A week later, the first message arrived shortly after breakfast.
Dean was in the smaller family sitting room with a stack of transition documents spread across the low table, though he had been reading the same paragraph for several minutes without absorbing it. His pregnancy was still too early to change much physically, but fatigue had begun arriving at inconvenient hours, and Arion had responded by developing an increasingly irritating habit of moving anything heavy before Dean could touch it.
Theo sat on the rug with his dragon, building something that appeared to involve three wooden horses, a blanket, and Boreas's front paw.
Arion stood near the windows in a pale sage shirt and tan trousers, one hand holding a tablet while the other rested against the back of the sofa. His attention had been divided between an imperial transition report and whatever was happening through the link when Dean's phone vibrated against the table.
Dean glanced down.
Sylvia.
He opened it.
