Page 75

“Normal.” Eagan winked. “The twins are…the twins. Arielle has been suspended from school. In the village. For three days.”

“Fighting?” It had to be fighting, right?

“Insubordination. Apparently one of the teachers said something that could be construed as cruel to a small omega dragon and made him cry, and Arielle…went all Arielle, all over.”

Cosmo winced. “Was there fire?”

“There might have been fire.”

“Is she grounded?”

“She’s up in the mountains with her father. Brand is teaching her the finer points of controlling one’s temper as an alpha. If that doesn’t work, we’ll send her up with Tyson.”

Cosmo wasn’t entirely sure that Tyson was going to be the appropriate teacher for instructing Ariel about how not to lose one’s temper and set the school on fire. But, not his circus, only marginally, his monkeys. “I assume Devon is here, and I can see him.”

“Oh, he’s most definitely here. He spent a few days in the library refusing to leave after Arielle pulled her stunt, but he’s back to normal. I think that he finds it awkward being the father of alpha dragon children, but he’s getting it.”

“Arielle just has a fine-tuned sense of justice, that’s all,” Cosmo said.

Egan chuckled. “You are their champion. You three always have been since you met them, and the rumor from Sebby is that it’s not just our Estes clan. It’s all of the children.”

He nodded. Of course they loved the children. They were, for all intents and purposes, good dragons.

“Well, I came to get tomatoes, and to see how everybody was doing…”

Eagan chuckled as Cosmo’s belly rumbled audibly. “Now there are hundreds of tomatoes. You can take as many as you want, I think. Myk’s been harvesting for you, in fact.”

They walked around the house to this amazing courtyard. It was protected between the mountain and the houses so that it was a safe place for children to run and explore, and a wonderful space for Myk to collect water and grow his vegetables and fruits.

There were buckets of strawberries on a long table, and many of the children sat there, stuffing their little faces with the red fruit.

Myk glanced up at him, waved. “Cosmo, I had a feeling you were coming. I gathered some tomatoes for you. Still craving?”

“Always!” he laughed. “Thank you, my friend. The strawberries smell good, too.”

“Happy day and welcome!” Sebby cheered.

The sun was shining, the children were bouncing around, and there had to be hundreds of them.

He thought that was an exaggeration, but he saw so many happy little dragon children in every color and shape and size. So many of them had found their forms at a young age. It was like watching a party of light. Pure joy.

He hoped that he had the same experience with his children.

If they could ever leave the house.

Chapter

Twenty-One

Hawk sanded down the cradle rails, then wiped them with a damp cloth to bring up the grain of the wood. The cradle, which he vaguely remembered being in his attic, had appeared not long ago in one of the rooms that had come to be in the center of the house. One of Cosmo’s comfy rooms, he called them. The medieval-era piece had a lovely hood of carved wood, with panels set into the sides that had once had paintings of a dragon fairy tale.

Hawk thought he could recreate them with a little practice and care.

“What’s all this?”

Hawk smiled over his shoulder at Cullen, who walked into the room carrying two steaming mugs of tea.

“A cradle for the little one.”