“On this land, Jack, I can touch your heart. I know you don’t understand, but we have the seven-year splits for a reason—seven years older or seven years younger, no one chooses outside those parameters. Gale girls get more powerful as they age, and we’re all attracted to power. That’s a potential for abuse the family’s chosen to guard against. We haven’t always been so civilized.”

“This from a man with antlers,” Jack muttered rolling his eyes. He hadn’t known he was a Gale until he was fourteen, so he got a lot of lectures on family dynamics his cousins had practically been born knowing.

David spread his hands, the calluses and dirt making them darker than his forearms. “This from a man with a tail.”

“And wings,” Jack pointed out. “Everyone loves the wings.” He might—or might not—have a list, but he had no shortage of cousins pleading for rides. Although that had an age limit now, too; adults only. It wasn’t as if Jennifer and Wendy had hit the ground. And he’d managed to gather up all the butterflies and change them back. He had a feeling at least some of the requests were for rides of a different sort, but while his cousins were blunt with each other, they weren’t entirely sure of him. “Charlie’s Wild,” he said, not entirely certain why.

“And you’re seventeen. Which is why you’re stating the obvious. Charlie’s thirty. Wild doesn’t change that.”

“I’m Wild.”

“I repeat, Wild doesn’t change that. It’s not going to happen.” Antlers arced up from David’s brow.

“Just to be clear, when you say it’s not going to happen, you mean me and Charlie? Happening? Like Allie and Graham happening?”

“Allie and Graham are second circle. You and Charlie are . . .”

Suddenly finding himself trapped by the weight of David’s regard, Jack stared back as calmly as he could. Within the park, in spite of what their other forms suggested, David was the apex predator. Or at the very least, the greater power—which to the dragon part of him meant the same thing.

After a long moment, David allowed him to look away. “Yes, like Allie and Graham.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? You hadn’t . . .”

“I thought it was a Wild thing.” It seemed obvious—he didn’t feel that way about anyone else in the family and no one else in the family was Wild. Except Auntie Catherine. Jack hadn’t spent much time with her, but it had been enough that he felt confident in saying she didn’t make him feel like Charlie did. Charlie made him feel like he belonged.