“Sir?” My stewardess tapped on the bathroom door lightly. “We’re cleared to disembark now.”

My pilot had fucked something up on our flight plan, and we’d been stuck on the damn tarmac for almost half an hour waiting for clearance by the ground crew. On the plus side, I’d managed to take care of some garbage while we waited.

“Got it!” I yelled back, scrubbing my hands with soap tinted pink with blood. It had been a long couple of days cleaning house within my organization.

This was something I’d been actively working toward for years, ever since taking over the empire from my psychotic father, but it had been a slow process. Until now.

Too many of my men were relics from my father’s time. Disgusting, immoral individuals with not a decent bone in them. Some had needed paying off to get them out of my company. Some, like Gheorghe, I’d simply killed for seemingly small infractions. Actions like that worked for me two-fold. For one, it kept my men in fear. As far as they were concerned, I was just as volatile and unstable as my father, and that’s how I wanted it to stay. The more they feared me, the less likely they were to double-cross me.

This latest mess that I was cleaning off my skin was one of those small infractions.

Despite my employees’ opinions that I was an unstable megalomaniac like dear old dad, I was simply using their little slipups as an excuse to rid the world of some of the most vile scum alive. These were men who got off on rape, murder, and violence. Those men didn’t deserve to breathe, so I considered my rash of housecleaning a public service.

“Sir.” One of my lackeys cleared his throat as I left the bathroom rolling my shirt sleeves back down. It hadn’t been the cleanest kill, and certainly was not something I’d planned to do on board my jet, but I had to take opportunities where they came.

“What?” I snapped, allowing a little thread of dragon growl to ride my voice.

“What do you want done with the body, Romanul?” The man asked, dropping his gaze submissively and probably not even realizing what he’d done.

“Clean it up. This meeting shouldn’t take too long, I want the jet kept ready, understood?” I didn’t wait for a response. They’d do what they were told if they knew what was good for them.

Striding across the tarmac to my waiting town car, I allowed myself a small sense of grim satisfaction. The man whose throat I’d just slit for daring to speak over me was a cold-blooded murderer. He’d strangled his pregnant girlfriend the year before, while he was fucking her, then covered up the evidence. No charges stuck to him, but I didn’t give a shit about the law. I conducted my own justice system.

The car door closed behind me with a heavy thud, and I gave a polite smile to the man opposite me.

“Victor, thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” I addressed him, and he raised his scarred eyebrow at me.

“It seems I needed to have put a bit more punch into that repellant spell I used. You must have something a little more than just dragon in you, huh boy?” Despite his youthful appearance, at least on his unscarred side, it was obvious he was considerably older than he looked. Smarter too.

“Romani.” I nodded. “From my mother.”

“Ah, that explains it. They did manage to skate through the plague pretty untouched. So I assume you want more answers?” Vic scratched his good cheek, watching me. “What makes you think I can tell you anymore than I told your wee girlfriend?”

“If you couldn’t then you wouldn’t have bothered with magic to make everyone forget their questions.” I gave him a flat, no bullshit stare.

“Right you are, boy,” Vic murmured, narrowing his eyes. “Well, go on then. Ask away, if you think you can phrase the questions clever enough to beat the geas.”

“If you were a Ban Dia, what would be the most vital piece of information to know about yourself?” I asked, having thought carefully about my phrasing prior to getting here. My question referenced neither Kit nor Bridget but was simply a discussion about species.

“Good start.” Vic dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I would want to know where my bloodstone ring was. All Ban Dia children are gifted one at birth, regardless of whether they are the heir to the magic or not. For the ones who are not Ban Dia, it is just a pretty trinket. For those who are, it is vital to completing the bond with her guardians.”

“And how would it do that?” I ground out between clenched teeth. This asshole seriously had withheld a vital piece of information like that from Kit?

“Once she chooses her three guardians, their blood is collected by the stone, which the Ban Dia then wears on her left ring finger. It allows almost like a reciprocal bond between them so the dianoch can tap into some of their Ban Dia’s abilities and she can draw from theirs. For example, if you had a bonded Ban Dia, she might be able to breath fire, or even shift. It depends on the strength of the bond.” Vic sighed and sat back in his seat. “But that is irrelevant unless she locates her bloodstone ring.”

“I see. And if such a ring existed, what would it look like?” I asked carefully, desperately trying to hold in my fiery temper, which seemed to be a hundred times worse since first going scaly.

“It’d probably be in a yellow-gold, intricate setting with a large, princess-cut sapphire. I imagine that—” Vic cringed and clutched at his head. Obviously what he’d been about to say was pushing the limits of Bridget’s magic.

“What species are you?” I asked casually, changing the subject.

Vic sucked in a breath, the pain visibly clearing from his face as he considered this question. “Fox shifter, same as Nicholai. Lachlan is a wolf though.”

“Are you Kit’s father?” My time was short; I wasn’t here to fuck around with niceties.

Vic grimaced. “Probably? I couldn’t say for sure. When Bride reached the age of fertility, she wasn’t wasting any time trying to produce her Ban Dia heir. While at the time I was her favorite, it could have easily been Nicky or Lachlan that fathered her.”

“Age of fertility?” I repeated. “What’s that?”

“I couldn’t give you an exact age because I don’t know myself. It’s somewhere around the three-hundred-year mark though,” Vic told me, looking surprised himself that he’d managed to say so much. “It’s like a built-in population control that they can’t reproduce any faster than that. Because they never die, if new Ban Dia were being born every twenty-odd years, then the world would be overrun with them.”

“Makes sense,” I murmured, rubbing at my chin with a warm hand. My whole body seemed to be permanently warm these days, actually.

“You were in the Blood Moon labs with Bridget weren’t you?” I pressed. “What can you tell me about that?”

“Nothing.” Vic winced in pain. “Try again.”

“Do you know what happened to Kit before social services found her as a kid?” I asked, and Vic squinted at me.

“I’d say her memories were erased,” he said, like I was a moron.

“No shit. Do you know why?” My patience was running thin with this guy. His jaw clenched; he shook his head, indicating he couldn’t answer again. “Okay, what can you tell me?”

“I can tell you that I’m doing my best to break this fucking spell that bitch placed on me. The second I do, everything I know is yours.” He huffed in anger. “Until then, don’t trust anyone but your Ban Dia and fellow dianoch.”

“Fine,” I snapped, reaching for the door handle to exit the vehicle.

“Remember this, boy. The plague wasn’t as black and white as you’ve been led to think. A lot of supernaturals were hit with an in-between, gray area.” Victor flipped his hood up, hiding his scarred face from view. “Not everything is as it seems, and until a Ban Dia gets full control of her magic, it’ll be bleeding out into everyone around her, whether she intends it to or not.”

I glanced back inside the car at him. He quite clearly wasn’t saying anything further, so I slammed the door and headed back over to my jet. Glancing at the time, I remembered Kit was due to call tonight, and I couldn’t help the small surge of excitement when I thought about this new information I’d gathered for her.