Page 16 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

That had made me interesting to people when I was young, which was not the same thing as being accepted by them.

Among the pack, I was Rafael Virelli’s son, which had granted me a place before I had earned one and made certain wolves resent my privilege. I learned the ropes early. I could be useful. Useful was measurable. Being useful kept people from asking, too plainly, what I was meant to be when I was the successor to a pack I could never run with.

There was no dragon equivalent waiting on the other side of that discomfort. No clan my mother and I could visit for holidays. No room full of elders who knew the old ways, no cousins shifting in the sky above some ancestral field, no easy place where my fire made me extraordinary. What remained of dragons was a family unit here, a widow there, a few bloodlines guarded by money or secrecy or both.

I was too much wolf for those who wanted dragons untouched by other blood. Too much dragon for wolves who thought alpha-ship should arrive on four paws. As a result, I had spent most of my life trying to be impressive for people who had not quite claimed me.

My father took the tray from me and kept it balanced in one hand while he glanced through the open parlor doors.

My mother had turned back toward the window, the light settling along one side of her face, her teacup balanced in her hands as though the whole afternoon had agreed to hold still for her a little longer.

“How is she?” he asked.

“She’s well,” I said. “She’s waiting for you.”

The tension in his face eased.

That, more than anything, was how one knew what sort of man he was. There were wolves in his world who prized intimidation and obvious dominance. My father could do all of that if pressed. He simply preferred not to waste the effort. With my mother, especially, his love had long since shed any need to posture.

He nodded toward the side office I’d begun using after my mother’s wandering worsened. “You said you wanted to discuss something with me.”

I glanced toward the office door, where I knew the phone might start ringing any minute now. I’d wanted to tell my father about the first real step in a search I’d spent years telling myself I would begin later, once I had more time and better justification than simple longing.

“Yes,” I said.

He waited. That was another of my father’s habits. He never rushed me when I was already resisting myself. He simply stood there, large and self-possessed and patient enough to make evasion feel childish.

We moved only as far as the pair of windows beside the parlor doors, close enough that he could still see my mother’s chair when he glanced back.

“You’ve contacted the law firm?” he asked.

I cocked an eyebrow. “You said your contact recommended a well-known family-law firm.”

“He did.”

I glanced at him. “You sound unconvinced.”

“I’m cautious.” He shifted the tray, getting a firmer grip on it. “I thought you might prefer someone more scholarly.”

“Scholars haven’t had much success getting museums to answer my letters.”

“No.” He looked ahead a moment, his mouth tilting just faintly. “They do tend to enjoy the sound of their own ethics more than the practice of them.”

That nearly made me smile.

Late-afternoon light lay across the small stretch of corridor between us and the parlor. The house was quiet around us except for one of the staff tuning the piano downstairs.

“What is it you’re hoping this firm can do?” my father asked.

I took a breath. It sounded childish every time I tried to articulate it out loud. Not the legal work, of course, that part was straightforward enough. It was the desire beneath it that I’d spent so much time containing that still felt embarrassingly raw.

“I want to recover what was lost,” I said.

He said nothing, which meant he wanted the full answer. I looked toward the window at the far end of the corridor, though there was nothing outside it I needed to see.

“You know my great-grandparents escaped with almost nothing,” I said. “They had already outlived most of the dragons they knew. Then the war did the rest. By the time my grandfather was grown, he had inherited pieces of a life without the world that made sense of them.”

My father listened quietly.