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“For caring about me. It’d be easy for you to claim me now. I know your dragon wants to—your eyes look crazy.”

I huffed a small laugh.

“But you won’t, because you’re worried it would hurt me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said. “Ever. No matter what. I think I’ve done that enough.”

She pulled back, then cupped my face in both hands and kissed me briefly. It was soft and sweet, and my frustrated dragon was soothed by the gesture. “But you want to claim me, right?”

“More than anything,” I said in a low growl.

“Then when this is all over. Promise me.”

“I promise.” I kissed her neck, right where I’d put my bite.

“Mom?” Dylan’s voice called down the stairs. “Is Dad back?”

I smiled and kissed Harley again, a brief, hard kiss. Like a promise. “Yeah, kiddo, I’m here.”

Smiling, Harley rolled off my lap as Dylan came thundering down the stairs. “Dad! Fix your dinner so I can have the leftovers. I’m hungry again.”

“There’s ice cream, too,” Harley said.

“Ooh! I’ll have that first.” He raced into the kitchen, giving me nothing more than a hearty wave. I was glad to see him so lighthearted. At least the stress of this battle with Sean hadn’t reached him.

“Where’s Cassidy?” I asked as I stood up off the couch. I was starving. Finally eating dinner sounded almost as good as ravishing Harley. A good second option, at least.

“Locked up in her room with Striker,” Harley said with a smirk. “She said they had to talk . But”—she lowered her voice—“I think they might be doing a little more than that.”

I chuckled. I’d been pretty sure that was happening when Striker brought his fancy white noise machine from his room in the clubhouse.

With a bunch of dragons sharing space, we’d gotten pretty good at masking—or at least, attempting to mask—our private endeavors.

“Well, that explains why Striker asked to skip the clubhouse meeting. First time he’s ever done that. He said he was compromised .”

“That’s one way of putting it,” she said, laughing.

I went into the kitchen and gave Dylan a big hug.

He whined theatrically and reached for his ice cream bowl as I got him in a headlock.

It felt like I hadn’t seen him in ages, and we roughhoused around the kitchen for a few minutes before I finally fixed myself a plate.

Dylan dived into the leftovers moments after finishing his ice cream.

Such was the metabolism of a teenaged dragon shifter.

Harley watched us with a fond smile on her face.

I wanted this for the rest of my life. My son, happy, laughing, and well-fed. My wife on the couch. The warmth of the house around us.

This was all I needed to be happy. All I wanted was for us to laugh and love and live freely together, without any threats from my old life hanging over our heads.

I had to see this through to the end.

“All right, Dyl, I’ve got to get a little more work done.” I ruffled his hair. “Don’t stay up too late playing video games.”

“No promises,” Dylan said through a mouthful of bread.

I leaned over the couch and kissed Harley briefly. Dylan was too focused on his meal to even comment on it.

“Good luck,” she whispered against my lips. “Don’t take too long.”

God, I was ready for this to be over.

I climbed the stairs and stepped into my office, closing the door behind me before my sharp ears could pick up any sounds from Cassidy’s room. Whatever she was doing with Striker—right now, that was her business. And I had something a lot more important to attend to.

I pulled Forrest’s phone out of my pocket and punched in his passcode—four fives in a row, simple bastard.

I scrolled through his recent calls and found most of them had been to Sean and Blakely.

He had a small life, it looked like. Pathetic.

Getting kicked out of Lakeview might be the best thing that ever happened to him.

I tapped Sean’s name. The call connected after a single ring. “Where the fuck have you been?” Sean barked. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day. You think you can just ignore me after everything I’ve done for you?”

Sean’s cold voice had my dragon roaring back into life and sent rage burning through my voice. “Forrest’s been busy having his ass handed to him.”

Silence.

“You won’t be working with him again. Ever.”

“Ace,” Sean hissed. “How nice to hear from you.” His voice was icy and unnervingly emotionless. Different from the voice I’d just heard on the phone. Different from the voice I remembered from my childhood.

My dragon knew what was happening. I wasn’t speaking to Sean as a whole man—a whole shifter with both a human side and a draconic side. It was as if Sean had been cleaved down the middle. Right now, I was speaking to his dragon alone.

He was losing control. I just had to give him that last push.

“You’re really this stupid?” I snapped. “You think that idiot cop could get past me? You really thought that would be the way to take me down?”

Sean snarled into the phone, and I didn’t have to see him to know his fangs had dropped.

I took a deep breath. I had to keep pushing in a way that would hurt him. Hurt us both.

“Shit like this is why Dad chose me to be the alpha,” I said slowly, clearly, making sure to enunciate every word. “Every choice you make isn’t just reckless, it’s stupid. You’re not smart enough to lead a clan.”

“You don’t know anything about leading a clan!”

“Seriously? Then why am I the alpha? Why do I keep picking off every dirtbag you try to convince to work with you? Why am I the one working with the Vahdats while you can’t even get a dirty cop to stay loyal?”

Sean growled. My fangs dropped instinctively at the threat, and I withdrew them quickly, so he wouldn’t hear their presence in my words. I was the one in control. The more I was in control, the more enraged his dragon would become.

“You were never going to be a real leader,” I said. “You’ve always been too weak. Too foolish. You’re a disgrace to our family name. A true Cole alpha would never lose control to his dragon like you have.”

“You think I’ve lost control?” Sean snarled. “I’m perfectly in control, Ace. Just like I’ve always been. I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

I didn’t believe that, but from the tone of his voice, this wasn’t just his feral dragon. This was the man. My brother. “You’ve never had a chance to kill me, Sean. You’re delusional.”

“I used to imagine it,” Sean said. “Standing over your bed in the middle of the night. You always had that dumb little teddy bear. You slept with it into your teens.” He scoffed.

My eyes widened. He was talking about our childhood. That teddy bear had belonged to our mother. He was right that I’d slept with it in my bed long after a young boy should. I still had it, too, stashed on a high shelf in my office.

“I’d look down at you hugging that stupid bear, and I’d think about grabbing it and shoving it over your face. Holding it there until you suffocated. I was always stronger than you. It’d be easy if you tried to fight me off.”

My heart stopped.

He hated me then? Back when we were just kids?

“It would’ve been too obvious,” Sean said. “So I tried something different, that day at the lake. I thought I’d pulled it off.”

My blood ran cold. “You mean…”

Sean laughed. “You really didn’t know? I was so obvious about it!”

I remembered that day like it was yesterday.

We were twelve years old, out on a small boat in the center of the lake, fishing with our dad.

It was a windy day, and cold, too. The lake, usually calm and still, was choppy from the aggressive wind.

Dad still wanted to fish, though, and he was busy trying to tie down the cooler of our catches and prepare the rod for the next one, and then something bumped me hard.

I tipped over the edge of the boat and crashed into the water.

I’ve never felt a sensation like that, before or since.

The water was so cold, it sucked the air from my lungs.

My muscles locked up, shocked and frozen, and I just sank.

I sank for what felt like an eternity before my body suddenly screamed awake, and I thrashed in the cold water until I broke through the surface and took a gasping breath.

I couldn’t scream before I sank again. I only got a glimpse of the boat, and it looked like it was leaving me behind.

“I tried to distract Dad,” Sean continued. “Helping him with the rods, you know, like a dutiful son. But you were splashing around like an idiot, and he noticed.”

Dad had noticed, yes. He dived into the water and grabbed me, and was able to haul me out of the freezing lake and back onto the boat.

I didn’t remember that part, though. I remembered the icy water in my lungs, Dad’s arm hauling me up, and then the sharp pain in my chest as I coughed myself back into consciousness.

“We were just kids. And you tried to kill me.”

“This time, I’ll succeed,” Sean hissed.

I hung my head and clenched my free hand into a fist to stop it from trembling.

It wasn’t Sean’s dragon that had pushed me off the boat.

Back then, he wasn’t a clan-less alpha, losing control because his dragon’s instinctive needs went unfulfilled.

He’d tried to kill me when he was just a kid. When he was still my brother.

Had part of him known, even then? Had he known that I was the stronger dragon? The next Lakeview alpha?

What Sean didn’t realize was that by telling me this, he’d burned away the last pieces of our connection.

He had never been the brother I thought he was. He had never cared about me. He had always wanted me gone. Dead.

I had spent all these years grieving my brother and missing him, but I had been missing someone who was never there at all.

It was heartbreaking. And at the same time, it was freeing. It still wouldn’t be easy to kill my brother. But now, I knew I could do it without remorse.

I straightened up. I still needed to push Sean. I needed to break him, fully and completely.

“No wonder Dad thought you were useless. You couldn’t even kill the competition. And you had all those chances, all through our childhood. Look at you now. You’re alone, and I’m the clan alpha.”

“You—”

“Dad hoped you’d come into your own as an alpha, you know,” I said, barreling forward with no concern for Sean’s words.

“He hoped you’d strike out on your own, build a clan, and become the leader your dragon wanted you to be.

He hoped that you might become a fraction of the alpha I am.

But that’s all it was. Hope based on nothing.

Because there’s nothing to you, Sean. There’s no leadership.

No wisdom. No smarts. You’ll never lead a clan, because you’re a pathetic excuse for an alpha.

You had to hire help to try to kill me because you’re too much of a coward to face me yourself.

” I laughed. “And even if you had killed me, you think the Lakeview dragons would follow you? It’s a two-way street.

The clan has to accept you. And these dragons?

They’d laugh you out of the clan in a heartbeat. ”

“How dare you?—”

“You’re a joke. You’re a failure. You have to pay people for their loyalty. And even then, they turn on you. You’re barely an alpha at all.”

“You don’t know anything about being an alpha!

” Sean bellowed into the phone. “I’ll show you what being an alpha really means, Ace.

It’s about power. And I’m more powerful than you could ever imagine.

You’re going to suffer for this, brother.

” He spat the word like it was bile. “I’ll drain every drop of life from your body, and I’ll make sure it hurts.

I’ll show you all what a true alpha is, and prove once and for all that our idiot father was wrong. ”

“Are you challenging me?” I growled.

“If you want a challenge,” Sean snarled, “I’ll give you a fucking challenge.”

The line went dead.

I set Forrest’s phone down and powered it off. Then I leaned back in my office chair, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath to settle my dragon.

I’d gotten what I wanted. I’d pushed him to the brink.

Sean was going to challenge me.

No sneak attacks. No kidnapping. An honest, honorable challenge, where I’d be forced to kill him to put this all behind me. For my clan, my son, and my mate.

There was no relief. I only felt grief. Grief for the brother I’d never had.