Page 67 of The Ruby Dragon's Unconventional Mate

I don’t care how it works. There will be no Keeper at my house.

All right.

He turned to Simon. “Send them to Lachlan. Give me an hour or two to talk to him, but send them, have them go to Lachlan’s.” He was not going to cry. He was going to deal with this.

“Both of them?”

“Yes.” He didn’t want to talk about it. “Both of them.” He stood and packed his things away. “I have to go. I’m sorry. I love you.”

Simon took his hand. “I love you, dear one. It will all work out. Have faith.”

“That’s your job. I’m just trying to get through the day.” Then he went to go get his cheesecakes.

He was going to have to go talk to his brother-in-law and see what was going to happen next. Seriously, it was the only option he had. Talk to Lachlan. Make sure that Lachlan was receptive to having a new Keeper of the Keys.

And then make sure that Lachlan was okay with him staying there for a while. Bryant didn’t have to have a Keeper of the Keys in his house.

Lars would just take both twins and move into Lachlan’s house until Bryant came to his damn senses.

Chapter

Twenty-Three

“Lars.” Bryant had come home to find that Lars was gone. And he’d taken his things. Not just an overnight bag, but a whole shit-ton of stuff. Most of his clothes. Slippy. All of his weird hair stuff. All of his cheesecake.

And, apparently, he was at Lachlan’s.

With Simon’s twin cousins.

“No. I tried to sit down with you and talk about it. I called you. Three times. You just kept saying no to me. No compromise. Not even any listening. So, until you can come to the table with a real intention to listen, I will be here with Lachlan.”

“Dammit, Lars…”

“What?” Lars gave a disdainful sniff. “Arthur and Alban are amazing, but you don’t even want to meet them. How insulting is that? I have known Simon since the womb, Bryant. He wouldn’t steer me wrong.”

“But I?—”

“Nope.” Lars hung up.

Hung up!

His damn mate was pregnant, and he’d been trying to see him for days, and he just kept?—

A scratching noise made him jump damn near out of his body, the sound loud and weird and coming from one of the windows.

What the ever-loving fuck?

How had he ended up at the fairy-tale house, potentially with the big bad wolf, while Lars was at the castle, having a slumber party with his brother, a ferret, a big cat, and twin-fucking-keepers?

He strode over to the windows that he thought the sound was coming from, and he peered outside. He didn’t see anything to begin with, but then he thought he spied movement in the rosebush outside.

Okay, so there was no way a wolf could hide in the bushes right there.

So, he headed outside, his body on alert, but he was now looking for an injured bird or a ground squirrel.

He circled the bushes, and he heard a rustle. “Okay, it’s all right. You can come out. I won’t hurt you.” If an animal was in there and injured, it ought to respond to his tone and to the magical suggestion he was sending out. “Come on, little bit.”

He heard a chittering noise, and then a little gray and brown weasel popped out of the bushes, tail moving, its bright eyes staring into him.

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