Startled into laughter, Beluviel dashed away from the pair. Graydon roared curses as he fought to get out of the harpy’s clutches. A betting pool was established within moments; the inhabitants of Cuelebre Tower were well experienced with how to respond to this sort of thing.

As Quentin wandered away from the fight with Pia on his arm, Dragos heard him say to her with a smiling shrug, “She’s my mate, not my problem.”

Dragos and Pia’s oldest son Liam took leave from college to attend the party, and Dragos used the opportunity to study Liam as his son cruised through the crowd, a smiling, easygoing predator.

Liam was one of the many changes Dragos and Pia had gone through. If Liam had grown like any other child, he would still be a toddler. Instead, being the progeny of two intensely magical and Powerful creatures, he had burgeoned into existence with the kind of speed reminiscent of the first generation of the Elder Races.

Now fully as tall and as powerfully built as Dragos, his handsome features, blond hair, and blue eyes were like catnip to most of the women and several of the men. He fended off advances with casual poise, and Dragos smiled to himself as he realized Liam had learned a lot more from college than schoolwork and magic spells.

He was the golden son, the heir apparent. New York was his for the taking if he wanted it, and New York was speaking its mind loud and clear as it said yes, please. But when the time came, would Liam choose to take over ruling the demesne in New York? There was no way to know yet how that story would play out.

Dragos kept the penthouse at the top of Cuelebre Tower. Maybe, eventually, he would give it to Liam, but that also had yet to be decided. For now, it remained his and Pia’s.

He also kept most of the money. (There was quite a lot of it.) Sorting out the money was the biggest headache of everything, because Dragos had always treated his finances as fungible and moved funds from his personal and business accounts to the demesne, or back again as needed.

In the end, he kept his favorite business ventures, all of them steady money earners and capable of operating efficiently without his constant hand at the helm, and he resigned from the boards and signed over the stock from others. Nation building in Rhyacia was going to be expensive. He felt no compunction about keeping most of the liquid assets, while leaving the demesne enough in its operating budget to see it to the end of the first calendar year.