The moment Julie fled from the house, the air around Antonio heated up unbearably. His dragon was intimately aware of every movement of his mate, and as soon as she went so far that he couldn’t sense her anymore, it lashed out with pure, unquestioning fury.

He scrambled out of the bathroom, having been getting ready to turn in for the night.

Julie, Antonio thought, his senses reaching out to her and Tony, but she was too far already.

She must have been running like crazy.

With a growl on his lips, he tore out of his private suite, a snarl on his lips. He didn’t need any evidence to know that it was his mother who had to be behind this. Julie wouldn’t simply leave like that, not after the day they’d had together.

He ran up the stairs to the roof, barefoot, his white shirt partially unbuttoned and his slacks straining around his thighs as his dragon fought against him. It was a struggle keeping the beast in until he could get out into clear air. The moment he threw the door leading to the roof open, the beast tore forward, twisting his body in the change.

His muscles elongated, tearing him in all directions at once. Within a couple of steps, he had reached the edge of the roof and thrown himself off of it toward the brightly lit courtyard below. Before he could ever get close to it, the massive, dark copper wings that sprouted from his back had opened and carried him into the skies.

His muzzle burned with the dragonfire within, struggling to be kept inside. He wanted to lash out, he wanted to break something, he wanted to roar – he wanted his mate back. It took heavy concentration to get himself to actually reach out with his now more powerful senses to search for Julie, instead of just flying around aimlessly in his boundless fury.

Where are you, he called, cursing that he had never given her a dragonstone pendant – it would have made it easier to find her now.

It didn’t take long until he sensed her, though, tracking a path through the forest to the east of the villa. He made a beeline for her, cutting over the treetops as he closed in on her quickly. Without thinking about it, he swooped down, stretching out his clawed feet, and snatched her suddenly, but gently off the ground in a cage of talons and muscled feet.

Julie screamed, but Tony laughed at the top of his lungs. The tiny dragon’s heartbeat was reverberating in Antonio’s ears, and it filled him with pride. Though too young to shift yet, the boy already recognized that which was so natural to their kind.

“Antonio!” Julie gasped. “Let me down!”

She wasn’t hurt, he made sure of that, but he also wasn’t about to put her down yet.

Not yet, he projected, the sound ringing in her ears. But soon.

He knew exactly where he was going to take them. It was no more than a twenty-minute flight, and by the time Antonio set Julie and Tony down, the boy was once again blissfully asleep in his mother’s arms, completely unfazed by the sudden flight. It was more than could be said about Julie.

With her hair scattered around her in a wild mane, she stared at Antonio as if he was a madman as he touched down first as a dragon, and then changed into his human form. He was smoothing back his hair as Julie glared at him, looking about ready to try and deck him again.

“You… You… I don’t even know what to say to you!” she hissed.

“You had plenty of words in the skies,” Antonio said, walking up to her and spinning her toward the small cottage he had flown them to.

She’d cussed up a storm during the flight, calling him every vaguely-close-to-an-actual-curse thing she could in the presence of a small child. He had particularly enjoyed ‘you overgrown, pompous winged lizard’ as an insult.

“Your brother at least had the decency to get an airplane,” Julie growled as they stepped into the house.

Antonio flicked on the lights and wordlessly scooped up the child from her arms, settling him in a ridiculously oversized leather chair in the large living room, making sure Tony couldn’t roll out of it in his sleep. Julie was standing in the middle of the room, shaking with anger, and something that Antonio couldn’t put his finger on.

Whatever it was, it needed to be resolved, now. If this little outburst had taught him anything, it was that as much as he’d thought losing his riches would decimate him, he now knew that it was nothing compared to the pure panic and fear of being left without his mate. The moment she’d disappeared from his radar, he’d thought his world would collapse right then and there.

He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into his lap as he sunk into a comfortable couch close to Tony’s chair. She struggled for a moment, but his grip was as iron as it had been when he’d carried her through the skies, and just as gentle.

“Julie,” he said, trying to put all his patience into his voice. “What happened? Where were you running?”

She sat rigidly in his lap, like a wooden doll, avoiding his gaze. He could see tears brimming in her gorgeous green depths, though, and his stomach twisted. Nothing in the world should be allowed to make her sad.

“Was it my mother?”

Her attention snapped to him.

“How did you know?”

“It’s always my mother,” he answered with a sigh, relaxing his shoulders as she uncoiled slightly and leaned into him a little. “What did she do?”

“You’re making it sound like she goes around stirring up trouble,” Julie said with a mirthless chuckle.

“Elderly dragons that have lost their mates rarely have anything better to do.”

“Uh-huh,” she answered, collapsing against his chest now.

She felt so right against him, like she was never meant to be anywhere but right there. His arms tightened around her as if of their own volition, his dragon confirming everything he’d been trying to deny for days now. There was no way in the world that he could ever be capable of letting her go. The year without her had been hell, and then he hadn’t even been so unquestioningly certain that she was his mate.

Now that he knew, all bets were off.

“Tell me.”

“She… well, she said that when you and Rossella got married, she would bear you an heir. And that this heir would be your… firstborn,” Julie said, her voice shaking a little.

The growl that rose in his throat was terrifying, his expression darkening. It was one thing for his mother to meddle and plot, but to so clearly threaten his son – there could be no excusing that. He had no doubt that Amira had banked on this, hoping that Julie would run and that he would not follow.

That she would think so little of him was just an insult added to the injury.

“And then you ran to protect yourself and Tony,” he deadpanned, the statement ringing true as no answer came from Julie. “She is wrong,” he said sharply, grabbing Julie by the chin and turning her face to look at him. “Understand this, Julie. She was wrong. I would never allow anyone to hurt my child, or you. Not my mother, not anyone. It simply will not happen.”

The look she gave him told him that she wasn’t being entirely truthful. He got the nagging feeling that there was something she wasn’t telling him.

“What else are you hiding?” he asked, a bark in his voice that he rushed to smooth out. “You will never have to be afraid of me, Julie. I know I haven’t done much to make you certain of that so far, but I swear I will. You can, and you must, tell me everything.”

She clearly hesitated, but after looking at Tony, Julie took a deep breath and turned back to him. He could feel how uncomfortable she was, and deep inside he cursed the fact that he had not gone to her himself, sending Giovanni to look for her instead. So much could have been avoided if she had not been brought in front of Rossella and Amira.

“Rossella, she offered to buy the baby. She said she’d raise him as her own, and that she’d make it worth my while. Not that I would ever agree to it, but I don’t think I would have been out of the country before something horrible happened to Tony. Just like your mother, I think Rossella wouldn’t have tolerated a… what did she call him? A half-breed?”

Her nose crinkled in disgust and Antonio was overcome with such raw rage that he could barely keep himself from letting the dragon take control. He wanted nothing more than to fly to his home and confront his mother, and then his betrothed, for what they had done to his mate.

But his first commitment lay with his child, and Julie. It had never been as painfully obvious as now – he had lost them once, and he hadn’t even known it. He couldn’t do it again.

“I swear to you, Julie, la mia bellezza, that I will never let anyone, anyone, hurt you or Tony. There’s nothing more important to me than having you two with me, and being able to keep you safe.”

It was the first time he truly felt like what he was saying came from the hearts of himself and his dragon. For most of his life, he had been doing what tradition demanded of him and what his bloodline expected. This, however? This was what he needed.

Without sparing it another thought, knowing that the path forward was clear, he pulled Julie into a kiss he intended to never break.