At least, after the baby, Rose might come.

The door creaked open and two sets of footsteps followed, one lighter than the other.

Noah turned to look enough to decide whether or not he should be worried. The first one through the door was a wisp of long hair and wide eyes, almost obliterated by the massive presence of the feral coming behind. Dane. Noah had known he would be here. He wondered what the big creature would think of him.

He didn’t know what he thought of being in the house of mages his father considered to be stronger—or at least more resilient—than the Quinns.

“My apologies for interrupting your...training.” Cyrus didn’t sound sorry, nor did it sound like training had been happening. So, that was how it was. Noah turned back to the window.

“You know we were finished.” The voice was too light to be Dane.

The creak of a suffering chair and a leonine grumble was definitely the feral. Over the years, a number of ferals had made themselves known to the Quinns. Rose had a way with them, even before she came into her magic, and some had trusted Noah’s mother to heal them. Noah knew better than to think that human form meant human ways.

“I can never quite tell,” Cyrus said sharply. “It seems I forget there are more things to do than to keep all of us safe. But someone has to remember.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Vivian said. She sounded on the verge of laughing. She made Noah’s skin crawl, with her bright voice and her mild temper. “Neither has Dane. We just have a different perspective.”

“Something that is the bane of my existence. If either of you had my vantage point, you wouldn’t take things so lightly. There is work to be done. Sooner than later. And apparently I must maintain the niceties all the while.” Cyrus meant him, Noah knew. Taking him in. “I have no time for it. Neither does Vivian.”

“Neither do I. I sure as hell don’t want another one,” Dane rumbled. “I told you not to give me the one I have.”

“Don’t remind me.” Cyrus’s voice was icy. “I regret daily my failure to take your desires into consideration. All of them.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the little one put in, sounding more amused than offended, “I think your decision worked out rather well.” The voice was definitely male, but young and full of sharp edges.

Noah should have known he wouldn’t be left to learn from the old mage. It was better that he didn’t.

An accident on his part could wipe out the knowledge and work of generations. He leaned his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes. Maybe they would send him somewhere else, since they couldn’t keep him. He didn’t want to be kept or bartered or passed around, but there were rules even he couldn’t deny. It was his own fault he was alive.

“Don’t make me regret this decision as well, Lindsay,” Cyrus snapped. “It’s a good thing you have developed some backbone. I need Dane, which will leave you with time on your hands. Therefore, this one is yours. I would tell you to keep your hands to yourself, but you’ll do what you want, what with how you’ve been spoiled. Noah.”

This one is yours. When Noah was twelve, this had been all he’d wanted, though in his family—

among his people—it was something done with ceremony and celebration. Here, in Cyrus’s domain, it had devolved to this. This one is yours. Noah made himself move, so he wouldn’t seem rude.

“Lindsay will show you to your room.” Cyrus pointed at the pale young man leaning on the doorframe. “The rest of us have larger matters to discuss.”

“Me?” Lindsay looked from Cyrus to Noah and back again. For a moment, Noah was sure he was going to refuse. “But I—” Something stopped him. He closed his mouth, shook his head and held a hand out to Noah. “Let’s see if we can find somewhere you’ll be comfortable.”

Noah looked at the hand—it was slim and soft and white. He couldn’t take it. It was impossibly familiar. The disconnect between his memory and reality nauseated him. He shouldered his duffel bag and headed for the door.

His manners and his family pride made him stop before he crossed the threshold. He turned and gave Cyrus a little bow, the kind his father would have expected.

“For a place in your home, my future is yours.” The words felt like they were being drawn out of him, from his guts and his spine. If you didn’t mean them, or if you didn’t have magic, he wondered, did they feel the same?

“I will keep your fate with mine, for the days you remain with my people,” Cyrus replied, his expression softening slightly.

Noah looked again at the man—barely more than a boy—to whom he’d been given. Lindsay. Lindsay appeared baffled by the exchange.

“Wherever you want me, I’ll stay.” Noah waited for him to lead on.

Dane listened to their footsteps fade before he let himself look at Cyrus. When he heard them reach the next floor, he turned on Cyrus with a hiss like a hot kettle.

“Are you insane?” Before he knew it, he was across the room, hands planted in the papers on Cyrus’s desk, his face inches from the old man’s.

“It’s been debated,” Cyrus said calmly. He tugged at the edge of a document trapped under Dane’s hand. “You’re impossible to please, you know. At least for an old man like myself. I thought you wanted to help me, not babysit.”

True. It drove Dane around the twist when he was sent off on one errand or another, leaving Cyrus vulnerable. Worse, the old mage had taken to going here and there alone, with no one but Vivian’s girl, Kristan, to look after him. That Cyrus wanted more of his time should have been a relief.

“You know the answer to that.” Dane pushed away from the desk, sending the papers floating like startled birds. He turned his back on Cyrus and went to look out the window where Noah had been sitting.

The air there was heavy with the smell of blood and burning and pain.

“While I don’t agree with Dane’s phrasing,” Vivian said quietly, “giving someone like Noah to Lindsay is...well, it’s a difficult task to take someone on under the best of circumstances.” Her high heels clicked on the floor as she went to gather the papers Dane had scattered.

“Abram Quinn assures me that the boy isn’t a danger to those around him.” Dane didn’t have to be looking to know the dismissive gesture of Cyrus’s hand. He could hear it cut the air and see it in his mind’s eye. “He carries an artifact from their family to ensure that he won’t get out of control. There is a method to what you call my madness. I’m weary of having to prove it again and again.”

“The kid is a Molotov cocktail,” Dane growled. He’d smelled it the minute he walked in the house, the barely stifled fire of a pyromancer. The artifact that kept Noah’s magic in check—Dane hated relying on artifacts and Lindsay would find it unbearable. Dane knew he was being overprotective. The thing wasn’t going to jump off Noah’s wrist and savage anyone. This was as good a time as any for him to let the habit go.

Dane took a slow breath and let the animal in him slink away to seethe. The human part of him rose to the surface and imposed logic on his churning anger. You’re mostly angry that Cyrus admits to needing you at all, Dane’s rational mind pointed out. One of these days, you’re going to have to stop getting pissed off at everything that makes you feel something you don’t want to feel.

“Noah came late to his magic by a great loss,” Cyrus conceded. “It will make his path difficult. But we can use him.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to talk to me before putting a burden like that on Lindsay?” Dane had good reason to be offended.

“I hadn’t yet decided.” When Dane turned around, Cyrus was watching him closely. “If I had given him to you, you would have had to choose between them every moment of the day. Could you have done right by him?”