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“G raham. Graham, are you sitting down?”

I roll into a sitting position and push my tangled mess of black hair back from my stubbled cheeks. Usually, I pull it back when I go to bed. Must’ve lost the elastic band when I slept. Or maybe I was too smashed to put it in last night. “I’m sitting,” I say, perching on the edge of my rumpled bed.

“I need you to come to Pine Ridge for a month. Look after the business for me and mind the house.”

I blink and wonder if I’m still asleep, having a weird hangover dream. Pine Ridge is a perfect little place, a happy little paranormal suburban gem for the “nice monsters.” My brother is proof of that. He’s got a big red brick house, a garden shop, and a landscaping company with big, fat contracts from the local bigwigs and the neighborhood college. He’s got a sweet, pretty brunette wife.

A human wife.

There’s no way Mr. Perfect could need my help when he has the lovely and talented Vanessa, a woman he loves enough to turn his back on his own kind for.

“Why? What’s wrong?” I demand, my voice scratchy and my temples starting to throb. I stagger upright and look for pants, water, and the Kane amulet that I’m not supposed to take off—but I do almost every night. I don’t want my family mixed up in the dirty dealings happening in the California CrossRealms.

“Vanessa is pregnant—and he’s got dragon genes. He’s going to be able to shift, like us!”

A spear of surprise sends me stumbling over the bathroom sink, nearly making me drop my phone into the basin. “What? How d’ye know?” The faint trace of an accent skitters out, and I cough it back down.

“Ultrasound shows the little one’s growing in a ‘hardened calcified sphere.’”

“An egg. Vanessa’s growing an egg ?” I demand. She’s a human. How is that possible?

“The doctor says it’s soft and will come out naturally with the afterbirth. The little one’ll break through it just like the amniotic sack.”

Maybe hearing this kind of talk isn’t the best after a long, smoky night filled with too much whiskey. My stomach whirls, and I beg the contents to stay down. “Why do I have to come home? How far along is she? When were you going to tell me, ye wee scunner?” Is she sick? I hope she’s not sick. My heart stutters. I gave Ian a hard time when he married Vanessa three years ago, but she’s been nothing but good to him—and somehow, she’s carrying his child. A dragon.

I thought Ian was a fool, condemning our bloodline to die out by marrying a human.

Well. Who knows if it’ll have all the capabilities of a full dragon?

Wait, if they can tell it’s dragonborn right now, can they tell if it’s well? What if the little one is sick?

“Sixteen weeks.”

“What??” I yelp. “That’s months, Ian!”

“You were so adamant that we both marry women of our own kind, you fool. I didn’t want to tell you in case the baby was just an ordinary human. Bad enough to have to listen to you rant at me for dooming our dying race without having to tell you that you were probably right. If Vanessa hadn’t needed this special scan, I probably wouldn’t have told you until he was born.”

“It’s a he? A boy?”

“Another Kane lad coming into the world. I’m taking Vanessa home to pick the amulet herself and have it blessed by the High King.”

“Can she fly in this condition? Why did she need a special scan? Wait, is this why you want me to come home?”

“Just to mind the business for a month until we’re home again. And she needed a special scan because her heart rate was getting a bit low and unsteady. Turns out, human women carrying dragonborn need high potency calcium supplements once the little one starts to get solid bones and the shell starts to thicken.”

“She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?” I ask, sitting down on the edge of the grotty little counter in my studio apartment’s minuscule bathroom.

“Ah, look at that. You do care. We’re going to name him after you, you know. Murdo Graham Lewis Kane. Lewis is Van’s father. You met him at the wedding.”

My heart swells—then hardens. “When are you leaving?”

“First of May.”

“I... I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire here.”

“In a CrossRealms? It’s hellfire, then. Graham, Mother wouldn’t want you near that place.”

“It’s not all bad. I’m in a legal business.” I mean... I’m muscle. I’m a repo man for someone quite shady, but it’s legal. The people who don’t pay their car loans get their vehicles taken back. It's simple. Legal.

I don’t let myself think about the fact that my boss is an Incubus and that if he doesn’t get paid in cash, he’ll eventually take souls. That’s not my department. I would never...

I stop my train of thought. There’s a lot I said I would never do that I’ve done since I started working here. They say the longer you work in the CrossRealms, the more evil you become. It’s just a myth. I tell myself it’s just a myth.

“There’s legal work here, too!”

“There aren’t as many of our kind,” I snap. When Ian and I moved to Pine Ridge four years ago, it was because we’d heard tales of so many “monsters” finding their mates in Pine Ridge. After a year of running a business together, Ian was smitten with a human and hearing wedding bells. I was furious and felt betrayed. I didn’t stick around long after they tied the knot.

“You mean dragons? There must be nice dragonesses there, I’m sure, but I heard,” Ian drops his voice, “that a lot of them work for crime families or have been corrupted by the dark energy coming from the CrossRealms.”

“So? Dragons are fierce. We’re meant to protect and fight, not to work in garden centers.” The second I say it, I regret it. Our mother is a fierce dragon, but she was a ranger with the National Trust. It’s from her that Ian got his love for nature. It’s from our father that I got my stubborn streak. I always wanted to be out finding trouble or creating it, the way he would constantly agitate members of other clans, the way he was always on about the Kanes’ position in the High King’s council, or always on about our land and how our we should have more, how it was our birthright.

“Aye, well, we’re not supposed to be so fierce we get ourselves a bad name with every other clan in all of the British Isles, Graham. Wee Murdo will be a fresh start for the Kanes, and you’re bloody well going to help. If you don’t... Well. This is Pine Ridge. The people here don’t fight between clans. I’ll ask everyone in town to take a shift if I have to, but I will get Murdo his amulet, and I will have Vanessa and our baby blessed by the High King.”

Ian’s fire sparks my own. I can feel the human skin I normally wear shifting to scales, feel talons emerging as my skin turns dark violet. In seconds, I’m in my halfling form (a humanoid dragon for those not in the know), and there’s only a shred of calm keeping me from turning into a dragon proper—the kind with a wingspan and lashing tail that would destroy my little apartment.

“I’ll see if I can get away, but don’t count on me. You’re the older brother, not my clan elder, not the High King.” I throw the phone onto the bed as I stalk past and grab my long leather trench coat from the heap of clothes where it lives.

Scaring the shite out of someone when I go to claim their car might put me in a better mood.

And maybe I’ll even figure out why I’m so angry in the first place.