Pyro … Pyro! … PYRO.”

He groaned and rolled over on his back.

Sunlight streamed through his unshaded windows and reflected off his pinball and sports video machines, illuminating his lair.

The movie theater-sized screen dominating the middle of the room showed a gigantic image of his younger brother, Kyan. The heavily scarred former mercenary was harsh on the eyes in the morning.

Pyro pinched his eyes shut. “What did I miss?”

“The officer meeting starts in five minutes.”

He yawned and rolled over. “Wake me when I’ve missed it.”

“You’re leading it.”

“Mmph?”

“While the CEO’s gone, you lead the meetings.”

He moved his mouth away from the pillow. “What do you need me for? You have Amber.”

Kyan was silent.

Bilgefire.

Pyro forced himself out of the triple king-sized bed, thudded onto the messy hardwood, and crawled to his closet. “I’ll be right there.”

In any other dragon company, the eldest female always ruled. Amber refused her responsibility with the same fervency that Pyro did. The vice president position made sense — he was second-oldest — and allowed him a great deal of freedom. Mal did the visionary work. Pyro offered just-so-crazy-it-might-work suggestions. Sure, he was theoretically in charge of things, but Mal was always there and he was always working.

Until now.

Pyro rolled into jeans and a T-shirt. In the center of his circular suite, he opened the empty elevator shaft and flew up into golden sunlight. The Las Vegas strip emerged below him and the gorgeous, dry sun of early summer warmed his skin.

He flew across the states, crossing west until he’d almost reached the coast, and then he floated down to the Onyx Corporation office building.

Their skies were empty. The private interstellar spaceship that had brought them here five years ago was gone.

As expected.

He descended into the glass shaft and hovered. Opening the glass door, he floated into his office and closed the glass behind him. With Mal’s absence, everyone would meet in one of the main conference rooms. He exchanged his jeans for business attire in his office closet, straightened his collar, checked his cuffs, and strode out into the hall.

Onyx Corporation head offices buzzed. The intern’s desk in front of Mal’s empty office had a new intern, a male with thick glasses and a nervous smile. Behind him, the warren of upper management cubicles hummed with energy.

He entered the conference room.

Four of his siblings stared at him.

He swerved to the espresso station at the corner of all rooms and tamped in a scoop of freshly ground Brazilian roast. “So, who has the agenda?”

Silence greeted his question.

He poured a glass of frosty milk from the mini fridge into the metal pitcher, steamed and frothed it, and created his morning peppermint mocha with extra espresso. Then, he took his usual seat to the right of the empty CEO’s chair, leaned back, crossed his ankle over his knee, and sipped.

Everyone stared back.

Operations Manager Jasper finally cleared his throat. “In Mal’s absence, the vice president is the acting CEO.”

“You don’t want to trust the fate of this company to me, do you?” He set his coffee on the table and opened his shaky hands.

His siblings stared back at him without blinking.

This smacked of a conspiracy. But fine. He’d play their game.

“Then fine. Here’s the agenda: Let’s talk about the only thing that matters.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “What do we do now that our mother got rid of our ports and we can no longer land on Draconis to sell our exports?”

Silence.

Finally, smooth salesman Alex leaned forward. Not a single hair of his light blond locks fell out of place. “What did you learn during your meeting with Sard?”

“His next product launch is historical. Victorian.” Pyro found the photos of Amy on his phone and passed them around.

Jasper studied them for the longest. They made the rounds of the table and returned to Pyro. He put his phone away.

Alex frowned. His exotic eyes, one turquoise and one lavender, studied Pyro with sharp attention. “Sard wanted to meet with you to show off his next product launch?”

“No.”

“Then what did you speak of?”

“We didn’t speak.”

Amber, Jasper, and Alex looked at Kyan.

The former mercenary was the only one who could keep track of Pyro. The only one who could keep track of any of them. His methods were neither legal nor known outside of highly classified dragon intelligence.

Even so, he wasn’t all-knowing. His gruff voice, the result of a laser blast too close to his vocal chords, remained soft. “You were inside the building a long time.”

“Do you really want to be under the aristocrats? Owned by them?”

His siblings shook their heads.

“Neither do I. And that’s the only possible reason that thieving Sard would negotiate.”

“You did not meet with Sard?” Amber’s voice was flat but fire crackled around her auburn eyes and hair. “You went to his building and you did not meet with him?”

“Good, it sounds like you can hear me,” he snapped. “He knows we’re stuck. And, unlike us, he doesn’t have a crazy mother throwing away his company in a fit of rage.”

“You can’t know what he wants until you hear the words from him.”

He waved her off. “I know.”

“As acting CEO, it is your responsibility to explore every possibility to save this company.”

“Mal wouldn’t give his company to the aristocrats. Neither will I.”

“Is there no other possibility?” Jasper asked. The steady Operations Manager was a careful speaker and a deep thinker. He rarely acted outside of authority. “None?”

Pyro opened his hands wide. “I don’t see one.”

They fell silent for a long time. Pyro let each caffeine-soaked swallow heighten his hate of Sard Carnelian and the rest of the smarmy aristocrats.

Alex leaned forward. “Then, distasteful as it is to bow under command of Sard Carnelian, what choice do we have?”

“Destroy the company. Flames from the ground up.” Preferably with the thieving rivals inside.

“This is your proposal? We neither try to sell our company nor try to negotiate with another family who has ports. We should destroy it?”

He leaned back. “Yep.”

The empty chairs — Mal’s CEO chair and his youngest brother, odd Flint — gaped. If Pyro’s plan went through, all the chairs would be empty. And on fire.

But that would never happen.

His siblings would never allow him to destroy this company. All he had to do was force them to acknowledge he wasn’t Mal. Then they’d take the responsibility off his hands and ensure their oldest brother’s company didn’t burn.

Amber tapped her fingers on the conference table. Her tone was subdued, but not shocked. Apparently taking control from him was something they’d planned.

But then her words penetrated.

“I’ll conduct the end-of-business closing costs and outstanding balances. Jasper, clear our inventory.”

“When did you want me to surplus our office equipment?”

“As soon as you have a buyer. We need to find a new placement together or else we’ll be spread across the universe again. Alex?”

“Old friends in Serpenta IV are interested in a security officer. Salesmen are always useful. I talked them into taking a specialist in logistics.” Alex nodded at Jasper.

“Nothing financial?” Amber, Chief Financial Officer of the Onyx Corporation, asked hopefully.

He hesitated. “They will not accept a female unless she is the new owner.”

Because on Draconis, females ruled companies. They didn’t work in a lower position like finance. Amber only got away with slacking because she was so far from the heart of the Empire, and technically, the Onyx Corporation was owned by their mother. That was how she could destroy it on a whim by giving away their port privileges.

Amber studied her black tights. “Thank you for asking.”

“You can stay with our mother until you arrange a marriage.”

She nodded.

“Mal will remain on Earth with his human wife,” Jasper said, ticking off everyone on his fingers. “We will disperse.”

The hell? They were actually going to destroy the company? All because of his little joke?

“What about Flint?” Pyro asked, just to play along.

Alex met his gaze. No judgment stained his two-tone eyes; just cold resolve. “He will do as he wishes, as always.”

“And me?”

“I assume you will also remain on Earth with whatever Earth female you marry.”

“And if I don’t?”

They quit playing around with making their self-destruct plans and stared at him.

“What are you waiting for?” Amber asked bluntly.

Steady Jasper also frowned in confusion. “You have no particular female you want and a plethora of willing lovers. It should be easy to secure a bride.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“You have a lot of women,” Alex agreed.

“The most of any dragon shifter,” Kyan said.

“A shocking number,” Alex said.

“Hey,” he said. “They come to me.”

“So don’t be lazy,” Amber said, chiming in. “It might take more time and effort to secure a female than you think.”

“Or I could not bother,” he said. “Become the Empress’s consort.”

Now they stared at him with shock. It was almost insulting. They accepted his suggestion to burn down the company like it meant nothing and then they looked like the world was ending when he said he’d marry the Empress.

Amber finally said aloud what they were all clearly thinking. “Do you have a death wish?”

He shrugged one shoulder. The rush of familiar adrenaline crackled under his skin, radioactive. “I’d be an aristocrat.”

“You hate aristocrats.”

“But as the highest one, I could order the rest around.”

Amber frowned. “You won’t last a week.”

“Aw, come on. Worried about the Empress? I know how to please females.”

Jasper and Alex both shook their heads furiously. Kyan looked at his phone as if he’d just received an urgent security call.

“She’s barely female,” Alex finally said.

At the same time, Amber made an un-dragonlike snort of disbelief. “You? Please females?”

“I please every female.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Every time.”

She shook her head. “There’s a big difference between pleasing a female in bed and pleasing her in marriage.”

He lowered his lids. “You’ve never been married.”

“Mal shared your unwarranted arrogance. He barely wooed Cheryl.”

“He secured her in the end.”

“She’s human. When Mal caused her anger, she didn’t attempt to chew his arms off.”

Pyro felt a sudden, intimate awareness of his hand curling around the warm ceramic mug of coffee. The scarred forearms encased in sleeves. The fine houndstooth sliding against his arm hairs.

“It’s an honor to be chosen,” he growled, mouthing the words plenty of the Empress’s former ex-consorts must have used before going to their doom.

“You survived the Colony Wars,” Amber said, more softly. “I have no wish to see you fall in Draconis Palace.”

A soft wave of tenderness thunked into his hard heart. He rubbed his chest and focused on what mattered.

This situation was all the fault of aristocrats.

If his snotty Onyx grandmother had acknowledged Mal on his first birthday, their parents’ marriage would have been validated and their subsequent dragonlets would have been born aristocrats. But his grandmother had refused to let the dragonlets of a brimstone miner darken her estate. Their mother had been forced to give them up, their no-name father had died too young, and they’d been spread across the Empire, forced into the worst situations to survive.

As soon as their grandmother died and their mother took over the family, she’d recalled them to her home estate, but it had already been too late. They had the wrong education, the wrong credentials, and no relative would give them a chance.

And so it went to this day. Aristocrats were still determining the course of their lives. Pyro couldn’t do a thing about it. Why not give in? Maybe he could burn the palace down before he drew his final breath.

Kyan finally spoke in his quiet, deadly voice. “Here are the women you spent time with this week.” He held up his phone.

Ten tiny faces appeared. Pyro glanced at them. Sure, that looked about right.

“Select one for your wife,” he ordered.

Pyro bristled. “Since when does a younger brother order an elder?”

“Choose. Now. Or I will choose for you.”

The former mercenary was serious.

As much fun as it would be to challenge Kyan for overstepping, Pyro didn’t want to face him if the male was serious.

Kyan didn’t crack a smile.

“Fine,” he said, just to change the subject. “I’ll secure my wife tonight. But you’re third in age. If the Empress is consistent, her marriage offer will leave me and land on you.”

Kyan’s jaw tightened.

How could she possibly propose to him? His scars were brutal and so was his personality. But then the Empress had expressed interest in hot-headed Pyro. And blunt Mal.

It wasn’t them she wanted. It was what they represented.

Success. A top company of bastard males from the Outer Rim. Low caste bastard males couldn’t dare make fools out of the higher caste aristocrats or succeed despite their limitations.

Even going to the ends of the Empire wasn’t far enough away to live in peace.

“Alright. You secure your wife.” Jasper ticked tasks off on his mental checklist. “The rest of us will shutter the company.”

Okay. This little joke had gone far enough.

He sighed. “You can’t close the company.”

Everyone stopped, once more, and stared at him.

“This is Mal’s company. You can’t destroy it on his honeymoon.”

“So you have an idea for how to save it?” Amber asked flatly.

“Figure something out.”

His siblings regarded each other with irritation.

“Well?”

“Pyro, we don’t have any ideas. If you don’t either, then we must dissolve—”

“We’re a number one company!” At least for another week, until the next ranking list was published. “We shouldn’t be dissolving or selling. We should be pivoting.”

“Into what industry?” Amber demanded.

He had no idea. “So that’s it? We’re over? It’s time to cut and run?”

They stared at him silently.

Hellfire. Maybe he shouldn’t have spent the last few days trying to drown his troubles in the student bar wishing alcohol had any effect on the dragon metabolism.

“What does Flint have to say?” he finally asked, invoking their absent youngest brother.

Everyone turned to Kyan.

“The same thing he’s said from the moment Mal recruited him. Enjoy this little ‘vacation’ on Earth because it’s not going to last.”

Pyro rubbed the back of his neck. “He couldn’t honestly have expected the Empress to propose or our mother to give away our ports.”

Kyan shrugged.

Who knew what Flint expected? The reclusive dragon spent his time reading esoteric histories and staring into orreries. Pyro’s best guess was that he was living “somewhere on Earth.” Only Kyan knew where.

Dead end.

Pyro turned to Amber. “Why don’t you marry into another company and give us their ports?”

Her eyes crackled. Red scales shifted beneath her skin in dire warning. “For the same reason I don’t want to take over this company.”

“You’re the female.”

“So?”

“Take responsibility.”

She bared her teeth. The incisors lengthened into fangs.

His brothers fidgeted uncomfortably. Pyro had never antagonized Amber to the point of her bursting into dragon and flaming him. Females were larger, more dominant, aggressive, and they could belch flames.

“Pyro.” Kyan interrupted softly. “You always said we were held back by the rules of Draconis. We’re no longer on Draconis.”

He slammed his palm on the table. Claws burst from his fingernails and raked the heavy wood, curling it up into little curls. “And we’re still subjected to the aristocrats’ rules!”

“So find a way around them.”

His scales stabbed under his skin, prickling with warning. “Help me out here. We have the creativity. We have the talent.”

“Mal put this in your hands to decide.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

They stared at him. At the end of their ropes, they had no one else to turn to.

Fine.

“I’ll reschedule the meeting with Sard.” He scored new lines of anger into the table. He couldn’t help one last whine. “You didn’t let Mal work on company business when he was acquiring his human wife.”

“Mal was more hopeless,” Jasper said.

“He had no women,” Alex agreed.

“Only the intern directly outside his office,” Jasper finished.

Accurate, but irritating.

“So why didn’t you hire an intern for me to marry?” he grumbled, as the meeting ended.

“You don’t need assistance organizing a wife.”

No. He didn’t.

Looking at the tiny photos on Kyan’s phone had made one thing startling clear: He’d been with masses of human females. Even this very week. But only one face stood out to him.

Amy.

She was going to be furious.

He cracked his knuckles as an unholy grin stole across his face.

Good thing he liked to live dangerously.