Out of Dette (Empty Nests #8)

Chapter One

Viraj

Silverton was a dream come true, but in the way that dreams could also be nightmares.

Beautiful sunsets, violent sunrises, and a tightly woven community of people who had mostly kept to themselves over the years.

The only humans that lived in the city limits were those that had married into the family lines at one point or another, or had come seeking refuge with recommendations of trust. So, it stood; they were less strict about their forms. Silverton was a place where dragons still flew.

Viraj strolled through his home, spring threatening the winter’s chill with tightly coiled buds lined up on heritage trees, not a fucking Bradford pear tree in sight. The fruitless abominations with the aroma of diabetic morning breath and beer piss could stay far away from their lands.

Viraj sought solitude that morning on their terrace overlooking the former village.

All the homes had nestled in what had been barely a cul-de-sac so many years prior, all bulldozed away and turned into spacious gardens, a hedge maze, and a community garden that grew a little bit of everything despite there being plenty of land for everyone to have their own gardens and farms.

A noxious goat, wall-eyed and trembling, sat at the edge of one of the gardens, happily munching away on what appeared to be shoots of tender spring asparagus.

The little feathery protrusions of newly sprouted seeds waved limply in the chilled breeze.

Even so far away, Viraj could sense the foul beast’s eyes on him.

A Nigerian dwarf goat with gas so potent, it could clear a room, fur black as sin, and eyes like the fires of hell itself stared openly.

“I will eat you one of these days,” Viraj muttered to himself in a language that so few in his life spoke anymore.

Fumbled words echoed back, clunky and inelegant on a tongue that never practiced. “Nahin, tum nahin karoge.” No, you won’t.

“I will, too.” Viraj turned to stare down one of his mates, Teige of the Stoor clan.

“Hmm, when you’re not being a little sex pest, I’m certain.” He wrapped powerful arms around Viraj’s shoulders. The Vritra Drake was no dainty creature like an omega, but Teige made him feel so. Despite what Viraj was, or maybe because of it, Teige loved him all the same.

“You’d rather have an omega, yes? No?” Viraj crossed his arms, looking for validation.

“No.” Teige sighed. Viraj could almost feel him roll his eyes. His posture and breath always changed a little when he did so, a familiar thing.

“Yes.” Viraj turned his head away as Teige swooped in for a kiss and found a silent dark-haired alpha nearby, swooping in for the kill. Or, as it were, a kiss in that instance.

And at that, all his hesitations melted.

Slow heat, tongue, lips so full. Gatlin’s kisses were like brown sugar on buttered toast. Sweet, characteristic, lacking something—but wholly good as it was.

And there red-haired Teige was, hair aflame with delight as he leaned in to add some cinnamon to the mix, a spicy fire in his very breath as they passed Viraj back and forth for sweet affirmations.

Teige stopped his kisses first, pressing his forehead to Viraj’s, pausing the growing tension. “Not this morning. We have company arriving soon.”

That brought Viraj pause. He’d almost forgotten.

A mix of anxiety and joy swelled within him.

He did so enjoy seeing his brother, but it always came with a sliver of guilt.

Forty years he’d left his brother in forced servitude to a Drake he knew nothing of.

It wasn’t as if his father would ever know anything went awry.

His father had long forgotten that Viraj and Rama existed. He knew nothing of Ryan or his new life, or even Viraj’s mates. And it’d stay that way. When one had dozens of children, they tended to lose a few over the years. Especially the Vritra.

Especially with what Viraj was.

Vritra were flawed dragons, tainted with blood of shifters and cordoned off for so long, their genetics garbled. Things they rarely spoke of.

Vritra technically had four genders, where other dragons only had two.

Drake and Dette were the norm. But for Vritra?

A third category was labeled Hijada. Literally other sex.

The Hijada were of two types—impotent Drakes and sterile females.

From their very birth, they were known right away when they hatched in human flesh.

And from that sign alone, they were kept from shifting; a metal pin stuck under their skin stopped the transition gradually, making it painful to the point of teaching them to not do it.

And after a point, that metal pin sank deeper in their flesh until their inevitable death.

And Viraj? By sheer luck alone, he’d avoided being pinned, being marked as Hijada. He’d hatched in his scales; his spines along his back smaller, but present. An alpha for all intents and purposes.

Pulled out of his ponderings, wandering hands circled his waist and hips from behind.

Gatlin. His familiar touch grounded Viraj as Teige kissed so sweetly, his accent as sweet as his lips, honeyed and smooth.

The brogue rolling over his tongue like silver with that beautiful feel.

“Nothing, Viraj, nothing could make me replace you. And I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve always said.

The same thing I told you when Gatlin joined us.

And look how happy you are? Nobody will replace you. Nobody will come between us.”

Viraj, somewhat placated, sank into Teige’s chest and nuzzled, his cheeks heating up with a tingling burn, another wave of illness threatening to send him back to their hoard. “Don’t do this to me right now. We have company on the way.”

Teige sighed, face twisting in frustration as Gatlin’s hug squeezed tightly. “Hopefully, they can find something.”

“It’s never been this bad, but it gets better when I…” Viraj trailed off, his cheeks burning even more fiercely, a mix of lust and madness coursing through him in a way that would only be tamed by being fucked raw and left to sleep off the resulting bruises and dehydration. “Nestblossom…”

The admission brought a sigh of frustration from Teige as he hoisted Viraj up against him and marched back inside, blue eyes aflame with lust that petered out the moment the doorbell rang. “Dammit…”

When their attendants opened the door, Viraj did his best to compose himself, the air outside from that face of the house held a more industrial scent, the world beyond nothing but farmland and homesteads—as the more urban party of Silverton had been moved downwind and built around the former processing facilities for silver that had all but dried up.

The mines, depleted for at least thirty years, still produced valuable resources and middling amounts of silver that stocked their hoard, but they’d divested their interests long before the silver made a difference.

Silverton was rich in its own way; their interests focused on many CNC, computer numerical control, mills that exported the world over.

So, their very presence welcomed in the new world with it, drawing eyes to what had become a crowd in the so many years it’d been since he’d last sent him off with his true mates.

“Brother!” Viraj shouted aloud as he opened his arms to approach Ram—Ryan as he strolled in, still as bald as a polished cabochon, despite the fact he had the most beautiful hair of all their siblings.

They embraced with a long entanglement of arms and squeezed one another, heads leaned on shoulders. The soft sigh he gave Viraj sloughed the barest amount of stress from his posture, his smile twisting into something small, and coquettish. A soft whisper made him tilt his head.

“Gaspard and Bastien have come with me,” Ryan said.

“My great-nephew?” Viraj glanced over his shoulder to see the two beaming behind him.

And certainly, the boy favored Gaspard in many ways, save for pallor and something similar about their lips.

Golden hair, almost blond, a trait from his Dior heritage.

Still, he carried something about his lips and stature from the Vritra.

“Nephew! It has been too long. The last I saw you, you were still a pup about—” Viraj halted as two little ones clung to Bastien’s pant legs, soft light-brown skin, bright eyes, and coppery and dark hair.

Their names escaped Viraj when he tried to recall the boy’s mate—mates. “About that size. Hello, little ones.”

Viraj had great-great nephews; the first time seeing them, and he loved them already, opening arms wide. A Dette and a Drake by their scents, free of the Hijada curse. Though, Bastien… He’d not noticed it before. He scented of Dette and something else, powerful though.

“Uncle Viraj, this is Lyam and Faolan. My little ones.” Bastien beamed and shooed them forward, but they circumnavigated Viraj to run with open arms to Gatlin and Teige.

“Da!” Faolan practically climbed Teige, reaching for hair a similar shade to his own, perhaps a little darker.

“Nae, little one.” Teige laughed, halting as he sniffed the little one with a long draw. “I’m a Stoor, not a Loch.”

“They’re the same thing.” Ryan sniffed as he waved them off and plucked Lyam up to shove into Gatlin’s arms. “But leave it to my ilk to chase the red-haired bastards.”

Gaspard cleared his throat, as blond as any of the Dior, but Viraj was well aware of the head of their den, Felix.

“We do love beautiful rubies.” Ryan fingered Faolan’s hair as he strode by, smiling. “Come, little ones. Pepa and Papa have things to do with Uncle Viraj. Let’s go pester the roosters.”

Viraj watched, eyes wide, as they left him with Bastien and Gaspard. “I’m not certain it’s—Right now? I mean—and Bastien? Should he?”