24. Corin

24

Corin

His mate wanted him just as he was. Not his magic, or his fortune, but him . Corin Blackburn.

His dragon should have shuddered at the thought, but instead, it was … pleased?

The torment he’d flown through to reach his mate seeped away. For one glorious moment, all was right in the world.

But they still had an audience.

He sighed. “That wasn’t all we spoke about.”

He lifted his head. Apollo and his mate Felicity were both hanging back politely from the conversation, while the Dans loitered unhappily where Maya had told them to stay. His mother must be around somewhere, too; he cast out a brief search and found her outside the restaurant, Tomás waddling proudly beside her.

Well, it wasn’t as though she didn’t already know.

“My grandfather wouldn’t tell me much, but he seems to think that whoever stole from our family vault may already be here in Hideaway.”

“Stole—” Braedan said in a strangled voice.

The air around Apollo and Felicity shimmered with the golden sparks of their magic. Apollo groaned and rubbed his head. “No. Nobody’s come in since you that we haven’t seen—”

“They could have been here already.” Felicity swore. “That makes total sense! God. I’m so sorry, Maya, we should have thought of that.”

Maya frowned. “He knew they’d stolen from your family vault, and he waited until you were there in person to talk to you about it? You’ve been waiting to hear back from him for days! Isn’t he meant to be in charge of defending it?”

“Uh,” Aedan gaped, foghorn-like. His brothers punched his arms until he closed his mouth.

“Unless—” Maya’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Hm.”

“Hm?”

“ Hm. ”

Whatever his mate was thinking, it was tugging the hint of a smile from her lips. “There’s another reason your grandfather might be right,” she murmured, but before she could say anything else, Caedan jumped.

“Oh, shit, is that him?” Caedan elbowed his brothers. “Look! With—”

“Oh, shiiiit,” Braedan muttered, shoving Aedan in front of them both.

Aedan raised one hand. “Hi, Auntie Igraine!”

“Boys.” Corin’s mother nodded to them. She was walking slowly, keeping pace with Tomás as he stomped proudly towards Maya. Gold hummed from under his shirt and Corin repressed a grin.

His mother’s gaze sharpened as she approached. * How are you feeling?* she asked, and he remembered her concern about him flying through duskfire.

* I’m fine, mother.*

“Hey, uhh, hey uhh—Miss—”

Corin’s attention snapped back to his cousins. “You say excuse me ,” he growled.

Braedan rocked on his feet. “Excuse me, Miss Flores—”

“Mama!” Tomás finally completed his promenade and raised his arms to be picked up.

Maya swung him onto her hip. “Hello, sweetpea. I think these idiots are trying to ask me if they can say hello to you.”

“Idits!” Tomás crowed happily.

To Corin’s surprise, the Dans pulled themselves together. They were looking at Tomás the same way Corin himself found himself doing: slightly wary, slightly hopeful, full of wonder and excitement at seeing a tiny dragon no matter what form he took.

“This is Tomás,” Maya said, as Tomás chewed on one fist and stared wide-eyed at the triplets. “He’s my son. And—”

She met Corin’s eyes, and he nodded. “Maya is my mate,” he announced, putting his arm around them both. “Which makes Tomás part of our family, too.”

The Dans all said hello. They noticed the hum of gold, too, and Corin straightened a little with draconic pride that Tomás was carting around gold stolen from his hoard.

“Dragons RAAR,” Tomás growled happily, waving his arms, and his sleeves slipped to reveal not Corin’s stolen watch, but a confection of pearls and gold.

He stared in dismay.

“It’s such a pleasure to finally welcome you to our family properly , Maya and Tomás.” His mother’s expression was pure smugness. No need to wonder where the pearls had come from.

But he wasn’t the only one who looked like he’d had the rug pulled out from under his feet.

The Dans were staring at the pearl bracelet as though it had grown legs and tripped them at the last hurdle of a race. Tomás noticed them looking and shook his sleeve back down over it with a possessive grumble.

His mother noticed, too, and the gleam in her eyes had become decidedly … suspicious.

“Aw,” Aedan muttered. “That’s Auntie Igraine’s bracelet? But—”

“Shh!” Caedan jabbed him in the ribs.

“Do you three have something you’d like to tell me?” Corin asked icily.

Maya nudged him gently, and he glared at his mother, as well. “You four ?” he corrected himself. “Mother—”

“Well, what did you expect us to do, with you sitting around like a dark cloud, refusing to hunt down the woman you loved?” Igraine huffed.

He turned back to his cousins. “You stole from the vault?”

“It’s not stealing when it’s ours!”

“Yeah, Granddad practically threw it at us when we told him—” Braedan foundered under Corin’s gaze.

“Told him what?” he asked. “That you intended to send treasures to my mate?”

“What? No, we sent them to the kid! He’s our nephew.” Braedan rallied, his shorter brothers bolstering him on either side. “Kind of. If we’re your cousins and he’s your kid, then he’s our … Anyway! It’s our right as his uncles to give him stuff!”

“Yeah!” Aedan backed him up eloquently. “Even if we couldn’t remember his name!”

Those shredded parcels. All addressed to Somebody Flores. He’d filled in the gaps thinking they were meant to read Maya Flores.

Baby Flores. Now it made sense.

“You knew about this?” he asked his mother. He was still glaring, but the emotion building in his chest didn’t match his expression.

“Of course I knew,” Igraine said primly. “Well. Not that they’d forgotten the name of their own cousin once removed. If I’d known that—”

“You should have talked to me before sending anything,” he said.

“What! And have you say No, no, I’m far too miserable and self-sacrificing, leave me to rot in peace while my mate and her child grow old without me. ” His mother sniffed. “Not in a million years, my love.”

Love. That’s what this feeling was. The sensation of being surrounded by his family. Not above them, as their leader, but among them.

As head of his clan, he’d been responsible for the safety and wellbeing of his family.

He’d forgotten to leave any room for them to care for him in the same way.

So they’d made room.

“You lured him here deliberately,” Maya mused out loud. Thank god, she sounded amused rather than outraged. “You knew that if he thought another dragon was bothering me, he wouldn’t stay away.”

“Uh, yeah. We definitely knew that,” Braedan said, nodding vigorously.

“Or, more likely, you planned none of this and are lucky it turned out as well as it did,” Corin growled.

“…Maybe?”

Maya snorted with laughter. “So much for our investigation,” she said between giggles. “No theft. No mystery dragon trying to threaten or court me. Just your family giving you the push you refused to give yourself.”

“I thought I’d already pushed too far. I was determined to give you all the space, the safety, you deserved after I chased you here—”

“Yeah, what was that about?” Aedan burst out. “We thought you were finally going to make your move, and you went and left her here!”

“You thought him hunting me through the night was him making his move?” Maya cried out.

“Well, yeah. That’s the way we do things in our family.”

“You—” She turned to him, bemused. “What is he talking about?”

He told her, briefly, the story of his grandparents meeting. And his parents. The way his mother and grandmother had both stolen their mates away. And had no problem with the Blackburns’ duskfire.

“But not you?” Her eyes drew him in, warm and understanding. She knew why he hadn’t pursued her the way his family expected. He could never claim her the way a dragon should, while his duskfire was still a threat.

“Not me. And that is a problem we still have not solved.”

“I disagree, sir .” She tipped her head back, managing to peer down her nose at him despite their difference in height. “Remember, I’m taking you exactly as you are.”

“Uh, guys?”

Corin stared down at his mate, barely aware of the others talking around them. “And I you,” he told her.

The duskfire would always haunt him, but he could live with that.

“ Guys ,” Felicity hissed. “Mays! Wake up!”

“I’m kind of having a moment here, Fee,” Maya muttered, still gazing up at him.

“Well, hurry it up. Your mom just arrived.”