Page 49 of Breed

Shan’s voice is shocked and stern enough to make me pause, a smudge of charcoal on my nose from the little piece I took from the embers in my hand.

“Nothing?”

“You’re drawing on our egg,” he says, distinctly unimpressed.

I turn back to the egg, where, yes, I have drawn on it.

“I’m just trying to get to know it.”

“Lettie, you cannot draw on the egg,” he growls, taking a scrap of fabric woven from the fibre of nearby trees, dipping it in a clay bowl of water, and then carefully dabbing my marks away. “It is sensitive. You could hurt it.”

I birthed the damn egg, and now I have to look at it every day, but apparently I’m not allowed to interact with it. Only the great daddy Shan is allowed to do that. What a fucking…

“Fine. You deal with it then. It likes you better anyway!”

I spin on my heel and storm out of the shack. I am in a high temper and a foul mood. I didn’t think I was ready to be a mother, but I also didn’t know that a fucking egg could make me feel so incompetent and broken on the inside just by existing.

Shan doesn’t come after me. He is too busy tending to the egg, turning it, making sure I haven’t done any inept human damage to it, I suppose. Am I jealous of my own egg? No. That would be ridiculous — but also, yes. I used to matter. Now the egg matters. Will I ever matter again? Maybe if I lay another egg. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ve outlived my usefulness.

I think I’m going to run away. I’m going to get back to the damn city, and find my damn crew, and…

“Where do you think you are going?”

Shan’s voice comes to me as I leave the line of sticks that make a fence around our little encampment. I’m not really supposed to ever set foot outside them, but I figure it doesn’t really matter now that my procreative journey is done. He’s got what he wanted from me.

“YOU HAVE YOUR DAMN EGG! YOU DON’T NEED ME ANYMORE!”

I finish climbing the fence before I turn around and reply to him at high volume. He is standing outside the cottage, his arms folded over his chest, an expression of outright disapproval on his handsome, mature, all-too-saurian face. He doesn’t need to comment on the fact that I’ve just disobeyed him for the first time in a long time. We both know it. I don’t even feel bad about it. I’m glad I’ve done something wrong. Wrong things make so much more sense right now than right.

“Is there a reason you’re acting like a spoiled brat?”

That description hits me hard. Is that what he thinks of me? Probably. He probably thinks I have all kinds of personality deficiencies. He only ever kept me around because he could fuck me and make that precious fucking…

“You don’t care about me. All you care about is the damn egg.”

“Lettie, that is our baby.”

“No, it’s not! It doesn’t do anything. It sits there and stares at me. Or actually, not even that.”

He draws in a deep breath. “It will hatch soon, and then you will see. You just need to be patient, and obedient. Now. Come here.”

I almost do as he says, but then I don’t. I stand firm where I am. I shake my head.

“No.”

“No?” Shan quirks a brow at me. “I must have been neglecting you, Lettie. For you to act this foolishly tells me you have entirely forgotten who you are dealing with.”

“An egg polisher?”

For some reason, that phrase sounds like an insult. I know I’m being an asshole. I’m basically giving him shit for looking after his own baby. Deep down, I know I am the fuck-up here. I am bad, and he may as well know it.

Shan strides over to me, steps over the fence, and takes hold of me in a way he hasn’t in a long time. He grips me by the hair at the back of my head, and he looks down at me with a very stern and unimpressed expression.

“You know better than this,” he lectures me. “You know you are to obey me.”

“What do you care anymore. You have your damn egg.”

His brows rise at my petulant outburst. “It is not my damn egg, Lettie, and you know it.”

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