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need therapy for my hand after signing all those autographs. Your family certainly sounds big.”
    She laughed.
    “What about your family?” Immediately, her face contorted in horror. She wished she could hide underneath the table.
    That was the wrong question to ask. Nico's eyes fell, like heavy weights had been tied to his face and dropped.
    “I'm sorry, you don't have to answer if you don't want to,” she said quickly.
    Cass knew a few facts about his history from reading. Also, from friends and family gossiping. They were all big LA Oulaw fans back home, if not, huge football fans.
    Nico's parents mysteriously died when he was young. Then he'd been taken in by a distant relative.
    That man, Alfred Hill, had been his caretaker for years. He must've seen the talent there, or rather, Cass guessed, the money, because he became Nico's manager. The rest was history. They managed to get to the Shifter Football League together, making him one of the top quarterbacks. Two years ago Nico dropped his manager without a word.
    And seeing how he didn't have many visitors, that meant his caretaker, his only family, wasn't part of his life anymore.
    “It's not a happy story. You might know some of it from the press. I don't have much of a family. There are very few dragons left. We don't trust very well, not even each other. It makes it hard to keep up a family line when you think your wife might want to kill you in your sleep and take your treasure.”
    He laughed, a pained laugh.
    “Even the press don’t know much about this. Around a hundred years ago, there was a meeting with most of the dragons alive. This was the first time in a very long time that they had agreed to meet together. I was with the children tasked with serving the food. We had not been invited to the dinner, but only were there to host for a short period of time.
    Dragons are untrustworthy, so they all drank and ate from the same plates and cups. Usually, they would bring their own. No servants were allowed there, so no taste testers to check for poison would be allowed. This would all be about trust. Forging an alliance together. When they saw the hosts take a sip, they knew it would be okay.
    We hadn't heard from the adults in a long while. We were told under no circumstances once the dining room doors were closed were we to enter. Knowing how important this meeting was, we stayed up all night and into the morning waiting.
    Soon, it became unbearable. We opened the doors to find nearly every dragon in existence dead at their seats. The cups had been poisoned, and even the hosts—Jae's parents—had been killed.
    We flew home, but when we got to our homes, they had been raided. All of our treasure had been taken.”
    “I don't know what to say. That's one of the most terrible things I've ever heard. Did they ever find out who did it?”
    “No.” He looked down and poured himself more wine. His lips were starting to be colored red, and Cass thought about kissing him, consoling him with her own.
    “You didn't deserve that.”
    “No one deserves that,” he said. “There's a lot of conspiracy theories about what happened. Some say it was the work of another group of shifters who wanted the gold for themselves, or hated the dragon’s pride and their fearsome power. The remaining dragons distrusted those around them even more, moving further into isolation. Some didn't even take mates so we became even less in number. The only items I have to remember my mother and father are my father's gold pocket watch and my mother's gold tiara, what they wore that night.”
    Cass got to her feet. She hugged Nico. Even if he resisted, she couldn't help but show him some affection.
    “I'm so sorry.”
    He grinned up at her. “Thank you. I’m sorry I have a habit of spoiling things, it seems. I hope I didn’t ruin dinner.”
    She pulled away.
    “You'd have to try harder than that.”
    Dinner ended there. They both went their separate ways. Cass headed to her room.