DRAKENFELL — JUVENILE DRAGON TRAINING YARD

“His bedtime is sundown,” Finnick said. “Onyx prefers his blanket over his tail. He will test you and chirp. If you give into it once, he will be up the rest of the night.”

Elara stared at him.

“He gets one snack after dinner. Dried venison, cut into strips, small enough that he doesn’t choke. Give Avalon the same but slightly before. If Onyx finishes first, he will attempt to steal Avalon’s. Intervene immediately or the theft will establish a precedent and the precedent will become policy.”

“Fin.”

“What.”

“Onyx is in good hands. Hale will read them a bedtime story and Onyx will sleep just fine.”

“I know that.” Fin’s jaw shifted. The shifting was the involuntary tell of a man who knew his instructions were excessive and whose knowledge was losing to his instincts and whose instincts were screaming that leaving his dragon overnight required a briefing packet and possibly a signed liability waiver. “I am providing supplementary information.”

“You are providing a bedtime manual for a dragon. You have been talking for four minutes.”

“Three and a half.”

“Four.”

Fin looked at her with the expression of an Alpha King whose authority had been challenged on a scheduling technicality and who was choosing, with visible effort, to concede the technicality rather than extend the briefing.

“Don’t worry,” Elara said. Her voice softened. The softening was genuine because the ridiculousness was genuine and the genuine was coming from a man whose protective instincts had been extended to a juvenile dragon and the extending was unexpectedly endearing. “He’ll be going to sleep on time with Avalon. I promise.”

Fin nodded. Once. The nod was the nod of a man releasing custody and whose releasing was costing him something he would never admit to and whose never-admitting was visible in every tendon of his neck.

Elara approved. She would never say it out loud because saying it would embarrass him, and embarrassing Finnick Shadowclaw was a project with consequences. But the dragon-dad energy was hilarious, and the hilarious was going straight into the vault of things she would tell Serena later.

Onyx and Avalon stood on the training yard in perfect formation. Side by side. Straight spines. Wings tucked. Tails aligned. The picture of discipline that both dragons had learned to perform when adults were present and whose performance was directly correlated to the speed at which adults would leave.

Both dragons glanced at Fin. Then at Elara. Then both heads swiveled toward the castle doors with the synchronized precision of two creatures who knew exactly who was coming for them and whose coming was the preferred outcome and whose preferred outcome required their current guardians to vacate the premises immediately.

Bellatrix’s stride was already audible on the stone path.

Onyx’s tail wagged once. Avalon’s followed. The wagging was subtle, contained, the wagging of two dragons who understood that waggling in formation was a violation but whose excitement was leaking through the cracks of their discipline.

“Go,” Elara said to Fin. “They’re in good hands.”

Fin left. He looked back once. The looking-back was the looking-back of a man leaving a child at their first day of school, except the child was a dragon and the school and the separation anxiety belonged entirely to the adult.

✦✦✦

THIRTY MINUTES LATER

DRAKENFELL — HYRAN’S PRIVATE STUDY

Serena entered the study and the study was already full.

Finnick was against the far wall, arms crossed, jaw set, carrying the coiled stillness of an Alpha who had just surrendered custody of a dragon and was redirecting his protective energy toward the mission. Aeron stood beside him, posture military, eyes sharp, the Master Mage of Shadowclaw whose readiness was constitutional rather than circumstantial. Maelor was near the bookshelf, a leather satchel over one shoulder, his expression carrying the clinical focus of a mage preparing for fieldwork and the theatrical displeasure of a man whose fieldwork always involved conditions beneath his standards.

Hyran was at his desk. Papers. Scrolls. Three vials of something luminous arranged in a row. The desk of a man whose preparation was a religion and whose religion required an altar covered in documents.

Serena’s necklace was on. The pendant sat against her collarbone, the dark magic humming at its low, constant frequency, the matebonds dampened to the foggy trickle she had grown used to over the last twenty-four hours. Dexmon’s emotions were there, distant. Fin’s were the same. The muting was the price and the price was training-field-tested and war-room-approved.

Her cloak was on. The thermal weave armor underneath was lightweight, thinner than a fingernail, sitting against her skin with the second-skin fit of material designed to protect without impeding. The armor was different from a training suit in ways that were subtle and significant: reinforced at the ribs, flexible at the joints, carrying a faint shimmer of warding that Hyran had embedded into the weave himself.

She had hair ties in her pocket. Elara had made her put them there. “Your hair will get in your face,” Elara had said. “It will get in your face at the worst possible moment because that is what hair does, and you will die with gorgeous hair in your eyes and I will never forgive you.” Serena had put three hair ties in her pocket because Elara was right about everything and arguing with Elara about preparedness was a war nobody had ever won.

Onyx was staying with Elara and Hale, alongside Avalon. Serena had approved the arrangement herself because if this turned into more than a day, the dragons needed stability, and stability was Elara’s entire brand, and the brand was reliable, and the reliable was the reason Serena could walk into this study without her chest constricting over the juvenile dragon she was leaving behind.

She crossed the room and took her position near the desk. Dexmon entered behind her, a half-step back, his presence filling the doorway the way his presence filled every doorway, which was completely and with the specific territorial energy of a man whose mate was walking into a mission briefing and whose briefing was a prelude to danger and whose danger was the reason his eyes hadn’t left her since they left their chambers.