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“Oh cool, can I see?” Cullen handed him a mug of tea and kneeled down to look. “Oh, that’s cool. Was it yours? Do you remember?”

“I remember having this. I don’t remember being in it, of course. Do you think that these cartoons were fairy tales?”

Cullen peered into the wood. “Oh, totally. You want some help painting it?” He held up one hand. “I mean, if this is like a dad thing, I don’t have to help. I just sort of thought I’d ask ’cause it sounds like fun and we could hang out.”

“I think that would be lovely. Thank you so much for the tea.”

“You’re totally welcome.” Cullen crossed his legs and sipped. “Yeah, see. You can see the golden egg in this one.”

“I would like to leave as much of the original painting there as we can and just fill in.”

“I love that.” Cullen grinned at him. “So we need to either figure out the fairy tale or make it up.”

Hawk closed his eyes. “I can remember…”

“Remember?”

“My mothers singing to me about a dragon and a golden egg. It was stolen.”

“Dude, you’re not serious. Did the golden dragon go and eat whoever stole it and crunch their bones? Because that’s what I would do. I would crunch bones—munch, munch, munch!”

Hawk wasn’t sure that Cullen was actually bone-crunching material, but he let it go. “Let me see if I can remember.” He tapped his temple with one finger. “How did it start?”

“Once upon a time.”

“What?” He didn’t follow.

“It’s a fairy tale. Fairy stories start with Once Upon a Time. Everybody knows that.”

“Okay.” Hawk laughed and shook his head. “So, once upon a time, there was a beautiful omega who lived in a tower, and the alpha came to woo her.”

“Ooh, I like wooing. I like making with the woo. Don’t stop.” Cosmo came in, belly tight and round, a tomato sandwich in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.

“Right. Greetings, mate. Do you need a blanket?”

“There’s one here on the back of the chair. Continue with the story, please. Wooing. You were at the wooing part.”

“Is there going to be a lot of kissing?” The third of the triplets was heard from. Corbin wandered in with a sack full of willow branches for the basket he was weaving.

“Well, this is a children’s fairy story, so the kissing will be limited at best. Are we all here now?”

“Yes, I brought cookies,” Corbin said.

“So, you can totally stay,” Cullen told his brother. “All right. Alpha dragon wooing omega in a tower? Go.”

Hawk chuckled, settling in, his hand on the cradle, which was telling him the tale, he thought. “He brought her a fine casket of jewels. Some of the rarest fruits in the land. A stack of the most coveted books. But none of this pleased her. ‘Bring me a golden egg,’ she told him, ‘and I will consider your suit.’”

“Attagirl. Make him work for it.” Corbin muttered around a bite of his cookie. “You’re going to end up fat and pregnant.”

Cosmo put a hand on his belly. “Hey!”

“He’s not at all fat.” Hawk winked at Cosmo. “Shall I go on?”

“Please, mate.” Cosmo licked tomato juice off his fingers.

“He adored her more than anything on earth or beyond, so he searched the world for the mythical golden dragon eggs, which?—”

“Dragons don’t lay eggs,” Cullen pointed out. “Do you think they used to, back in the olden days.”