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Chapter Four

Tommy picked up the newest listing of dragons that had been talked to. The files that Sal had compiled after talking to them had appeared on Tommy’s desk just moments before. Sal was working too early, and that meant that one of the hatchlings was awake and probably sick, curled into Sal while Sal worked because they felt safe with their father with them.

Evan was out in the garden and had been for a while. Cumulus was with him, draped over him like a blanket, a small bit of comfort. The nightmares had been getting worse, but the issue was that Evan wasn’t able to remember them at all. Tommy didn’t think that he was lying either. The issue was that hatchlings could remember a lot of things in their life and could remember from the moment that their egg broke. Tommy had a feeling that most of it was nameless and shapeless fears of his. It was something that was horrible, and in the end, it was something that they couldn’t do anything about but get this whole thing figured out.

Margaret and Phillip of Hershey, Pennsylvania, were so utterly normal. There was nothing big once they had moved there when Evan had been around a year old. Before that, they had been in Harrisburg. The move was a little strange because the two dragons were well-loved where they had been. Sal would be leaving again with Gina soon and going back there to talk to other people. There was a small group of isolated mages that had forgotten more about magic than most knew, and they were currently in Hershey. The governor of Pennsylvania had dispatched them to look at something that had been in that forest, and it was spreading.

There was another team in Harrisburg that was working on something like the first, but that one hadn’t been growing as big. Tommy felt like they were connected.

It had been two months since they had started to pull Evan into looking into his parents when they were sure that it was his parents who had sent that storm after him. Tommy still hadn’t figured out why. Nothing that they had found so far about the spells on Evan and the runestone that had been used to cause the storm had helped them with a reason why. It was why Sal was going to talk to the group of mages. They had been allowed because Tommy had been able to talk to the governor and point out that they had figured out who had been the target and that the dragon had been born in Harrisburg and then raised in Hershey, and the issues that were happening in those areas had been linked to the storm. It was enough that Tommy hoped that Sal had a good thing there.

The door to Tommy’s office opened, the one that was outside. He was shocked to see Sal there and not Evan. Tommy just stared at him.

“Left all three hatchlings with Evan because they are all awake, coughing up a storm. That stupid cold that’s been going around. They will feel better soon, but they are another hour from the dosage of the potion that will help suppress the cough and get more sleep. Their familiars will give it to them when it’s time, but for now, Evan’s going to watch them. I have…scary news.”

Tommy nodded, waving at Sal with that nod. Sal shut the door and traced a set of the runes that would stop anyone outside from hearing them.

“The point of location that the miasma is coming from in Harrisburg is a grave.”

“A single grave?”

“Yes, a hatchling that died.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Oh, it does. The grave just has the name of the hatchling, Daniel, by the way. The thing is that when the isolated mages dug up the grave, they found a second hatchling inside the grave, just born.”

“Just born. Like…”

“No, the issue is that the bones of it are a year deader than the body of Daniel.”

“They buried a dead dragon that had been dead for a year in a grave and did not mark it?”

“They are working on the DNA of the hatchling. Seeing if they can link it to a hatchling that had gone missing.”

Tommy swallowed, and he realized that Sal was talking around at that point. William.

“Daniel would have died when William was one.”

“Fucking hell. No.” Tommy couldn’t believe that they had done something that killed William. It was like the Gods were making him distrust everything. Evan would have been too young to be any part of it.

“I’m sorry. I know that you said you had no hope that he was alive, but this just…I’m going to go to Harrisburg first, and Gina is going to go to Hershey, and we will work from there. Evan has agreed to watch the hatchlings since they can’t go to school because all three of them are sick. Unless you don’t want it.”

“You know that I do. I’ll work from home and claim to be watching them. Earthy can get me anything from my office that I need. I have no idea what to do about this.”

“I’m first going to meet with the mages, and we are going to find out why Daniel died. There are a few things that can kill a dragon of that age that are not being killed by someone or a crushing injury. That’s going to be the main point to figure out what’s going on, and I’ll make sure that you know what’s going on.”

Tommy looked at the papers in front of him. Evan’s parents seemed to be the ones who had stolen William away and then killed him right away to do whatever they did. There might be days apart between William’s kidnapping and his death, but not much because dragons grew in size quickly after hatching.

“Give me all the reports that we have on the magic of the kidnapping so that I can take them with me. We haven’t had people looking at it in a very long time. I doubt that any of those dragons were the ones that were here to look at what was going on.”

Tommy had those reports on hand. He always did. He would give Sal his copy because at this point in time, Tommy was pretty sure that he could say it all by heart.

“If this is true, I will be the one to tell Pearl and Magnus. They will not blame Evan for this, but I want to make sure that they understand why the storm happened. They didn’t want someone looking at Evan and seeing something; maybe there is something in his magic that would track back there. Or just him being in the spotlight would reveal enough of this. We cannot let this slip out anywhere.”

“Gina knows because she was reading the papers with me since we are working on this together now.”

Tommy hadn’t been part of the decision to tap both of them together to work this part; he didn’t care about it because he trusted them, but Pearl and Maguns were the ones who assigned them to help Tommy with this. There were going to be a lot of people coming and going over the next few days because this was going to go horribly wrong. There was no chance that William was alive based on what Tommy knew now.

The door opened up again, and Evan popped his head inside.

“We are going to go to the living room to sleep. The hatchlings are all sleepy. They will be woken up to get their potions when it’s time. We are all tired as hell.”

“Sure,” Tommy said.

Evan looked at him and then at Sal, and the look on his face was asking the questions that Tommy wasn’t ready to answer. He shook his head at Evan, and Evan just backed out of the office and shut the door.

“It’s one thing to know that his parents wanted him dead, but to find out that his parents kidnapped a baby dragon and killed it for something is just something I don’t want to tell him until we are sure what has happened.”

“I do not envy you for what you have to tell him and the governors,” Sal said.

Tommy snorted because no one would envy him for this job at all. They thought that they wanted it until things like this happened. He looked at the report he had been ready to look at and just huffed. He used the magic of the desk to close the folder. He had hooves, so he didn’t handle things well, but magic had been delivered for all dragon types to help them be able to do jobs that they wanted to do, and not the olden days, when they were stuck doing things that their breeds could do.

Cumulus appeared at the window, and Tommy could see that he was looking inside in anger. The shade of Cumulus’ body was a darker green than it normally was, and that was how Tommy knew what it was feeling. Tommy wondered time and again if Cumulus knew more than he was making Tommy think that he knew. It wasn’t enough to have Tommy confront him, but he figured that things were going to come to a head sooner rather than later.

—

Buck took to the sky, finding that he missed flying so much, but he didn’t do much of it so as not to attract someone to him. He didn’t need someone to realize that he was alive before Tommy, and he figured out what was going on. Sal and Gina had been gone a day, and then the folder that held the paperwork from them was never updated; the small glow on the desk showed that there was something new in there. Tommy flinched like he was afraid it was going to blow up on him. He knew that they had gone to Hershey and Harrisburg, something about a team of dragons being sent to both places because of something that was happening there that they had tied back to Buck.

The issue was that Buck had never lived in Harrisburg. They had always been in Hershey. It wasn’t like they had birth certificates as the humans did. It was just recorded with their name and their parents when they were born, and their magic was the main thing that was used to tell dragons apart.

“You can go up higher; there is nothing that can be seen from outside of the compound,” Tommy said as he came out of his office after the last update to the folder.

“I know. I just…I’m afraid that Bobby’s in here. He doesn’t come here much, but I know that things are happening in the city, and if he needs someone specialized because I’m not there for what I need, that has to go through headquarters here.”

“I can find out if he’s here, and then you can fly to your heart’s content,” Tommy said.

Buck snorted, but he came down, landing close to Tommy and curling into him when he could. Buck wasn’t sure what he felt for Tommy, but he knew that being around him made him feel a lot better. It was the kind of thing that made Buck hope that Tommy felt the same, but he was waiting until there were more things known about what was going on before he got attached. Buck could understand that because it wasn’t like he wanted to be hunted for the rest of his life. He wanted to make sure that he was safe before he allowed himself to go after this thing between him and Tommy.

No one at the 118 would think that he was able to hold himself back. Buck really liked sex, but lately the hooking up hadn’t felt like something that he wanted to get back to. He had seen how Gina and Sal were with each other. He saw the way that Tommy was when he talked about other dragons he had dated. When Buck asked about the other dragons that Kiara and Keanon talked about when Tommy was trying to find them a second parent to help, he wanted to find someone who fit with all three of them and made the family feel more like a family. Buck felt like that was him. The dragons were already attached, so it wasn’t like that part wasn’t going to happen.

“We need to talk,” Tommy said.

“I don’t like that.”

“No, I doubt that you would. We need to go. Sal’s got a communication portal up.”

Buck nodded. He knew that Tommy would have put this off if Buck had headed up to fly, giving Buck something to have as a good memory.

The office was shut up, and even the shades were drawn when they got inside. Buck had never seen Tommy’s office so closed off before.

“Safe on your end?”

“Yes, they locked me in a room that I can get out of, but no one but the one who set the spell can get inside.”

“Taht bad?” Buck asked.

“Worse,” Tommy and Sal said at the same time.

Buck dropped down into the little nest that was there for the twins when they wanted to sleep in there, and Tommy was working. It wasn’t nearly big enough for Buck, but he could make himself small enough so that it didn’t hurt to stay in there. “Go.”

“We found the DNA results on the baby dragon that was in the grave with Daniel. Then those two strands were compared to you,” Sal said.

“Yes, Tommy got that from me last night.”

“You are not a match to either of them, but they are a match to each other.” Sal looked like he was trying not to say something, but it had to come out, so Buck kept his mouth shut on that.

“And I did something a little illegal,” Tommy said.

“What?”

“I had someone I know get me DNA from Maddie,” Tommy said.

Buck raised his head, and he looked at Tommy. “Why? She’s my sister.”

“Ah, you’ve been raised as her sister, but you are not related to her at all. She’s related to the two other dragons. The exact age of hatching is put as a day before what you know as your hatch day.”

“She’s not my biological sister? Is there any family relation at all?”

“No. There is none,” Tommy said.

“Where did I come from?”

“I have a DNA test that is from blood from the shell of William,” Tommy said.

“Who is William?”

“He is a hatchling who was stolen from his parents here in LA thirty years ago. On your exact hatch date. The hatch date isn’t anything because there are thousands of dragons born across the world on that same day.”

Buck tried to wrap his head around what Tommy was saying. He hadn’t been here as a hatchling, so he had no idea what kind of search had happened for that hatchling. By the time he would have memories, there would not have been such a public search across the country like that.

“And what did that say?” Buck asked when he could finally speak. He was glad that Tommy knew him well enough.

“That you are a match. You are William. I’m going to be honest, I thought that the dead hatchling was going to be William.”

“What killed Daniel?”

“One of the wasting sicknesses that can sometimes be fixed by a spell that is dark as hell,” Sal said.

Buck sat up, and he looked at the two of them. Sal looked pissed off while Tommy just looked sad. “I was taken from my parents to heal him?”

“We are going off the assumption at this point that they tried to make a baby dragon that would heal him, using the spell, and then that dragon died, that is the dragon that was buried with Daniel. So they decided to take a baby dragon that would work. It only works within the first day of being hatched. The dark spell takes a year, and it’s a risk because both could die, one could die, or it could just not work. It’s dark for that reason.” Sal sounded even more pissed off than he looked.

“So it didn’t work?” Buck tried to wrap his head around what he knew of his younger years. Maddie had been there. Maddie was older than him and even slightly older than Daniel. She knew. She might not know about the whole dark shit their parents did, but she knew that they had a brother. A brother that Buck never knew about. “I never knew about Daniel.”

“No, we assume that it didn’t work. Daniel’s death was when you were exactly a year old. So, that meant that you were there and people knew about you at that point, so they had to leave. That is when the family moved from Harrisburg to Hershey. I am not sure why they just didn’t get rid of you,” Tommy said.

“So they moved to hide that their son died. Did they keep me around to torture me? To treat me like shit for not saving their son?”

“I don’t know.” Tommy nodded at Sal, and the portal disappeared.

“Where did he go?”

“The rest should be between you and me because, as much as I would love just to tell you that you can sit with this for a long time, you have a decision to make. About your parents, both sets of them. We can push this. There is enough that your parents would be convicted of what they did, and the kidnapping, along with it, would make them eligible to be killed. The death penalty is there for things like this. The spells they did in the aftermath of taking you, the attempted murder. It would be a public spectacle.”

“Would my parents…my birth parents even want me?”

“They have never given up. I should have seen it, Evan. I should have.”

“Why?”

“Because Cumulus was William’s familiar.”

Buck was shocked at that, but he remembered Cumulus saying that he had been hidden from him. It would not do to have William’s familiar come and find him, especially if they knew who they were taking. Cumulus was the only familiar like him. There would have been no way to hide who he was. None at all.

“So that is why you have not pushed me out. You were afraid?”

“Not in the way that you think. Cumulus had moved on, or so I thought. I was waiting to tell William’s parents. I was waiting to find the right time after this storm shit was done. Then this happened.”

“Who are they?”

Tommy pursed his lips, his whole body going rigid in a way that Buck had never seen before. He had no idea what was going on with him. He hoped that something else was going to happen now to stop this. Tommy was going to tell him that he was joking.

“Tommy, don’t start lying to me now.”

“I’m not. I think that they realized what was going to happen. You were her end, and you were away from them. You said that you never once wanted to go back home. Maddie would never want to actually stop you from doing it. She knew that your parents hated you. You said that you never wanted to see them again. They knew this. They also knew that you were close to where your hatch parents were. They worked on this over the years to kill you if they needed to get rid of you. Gina’s been working on it while we waited for the DNA to come back. As soon as it did, we made sure that we had everything. It’s just been an hour since the DNA came back. So, I have not kept this from you long, but Gina thinks that when the storm nearly killed you, your magic that was suppressed broke free, and the spell thought you were dead and stopped.”

“You said something like that.”

“Yes, and that’s when Cumulus could start to feel you again, but not enough to actually do anything like find you, until that moment when he found you again. You would never be able to hide from him if you wanted to, outside of removing all of your magic from your body.”

“Who are my parents?”

“Pearl and Magnus, the governors of California.”

Buck breathed as he tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do. Who they were was good. They could protect him. It would make it all public, though. He had to tell Maddie. Or did he really? She had lied to him his whole life. She knew their parents hated him. No, her parents. They were not his. Not anymore.

“Do not call Phillips and Margaret my parents ever again. They never loved me. They never wanted me. I was a means to an end that died, but they couldn’t kill me when they realized I couldn’t do what they wanted. Or didn’t do what they wanted. You think that the dark spell didn’t work because of how they got me?”

“We think so. There is a lot more looking that needs to go into it. The mages who are working on the issue there in Pennsylvania will look into that more when we tell them the rest of what we know. It will be their job to look into it because all things need to be looked into. How were they able to hide you as they did? There are a lot of echoes of that magic that they could find. I need to order for Phillips and Margaret to be taken into custody before they flee. We know that they can hide, and I hope to make sure that they cannot slip past us.”

“Do what you need to, and I’ll…think of meeting my hatch parents. You won’t tell them until it’s time for me to want to, right?”

“I want to say yes, but I’m bound to them, Evan. I’m going to keep it quiet for a day or so, but you need to think about it. They have loved and missed you. They will accept you for who you are.”

“And…” Buck knew that thinking about him and Tommy was kind of stupid. “And what about us?”

“What about us?”

“You are telling me that you don’t feel it?”

Tommy looked away, and Buck knew that Tommy was doing that to put some distance between them. “I feel it, and up until this point, I would have kissed you and taken you to bed before we found anything out because you’ve settled, and I wouldn’t think that you have been making the choice because I saved you.”

“Anod now?”

“Now, you are going to have a lot going on, and I’m not sure a romance is a good idea.”

“It’s not because of who I am related to?”

“No, to be honest, your hatch parents would love it. They love me. I have thought for a while now that they were grooming me to take over when they are ready, because William had not been found yet.”

“And so, me being involved with you would be the best thing?”

“Yes,” Tommy said.

“So it’s just that my life is now really fucked up?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s take it slow. I’ll take the day, figure out what I want to do, and you can go from there on that. I want something that is mine to choose in this, without others telling me that I don’t need it or want it. Don’t take that from me.”

“I won’t.” Tommy sounded earnest, so Buck believed him.

Buck’s head was spinning, and he needed time to think, and he did his best thinking when he was flying. He needed to get up into the sky, up high, where there were no issues with beings below seeing him. “I’m going to go flying.”

“Okay, please take Cumulus with you just to be safe. There is not a lot that can take him out, given how old he is. He will be able to watch your back if there are any predators out there.”

Buck thought about it for a few seconds before he nodded. He had been getting to know his familiar over the last while. Learning how it felt to have one that stuck with him. He felt that there was a part of his heart that was healed from being around Cumulus. That had been the biggest shock; the bond was still there between them. It had always been, but it had been muted. The ache that he got sometimes made a lot more sense with the knowledge that Cumulus was always there. They had been kept from ever seeing each other.

The hate that welled inside of Buck was the main enemy he had at the moment. He didn’t hate easily, but he had disliked his partner for so long that it wasn’t hard to tip over into hate. They had ruined his life. They hadn’t returned him to his parents. There had been no chance for him to have a good life because they blamed him for not saving their son, even though it had been a long shot. He wasn’t sure what would have happened if both of them had died. What kind of life would he have lived?

Buck moved to the door, and Cumulus was right there, waiting for him on the other side, and they took flight together. It felt fucking good to have someone who had his back.

—

Evan had been gone for hours, and if it weren’t for the fact that Tommy knew that Evan was wrecked, he would have worried. But this was nothing. Evan’s world had been shocked, and there was nothing to do about it. Tommy wondered what was going to happen next. He felt that pull that Evan did when it came to them, but before this, they had been getting to even footing, and Tommy had been about to do something about it, and then their worlds had been wrecked. He wasn’t sure what was going to come of this. He would have to resign from Pearl and Magnus’s service if Evan never wanted them to know. Or he would have someone take those memories from him. That was risky, but he loved what he did. He loved them.

The idea of them as parents had never fully formed in his head. He had a mother who had loved him beyond all measure, but things had been hard. They had never crossed a line, but they did act paternal to him. They had been checking on him while he looked into the storm.

Cumulus was the first to come back.

“Evan is taking another lap around the compound before he heads back. He wants to know how long it will take for you to get an audience with the Governors and tell them who he is.”

“Minutes. I don’t need to worry about that kind of thing at the moment. Why?”

“Because he wants them to know today, and he wants them to meet him today. He wants to wash up and get himself settled when it comes to that, and then he wants to go and see them. He wants to know if you think he should wear anything. He doesn’t, and neither do you, that often, but should there be something that he wears?”

“No, they don’t stand on ceremony with a lot of things like that. They had things that they wear on balls and other things like that, but mostly, we all just go around without apparel.” Tommy knew that Evan had been thinking about this, but he honestly figured that Evan would want a few days to get it into his head what his life was going to be like. There was a lot that was going to happen with this. It would be announced, and then his protector team would know about it.

Tommy would have to make sure that they were told in person and not over the news, like everyone else in the country was going to be told. It was going to be a balance. Evan was a good dragon; he was kind and thoughtful, and he was scared of doing anything that was going to get him looked at as wrong by other dragons. Tommy figured that it was part of his childhood.

Cumulus nodded and then left the room, the door shutting behind him. Tommy was left with his thoughts. He would have to pull in someone else to watch the hatchlings because he and Evan were going to be busy for a long time. There was a list of people, though, so that wasn’t an issue. Tommy watched Sal and Gina’s three ad lot and could get called into doing things. They would drop them off at the office of the one who would watch them without too many issues as they headed to the main building in the compound where Pearl and Magnus lived. There were a few seconds where Tommy worried that this was going to blow up in his face.

Evan, being William, really should have smacked him in the face, but then he had always thought that he was dead. Cumulus was part of the reason, but he knew that even familiars could mourn their dragons for a long time. Cumulus had lost more than a few of them over the long life that he had. Familiars were considered to be immortal, but there were those who thought that they died with their dragons if the bond lasted, and then they were reborn—something like a phoenix. Tommy didn’t think that was real.

Tommy grabbed what he was going to need to prove who Evan was, even if Pearl and Magnus would need little to know that he was their son. It would be something that they would take on Tommy’s word alone, but there were others who were going to push it. Tommy knew that they were working on international treaty things today and hadn’t needed him. He had been glad of that because everything had been hammered out beforehand. That was the part that made things a lot easier. When things were going well, he worked very little, but his mind was always on what he should be doing and what he should be anticipating. Having the reveal happen today worked because the room was going to be just the retinue for the international dragons’ ambassadors and the highest staff of the compound. There would be no loose lips, but still, Tommy looked around for Earthy and found him in the corner just staring at Tommy.

“I want to get Evan’s team here, all of the people. He had a list somewhere.”

“I know who they are. I’ve been watching them mourn him, and while I understood why he did what he did, I wanted to make sure that they were doing okay. I’ll get them there. They will know me but pen me something.”

Tommy worked on that because it was going to be needed. He had a lot to do while Evan got ready. Tommy was clean enough because he hadn’t done much that day. He would make sure that this went as smoothly as he could make it go. He was getting excited because he got to return William to Pearl and Magnus.

It was going to be a stressful but happy day.

Chapter Five

Tommy checked that Evan was keeping up with him. This area of the house wasn’t one that many people got to go to. It was where they met with dignitaries and the like. Tommy didn’t go there much unless there was a worry that someone was going to lie to them.

The hatchinglings had been left with someone whom Tommy trusted. There was going to be a lockdown of the place, and he was glad that Evan’s team was in place where Tommy wanted them. Earthy had been good at getting them where they needed to be for this, even if they had no idea why they, of all people, were being called in to talk to him.

“You know what they are doing, right?” one of the dragons at the door said.

“Yes, but this is something that is beyond that.”

The dragon looked at Evan and then back at Tommy before opening the doors.

Pearl was the first to look at him. She looked shocked as he was sure that everyone else was going to be with his news.

“What is the meaning of this?” Magnus asked when he finally looked at them.

“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I wanted to give you the news as soon as I got confirmation.” Tommy waited to feel Evan with him before she fully entered the room. The doors shut again, and no sound was going to escape the room now. No one was able to listen in on them.

“What news?” Magnus asked, sounding a little bored.

“I have found William.” Tommy turned to look at Evan and then looked back at the two dragons who had been his entire world until his hatchlings came along.

There was utter silence until the dignitaries bowed and moved to allow Pearl and Magnus the view. These were their most trusted friends. It was why there was one but them in there, Tommy could see that. They were further along in the talks of the day than Tommy thought they would be. He smiled at the dignitaries, and he was glad when he saw tears in a few eyes.

“Truly?”

“DNA and magic confirm it.” Tommy stepped closer, and the packet of papers that had been in a stack at his side flew out at his will and went to them. The papers moved on their own, unfolding as Pearl and Magnus’s magic and will did that.

Pearl was the first to look up. “Your name is Evan?”

“Yes, Ma’am. I have not decided if I want to keep it or not. It depends, to be honest.”

“Of course, but you are fine with Evan for now?”

“Yes,” Evan said.

“We will not hug you, but we are glad to see you.”

“I didn’t know that Tommy was going to interrupt the whole thing here. I’m sorry.”

“No, we were at the point of them telling us about grandkids and the like. We are done with everything formal. We can take our leave from them.”

“We will say nothing. This is something that needs to come out in the right way, but we are very, very happy for the safe return of Evan. If there is any help that is needed, let us know,” one of them said.

Tommy knew the voice, but he couldn’t connect it with that name. They were from France, that was all he knew. Tommy was too focused on Pearl and Magunus.

The room emptied quickly, and nothing was said until the doors were shut again.

“Come forward, please.”

Evan moved before Tommy did, like how drawn to them.

“Who are you?” Magunus asked when Evan got closer.

“I’m…” Evan huffed, and the words seemed to fail them. “I work with the 118 protector team. I am someone who has never fit in anywhere that I went until I came here to LA. I wanted to help people, and I wanted to get out of the sphere that my kidnappers pushed me into.”

“The report here tells us of the spell that was done to take you, as well as the ones that were added to you. Something is missing, though, Tommy.”

“The storm was meant to kill him,” Tommy said.

Pearl gasped, and she looked at Evan and then at Tommy again. “Why?”

“We assume that his kidnappers had set up something like that to take him out in a way that would never tie to them or they thought would never tie to them. He’s getting closer and closer to being part of the ceremonies here. There was every single chance that if he had met you, something would have slipped out. There is also the fact that his bond with Cumulus was muted. Neither could touch it. It took days for that to break fully and Cumulus to come to him. We have been helping him; Gina’s been his main caretaker.”

“We knew that you had been helping a dragon who had been washed up on our shores after the storm, dealing with so many issues from the storm.”

“We think it’s less the storm and the breaking of the spells that have been on him. We are going to keep on working on it. Gina and Sal are going to get everything they can from Pennsylvania to make sure that we can put Margaret and Phillip in jail. When I give the word, they will be taken into custody.”

“Do it now,”

Tommuy turned and nodded to Earthy, who nodded back and slipped out from an upper window of the hall and was gone, to go home to send the message.

“My team. I have been hiding from them. I’m on the list of dead from the storm. I was out over the water when it hit, and I was trying to make sure that it didn’t harm people. I realized that it was after me, so I went further out to shore to stop it from going after the rest of the beings of the city and my team.”

“I gathered them without a word about what was going on. His sister as well. She’s being taken to the private chambers and will be told alone with just Evan and me,” Tommy said.

“We will want a few days, but when do you want the world to know?”

“After we have Margaret and Phillip in a cell in Pennsylvania. Then I think that it would be safe to broach it.”

“Do it,” Pearl said.

Magnus was the first to step down. He was careful as he moved, and he stopped in front of Evan to wait for what Evan wanted to do, and he just rushed forward and hugged him. Pearl fell down, and she wrapped him up in a hug, holding onto him. They cried, all three of them. Tommy turned to give them as much privacy as he could without leaving Evan. Evan had already had Tommy promise that he was not going to leave him alone for any reason with them. They were his parents, but they didn’t know each other.

“You want to talk to your team and then your sister, then come t o us? We will be in our private rooms, and we can have dinner in there and talk to get to know each other without a lot of pressure. We will work on the draft of what we want to put out,” Pearl said. She let go of Evan and stepped back, but she reached up and cupped his cheek.

“What cause will you cover this with? Dragons will talk.”

Tommy wasn’t shocked when Evan drifted back to his side and tucked himself in close. There was no mistaking it.

“I see,” Pearl said with a smile. She laughed a little bit. “Yes, that would work. Your lovely new beau and meeting us is something to talk about, and the interrogation will be about the storm. You found something, and knew that we wanted to know as soon as you and Sal figured something out. That will work for now.”

Tommy bowed his head, and he scooted just a little closer to Evan. Tommy knew that he was Evan’s rock at the moment, and he was going to do whatever Evan ended for this.

“The team first and then Maddie, because that one is going to be heard. I am not sure if she knew that I wasn’t the dragon that should have come out of the egg.”

“We will look at this report more thoroughly so that certain things need not be discussed,” Magnus said.

“That’s everything that we have on the matter at the moment, but it could be updated with more things.”

Tommy headed for the door after he had finished speaking, and Evan followed him. There was a hesitance, and Tommy knew that Evan wanted to get things over with.

“I have a set of rooms in the compound that is just off their area. It’s where I sleep sometimes when things are horrible, and I’m needed for a lot of things. I can get the hatchlings from where they are later, and we will be able to sleep here, if that is where you want to sleep.”

“It’s safer here, right? In case something else happens?” Evan asked.

“Yes.”

“Then yes,” Evan said.

“Good. I’ll send word that we are staying tonight to have me on hand as Pearl and Magnus work on going over what I have found out about the storm and the threat that is posed to the city.” Tommy led Evan to the room where the 118 was. He stepped into the room and looked around.

Bobby was sitting at the head of the table with the rest of the team spread out. He had worked with Hen and Howie on a few things over the years, small things, but enough that he knew them well enough.

“Tommy,” Hen said. She stood up like she was going to come and hug him, but Tommy shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” Bobby asked.

“We have news about the storm, and there is a lot that is going to come out, but there was one piece that you needed to know before it became public knowledge.”

“This is about Buck, isn’t it?” the one dragon that Eddie didn’t know asked.

“Eddie,” Hen hissed.

“No, he’s fine. This is massive, and things will be frantic for days.”

“Maddie should be here,” Howie said.

“She will be told on her own. Earthy went to her with a different letter and escorted her here on his own. Buck is alive.”

“No, he was never found. We saw him go into the heart of the storm, and I couldn’t call him back,” Bobby said.

Tommy turned to the door, and Evan was waiting for that signal, and he slipped into the room and shut the door. There was dead silence in the room, and then Bobby was the first across it and hugged him. The large dragon engulfed him, and Tommy knew that he would need to give the team time to settle into what they were finding out after mourning their friend for three months. It didn’t seem like it had been just three months since the storm, but Tommy knew it had. This was just the start of it. It was the end as well—the beginning of the end.

“How?” Hen asked when things were calm again, and everyone started to sit down. Evan didn’t sit with the team and instead waited for Tommy to settle on a large cushion that was made for someone like him. Evan sat down with him and left his friends alone.

“The storm broke the magic that was hiding me. There is a lot that you will hear from everything else, but at the heart of it, the storm was sent for me. I realized it when it shifted to follow me when I was in the sky. That was when I went out to draw it away from the coast and the damage that it was going to cause there. That was found out recently because something was happening in the city where I grew up, and then I found out that stuff was happening in Harrisburg as well. I hadn’t ever been there and found out through what a friend could find that, based on what was known, it was where I was hatched, and there was a grave with two hatchlings in it. Only we found out that the second, smaller dragon was blood-related to the first, and things spiraled from there. DNA matches those two as brothers, but not related to me. Margaret and Phillip kidnapped me when their own hatchling died, and they used me to try to save their other hatchling that had caused one of the illnesses that dragons can have.”

“William,” Hen said.

Evan nodded his head. There was just silence again for a while.

Tommy wasn’t shocked that Hen had put that together. She had been here in LA her whole life. Howie had been for a long time, but he also grew up outside of LA. He wasn’t sure where Eddie came from, and Bobby was from Minnesota.

“We just came from the governors,” Tommy said. He curled around Evan a little more. “And we will be going to Maddie after this to find out what she knows.”

“They tried to kill you to keep their secret,” Bobby said.

“That’s what we are going with,” Tommy said.

“You are good, though?” Hen asked. She looked a little worried.

Tommy was glad that the team wasn’t blaming Evan for hiding out for the last while. It could very easily go that way with Maddie. It was understandable, though, without knowing who was going after him.

“Maddie’s going to be wrecked,” Howie said.

“How sure are you that they did all of this?”

“We have enough that there is a team that is going after Margaret and Phillip now. We are unsure of what Maddie knows, but given what this could have done, we assume that she knows nothing beyond Daniel’s death and Evan here being the hatchling that they had been trying to get to save their other son.”

“I don’t think she knew anything about that. She was so young,” Evan said.

“Well, what do you need from us?”

“Vows that will stop you from talking about this until the news breaks. We want to make sure that we have everyone involved with the whole plot to steal a hatchling and the storm before we announce that Evan is William.”

“What name will you go with?” Eddie asked.

“I haven’t decided. I am not sure who named me, to be honest. If it were Margaret or Phillip, I’d probably pick a whole new name. Not William and not Evan. Maybe not even Buck because…I don’t know. If Maddie or Daniel named me, that might be different.”

“You think that they let their other hatchlings name you?” Bobby asked.

“They didn’t want me. I was a means to an end to save the son that they wanted. Why would they care to name me? Even the original one that was their blooded dragon? I was just a tool. He was just a tool. Why name a tool? Beyond you know, I have all of our tools named,” Evan said.

Bobby laughed, and that little joke broke a lot of tension.

“You should go and talk to Maddie. We will stay in here, and you can seal all of us with the vow once this is all done.”

It seemed like Bobby was the voice of reason, as he always was when he took part in discussions.

—

Buck opened the door, and he let Tommy inside first, but he stayed outside, out of Maddie’s line of sight.

“Um, I am not sure that we have met before,” Maddie said.

“No, we have not. Thank you for coming, Maddie. I know that you are dealing with a lot of things. My name is Tommy, I’m an advisor to the governors of California, and I do a lot of things for them outside of advising.”

“He’s really dead, isn’t he?”

“Your brother, Buck?”

Buck closed his eyes, and he slipped over more to stay on the side. The hall was sealed so that Buck could stay outside the room without the door shut and listen in.

“Yes.”

“That’s not what I’m here about. I’m here about your childhood and Daniel.”

Maddie gasped, and even though Buck couldn’t see her, he didn’t want to see her; he could just picture what she looked like in his head. It was something that he needed to wrap his head around as he listened. He settled on the floor, looking almost like a furry bread loaf.

“How do you know about Daniel?”

“There is an issue that started a while back in Harrisburg and Hershey. The Hershey source started around your old house and the one in Harrisburg out of the grave where Daniel was buried with your actual brother.”

“Evan is my brother.”

“No, he’s not. He never actually made it out of the egg.”

“No, I was…he…just no.”

Buck wanted to go in there, but this was better handled by Tommy and only Tommy. Buck still wanted to comfort her. It was something that he did. He comforted people even when he shouldn’t. He gave himself up to help people who didn’t return the favor. Buck loved his family, he had made at the 118, but he needed to figure out a way to live that didn’t involve them the whole time. He needed a life of his own, and maybe, just maybe, Tommy could be that life.

“Are you okay?” Tommy asked.

“I’m trying to process this. Then who is Buck really?”

“He is not biologically your brother, but I’m sure that it can be said that he is. He is the son of the governors.”

“I heard about that. He was taken. I never once…We had him this whole time? My parents treated him like shit because he wasn’t able to save Daniel, didn’t they?”

Buck knew that Maddie was smart, and while she tried to look at her parents like they were misguided, the way that her words dripped in anger, Buck knew that she had finally broken that last straw for them.

“I can help you get them.”

“I got word just before I came to see you that you are in the custody of the guards of the governors of Pennsylvania. All of the governors took it personally that a child of one of their contemporaries was taken. They are treating this as if their child were the one.”

“Is Buck alive?”

“He is. He’s been here with me the whole time. He gave over the name of Evan, something that wasn’t really on file for the dragon named Buck, who went missing and was marked as dead on the list of dragons and other beings who lost their life. He realized, while trying to combat the storm, that it was going after him. He knew that someone had targeted him.”

“They sent that after him? They didn’t care about who got hurt, did they?”

“I won’t know that until the meeting with them has happened. Which is going to take a while, as they are going to make sure that no one can get them out of their cages, they are going into for transport here. Then they will be flown here by a contingent of dragons from all fifty states. Even Hawai’i is sending dragons, and Alaska is sending so many other things to help with the prison they are going to go into.”

Maddie was silent.

“Can I see him? Please?”

“I have a question before that. You love Evan, and you want to see him happy, don’t you?”

There was no verbal answer, but Maddie had to have said something.

“He’s waffling over his name. He made the case that he didn’t think that Margaret orPhillip ever named him. He said that he was a tool and outside of himself, and naming all of the tools at the 118, there is no reason to name a tool.”

“Daniel named him. Daniel loved him so much. They slept together all the time. Daniel would crawl into bed with Buck, and finally, it just hit the point where our parents were so worried about Daniel that they left him in the bed with Buck when they were both put to sleep for the night. Daniel was the one who cared for Buck most of that first year, then I took care of him because Daniel loved him so much. It wasn’t Buck’s fault. You called him Evan.”

“It’s the name I got used to calling him. He’s said that I can keep on calling him that. I think that, honestly, he might be dropping the name of Buck for Evan.”

“He hated the way that our…the way that Margaret said it.”

“He does not claim them as his parents. He said that he doesn’t want them in his life at all, and if for some reason they name him, then he was going to change his name to something else, not William and not Evan, because he’s neither of them. I think that Daniel being the one to name him means that it will likely stay Evan.”

Maddie started to cry, and Buck couldn’t take it anymore. He slipped into the room, and he went right for her. He wrapped himself around Maddie and held onto her as she broke down. It was like a massive change had happened to her at that moment. She clung to him, and her lithe frame felt so fragile in Buck’s arms. Tommy’s body pressed close to him, and Buck took the support as what it was.

Today was emotionally charged, and it wasn’t done with yet. There was a lot to do, and there was still actually having a nice sit-down time with his parents, his actual parents, the ones who loved him and had never stopped looking for him. He was going to bring Maddie with him because he had a feeling that they would love to have a daughter. Maddie had no parents either because the dragons who hatched her were not worthy of having children. Not with all of the damage they had done to save their hatchling. There were paths that were not to be crossed.

“I’m so sorry,” Maddie said.

“I know you are.”

“They bound me. It was magical, and I didn’t realize until now that it had lifted when I could talk to Tommy about Daniel. That was all they bound. I never knew that you weren’t Evan. Well, you know what I mean.”

“You are still my sister. I’m going to ask my parents to have them adopt you. Get both of us away from the legacy of the dragons who did this to us,” Buck said.

“They would love that,” Tommy said.

“They would?” Maddie asked. She wiggled out of Buck’s hold to look at Tommy and then at how close they were to each other. The support that Tommy was giving Buck. “Are you sure?”

“They always wanted many hatchlings. It was something that they talked about, but they were only ever able to make a single egg. There are a lot of reasons why that could be, but in the end, it’s something that happens.”

“I have a hatchling myself. Jee-Yun, with Howie,” Maddie said.

“A new hatchling as well? They will be thrilled. You would be able to live here as well if you wanted. There are houses that are not in use. Evan would be getting his own as well, if he wanted.”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Maddie asked.

Buck knew that there was color creeping up his cheeks, and he looked away from Maddie.

“Oh, I see,” Maddie said.

“He likes my house and my garden. He spends a lot of time in that garden.”

“He always did as a hatchling. Daniel would sit with him and allow Buck…Evan to learn all about the world in our garden. It made such a cute picture, but my parents… no, Margaret and Phillip never once wanted anything to do with all of us, well, outside of Daniel.”

Buck wanted to go home. He knew that he needed to talk to Maddie, and he had more things to do with his parents now, but he really wanted to go home and bully Tommy into lying on the pillows in the living room and curl into him. Then have the hatchlings all around them. It was what he wanted, but he had to endure for now.

“Things are going to be hard and going to change for a while, but it’ll be for the best, Evan,” Tommy said, like he was reading Buck’s mind.

It was like they were perfect for each other, and Buck was going to make sure that Tommy knew how much he wanted him.

—

Buck heard the front door shut. Something had happened in the early morning hours, so he had been pulled out of the house, and Buck stayed with the hatchlings. There were going to be times when that happened more and more. Tommy would have left just his familiar behind with them, but now that Evan was there, it was just easier to leave him if it didn’t have to do with him.

“You okay?” Buck asked when Tommy entered the kitchen. The smell of coffee had to have drawn him in there because Buck had a kettle of it going. The smell would wake the hatchlings soon as well, but they would not get any of it. It was just the smell of there being someone else awake in the house. The food started well. Buck hadn’t wanted anything too hard, so he had started up a breakfast casserole that he had pulled out of the cooler. He wasn’t even sure where it had come from, and it would be enough to get them going before they figured out what else to eat for the day.

“Not really, but it’s okay. There were issues with keeping your parents where they were. The city had figured out what was going on, and they started to form a mob. So they have been moved to another place, not Harrisburg, because the spread of the issues there has been getting bigger as well. No one is sure what is going on with that.”

“Graverobbing?” Buck asked.

Tommy looked at him like he had grown a second head. “What?”

“Well, once Daniel died, if he knew anything about what was going on, he would have learned it all. He knew that the dragon with him was his actual brother, and the dragon that had been raised as his brother was not. He would have learned it all if one believes that there is an afterlife and all of that jazz. The grave was disturbed based on the report you gave me to read, before the researchers got there.”

“And Hershey?”

“I’m sure that there was something in the house that belonged to Daniel as well. They might have tried to get rid of it all.”

“Unless one of them is the one who robbed it. Or disturbing the grave pissed off Daniel, and then he realized that you were nearly killed, no matter what, you cannot tell me that he wouldn’t still love you. Even if you are not his blooded brother.”

Buck hooked a claw into the handle of the massive cup he had made up of coffee. Tommy moved to make up his own, the magic doing what he wanted. Buck had always wondered how many of the breeds got around doing things before magic had evolved to allow them to do things like this. It might have to be his next area of study. There were a lot of things he wanted to study, and it was going to be a while until he was allowed to go back to his job. He would be going back. That had been talked about, but with the fervor there would be about who he was, and everything else around what had been done to him. There was going to be too much chance for something to go wrong because of the media attention.

“So you think that one of them took something from his grave, brought it home, and then pissed off Daniel in trying to kill me, so he did that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a possibility.”

Tommy nodded. There was a soft chime from somewhere further out in the house, and then the sound got louder until Earthy came in the room with a small mirror. Tommy took it from him and held it up; it opened bigger into the portal that Buck knew as the one that Tommy talked to Sal over.

Gina’s face was the one that appeared.

“It’s started to go down. We didn’t notice it at first, but it’s been getting smaller since some point last night, evening, I think.”

“That’s when Evan met his parents, and they talked more than just we did in the galley, where Pearl and Magnus were meeting the dignitaries. So that points a lot more toward the whole thing with it being Daniel causing issues that only he could cause, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We are going to stay for the cleanup and make sure that everything to do with this comes back with us while they work on cleansing the area. I’ll come home first with most of the papers, while Sal will come later with the rest of the papers, but we will be making it known that he’s taking all of them, just to be safe.”

“Sounds good. I’ll make sure the hatchlings are around later to talk to you both. How are you feeling about things?”

“Better now that it’s going down. We are not much help, but we are able to help with leading out magic. I’ve been able to help a few other beings around here, so it wasn’t all for nothing.”

“That’s good. That’s good. Do you need anything else from us?”

“No, you have your fun morning at home. Sal might wanna see your face later when he calls, Evan’s too.”

“We can do that.” Tommy reached a hoof out and tapped the glass of the mirror before Gina’s face disappeared, and it shrank again and landed on the counter like it had been set there by gentle hands.

“Can we just not leave the house at all today?” Buck asked.

“Of course, if that is what you want, that is what we can do. I’ll see about sending the hatchlings off to have fun with other hatchlings. They have a lot of friends whose parents wouldn’t mind taking control of them for a while, and we can just veg around.”

Buck felt like he was overloaded. There was too much going on, and he didn’t have enough time yesterday to process it all. He needed that time. There were going to be a lot of other things that they were going to be doing for weeks. It would be good to start to make the tie for themselves now. Then it would be easier to do it later if they had the whole thing started.

“Sounds good,” Buck said.

---