Page 28 of Accidentally a Dragon Daddy

“Says the trembling girl with a face as pale as snow,” he quipped, trying to sound confident and aloof but failing miserably.

“I’m pregnant. Something I never thought I could be. On top of that, I’m pregnant with a dragon’s child.” I looked at him in alarm, eyes wide as a new thought entered my mind. “Will I survive this?”

He frowned. “What do you mean? I certainly hope so. I guess there’s always some risk in childbirth, but why wouldn’t you?”

“I mean, it’s a dragon, Damon. My body isn’t built to carry or birth something like that. It’ll rip me open. I—What?”

He was laughing, trying to smother it with an arm, and when I snapped at him, glaring furiously, he tried hard to gather his composure but only partially succeeded.

“It’s not funny!” I snapped. “You aren’t the one who has to deal with this.”

“Neither do you,” he said through a snort of laughter. “That’s not how it works.”

“It’s not?”

He shook his head. “No. Dragons are born in human form. We start to bond with the beast inside around the age of five or so. During puberty, we go through our first transformation.”

“So, I don’t, like … no tiny dragon is going to come out of me?” I asked, sagging in relief when he nodded. “Okay. Well, back to normally panicking about being pregnant, then.”

“Normal panicking?”

I exhaled sharply. “You’re going to be a dad, Damon.”

He reeled backward.

“Which means I’m going to be a mom,” I whispered. “A mother. I …”

The world spun, and the sky grew bright.

“Easy,” Damon murmured, one hand around my back, pulling me in close to him, resting my head on his shoulder as he scooted closer across the forest floor. “It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said with a hiccup-laugh. “I’m gonna be a mom.”

“And you’re going to be great at it. You’re going to—”

He jerked his head upward, scanning the sky through the trees as a jolt of surprise ran through his body, transferring to me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“They’re coming back. Shit,” he snarled, all business once more. “Come on, we have to go. We need to get deeper into the forest. Before they get closer and can track us.”

He hauled me to my feet as we took off. But the searching dragons were relentless and moving faster than he seemed to have expected. We’d only gotten a few hundred feet before one of them plunged through the canopy ahead of us, shattering tree trunks and shaking the forest floor as it landed, almost immediately shifting.

“Halt!” the dragon-man shouted as Damon pulled me to the left and kept running.

The other dragon swooped past overhead so low the treetops had to be scraping its underbelly.

“We’re not going to escape them,” I gasped. “Not with me in tow, at least.”

“I am not letting you go,” he growled possessively. “Not now.”

The other dragon came crashing through to the forest floor, the giant golden beast’s head snaking through the trees. “Damon. Stop it. You’re not getting away.”

We skidded to a halt as the two dragons blocked our way forward and back. They wore black uniforms that seemed to adhere to their skin. One of them had a golden strip down the outsides of his pants legs, but that seemed to be the only color.

“Who are they?” I asked, curious about the matching outfits. What did that mean?

“They’re guards,” Damon grunted.

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