The path back to the marital bed wasn't a long one, but it was one that needed to be navigated carefully. For once, their roles had reversed, with Lei making the trip into town for his pigments and Mir left at home to tend to things. Normally, Mir would have gone too, but he was still in trouble for the incident with the femur, and it honestly wasn't wise for him to pop up in town too often. Once a month was his usual schedule, and he'd already appeared twice this month. A third time would have been a source of gossip, and with things only just calming back down, a rumor would be ill-timed.

  The ex-Dark Lord now found himself in their kitchen, pulling ingredients out of the pantry and listening to soft puppy noises squeak in from the living room. The business of the day was baking cinnamon rolls, something he was passible at but not nearly as adept as his husband. Still, he knew the way to his husband's heart, and that road began with warm, sweet treats and a contrite expression. He wouldn't apologize for his actions, that would be a lie, but he would apologize for upsetting the other. Timing was key in this. He wanted the house smelling of the baking and the rolls themselves just cool enough to pull to pieces when Lei returned. Starting now left him with time to get a failure batch out of the way; he always needed a warm-up, and the Shadow Gang would eat them even if they were awful. They'd have to, it was in the contract.

  Step one was to get his milk lukewarm and add in his yeast and sugar. He liked his cinnamon rolls light and fluffy, and that meant it began with some very active yeast. While the yeast was doing its thing, he started getting the rest of the dough ready. Butter, the kind without extra salt, that he'd allowed to go soft, was mixed into the flour, the sugar, the two eggs, and the whole thing was kneaded in a bowl. He tossed in a spoonful of salt and a pinch of cinnamon, then added the yeasty milk and finished getting his dough ready. Then it was a towel over the top of the dough, allowing it to proof.

  He checked on Miracle and the puppies while he let the dough rise, careful not to touch the small bodies since he'd be handling food. They were very cute to watch though, stealing little parts of his black heart. Hellhounds were gorgeous animals. When they weren't in their 'active' state, they looked very much like larger, all-black versions of those sleek black and tan security dogs noblemen kept. Their ears were naturally sharply pointed, but their tails were long and whiplike. It wasn't until they began hunting that fire would erupt along their spines, the hue of their flames spreading through their fur.

  Miracle was a blue, her fire incredibly hot, while Mayhem was an orange that had quantity over quality of flame. It was impossible to say what the pups would have yet. They were too small. Too tiny. There was still pink around their noses, their little eyes not yet open. It was a sign of being pack that Miracle would bring her pups to him, often, wanting them to pick up the scent of the pack leader. Even now, as he approached, she'd picked up one of the plump little things and held it out.

  So much for keeping clean hands.

  "I'm not Lei. I'm not going to babysit for you. They are healthy little things though, you've done very well for yourself considering what you had to work with." His eye flicked over to Mayhem, currently lying on his back with his legs splayed, belly exposed, and sound asleep. That one wasn't known for his intelligence, only his size. With a last pat to the pup he'd taken from her, he tucked the little thing back in next to Miracle. "Don't give me that look. Lei will be home soon, and then you can con him into taking over for you. Just make sure you feed them first; he couldn't nurse them for you if he wanted."

  Back into the kitchen, he washed his hands and then turned his attention to the filling. Starting with almonds that he ground fine before adding cinnamon to them, then honey and butter until he had a sweet, rich paste. The dough was rolled out, cut into strips, then the paste was applied and then rolled up. With all of that done, it was into the oven, smiling even as the kitchen turned into a flour-covered disaster. Lei should be browsing the markets right about now, talking to everyone with that easy way of his. Mir felt a small prickle of something cold. Unease maybe? Jealousy most likely. It wasn't a lack of trust but more a ferociously proud possessiveness. He loved his husband, and he loved his husband's attention more.

  He'd just set the last tray of rolls to cool when that cold feeling turned hot.

  Mir's hand moved to his chest as he felt rage burning through him, his heart rate skyrocketing as the second-hand emotion crawled through his veins like fire. Lei was furious. Furious in a way that bypassed all their safeguards. There was no fear in it. No panic. He wasn't in any danger. It was just a boldly blinding anger the likes of which Mir didn't think he'd seen from his husband in a century. Not since a group of Adventurers had broken into his hoard and trashed it in search of gold. Because those idiots had been convinced that all dragons hoarded gold, and it was impossible that a dragon could hoard flowers instead. Lei had cried tears of fury over broken stems, while Mir had done some very unsavory things with time in order to restore everything just so.

  But the hoard wasn't something a mortal could access these days, and this anger felt different. Lei was furious on someone's behalf.

  Leaning on the counter, still surrounded by the scent of his baking, Mir forced himself to breathe through it. Hot rage wasn't his style, hadn't been since he'd outgrown youthful foolishness. Hot rage got men killed. It was an honest emotion, too honest for a man as filled with treachery as Vladimir Grimm was. Perfectly suited to Liefr, who was always open, committing his everything to every feeling. But while Lei could feel blinding rage and not act on it... that wasn't Mir's style.

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  Wiping his hands with a rag, Mir had just turned toward the living room when he felt that telltale ripple of Lei's power. Dragons were wondrous, magical beings with a host of extraordinarily magical abilities that were innate to them. One of the lesser-known ones was an ability to simply teleport to their nest. It kept hatchlings safe if they wandered too far or teleported angry parents in to defend their infants. It was one of the reasons that raiding a dragon lair was so incredibly difficult; even if the dragon was out, they could appear in an instant if they sensed something amiss.

  Right now, Lei had used that ability to return to his 'nest', their home. He arrived with a bang, pushing the door open with a thunderous force. The dragon winced, stepped inside, made sure there was no lasting damage, and then shut it far more gently. He sank onto their lounge, still in his travelling clothes, looking like the perfect amount of vagabond chic. Mir watched him pull his glasses off, the priceless lenses dangling from careless fingertips as his free hand rubbed his eyes.

  Gently, the former dark lord crouched in front of his husband. He rested his palms on the dragon's knees, waiting quietly for Lei to finish processing everything. Arms reached out, wrapping around him, Lei's chin slotting onto his shoulder before his face turned and buried itself against Mir's neck. For a long moment, there was just silence as Mir let Lei process his rage and the thin thread of grief under it.

  Finally, as he felt the tremor in the other ease, he spoke up. "I wouldn't ask my heart, but the emotional bleed-over is making me want to unleash a plague, start a war, and underfund the orphanages that will be overcrowded as a result of the first two. So, in the interest of not doing any of that, can we perhaps talk about why you're so upset?"

  His husband's breathing sounded like the bellows of a blacksmith, his voice a little too resonant when he spoke. That implied that he was losing a bit of control over his human shape, something Leifr never had issues with normally. Finally, he lifted his head, eyes locked onto Mir's singular bare orb. "Something is taking the children."

  Ah. He should have guessed. The one thing that would always bring his mild-mannered spouse from at rest to roiling boil was actions taken against children. It was one of his lines that was never to be crossed. "I made cinnamon rolls. I can heat some milk. Why don't we have both and talk this over like civilized beings of power?"

  "We have come full circle now if you're being the voice of reason, darling." Lei's words were soft, his rage easing just a little bit, emotions retreating from Mir. It wasn't that he'd stopped feeling them, they were just contained to his own skin once more.

  "I know, shocking, isn't it? I've always been a reasonable man, Lei." It was always someone else who forced him to do unreasonable things. "Come now, eat a sweet treat. Curl up in a nest of blankets and just tell me who you want me to kill." Nothing said love like bringing your husband the corpses of his enemies. Maybe murder was just Mir's love language. Or one of them, who said you couldn't be love bilingual?

  "Alright. Alright. You know the temperature I like my milk, and you'll be making me those pigments. Exactly as Giselle makes them, flaws and all." Because the dragon had rushed home without them, and he wasn't going back to town anytime soon.

  Mir left him on the couch, heading back inside long enough to warm the milk to that perfect lukewarm temperature. Settling two of the most perfect of the cinnamon rolls on the tray, he carried it out to where Lei sat, still in all his travelling clothes, still hunched over. The tray was gently slipped onto the end table, and he took a seat next to his husband. Without prompting, Lei once more buried his face against Mir's neck, as if hiding from his own feelings.

  "Find them, Vladimir." His voice was a low growl against Mir's skin. "Fix it."

  There it was. The most simple ask his husband could make. Two words that implied so very, very much.

  Leifr Grimm, by order of the Draconic Council, could not interfere with the mortal realm. He was, in many ways, more limited in scope than Mir himself. He was, of course, allowed to defend his nest, his lair, his mate, himself, and any young they might produce. The dragons were not entirely cruel to one of their best. He was also still allowed to use magic within the scope of his former duties, healing the land from corrupting influence and guiding life energy back into the Great Cycle. Both of those were net beneficial, even to Evil, as too much corrupting in the Leys and the Land rendered it useless even to the cruelest of beings. He was allowed his magic for the simple, day-to-day acts of living. Lifestyle maintenance, they called it. But beyond those three approved uses, he was allowed nothing.

  He could have found those children. Fetched them back from whatever grim nonsense had befallen them. He could have been the hero who healed wounded bodies, mended fractured souls, and drained the bad memories from tender minds so that they didn't carry the burden of the ordeal. But he simply wasn't allowed to. It was one of the reasons Lei chose to be a homebody, so that he didn't encounter situations where he would be agonized by his inability. That and dragons as a species tended to become homebodies after they reached a certain age; he was rather typical in that. It was simple misfortune that the one time he'd chosen to leave his cozy nest, and alone at that, he'd encountered a situation that crossed a line so embedded in his personality even Mir would never dare flirt with it.

  Now here he was, the chain that held the monster, willingly releasing that restraint. It was the equivalent of the jailer opening the doors of the prison. In just this instance, though, Mir wouldn't abuse his reprieve.

  "Tell me everything, my heart, and I will make it so."