Roxy marched into Drax’s room with a mission.

"Up!" Roxy clapped her hands sharply together, the sound echoing like a thunderclap off the stone walls. "Out of bed, Drax! The sun is up, the perimeter is clear, and we have exactly two hours before you need to be in the skies!"

A massive, deeply aggrieved groan rumbled from the center of the bed. A thick, dark fur blanket was aggressively pulled over a head of messy dark hair.

"Mother, please," Drax’s deep, teenage voice vibrated with absolute, bone-deep exhaustion. "It is practically the middle of the night. Have mercy."

"Mercy is for those who are not traveling across the continent today," Roxy declared, marching directly to the towering windows and throwing the heavy velvet curtains wide open, flooding the room with blinding morning light.

Drax hissed, burying his face deeper into the mattress. He was entirely exhausted.

Yesterday, while the Matriarch was resting, Drax had been on primary babysitting duty with Dena. Wrangling the energy of the wolf twins, a chaotic snake-shifter, an abyssal prince, and a teething white tiger cub had completely drained his draconic core. He desperately, fiercely deserved his beauty sleep.

But Roxy was absolutely not hearing it.

The Demon King wanted to break her family, which meant her eldest son leaving the absolute safety of the Manor to train at the Dragon Peaks was setting her nerves on edge.

She had just finished feeding baby Fedor in the nursery, and immediately sprinted down the hall to prep her drake.

She marched over to the bed and violently ripped the heavy fur blanket entirely off his body.

"Hey!" Drax yelped, shivering as the cold morning air hit his bare, scaled chest.

"Into the washroom. Now," Roxy commanded, pointing a perfectly manicured, entirely uncompromising finger toward the en-suite.

What followed was a deeply humiliating, chaotic fifteen minutes that completely stripped the terrifying teenage warlord of all his dignity. Despite Drax loudly, continuously singing his protests that he was absolutely not a little kid anymore, Roxy practically dragged him into the steaming washroom.

"Mother!" Drax argued, his face burning a brilliant scarlet as she aggressively scrubbed his broad shoulders with a soapy linen cloth.

"You smell like baby tiger spit and crushed star-figs from yesterday’s feeding time," Roxy shot back, completely ignoring his draconic pride as she dumped a bucket of warm, scented spring water directly over his head. "You are going to meet the elders of the Dragon Peaks. You are the heir. You will arrive smelling like royalty, not a nursery floor!"

She didn’t stop there. Once he was scrubbed clean, Roxy personally laid out his traveling clothes, fussing over the reinforced leather clasps of his tunic and smoothing the dark fabric over his shoulders as if he were still five years old.

Twenty minutes later, the grand living room of the Iron-Wood Manor hosted a deeply amusing sight.

Drax sat heavily on the plush sofa, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, a magnificent scowl etched into his handsome face. He was fully dressed, entirely spotless, and looking incredibly grumpy as his heavy traveling bags were piled neatly by the front doors. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Pacing a manic circle in front of the stone hearth, Roxy was frantically, violently swiping through the screen of her tablet.

"Did I pack the winter salves?" Roxy muttered entirely to herself, her green eyes darting over her checklist. "The air at the Dragon Peaks is incredibly thin. His scales might crack. What about the dried meats? Zarek, did we put enough dried venison in his left saddlebag?"

Kaelen, who was calmly leaning against the archway with a cup of hot winter tea, let out a soft, highly amused sigh.

"My Queen, please," Kaelen soothed, his icy blue eyes tracking her frantic pacing. "You must calm down. Drax is a formidable drake. He has been trained by you since he could walk. He could perfectly manage a month in the wilderness with nothing but a single iron dagger."

And btw, he was a dragon!

Roxy abruptly stopped pacing. She whipped her head around, completely ignoring the Wolf Alpha, and locked her terrifying, maternal glare directly onto the towering Dragon King standing near the doorway.

"Zarek," Roxy demanded, her voice dropping into a lethal octave of absolute suspicion. "Look me in the eye and assure me that his living arrangements are actually finished. I swear to the gods, if my son gets to the peaks and has to sleep in a damp, freezing cave like some feral lizard—!"

"Roxy, breathe," Zarek rumbled, holding his massive hands up in immediate surrender. The King of the Dragons possessed an empire, but he knew better than to argue with his Matriarch. "It has been entirely taken care of. I dispatched a royal architectural unit three weeks ago. Drax has a fully insulated, heated stone house waiting for him on the upper ridges. He will not be sleeping in a cave."

Roxy narrowed her eyes, studying his face for any sign of a lie, before finally letting out a huff of breath and dropping the tablet to her side.

Drax, entirely fed up with being treated like a fragile glass doll in front of his fathers, let out a heavy, exaggerated sigh.

"Mum, please," Drax groaned, rubbing his temples. "I am going to be fine. You are overreacting."

The living room went completely, dead silent.

Torian instantly grimaced, taking a slow step backward. Kaelen closed his eyes. Zarek simply braced himself. They all knew the teenage drake had just stepped on a massive, emotional landmine.

Roxy slowly turned to face her son. She leveled a glare so intensely heavy, so laced with raw, bleeding maternal terror, that Drax instantly swallowed hard.

"I am doing all this because I am worried for you!" Roxy shouted. Tears sprang unbidden to her green eyes. "I am sending my eldest boy away! But excuse me for caring! I suppose you have become so big now, you don’t need your mother again!"

The guilt hit Drax with the concussive force of a falling boulder.

His draconic pride completely vanished, instantly replaced by the terrifying realization that he had just made his grieving, traumatized mother cry.

"No, no, Mum, wait," Drax panicked, immediately jumping off the sofa. He closed the distance in two long strides, entirely wrapping his strong arms around her shoulders. He pulled her into a desperate, apologetic hug. "It is not like that at all. I swear. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry."

He rested his chin on the top of her dark curls, letting out a soft, exhausted sigh. "I am just feeling incredibly mad that I didn’t get enough sleep. Dena and I were up half the night with the twins. I am just tired, Mum. I need you. I will always need you."

Roxy sniffled, her arms wrapping tightly around his waist, burying her face into his clean tactical tunic. She knew he was exhausted, and she hated pushing him out the door, but she also knew how to play her cards.

Roxy pulled back slightly, looking up at his handsome, tired face. A faint, mischievous smirk—a tiny, lingering echo of the trickster she loved—pulled at the corner of her lips.

"Well," Roxy murmured, wiping her eyes. "I suppose I should tell you that I spoke to Malcor through the Vanguard communication crystal last night."

Drax blinked, suddenly incredibly wary. "You spoke to my training master?"

"I did," Roxy confirmed. "And I explicitly ordered him to give you a grace period. When you arrive at the peaks, you can rest, sleep, and eat all you want for an entire week before he is allowed to start your combat training."

Drax’s green eyes blew incredibly wide. A full week of unbothered, deep draconic slumber without a single screaming toddler or Vanguard drill. It was the greatest gift she could have possibly given him.

Drax absolutely beamed. The exhaustion melted from his face, replaced by pure, unadulterated teenage joy.

"Thank you, Mum!" Drax laughed, lifting her completely off the floor and spinning her around in a massive, bone-crushing hug. "You are the absolute best Mother in the world!"

By mid-morning, the entire Iron-Wood family had gathered outside the massive front gates of the Manor to bid their final farewells.

The winter snow crunched beneath their boots as Drax made his rounds.

Little Iris and Tanith were up first. The two girls had spent the morning weaving in the greenhouse. They giggled as they reached up, carefully placing two brightly colored, slightly lopsided winter flower crowns directly onto Drax’s dark hair, intentionally balancing the vines against his small, emerging draconic horns. Drax didn’t dare remove them, offering his sisters a solemn, respectful bow.

Next was Tyara. Caspian held the white tiger cub out. Drax reached forward to scratch her fluffy ears, but the fiercely energetic cub immediately lunged, sinking her tiny, sharp teeth hard directly into Drax’s leather bracer. Drax winced, prying the feral baby off his arm with a laugh.

Roxy stepped forward, cradling baby Fedor in her arms. Drax looked down at the newborn Kitsune heir. As if sensing his older brother’s departure, little Fedor, completely bundled in his emerald blankets with the red gemstone, offered a bright, gummy, and entirely perfect smile. Drax gently brushed his knuckle against the baby’s soft cheek.

Axel and Onyx approached with entirely too much swagger for six-year-old wolf pups. The twins stepped up, crossing their arms, before simultaneously unleashing a complex, highly coordinated handshake they had been practicing for weeks, ending with a solid, aggressive ’dap’ against Drax’s palms.

"Don’t let those mountain dragons push you around," Axel ordered seriously.

Finally, little Zale simply waddled forward on his pale, webbed legs and threw his arms tightly around Drax’s knee in a silent, profound abyssal hug.

Drax took a deep breath of the freezing air. He looked at Zarek, receiving a slow, deeply proud nod from his father.

With a deafening, bone-cracking symphony of shifting anatomy, Drax’s body violently expanded. The teenage boy vanished, replaced by a magnificent, towering black dragon. He was smaller than Zarek, his scales not yet fully hardened, but he was breathtakingly lethal.

Torian and Syris quickly stepped forward, expertly strapping the heavy leather traveling bags and supply packs securely around the young drake’s muscular torso.

Drax let out a deep, vibrating roar of farewell. He crouched low on his powerful hind legs, his massive leathery wings snapping open. With a concussive blast of displaced snow and wind, the young dragon launched himself into the crisp blue winter sky.

The family stood in the courtyard, their hands shielding their eyes from the sun as they watched the magnificent black silhouette shrink into the distance, heading toward the towering peaks.

As the silence of the Iron-Wood settled back over the snow, a small, freezing hand tugged gently on the fabric of Roxy’s dark fur cloak.

Roxy looked down.

Little Iris stood by her boots, the remaining crushed flowers from her weaving clutched tightly in her small fists. The young wolf pup’s beautiful violet eyes were wide, staring up at the empty sky with a profound, quiet sadness.

"Mum?" Iris whispered softly, her lower lip trembling just a fraction. "Can I see brother anytime soon?"