Trent’s day started with a six o’clock staff meeting and had gone down from there. The owner of the clinic and lead veterinarian, Dr. Price, had crabbed about their numbers. In an ideal world, veterinary medicine would only be focused on the welfare of the patients. Unfortunately, overheads were high and the office had to make do where it could. That meant promoting add-ons like in-house grooming and over the counter medications that pet parents could buy there instead of at the local big box store.

Luckily for Trent, dragon medicine fell out of Dr. Price’s blast zone. Flea pills and heart-worm medication that worked on Fluffy and Rover would do nothing for Miss Johnson’s Mini-Smaug.

Trent’s job was to sit back, keep his mouth shut, and listen with sympathy as the vet techs were drilled on how to offer boarding services. He doodled in his notebook in lieu of making notes.

Dr. Price has overextended his business, Trent thought. There were clinics that could offer a full suite of services, but Winchester Bay was a coastal town whose main population depended on tourism. Not much call for a groomer or a boarder when you were already here on vacation.

If I had my own office, I would do it differently.

Not the first time Trent had entertained that thought. In fact, it was becoming more frequent.

When he’d first graduated from medical school and finished his required residencies, he had been content to work under someone else. Happy to let Dr. Price take all the financial risk of running a business. Trent would sit back and be a good employee.

Now, with almost seven years of operating the dragon medicine side of the clinic, he couldn’t help but think of how he would streamline processes and procedures if he were put in charge. Not that Dr. Price would allow him to take on any management responsibility. Trent had tried and been shot down before.

After the interminable meeting was over, Trent had a solid day of bookings to look toward to. Dogs, cats, and birds depended on their owners to notice when something was amiss. However, when a Bonded dragon was sick, their person felt as bad as the Bonded dragon and vice versa.

There was a summer cold going around, and Trent didn’t have time to stop and scarf down half a sandwich until well after two in the afternoon. Paperwork from all his appointments were piling up. Finally, out of desperation, he told Naomi he needed a block of a half hour to catch up.

Luckily, they’d had a cancellation, which gave him space to breathe before he dived back in. He finished his last appointment around six that night. A solid twelve hours of work. Well, no one ever claimed that being a dragon doctor was an easy career with short hours.

“Guess who?” Naomi sing-songed as she poked her head into his office, just in time for Trent to meet his last client of the night.

Trent felt a flash of irritation at the interruption as he was almost done with the paperwork. He opened his mouth to snap, but stopped himself when he caught the glint in her eye. “Cole?”

Her grin answered him.

Just like last time, Trent’s day seemed brighter, like someone had turned on a lighting a dark room. He looked at the stack of paperwork he had yet to do, and suddenly it didn’t seem so overwhelming. What he couldn’t get done tonight he could finish before his first appointment tomorrow.

Pushing back from his desk, he rose to his feet.

A part of him—the analytical part that served him so well in med school—knew that he was on dangerous ground. If he wasn’t careful, he would do something stupid, like offer Cole a job again just so Trent could see him more often. It was unprofessional. Cole Lambeth was a client.

… A cute client who was clearly as passionate about dragons as Trent was, himself. A client who had never worn a wedding ring on his finger, or arrived with a girlfriend or boyfriend at his side despite the fact anyone with two eyes could see he was a catch.

Yeah. Trent was in trouble.

Taking the clipboard with the chart from Naomi, Trent barely glanced at it before he walked to the exam room.

Cole stood inside, looking exhausted in a way that made Trent feel instantly protective. The dragon sitting on the exam table was new, too.

Despite the lure of Cole, it—she—caught his eye immediately.

The dragon was a uniform steel blue color, but under the harsh overhead lights there were visible striations visible along the belly and flanks. Some might consider that a natural marking because dragons were usually not one solid color, but Trent had been taught to look for those signs as a red flag. Those were stretch marks.

This dragon had been pregnant with eggs. Probably, on numerous occasions.

A cold feeling of foreboding trickled down Trent’s spine. The light of joy in his head dimmed.

“Cole,” he said, “Who do we have here today?”

Turning to him, Cole let out an exasperated breath. “It’s an abandonment case. I already had Naomi search for a microchip first, but there wasn’t anything. She looks healthy, acts normal, but isn’t eating.”

“You… already know it’s a female?”

Cole shrugged. “The person who dropped her off said so.”

Trent’s internal frown deepened. As a species, dragons were unusual. The vast majority were male, with only ten percent of hatchlings being female. Of those, an even smaller percent ever went into heat. Dragons were long-lived and tended to lay large clutches, which supported the growth of the species.

However, females became murderously territorial when clutching. It was what made them so popular in black-market dragon fighting arenas. Two egg-heavy females would easily battle to the death.

Part of Trent recoiled as he began to see Cole’s visits in a whole new light. He often had sick and injured dragons with him. Common to shelters, but also sadly common to those who ran underground dragon fight rings.

And Cole did seem to have an unusual number of dragons. Winchester Bay wasn’t that big of a town…

The dragon herself was biddable. When Trent went through a quick examination, he didn’t feel the telltale lumps of eggs yet. But some females didn’t show right away. She could be carrying low.

“Where did you say you got this dragon?” Trent asked.

Was it his imagination, or did Cole’s eyes dart to the side before he replied? “She was abandoned.”

“Two strays in one week. A little unusual, don’t you think?”

Cole let out a strained laugh. “I guess I’ve become too well-known for my own good.” He shrugged but didn’t quite meet Trent’s eyes.

He was keeping something from him.

Trent’s stomach sank to his shoes. He made his decision in a snap. “I’ll need an x-ray.”

The dragon was well trained. It only took a gesture to get her to hop up to Trent’s forearm.

The normal, proper procedure was to advise the client of a preliminary diagnosis and then go over the costs before an x-ray evaluation. But to hell with the normal procedure. Trent had known Cole for years. The man was too nice to try to stop him from removing the dragon from the exam room.

Nice.

The people who ran underground dragon fighting arenas were not nice.

Dragons were usually receptive to the moods of those around them, but this steel blue female was unusually calm. Either she didn’t pick up on Trent’s seething suspicion, or she was too well-trained to react to it. Another red flag. Dragons who had been in fighting arenas were trained not to give their human handlers much trouble.

The dragon was so docile, in fact, Trent had needed no help at all to position her for quick x-ray snaps. The office equipment was nowhere near top-of-the-line, but it only took a few moments before the digital images were transmitted to his computer screen.

By then, Trent had calmed down a little.

“What is it? What’s wrong with her?” Cole demanded as Trent returned the dragon back to the exam room. Cole lifted his hands as if to take the dragon from Trent’s arm, but saw the doctor’s expression and stopped. His lower lip was red and a little swollen as if he had been biting it.

“Do you want to tell me why,” Trent said, his voice deceptively calm, “there are multiple fractures along both wing joints?”

“What?” Cole’s expressive eyes widened. “Fractures? Multiple?” His gaze darted up to the dragon. “Is that why she’s not eating? Is… is she in pain?”

Trent ignored the question. “Who did you get this dragon from? The truth, Cole.”

“I told you… she was abandoned. I have a friend who is a realtor and he discovered her in an empty house.” Cole had finally picked up on Trent’s anger and was starting to flare up in response. “What’s going on? Is she going to be okay?”

“The wing breaks are old and healed.” Some of Trent’s anger had drained away. Cole’s reactions had seemed authentic. Still, he watched the other man carefully as he added, “I suspected she was pregnant, too. The x-rays confirmed it. There are four eggs.”

All the blood drained from Cole’s face. He apparently had no trouble following Trent’s line of thinking. Egg-heavy dragons were rare enough. Previously injured ones painted a grim picture. “Pregnant…? Are you’re saying whoever had her last put her in one of those arenas?” His voice broke on the last word.

Trent suddenly felt very foolish. Based on his reaction alone, he was becoming more convinced that Cole had truly come across an incredibly valuable dragon by accident. He should have known better than to suspect him. He would have apologized for being so brusk, but Cole spoke again before he could get a word out.

“But if that’s the case, why would they abandon her when she’s pregnant? Isn’t that what they want?”

“Just because you run dragon arenas doesn’t mean you’re knowledgeable about the animals,” Trent said with a sniff. “She’s obviously carrying small. Their timetable might have been off and she wasn’t showing the typical aggressive signs fast enough. They cut her loose.”

“Bastards,” Cole said with the force of a swear. Then he glanced up at Trent. “If that’s the case, she’ll be nesting soon. She’ll want to kill any other dragon who gets too close. She can’t be around my flock.” He caught his bottom lip between his teeth again. “Shit.”

Trent sighed and lowered his arm to place the dragon back on the table, but she flared her wings in protest. When he raised his arm again, she settled. “Probably not immediately, but there won’t be much of a warning when she does get aggressive. I think she was feeling uncomfortable with the rest of your flock so close. That’s why she wasn’t eating.”

“Yeah, but soon she will be murderous, and I don’t have an area to safety quarantine her.” Cole ran his hand back through his hair.

He looked almost physically pained. Most people would be thrilled to find out they had a female capable of breeding, much less an already pregnant one. Dragon hatchlings fetched quite the price because a Common was more likely to bond with an owner within the first six months.

But, judging from the anxious look on Cole’s face, money wasn’t the top of his considerations: the health and safety of the rest of his flock, was.

Trent cursed himself anew for even suspecting Cole could be part of a dragon fighting ring.

“She’ll have to go to the shelter,” Cole said heavily. “I hate to do it, and I don’t think they’re set up for the kind of care she will need, but I can’t endanger the rest of my flock.”

“I can take care of her.” The offer was out before Trent could think twice about it.

Cole’s gaze snapped to his own. “You mean, board her here? Trent, I can’t afford that.”

He called him by his first name. Trent. Not Dr. Kingston. Trent smiled inside.

“I don’t have any pets at home.” He shrugged, the weight of Cole’s gaze making him feel unusually self-conscious. “I work long hours, and what a dragon mother needs is peace and quiet to brood her nest.”

His home was actually rather cavernous and empty, which was a big part of why he didn’t mind spending most of his day working.

Cole studied him for a long, long moment. It occurred to Trent that Cole wasn’t completely oblivious to the fact that an egg-heavy dragon was worth a lot of money to the wrong type of people.

Hopefully, Cole would think he was one of the right type of people.

“Okay,” Cole said at last. “But I insist on inspecting your home, first. Make sure it’s dragon-proofed.” He smiled to take the sting out of his words. “I do that for all prospective dragon parents.”

Trent’s heart gave a particularly hard thud. The image of Cole in his house was part of a fantasy he had indulged in quite a few times. Now, it would be real… even if it was only for official reasons.

“That’s acceptable.” Trent let a small smile curve his lips. “It’s a date.”

Cole’s cheeks pinked, but he didn’t object.