Chapter Eight

 

 

The look on Luca’s face was priceless. He flapped his wings and sheer panic came over his pretty face as he turned it up to me. “Help me, Dmitri? What’s happening?”

“Calm down, Luca, it’s nothing to be frightened of. You’re in partial shift. Your Wyvern took over when it looked like you were about to crash into the ground.”

“I was about to crash into the ground!”

I rolled my eyes. “You know I’d never let you get hurt.”

“Get me out of this!”

“It’s not a costume. Look behind you.”

He turned and a look of complete shock replaced the panic. “A fucking tail! I have a fucking tail!”

“You do. A cute one, too.”

He looked back at it dubiously, and I regarded it too, but with much more appreciation. It was about four feet long, with red and black scales and a barb at the end, shaped almost like an arrow. It was tipped with some hard substance, which probably meant the barb was made of keratin, the same substance as fingernails and claws, so it could be used as a weapon if Luca needed it. It was extended out of his lower back.

“You’ve got the hard part already done. Just concentrate and ask your Wyvern to come out all the way.”

He glanced back at me resentfully, but closed his eyes and seemed to be thinking about it really hard. He was trying so hard, I wasn’t surprised when his pretty face suddenly transformed into that of a Wyvern with long, black eyelashes and a little black nose. I laughed in delight at his little snout, and he stuck out his long, forked, red tongue at me.

“Just a little more,” I said, tweaking his pointed ears. “You can do this.”

He huffed and his big blue eyes blinked at me. “Can you talk? You can’t, can you? Interesting—I may have to keep you in your shifted form all the time.”

He growled at me very distinctly and the barbed tail waved in the air, or should I say it twitched—like a pissed off cat.

“Your eyes are exactly like they are in your human form,” I said, stepping closer. “So pretty.”

He huffed again and closed them as he concentrated one more time. I whispered softly in his ear, asking his Wyvern to come out to me. I spoke in Donsk Tunga, or Old Norse, the language of the Vikings. It’s a North Germanic language once spoken in Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and in this part of Russia. And it’s the language of the Dragons—I knew that this little Wyvern, though only distantly related to the Dragon, would know it instinctively.

It worked even better than I had hoped. His body shivered and then shimmered, and he stood before me—a beautiful, fully developed Wyvern. His scales were the same red and black as his tail. He was small, compared to Dragons, only about six feet tall. He had two back legs and no arms, his wings taking the place of them. His little face was fierce and bad-tempered but he had those ridiculously long eyelashes and blue eyes that I was already crazy about. I stepped closer and his tail wrapped around my legs, pulling me close to him. He was careful to keep the sharp little barb away from me.

“Well, hello to you too, little Wyvern. Would you like to fly with me?”

He blinked at me again and slowly nodded. I kissed the tip of his snout and stepped back out of his arms. I called my Dragon forth, and he rose up, towering over the little Wyvern. I picked up the length of rope I’d brought with me, and I leaned down to speak to him in Donsk Tunga again. “Come and play with me.”

He nodded, stretching out his wings, but then looking back at me with a look of confusion on his face.

He gave a little hop, but nothing happened. He tried again and still nothing. He looked up at me resentfully and stomped his foot. Since Dragons have both arms and wings, I was able to bend down and scoop him up in my arms, trying to hide my smile. “No, baby. No Dragon or dragonet can just start flying without a little help. I’ll teach you!”

I took off in the air and looked down at him. We were soaring over the valley, almost up into the low-hanging clouds but he wasn’t afraid. He was wrapped around me but looking back over his shoulder and down at the ground with interest. I circled over the mountains closest to the mansion and selected a rock outcropping that was large enough to land on. When we got down, I put Luca on his feet and he looked up at me questioningly—it was a long way down to the valley below.

“I’m going to teach you the same way my father taught me. Before we start the process, I need to check your wings. Stand still for me and let me make sure they’re good.” I towered over him in my shifted form, but I was able to look him over carefully, checking to make sure he didn’t have any broken or cracked bones on his wings that might make him lose his balance. His wings didn’t have feathers—no Dragons’ or Wyverns’ did. Our wings are composed of leathery skin, tightly stretched over fine, delicate bones. His were much smaller than mine, but still quite large in proportion to his size. I took my time and examined them thoroughly. Next I checked his tail. It was important for it to be curled neatly onto his back so as not to get in the way. I helped him curl it over his backside and couldn’t resist stroking both it and his backside a little. They were irresistible.

He snarled at me adorably, and I picked up the length of rope I’d brought with us and tied it around the base of his curled up tail. Then I gently pushed him off the edge.

Perhaps I should have warned him what I was going to do, because he gave a high-pitched squeal that no Dragon would ever make and he fell straight down. I glanced over the edge and saw him hanging there, frantically flapping his wings. “That’s it! Keep flapping!” I held on tightly to the rope and gradually—slowly—he began to lift his body weight aloft—I played out the rope a little at a time. He began to gain momentum and soon he was flying up and around in a circle over my head. We were both delighted and I drew him slowly back down to me on the ledge.

“You did great, baby. Do you think you’re ready to fly with me? I’ll leave the rope on for now and keep you close.”

He nodded with confidence and we leaped off the ledge together. “I’m going to let you fly beside me now,” I called to him. “But remember, I’ll catch you if you fall.”

He gave me a dubious look, but I was flying beside him, still holding onto the rope. And he was doing wonderfully for his first time. Still, I wanted to stay close to him just in case he had a problem. Hell, the truth was that I needed to be close to him for my peace of mind because, as annoying as he could be at times, I’d become very fond of him.

Fond. Yeah, that’s one word for it, the traitorous little voice inside me said before I shut it down.

I watched as my little Wyvern tried to soar up through a cloud and fly away from me, forgetting, I suppose, about the rope I still had tied to him. It jerked him back and he lost altitude for a moment, tumbling end over end before he recovered and swooped back up beside me, giving me a look that should have killed me there on the spot. If I’d laughed at him, I think he would have killed me for sure.

I shook my head at him so he began to fly in a circle around me. He kept looking back at me as he ascended and I knew that he wanted me to follow him, so I did. We spent the next few minutes with him tugging me behind him and playing a modified game of tag through the clouds until I became concerned that he might be getting tired. I tried to indicate to him that we needed to land, but he didn’t seem to want to stop so I simply swept him up, wrapping my wings around him and took us to back to the roof.

I shifted back into my human form quickly and spoke to him in the Old Norse. “Luca, shift out of your Wyvern. You need to rest.” He just stood there, staring at me. I almost laughed out loud because even in his Wyvern, I could detect that pouty, stubborn look that was quickly becoming my constant companion.

“Luca, we need to stop now. Do what I say. You need to rest. That was a lot for your first time.” I thought for a minute that he was still going to refuse, but then I could see his wings shrinking and changing back into arms. And, suddenly, there was my beautiful, naked Luca, standing there shivering in all his glory. I took the rope off his hips, recoiled it and quickly retrieved his clothes for him.

Luca was dancing around excitedly as he dressed. He began chattering continuously. “Oh, my God, Dmitri, that was fantastic. When can we do it again? Only without the rope because I can do this!” Before I could answer, he went on, “Why didn’t you tell me how much fun it was to fly like that? Why didn’t anybody in my life ever tell me? When can we do it again? Did I already ask you that?”

I laughed and held up a hand to stop his babbling. “Take a breath, baby. Yes, you’ve already asked me that, but you didn’t give me a chance to answer.” I put my arm around his shoulder and started walking toward the door. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm and we’ll talk about it.” I hurried us along, because just as we’d turned toward the door, I’d seen something out of the corner of my eye. It was only there for a moment, but it was a bright flash of something on one of the nearby hillsides, like a reflection of the sun on metal or glass. It may have been nothing, but it made me uneasy. I decided that it would be a good idea to speak to my father about it so that he could alert the guards we had patrolling our property at all times.

As soon as I got Luca settled back in my apartment, promising him that I’d hurry back so that we could discuss when we could go flying again, I left to go look for my father. I ran into Viktor in the entry hall. “Viktor, is my father in his study?”

“No, sir. He and your mother left right after breakfast, saying that they’d be gone all day, but they’d be back for dinner.”

Since it was only a couple of hours until then, I thought that I might go back upstairs and spend some quality time with Luca. When I got back to my apartment, however, Luca was lying on my bed, snoring softly, so I decided to see what information I could find about Wyverns on the Internet. I had to admit that I didn’t really know as much as I needed to about them and since I planned on having one for the rest of my life, I wanted to be an expert.

I’d just begun reading about two Wyverns mating while flying. They would fly high into the sky, wrap their tails around each other, close their wings and begin a free-fall. I heard Luca stirring and waited for a minute till he got quiet again and continued reading. During the free-fall was when the mating would occur. The clinical description of it on the internet was kind of funny, but went like this—The Wyverns wrap their tails around each other until both tails meet the cloaca, which is the area for reproduction. The male extends and inserts his sex organs, known as the hemipenes, which then expels sperm into the female.

Well, we didn’t have any females handy, but the cloaca was the sex organ on both males and females in our shifted forms, so that wouldn’t be a problem for me and Luca. The size difference between us might be tricky, but with a little effort and experimentation, I thought we could work it out. It would be fun trying, anyway. Dragons had no real preference when it came to sex, so though this blog I was reading referenced females, I wasn’t sure why. Wyverns, as far as I knew, were bisexual too. Or pansexual, for that matter.

And the sex was exactly the same for Dragons. I’d heard of Dragons having sex in shifted form, but hadn’t thought about Wyverns doing it. Of course, there hadn’t been any Wyverns around in so long that no one really knew much about their mating practices or anything else. All I knew about it was that we Dragons called it Dragon-slide and, since we all love speed and risk, the free-fall supposedly enhanced our normal sensations. In other words, the sex was supposed to be—well, fucking fantastic, no pun intended.

I’d never tried it, but it definitely sounded like something I wanted to do with Luca. Of course, I was beginning to realize that anything that involved Luca and me fucking was of supreme interest to me.

I didn’t get to finish the article I was reading because Luca became restless again and awoke suddenly, sitting straight up in bed calling for me. “Dmitri. Dmitri,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He sounded frightened so I went into protection mode, immediately. I closed my laptop quickly and went over to the bed. I could finish reading later. I put my arms around him and noticed that he was shaking. “I’m right here, Luca. What’s the matter?”

He put his arms around my neck and held on tightly. “I don’t know. Bad dream, I guess.”

“What was it about?”

“I can’t remember,” he said, laying his head on my shoulder. “I just know that I woke up scared.”

“Well, I’m here. You’re safe, so don’t worry.” I pulled him over to straddle my lap and began rubbing his back. He turned his face up and leaned in to put his lips on mine. I slid my tongue into his mouth and heard him groan as his tongue met mine. We kissed like that for a few minutes before I slid my hand down in the back of his jeans and underwear to cup one of his cute little ass cheeks, not an easy task since his jeans were so tight. He wiggled his ass, and I broke the kiss to say, “I think you have on too many clothes. Let’s remedy that.” I tugged on his shirt and pulled it over his head. Then I moved him off my lap and laid him down on the bed beside me as I reached for the buttons on his pants. Soon, I had him naked and I raked my hand down his body, pinching a nipple on the way and brushing my fingers over the head of his stiff shaft before reaching down to cup his balls and massage them.

He spread his legs farther apart to give me easier access and moaned out, “Now you. You need to be naked, too.”

I smiled down at him. “I totally agree.”

I slid off the bed and stripped out of my clothes in record time. Luca never took his eyes off me the whole time, which I found to be quite a turn-on. I’d never thought of myself as an exhibitionist before, but I found that the appreciation and lust in Luca’s eyes always seemed to make all the blood in my body go straight to my cock, causing it to swell in anticipation of things to come. I crawled onto the bed and into Luca’s beckoning arms. He spread his legs again so that I could nestle our hard cocks together. I was afraid that I was too heavy for him, but he insisted that I wasn’t, locking his legs around the backs of my thighs to hold me there. I started to move, slowly rubbing our cocks together. The friction felt wonderful and I found myself speeding up my movements and grinding harder into him. It must have felt as good to him as it did to me because it didn’t take long before I felt him stiffen under me and then the warmth of his release spilling out between us. He pushed up into me with a groan that triggered my own orgasm.

We lay there for a while, arms and legs entangled, and I was completely relaxed. I could feel myself drifting toward sleep when it occurred to me that I’d better check the time. I turned toward the bedside table, causing Luca to make a little whine of protest, and picked up my cell phone. Seeing the time, I sat up and began to try to disentangle myself.

“What are you doing?” Luca asked huskily.

“Get up, baby. We have just enough time to shower and get ready for dinner.”

He opened his eyes halfway and looked at me through the slits. “I don’t want to go. Can’t you just bring me something back?”

“No, I can’t. Now, get your cute little ass up and get in the shower. We don’t need to be late.”

He gave me a pouty look and said, “They won’t miss me. They don’t like me.”

I knew that he was probably right, but I shook my head in denial anyway. “That’s not true, Luca. They just don’t know you, yet. Once they get to know you better, things will be different.”

 

****

 

Luca

 

Surely he knew that was total bullshit. He had to see how his parents looked at me. To them, I was little better than Spawn and certainly not equal in any way to them or their son.

“I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either.” He frowned at me and crossed his arms and I knew that I was going to have go downstairs to eat with the family, no matter what I said, so I slid across the bed and headed toward my shower. I gave him a dirty look as I passed him, though. It didn’t change the fact that I had to go down and eat with those people, but it made me feel better.

When we were both dressed, we made our way down to the dining room, arriving just in time. We took our seats, and the food was served immediately. I filled my plate with roast beef, gravy, potatoes, carrots and onions and when the aroma wafted up to my nose, my stomach growled hungrily. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast so naturally I was starving, but when I looked up and saw Dmitri’s mother frowning at me, I was embarrassed and dropped my gaze to the table.

This meal was turning out to be another one of those long, interminable ones, so I just ate quietly and tried to make myself invisible. I let my mind wander until I heard Dmitri’s father ask, “Well, did you manage to get him to shift today?”

Dmitri sighed and put his fork down. “Why don’t you ask him, Father? But yes, we both shifted and flew today.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Is he a Wyvern or not?” Dmitri’s father bellowed out.

Dmitri glared at him and put down his fork. “There’s no reason to shout. Yes, he is. We went flying, as a matter of fact, which reminds me—I saw a bright reflection on one of those foothills to the west. I don’t know if someone was watching us or not, but you might want to increase the patrols on the perimeter of the property.”

I glanced up at Dmitri in surprise. He hadn’t said a word about it to me. His father nodded and they moved on to another topic, though I zoned out again and paid little attention. I wished it was only Dmitri and me at the table. Even his cousins didn’t bother me, but I couldn’t get past my feelings about Dmitri’s mother and father. They seemed to hate me for no good reason whatsoever, except the fact that I was Wyvern and not a Dragon. That was going to be hard to work around—I couldn’t very well change who I was, and I didn’t think I should have to.

Finally, the never-ending meal was over, and we made our escape. Once back in the apartment, I took off that damn suit and tie that we were required to wear for the evening meal and put on some pajama pants so I could relax.

Just as I was about to suggest that we watch a movie or something, Dmitri’s phone rang. He was only on it for a minute or two and when he ended the call, he came over to me where I’d taken a seat on the sofa. “Luca, I have to go meet with my father for a while. He wants to talk to me. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I’ll try to hurry. I promise.”

“Okay, but try to get back soon so we can go to bed early. I want to go flying again first thing in the morning.”

He chuckled and leaned down to give me a kiss. “I think I’ve created a monster.” He patted my cheek. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

After he left, I went into his bedroom and crawled into his huge bed. I grabbed the remote off the bedside table and turned the television on. I found a true crime show on his satellite TV. It was British, but looked like it was going to be interesting. And it was for the first twenty minutes, but that’s all I saw, because I went to sleep and didn’t wake up until the next morning. I wasn’t even aware when Dmitri came in. All I know is, I woke up the next morning when it was just beginning to get daylight, wrapped in the warm cocoon of Dmitri’s arms. It felt really good, but I was ready to get up and go flying. I tried to let him sleep. I really did. I lay there for at least fifteen minutes before I couldn’t wait any longer and I began to shake him and call his name. It took another fifteen minutes to get him fully awake, and by that time, I was already dressed and ready to go. Of course, then he wanted to eat breakfast, and he made me eat something too. I swear that man could get on my last nerve.

Finally, we were on the roof shedding our clothes, and I was so excited I could barely be still. He didn’t use the rope this time, but told me I had to stay close this first time without it. Once we shifted, he spoke to me in that oddly beautiful language that, for some reason, I could understand. It wasn’t anything I’d ever heard before. It didn’t sound Germanic, and it didn’t sound Scandinavian either, from what I’d already heard on the satellite TV programs. But though I knew it was some strange language, I understood it perfectly, even though if I tried to translate individual words, the meaning just skittered away from me.

“Once you take off, Luca, I want you to soar as high as you can. I’ll be right behind you. Then we’re going to have some fun. Don’t be afraid. Do you trust me?”

I nodded and concentrated hard to make myself transform. I was a little afraid I couldn’t do it. I didn’t look forward to being thrown off the roof again, but I shifted right away, like once my body got the hang of things, it was like slipping on an old, familiar suit. I took off up toward the clouds with Dmitri right behind me. We played hide and seek in the clouds for a while, until, suddenly, I felt his huge wings wrap around me completely. He had his arms around my wings so I couldn’t fly and he had me pressed tightly against his abdomen and hips. It sent both of us into a free fall, though we were pretty high up. My heart started to race as we plummeted down and I was about to try and break free of him when I felt him wrap his big tail around me, scooting my ass up even with his hips. Instinctively I wrapped my tail around him too, pulling him close. That’s when he pressed his tail up to mine and entered my cloaca. It was embarrassing and oh god, so pleasurable all at the same time. I was aware of the most exciting sensation I’d ever felt and I didn’t want him to stop, no matter what.

We must have been close to hitting the ground when I felt him shooting into me. I screamed my pleasure, and he gripped me with his arms and held me tight. Still holding me in his arms, he opened his wings and took us back up to the clouds, his tail still wrapped firmly around me. I felt weak, but satisfied in a way I never had before.

I guess he knew that I was too weak to fly on my own, so he flew back to the rooftop where our clothes were and set me down gently. When we had both shifted back to our human form and were getting dressed, I looked over at him and asked, my voice shaky, “What the hell was that about?”

He frowned. “You didn’t like it?”

“Hell, yeah, I liked it. It was kind of strange, but I never felt anything like that before.”

We were dressed by this time and he reached for me. “I thought so, too. It’s a mating thing that Dragons and, apparently Wyverns, can sometimes engage in. I’d never done it, but it sounded like fun so I thought we’d give it a try.”

“Okay,” I said, smiling at him. “I’m always up for new things.”

“Oh, really,” Dmitri said, smiling at me. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

He had stepped up close to me and was smiling down into my eyes so neither of us heard the door open behind us, I guess, until we both heard Viktor’s voice just behind Dmitri.

“Sir,” he said. “Sorry to bother you, but you have visitors downstairs.” Viktor never really changed expression, but his flickered up into Dmitri’s and then back down again. “It’s Lord Eldor, sir. He says to tell you he’s come for Luca.”

 

*****

 

Dmitri

 

I was able to hold it together as I walked rapidly toward the library, where I’d told Viktor to put Lord Eldor and his men, but just barely. I was filled with rage at the nerve of the man to walk into my home and demand to take what was mine.

There were three of them, Viktor said, and Lord Eldor was the only one he’d recognized. I sent Luca to our rooms, with firm instructions to him to stay there. He was pale and trembling when he left and for once he didn’t give me any trouble. I asked Viktor to make sure Sebastien and Alexei were notified of Eldor’s visit and I went down to see what the hell he wanted.

Lord Eldor the Red was a tall man, probably six foot four or so, and his hair was still a vigorous and shocking shade of red that he obviously kept dyed. He was surely as old as my father, and my father was over six hundred. The two men with Eldor were strangers to me. One was a Green Spawn—I could smell it on him, a faint but nauseating smell of camphor and methane. The other was a Spawn as well, in that he had some traces of Dragon blood in his heritage, but he was definitely something more than that. Human blood, for sure, but tiny sparks of magic surrounded the ether around him, and I knew this had to be Eldor’s witch.

I’d heard about him, but had never seen him. His surname was Pendragon, and supposedly he was a descendant of the British Pendragons—the family name created and adopted by King Uther Pendragon to honor his brother, who was also Merlin’s father. Uther’s son and Merlin’s nephew was the fabled King Arthur. This man in front of me definitely had a bit of Black Dragon in his heritage too.

Blacks were adept at magic, particularly Dark Magic and had been known to prefer working their magic to doing almost anything else, except, of course, accumulating treasure. If this Spawn was descended both from Blacks and an ancient line of kings and wizards, that made him very dangerous indeed.

Some Dragon clans kept a witch, though our family never had, to my knowledge. Witches were powerful, but dangerous and not always trustworthy. I didn’t want this one anywhere close to my family or to Luca.

Eldor and the witch were standing by the window talking together softly, while the Spawn was sprawled on my sofa with his feet on the Michael Armini coffee table in front of him. I glared down pointedly at his dirty shoes as I entered, and he grinned at me as he slowly pulled his feet off the table. His hair was black, but tufted with green, which could have been some kind of affectation, though for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would actually want green hair. Green Dragons were known to enjoy eating small humanoids such as gnomes, which was their first choice, but wouldn’t turn down an elf or even a small human if they got the chance at one. I didn’t think much of Greens, let alone their Spawn.

I ignored the creature after the first glance and concentrated on Eldor and the witch, both of whom looked up as I came in the room and came forward to meet me with barely concealed distaste.

“Lord Dmitri,” Eldor said.

“Lord Eldor. I won’t say it’s nice to see you again, because it isn’t.”

He gave me a tight and mirthless smile. “Still under the impression that you’re amusing, I see, Dmitri. How tiresome.”

“There’s a simple remedy for that. Get out.”

“Not without what I came for.”

I glanced over at his witch. “Felt the need to bring some back-up, did you?”

Eldor smirked at me. “Have you met my wizard? His name is Rheged Pendragon.”

He pronounced the name “Regg-id.” It sounded pretentious to me. I looked him over with barely concealed contempt. He was probably in his mid to late thirties, though it was hard to tell with witches. They could glamor themselves to look however they wanted. He was tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. Lots of tattoos on his arms that probably extended further onto his shoulders and chest. Good-looking enough, if you liked the type.

“Rheged? What kind of name is that?”

“Mine,” he said, curling his lip a little as he stared right back at me and gave me a once-over with his gaze too. “But my friends call me Pen.”

“That leaves me out.” I switched my attention back to Eldor. “What the hell are you doing here, Eldor?”

“You have something that belongs to me.”

“And what might that be?”

“The Wyvern—he belongs to me.”

The Spawn got up off the sofa and stood in front of me as the witch stepped closer to Eldor. Did they actually think I’d be intimidated in my own home? It was almost laughable. The door opened behind me and without even turning, I knew Sebastien and Alexei had come in. I saw the witch’s eyes flicker over them and glitter a little.

“Belongs to you?” I said, my voice registering surprise. I laughed in his face.

His hands tightened into fists. “He’s my grandson!”

“So what? That never seemed to matter to you before now. Besides, he’s not some puppy that you can simply collect.”

“Yet you had him on a leash the other day when you were flying together.”

I shrugged, trying for casual, but I was seething inside. The fool was admitting to spying on us. To trespassing on my land. “I was teaching him to fly. You and your son sadly neglected his education, among other things. But then that’s the way of you Reds, isn’t it? Not much attention to details.” I took a menacing step forward. “For example, you’re completely missing the fact that Luca is in my home and he belongs to me now.”

“Actually, I think we’ve been over that. I belong only to myself.”

The strong, stubborn voice rang out in the room and I turned to see Luca step in behind Sebastien. Damn him. I’d told him to stay away!

A tense silence fell over the room, as Luca came over to stand beside me. He looked at Eldor curiously and then slipped his hand into mine. “However,” he said. “I prefer to stay with Dmitri.” He glanced up at me. “For the moment, at least. I’ll let you both know if that changes.” My mouth dropped open in surprise as Luca lowered one eyelid and winked at me.

“Luca, please listen to me,” Eldor said, taking a step closer to him. I growled and thrust Luca behind me. In seconds, Alexei and Sebastien had closed ranks around him, and the Spawn and the witch came up even closer behind Eldor. Something crackled in the air around us and I knew the witch had done it. I growled at him and blew out a thin plume of smoke from my mouth, letting a little fire shoot from my nostrils. Eldor took a step back, shaking with anger.

“Get out, Eldor.”

Completely ignoring me, he leaned to the side and addressed Luca. “If you need anything, anything at all, my home is on the other side of the mountain range. Fly to me, son. I want so much to get to know you. Your parents took you away before I got the chance to do that.”

“You’ve had nineteen years to remedy that situation,” Luca spoke up behind me, and Eldor’s neck got red. His spine seemed to noticeably stiffen.

“But I had no idea where you were. Your father sent me word that your mother had died in childbirth, and I assumed that you were dead too. Now that I know, you need to come home and take your rightful place in our family.”

I glared at him. I hated these old patriarchs who tried to rule their entire clans with a firm, controlling hand and woe be to any one of the family members who didn’t fall in line. My own father was like that, as a matter of fact, and I was already having a problem keeping my mouth shut and being respectful to him when he constantly disrespected Luca. Things were rapidly coming to a head in that area, and I honestly didn’t know what to do about it. Now here was this old man trying to lay the law down to Luca too.

“Well, as you can see, I already have a place, right here.”

Eldor pursed his mouth and seemed to be swallowing the words he wanted to say. Instead he inclined his head to Luca. “As you wish, of course. I really would like to get to know you.”

Tired of the shit, I took Luca’s arm and squeezed it a little. “Don’t talk to him, Luca. You’re only encouraging him.”

“Dmitri,” he said, patting me on the chest. “Chill, honey.” Honey? Did he actually call me that in front of Eldor and the witch? I saw the witch’s lips twitching as he lowered his gaze and barely hid his smile.

Luca turned back to Eldor and smiled. “Maybe some other time, sir. My boy here doesn’t seem to like me talking to you.”

His boy? I gave him an incredulous look and then swung back to Eldor. “I asked you to get out. I won’t say it as nicely next time.”

Eldor tore his gaze away from Luca and gave me a tight smile. “We’re leaving. But Luca, remember what I said. You’re always welcome in my home. I hope you’ll…consider coming to see me.” He held out his hand for Luca to shake and damn if Luca didn’t reach for it. I took a handful of his shirtfront and pulled him around to face me. “What part of ‘you’re only encouraging him’ do you not understand?”

I pulled him around to my side and tucked him against me with my arm around him. “Get out, Eldor. Or else I’ll forget my manners.”