and east is. Well, everything north of Panama, since there’s no one in the west to claim it. But, officially, Texas and east.” he said.

  “I have a fourth cousin who lives outside Montreal,” Eleanor added, “and it’s not often we find ourselves here. I might take the chance to visit her.”

  “Of course,” I replied, swallowing the strange, sudden grief I felt. It had been a while since I had heard anything about my own family and the absurdity of having to approve or deny someone else without being in control of seeing my own hurt. Sam weaved her fingers through mine and pulled magically, numbing the sensation, and Beth leaned even more against me in an attempt to cushion the feeling. “It was a pleasure meeting you,” I replied after a moment.

  “For once in my life,” Clement replied as he stepped away, “I believe the phrase is apt. Your assistant got our contact information, should you need anything. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any draconic questions, as long as you don’t mind the seats knowing you’ve asked.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.”

  Arjun wasn’t far behind the lovers, approaching in the suddenly quiet room, the air no longer full of conversation from Adriana’s assistants chatting with Eleanor’s friends.

  “Dismissing everyone, are we?” he asked with a cheeky smile.

  “Ah, it’s the host’s purview to be grumpy by the end of a get-together, isn’t it?” I asked. “No, it wasn’t my intent to dismiss everyone, but, at least given that my impetus for being here has ended, I think most of the non-dragons were more comfortable no longer in my presence. Can’t have been nice to be present when I forcibly ejected Juliana.”

  Arjun shook his head, “Pleasant? Perhaps not. But no one will hold it against you and, in fact, some have suggested that we host in your territory in the future because you said no to her.”

  “I suppose that’s a legacy I can live with.”

  “I’ll see you Monday, James.” And then to each of my companions, with a nod each. “Elizabeth. Samantha. Zoey. Evgenia. And our conflicted chaperone, Cynthia. This was the best possible first meeting of a dragon I’ve had in, well, quite some time. I wish you all well. Ta!”

  When he and his entourage left the room, I let out an exhale that I hadn’t realized I had been withholding.

  “Yeah?” Beth whispered.

  “I’m drained,” I replied. “And I know why. They answered the energy question.”

  “Oh?” Sam perked up. “Do explain.”

  “It’s you. You two. And Zoey. Zenya and Cynthia, maybe. I get energy from accomplishing things. From acquiring things I want. From improving and growing.”

  “I don’t understand,” Beth said.

  “Antonin thought it was gold and wealth because those are things most people want,” I explained. “It’s easy to quantify when you’ve gotten more than you had before, and they’re easy to store, so many dragons did indeed collect material wealth. But, I’ve got you. Our relationships, shared experiences, and time together give me the mana to do everything. It’s you three, and Zenya and Cynthia, that recharge me. I’m strong because of you.”

  “That actually makes a lot of sense. Seems right to me, anyway. What’s the phrase, Sam?” Beth asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

  “Behind every great dragon,” Sam answered with a chuckle, “are the greatest women.”