As soon as the portal was burned up, O shifted. He sagged from the effort of maintaining dragon form in the human realm. It hadn’t been easy. But now, both he and his dad stood buck naked on a cliff in the middle of the woods while everyone panted, wide-eyed.

Ike flung himself into his mother’s arms. “Mom!”

Mel hugged her son gingerly, her face wincing in pain. “I’m okay, hotshot. I swear. O saved me.”

“Mom,” Ike said, drawing back from the hug and staring her solemnly in the eye. “O breathed fire. It was freaking awesome.”

Mel let out a watery laugh. “Yeah. It was.” She stood up and surveyed the group. “We gotta get the hell out of here.”

They made record time getting down the mountain and back to Amos and Lucy’s house. And by the grace of god, nobody saw the two naked guys in the group.

“Not exactly the way I’d envisioned meeting your father,” Mel said later that day as she toweled off her hair and slid into pajamas. She gingerly pulled a clean T-shirt over her new bandages that O had lovingly applied. He’d never felt worse about anything in his life. His dragon claws had given her those scratches. She’d told him that if he apologized one more time then she was never going to marry him. He’d seen enough flickers in their future to take her at her word and button his lip.

“Surprisingly, that didn’t go the way I thought it would either,” O said, brushing her hair back from her shoulders. “But, you know, hell of an icebreaker.”

The two of them joined the others in the living room that night. Ike had been asleep for an hour or so already. So it was just the grown-ups. O’s father, Donovan, sat in a kitchen chair, looking exactly like O would in about 30 years. Blonde hair speckled with white, green eyes and lines around his eyes.

“So why the hell did you bring me all the way to the human realm,” Donovan said, his human voice rusty, like he hadn’t used it in a while.

“Why don’t you tell me, Dad?” O cocked his head to one side. “Why don’t you tell me about Idris?”

Donovan sat up straight. Folded his hands. Sagged back down and plunked his forehead into his hand. “What do you want to know about him?”

“Is he my brother?” O asked and Mel’s head snapped around to stare him in the face. Amos and Lucy glanced at each other and reached out to hold hands.

Donovan nodded his head stiffly. “He’s your brother. My firstborn son.”

O pulled Mel even closer to him. She was practically sitting in his lap at this point. Placing a hand over the warm skin of his neck she tried to send calming feelings his way, the way he often did for her. His eyes fluttered closed for a second as he leaned into the touch.

“Why did he grow up in the human realm?”

Donovan looked out the window. “You know, you grew up in the human realm for a few years, too.”

O blinked. “I did?”

Donovan nodded. “The four of us lived here. Where we were all safe from Dalyer. Until you were about four years old. At that point we realized that you were…”

“An oracle,” Mel supplied and Donovan nodded again.

“A four-year-old oracle who was slowly going crazy in the human realm,” Donovan went on. “In the dragon realm, oracles are respected. Their gifts are useful.” Donovan scratched at his stubble. “I don’t think any oracle’s life is easy. No matter where you live. But we knew you’d have power in the dragon realm. Choices. We thought you’d have work, people who respected you. We always dreamed you’d meet a pretty girl someday. And all the rest that comes with it.” He waved his hand toward the two of them. “We knew that wasn’t going to happen in the human realm. In the human realm people who claim to be oracles are imprisoned. Tortured. Killed. And your gift was already so potent. We knew there was no hiding it from people. You had to be raised in the dragon realm. So your mother, a human, stayed in the human realm to raise Idris. And I returned to the dragon realm to raise you.”

“So why didn’t the whole family come back to the dragon realm?”

Donovan sighed heavily and looked around at the circle of people as if he were weighing the worth of each one. Eventually he just shrugged. “O, your last name isn’t Stillwell. That was your Uncle’s first name. I took it for the two of us in honor of him.”

“So what’s our real last name?”

Donovan stared his son in the eye. “Prodigo.”

All the dragons in the room gasped and covered their mouths in shock. Amos actually stood up and paced around for a second. Mel and Lucy just blinked at the group, completely nonplussed. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Amos said, “that they are part of the original royal line. The one that Dalyer’s family stole the throne from.”

“It means,” O continued the thread, “that as the firstborn, Idris is the rightful, true, fated heir to the throne of the dragon realm.”