The voice was unmistakable, but Dracon quite literally took a moment to do a partial shift that looked like he was swallowing. He then let his forked tongue slip out to taste the air, searching for the particular scent of undead he had learned to associate with the vampire. He wouldn't have known Arkady by looking at him, not in a million years.
"I'm still not quite sure it's you I'm seeing," Dracon replied with a note of gruff humor in his gravelly voice. Drake's voice wasn't very low, per se, but it had a roughness to it; a whiskey soaked smoker's rasp that turned into an eerie, nervewrecking hiss when he got upset. It was unusual to hear the hidden amusement behind that tone. His eyes narrowed a little, as his brain laid the image of Arkady in his memories over this whole new look. "You've... changed."
Well, he hadn't been shot or stabbed yet, so he was going to mark this as the warmest possible welcome he could expect. Drake had the decency to lower his gaze for a moment and steel himself before he looked back up into Arkady's eyes. "I'd like to. Return, that is. If y'all will have me."
No sweetening the pill, no preamble, no frills. Straight to the point, that was Drake.