“What the hell are you doing, Dads?” Fensa demanded after Ola and her mother reluctantly guided her to the pens behind the Arizona kingdom house.

The structure would have looked like it housed a row of jail cells to any human who happened upon it. Or maybe a well-appointed doggie day care, with its large indestructible satin pillows scattered about, and titanium water and food bowls. But the primary purpose of these pens was to provide visitors with a place to shift in private on full moon nights.

Fensa had lost three days, but there was still over a week to go until the next full moon.

So why was her son, in dragon form, locked inside a changing cage with her two dads standing on the other side?

FJ, the taller of the two, wore a suit and wingtips with a sword in a scabbard slung across his back. But her stockier, more muscular father, Olafr, was leathered up from head to toe and, according to Other Fensa, was packing iron of another kind underneath his DETROIT WOLVES MC motorcycle jacket.

This should have been the best reunion ever. The last time she’d seen her papa, Olafr, was four years ago. And he’d been in a casket. Even before that, her sweet but alcoholic father hadn’t looked remotely like the hale and hearty man who stood before her.

But as it was, Eos roared at the first sight of her, which caused her father to draw his sword and her papa to reach into his jacket for a gun—which he trained right on Eos!

“No! Stop!” Apparently, a recent C-section was nothing in the face of a mom in fear for her child’s safety. With a strength she didn’t know she had, Fensa ran over to the cage and threw herself in front of the ten-foot dragon with her arms spread wide.

“Put that thing away!” she screamed at her very much alive Papa.

“Fensa, Daughter. Move away,” FJ commanded, his voice harder than the steel of his sword. “We will deal with this serpent. Ensure he never hurts you again.”

“Never hurts me again? What in the hell is wrong with you? He’s only a child!”

Olafr, whose face had been set to resolute stone just a moment ago, faltered. “A child,” he repeated in his Schwarzenegger-esque way. “I don’t understand what she is saying. Varra…?”

Varra was their fathers’ cutesy nickname for their mom, Other Fensa informed her. The mom who was currently looking from her mates to the ten-foot dragon inside the changing cage.

“Yeah, about that. Apparently the dragon the King of Arizona tranqed and took prisoner is a boy.”

“A four-year-old boy!” Fensa added. “Who also happens to be your grandson!!”

Now Olafr immediately lowered his gun. Other Fensa remembered him as being the more reasonable of the two men: more patient, and less quick to violence, even if he didn’t look it.

As if to prove Other Fensa correct, FJ’s eyes remained sharp on the dragon, only slightly lowering his sword to say, “I find this claim hard to believe, Daughter. For I smell nothing of the wolf on him.”

“That’s because the burning smell overwhelms everything else big time,” Fensa answered with more patience than she felt.

“If he be partly our kind, why did he not shift as soon as he smelled us?” FJ shot back. “Does he not have the nose to know we are related?”

“He didn’t make that super logical leap because he’s only four and scared to death! His natural instincts are to take the form of his biggest predator whenever there’s trouble. And as for knowing you’re related, I’m assuming he does, or he would have turned the both of you into Viking kabobs as soon as you pulled weapons on him. Now open the damn door!”

Both men hesitated, their eyes shifting to the ten-foot dragon.

“I said open this goddamn door before I take that gun and use it on you myself!”

“Guys, just open it. She wouldn’t be talking like that if she wasn’t its mother, trust me,” Fensa’s mother, Tiara Greenwolf, said to her two mates.

Still glaring at the dragon, FJ put his sword back in its scabbard… and opened the door.

“Okay, baby,” Fensa said, squeezing into the cage with Eos. “I know you’ve got to be crazy scared right now, but I need you to shift to human so we can all go home. Can you do that? For me? Please?”

The ten-foot dragon let out a huge snort of steam, which caused FJ to once again bring his hand to the hilt of the sword he’d used in the Viking-Dragon War.

But before he could slide it all the way out, a five-foot-tall boy appeared in the cage with Fensa. “Mama!” he cried throwing his long arms around her. “I wassss sssssooo afraid for you. Are you alright? The babiessss, too?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m okay. So are the babies, thanks to you,” she assured him, hugging him tight.

“Thank the motherssss. I misssss Blue Father,” he said. Then he began to sob.

She understood exactly how he felt. All too well. And before she could stop the incoming tide of grief, she was sobbing, too. Huge irrational tears. For the life she’d lost. For the dragon she missed like a vital organ.

“Oh, honey,” she heard Ola say.

In the next moment, her sister was in the changing cage with them, pulling them both into her arms. Giving the kind of comfort she never could when she’d only been a specter living inside Original Fensa’s mind.

Strange. In this life, she had everything Original Fensa would have ever wanted. But it wasn’t enough. Would never be enough.

Not without her dragon.

He’s not dead, she whispered to Other Fensa inside their now combined mind. I know he’s not.

She knew her words didn’t make sense. Even to Other Fensa, who now technically knew her better than anyone. But that didn’t matter. They made sense to her.

If he was dead. If he hadn’t survived until now, she would know. Her body would feel hollow. Just the way her great aunt described after her husband, King Tikaani, died. If he were really gone, she’d just miss him. Not ache for him like a held breath.

She’d believed in Ola, even when she had no evidence she existed anywhere but in her head. And even though her parting from Xenon had contained no promises like those of her grandparents, she hadn’t been lying to him at the hot spring. She trusted him. Then, now, and forever.

“I’ll find him,” she promised her sobbing dragon-wolf child. “I’ll find him.”

While Ola soothed, “It’s okay, little buddy. We’ll figure this out. Everything’s going to be okay. You’re okay. It’s all going to be okay.”