Page 202 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

When we finally stepped outside, dusk had settled over the estate. Emergency lights flashed against the pale stone. The ruined east wing smoked faintly behind us. Max leaned against my leg, exhausted now that his work was done.

“You’re coming home with me,” Rafe said. “Our family doctors are there.”

“I was checked by paramedics.”

“You were grazed by a knife, almost crushed beneath a display case, exposed to smoke, and recently recovering from illness.”

“I also had a very big day emotionally, but nobody is making a chart for that.”

“They can start one.” His jaw worked once. He looked away toward the lawn, then back at me, and the part of me braced for command softened when I saw the effort it cost him to choose a different shape.

“Please,” he said. “Come to my estate. Let my doctors examine you and Max. After that, if you want to leave, I will take you home.”

There it was.

The offer. The choice.

Care without the cage.

I looked down at Max. “What do you think?”

Max sat on Rafe’s shoe.

Rafe looked at him.

I sighed. “The motion carries.”

Rafe’s estate was nothing like Dimitris’s.

That was the first thing I noticed.

It was enormous, because rich, magical families didn’t believe in manageable square footage, but it didn’t feel like a showroom for one man’s ego. The house rose from the grounds in warm stone and dark wood, windows glowing in the blue-black evening. The drive curved past old trees, low gardens, and terraces softened by age and use. It was beautiful in a way that looked lived in.

And there, exactly where I remembered it from the night I had flown over the estate on Rafe’s back, was the landing terrace.

It was wider from the ground and no easier to be normal about.

The terrace curved beyond the east wing, broad enough for a dragon to take off and land, its edges softened by moss.

A man in a dark suit opened the door. A woman with silver hair and a tablet looked at the three of us and visibly recalculated her entire evening.

“Mr. Virelli,” she said. “Doctors Hoshino and Bell are on their way to the east sitting room. Your parents have been notified.”

“My mother?” Rafe asked.

“Awake and insistent.”

A brief, complicated warmth moved through his face. “Of course.”

The next twenty minutes happened in pieces.

A doctor cleaned the cut at my collarbone and confirmed it was shallow. Another checked Max’s paws, ears, heart, breathing, and declared him “remarkably sound for a veteran gentleman,” which Max accepted as if he had expected no less. Rafe submitted to the exam after one look from me, because apparently even dragons understood when a woman was done negotiating.

“You need stitches,” I said.

“I only need three.”

“That still qualifies as stitches.”