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The death of the Matriarch. We had to kill her. We had to break the curse, and thanks to my little brother, we now had the tool to do it.

It was held in a padded satchel hanging off Robby’s hip. A small hand mirror, enchanted with the vamp-ending powers of the basilisk. Since the Matriarch didn’t seem to want him dead, we figured having him hold it would keep it the safest. It only had one charge, so we had to be extremely careful as to when we whipped it out, but with the mirror in our possession, we actually had a chance at destroying her and breaking the curse.

Or so I hoped.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Robby as we walked down the hall, going past a room where five wolf shifters were dressing into their leather tunics.

“Nervous but excited. I just want today to be over with already.”

“It will be soon,” I said, reaching for his hand. “And when it is, you and I will be in bed celebrating our victory.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really,” I said, biting my lower lip and squeezing his hand in mine. His smile inched up his face, his brown eyes brightening.

“Maybe we should let everyone else handle it, and you and I can just stay home and fuck each other’s brains out?”

I chuckled at that, even though my cock twitched against my thigh. “That does sound tempting.” It was all I wanted to do. Carry Robby up to my bed and have my way with him, and then I could lie down, and he’d do the same with me. Our love-making was intense and never enough. I always wanted more, more, more of him. “We’ll make sure to celebrate our victory all night tonight.”

“How are you guys going to celebrate?” Benjamin asked as he walked in on the wrong part of the conversation. He wore the same thick leather tunics we saw the shifters changing into. It wasn’t as restrictive as mail, but it also wasn’t as protective. At his hips hung two sheathed daggers dipped in the toxins of a ruby sunflower—one of the only things that could incapacitate vamps. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would slow them down enough for Ben to finish the job.

“By playing a long, long, long game of Monopoly,” Robby answered as we entered the grand foyer. Benjamin snorted a “yeah, right” and went over to where Dawn and Claire were, going over some last-minute plans. I looked at the clock on the wall. Only thirty minutes left until the first squadron created the distraction.

“It’s almost time,” I said to Robby, his hand still in mine.

“I’m getting a little nervous.”

“And that’s normal. What we’re about to do is going to be difficult—no amount of joking can hide that. But we’ll be in this together, and I won’t let anything happen to you. Okay?”

Robby nodded, but his tense shoulders and furrowed brow hinted at the storm raging inside him. I leaned in for a quick kiss. Just another reassurance that everything would be okay.

“You two lovebirds ready?” Madds said. He had on the same dragon-scaled shirt and pants as I did, except his were a sapphire blue as opposed to my ruby red. It was armor made to give us the same protection as our dragon forms, protecting us from most blows and stab wounds. The scales were taken from the annual sheddings, where dragons would drop scales and grow new ones. It was a long process, and the armor was extremely rare since most scales that were shed weren’t usable, but today called for our most special attire.

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Robby said.

“I know you’re ready.” Madds poked him in the chest and smiled. “I’ve seen you swinging around that short sword with Xavier. And you’ve learned a good amount of hand-to-hand combat from me. You fight like a dungeon dragon: raw and angry. Like you want to prove something, like you belong up in the skies with us. I think you’ll be the one to save us today.”

“Nah, I’ll leave the saving up to all the supernaturals. I’m just there for moral support.”

Maddox squeezed Robby’s shoulders. “Don’t cut yourself down.” He nodded toward the door, where our group began to file out. “Come. Let’s get this over with.”

We followed them out into the courtyard, the bloodred eyes of the gargoyles watching as my siblings and I gathered. Our group would make up the core infiltrators: Dawn, Claire, Madds, Xavier, War, Robby, Ben, and me. It was too important of a mission to include most others. We had to keep it tight and focused with people we could trust with our own lives.

“Okay,” I said, standing in front of the group. “This is it.” All eyes turned to me. We didn’t necessarily have a leader, but I did feel comfortable taking the mantle. “Today decides not only our fate but the fate of the rest of dragonkind. We need to kill the Matriarch and break the curse, and I believe that together, we can do that. Remember to have each other’s backs in there. I don’t want any of us even getting so much as a paper cut.”