“As you will.”

Dane wasn’t surprised when that slice of bacon went down and was followed by another, and Noah picked up his fork to eat his eggs, cleaning his plate almost before Dane did. A man couldn’t run all that magic without wearing down his body. The alcohol was probably the only thing keeping Noah from being a skeleton. As it was, Dane could still see why Lindsay found him appealing.

When Noah cleared the table, Dane let him do it, watching without comment as Noah put the scotch bottle away before putting their plates in the sink. Good. It was nice to be right about things once in a while.

Noah was exactly what Dane had expected from one of the Quinns, except that he’d forgotten how traditional the old families could be. The Quinns went back long before Dane’s memory. It must have been

hell growing up dead-headed in that family. Made sense that Noah was expecting to be on the outside looking in.

Dane couldn’t imagine what it was like for someone from a traditional enclave to go through leaving the only world he knew and then suffer the loss of the one person who had wanted him the way he was.

There was a limit to how much losing and leaving a soul could take. A soul like Noah’s, with so much power to wield, could be a danger if broken. Dane had seen it before, and the aftermath.

Noah needed to discover that there was more than one person in the world who would be willing to have him as he was. Lindsay was deeply loyal and desperate to connect. Noah would repay every good thing Lindsay gave him and more. Under all their power, they were painfully human and barely grown ones at that.

Dane would be around for them, and they were smart enough to figure that out. If they didn’t know it yet, they’d catch on in the next fifty years or so. Maybe having a little family would be enough to keep both of them stable. Looking after what had the potential to be a small Armageddon—especially if the two of them went off the rails at the same time—was certainly going to keep Dane on the straight and narrow.

“You ready to go sleep?” he asked, once Noah had rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

“Sure.” That was reluctant.

“I mean sleep.” Dane finished his second beer and brought the bottle over to put it with the first. “You have to learn to let him give you what you need.”

All he got in response was a subtle shift in tension, and Noah looking away from him, out the window and into the dark. Dane frowned as he re-evaluated the situation, breathing in to test the air. This close, he could see the rigid line of Noah’s throat and the clench of his jaw, the narrowing of his luminous eyes. All that distress and the smell of guilt and betrayal added up to something Dane understood.

“Don’t blame yourself for wanting what keeps you safe,” Dane said, feeling the uncomfortable twinges of empathy in his chest again.

Reaching out, he petted the nape of Noah’s neck the way he’d first stroked Lindsay’s hair to calm him, the way he’d soothe an anxious animal, though petting Lindsay was all softness like petting a rabbit and Noah was all sinew and heat. Still, Noah’s head sank down and his neck curved under Dane’s palm, grudging acquiescence instead of begging for more. It had been a long time since Dane had seen a dragon, but he remembered them well.

“What’s between the two of you is between you,” he said, because it needed saying. “And not for me to decide or deny. It is what it is. If what’s mine is content, I’ve nothing to mend.”

“I don’t...” Noah began, but Dane gave him a little shake by the neck before letting him go.

“Hush. I’ve said what I mean.” Dragons were recalcitrant things. Dane nudged this one toward the hall. “Bed, now.”

Halfway up the stairs, Noah said, “I can sleep in my own bed, you know.”

“You’ll sleep on the couch.” There was a decent-sized one in Dane and Lindsay’s room. “I won’t have Lindsay worrying over you for nothing. He’ll tell you when to go back to your own bed. Don’t mention it again.” Dane wasn’t going through this every night until Noah was back in the habit of sleeping.

“Fine.” Noah stopped at the bedroom door, hands in the pockets of the robe, shoulders up around his ears with irritation. Dane wanted to laugh at him, but knew better than to make things worse.

“Go on.” Dane opened the door and waited, watching as Noah slunk over to the couch. The opening of the door woke Lindsay, as he’d thought it would. “Your boy can’t sleep,” Dane said by way of explanation.

“Oh.” Lindsay yawned and wriggled out of bed, gathering up a blanket and a pillow as he went.

“Anyone who wakes me before noon better be bleeding or on fire,” Dane warned. He closed the door and went to sprawl on the bed, taking up most of it. The blend of new and old smells was strange, but he knew that in days, missing one or the other would begin to be equal causes for concern. The animal in him was forever making decisions like that without his permission.

He could have listened to the soft conversation between Noah and Lindsay, but he didn’t feel the need. They were fine. It was their business and Dane would leave them to it. He couldn’t always be here for them, even if he wanted to be. Rolling over and leaving enough room for Lindsay in the bed, he fell asleep to the sound of their voices.

Chapter Four

Nearly two weeks after being packed out of his father’s house and sent to Atlantic City, Noah was starting to accept that this was home. That bothered him, that he could fall into a new life this easily.

Almost a year had passed since he’d been anywhere he considered home—hospital, a healer’s spare room, his father’s house—and maybe that was making the transition easier.

What was making it harder was Lindsay. It wasn’t that Noah didn’t like him or didn’t want to be around him. He did. He wanted Lindsay there in spite of the fact that Lindsay was a constant—

maddeningly constant—reminder that nothing was the same, while Lindsay’s magic let him wallow in the illusion that nothing had changed. Lindsay’s magic made him feel safe, but there was more to it than that.

Lindsay was good to him with the driven persistence of a new parent, even if he was five years younger. There wasn’t a room Noah found himself in that Lindsay wasn’t in as well moments later. Even when he went outside, wandering the streets, he was never alone. He and Lindsay were bound together in their strange little gestalt awareness and married by the choices of their elders.

Noah could feel Lindsay’s sincerity flowing down the bond that kept his magic in check, and he knew that Lindsay was genuine in his intentions and his actions. He would have tried to be obedient for the sake of his family’s reputation, but it was easy to yield when he was faced with such unsolicited devotion. That it comforted him was rending sometimes. He didn’t want to be comforted. Hurting was penance for being alive.

He healed in spite of himself, his skin itching and peeling, and cried bitterly over it during brief moments of privacy in the shower. Knowing Elle would have been happy he was doing more than surviving didn’t ease the guilt. He kept that inner pain from Lindsay as best he could, hiding it away like a stolen talisman, and felt guilty for that, too.

There was no way Noah could have healed like this before, trapped in his rage and grief, homeless in spite of sleeping under his father’s roof. That house had stopped being his home, slowly and irreparably, over the years that his magic failed to manifest. His magic had rejected his family as they had rejected Noah. What Noah might have tried to forgive, his fire could not.

Cyrus had brought him in and given him a home; his fire breathed and grew at the mercy of the air, just as Noah lived and healed by Cyrus’s acceptance. Lindsay and Dane had given him a family—not one to replace the one he’d tried to make for himself with Elle, but a family nonetheless. Here, where his magic was welcomed and nurtured, it was finally willing to let him heal.