Gavriel blinked a few times. Something was clearly wrong with the Beta Luna of Drakenfell, and he was seriously considering mindlinking Alaric. Unfortunately, his attention kept getting hijacked by the thing she had just said.

Shifting.

Serena was shifting. The ancestors said she would need to on her own. He wanted to be there for her. Supporting her from a safe distance where two Alphas didn’t try to kill him. But instead he had been in a coma.

Gavriel turned abruptly. He didn’t know when his legs decided that he was going to the training field. But they had, and his brain arrived at that conclusion a second later.

“You probably don’t want to watch,” Elara added quickly. “Trust me. It takes forever. Tiberon has to command it. It hurts Dexmon and Finnick both so badly it breaks them out of their own shifts. Every time. One of them is bleeding through their nose, sometimes both. The pain transmits through their matebonds and—”

Her eyes went wide.

He looked at her.

“What?” he sighed.

“Nothing to worry about,” she replied after a moment.

She looked up at the sky. At the gods. At whoever was running this goddamn circus from above.

This was in their hands now.

Elara had done everything a Beta Luna and a best friend could do.

She was not going to be the one to break it to Gavriel. Absolutely the fuck not.

But maybe she should give Serena a heads up. After training. Yes, that was the plan.

If it didn’t blow up on the training field, which there was a good chance it might, then she would give Serena a pep talk and break the news.

Serena was a compulsive truth-teller, which was the natural enemy of intelligence in sticky situations such as Exhibit A.

So Elara would make her promise, on their friendship, on the Moon Goddess, on Onyx’s goddamn tuxedo, that she would not tattletale on herself.

The promise would be broken without question. But it would hold for twelve hours.

Probably.

✦✦✦

DRAKENFELL — JUVENILE DRAGON TRAINING YARD

Nobody said a goddamn word.

Bellatrix Drakenfell walked onto the dragon training field at her usual time, in her usual stride, with her usual expression of a woman whose presence was a gift the field had done nothing to earn, and the field received her the way the field had learned to receive her: in silence, with compliance, and with the specific posture of military personnel who had been outmaneuvered enough times to recognize the futility of resistance.

Onyx saw her from across the formation line and broke ranks.

The handlers did not react. The handlers had stopped reacting three days ago.

Onyx sprinted across the field ready for his tuxedo, because his morning routine now included that.

He hit Bellatrix at full speed. She caught him. Settled him on her hip. His tail wrapped around her forearm. His purring started.

Petra collected Avalon from the formation line with the quiet efficiency of a woman executing a retrieval operation she had performed enough times to do it without speaking. Avalon went gladly, excited for his bath, oil massage, and the company of a queen whose lap was warm and whose parlor had dried meat, and the going was the best part of his day.

Two dragons. Two women. Zero objections from the field.

Good. They learned.

Bellatrix turned toward the castle path. Her mind was already three moves ahead, running the calculus of an eight-step divorce prevention plan that was exceeding every projection she had set for it.

The fainting. Gods, the fainting.

She had executed Step One with a precision that honestly surprised even her. The collapse had been graceful, controlled, timed to the exact second after Serena’s verbal assault had peaked, landing on the stone floor of the grand hall with the acoustic signature of a woman whose body had given out under the weight of undeserved cruelty.

Every servant in the corridor had gasped. Guards had moved. An omega had dropped a tray. The optics were immaculate.

And the fallout. The fallout was a masterpiece.

Dexmon had come to her chambers and held her hand. He had looked at her face and seen a mother in pain and had gone to Serena and asked her to hear Bellatrix out, and Serena had agreed, which meant the girl who had told her to fuck off in a public corridor was now carrying guilt about it, and the guilt was doing the work that Bellatrix’s charm had failed to do, and the guilt was free.

Serena looking like the bad guy was the cherry on top of the entire cake.

The girl had cussed at a queen in front of witnesses, and the queen had fainted, and the narrative wrote itself: cruel daughter-in-law verbally attacks ailing mother-in-law who was extending an olive branch.

Nobody needed to spin that story. The story spun itself the way a wheel spins when you push it. One push. Momentum did the rest.

Really, she should have started fainting years ago.

The eight-step plan was in full force.

Mural? Check.

Orphanage? Funded.

Social Calendar? Loaded with joint engagements and a wedding in the works.

She was winning. The divorce papers were still on Tiberon’s desk, but the desk was losing ground to the mural and the orphanage and the fainting and the chest pains and the wedding she was about to plan, and the ground that the desk was losing was the ground that Bellatrix was gaining, and the gaining was her oxygen.

Onyx chirped, pulling her from the mental inventory.

He was looking to the left. His gold eyes had locked onto something across the field, and his body had shifted on her hip, angling toward whatever had caught his attention with the focused curiosity of a creature who wanted to investigate.

People were moving. Heading toward the main training arena. Draken Forces personnel, off-duty handlers, two guards who were definitely supposed to be somewhere else.

They were walking with the specific pace of people heading toward a spectacle, the pace that existed between casual and urgent and communicated ’Something interesting is happening.’

Onyx looked at Bellatrix. His gold eyes were wide, requesting.