Page 16 of The Sapphire Dragon's Missing Mate

Huge mistake. He burst into tears. “I can’t even do that right. How can I be a dad without a compost heap? We want our children to eat their vegetables—and we can’t even grow any.”

We were going way off track here, but I wasn’t sure how to get that straightened out. I wasn’t going to let my mate go hungry. Lately, if he did, he got dizzy, and I had no intention of seeing him faint while shopping for nesting materials. In a quandary, I caught the midwife’s eye, hoping for a little help here. Why didn’t I bring along some granola bars or cheese and crackers? It was all on me!

“Boys, I will fix you some sandwiches for the road.” Parma straightened from where she was bent over my mate’s belly. “And then you can shop for that nest.” She washed her hands again and left the room. After Arvin had dressed behind his screen, and we were ready to go, the midwife returned with a brown bag and a sheaf of printouts. “Nice roast chicken on sourdough, some apples, and although I don’t recommend too many sweets for my patients, I included a couple of brownies. They’re very high protein and made with beets.”

“Thank you.” Arvin took the bag from her. “I’ve never had brownies made that way, but I am sure they’re delicious. Then his expression became very concerned. “I don’t suppose they are still chocolate?”

“Cocoa and chips,” she assured him, passing the papers to me. “Just some tips for the next little while, a few nest ideas from Pinterest…things like that. If you haven’t laid the eggs within two weeks, come back, and we’ll make sure everything is still going as it should. All right?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just led us out onto the porch, closing the door behind us.

“Well, that was interesting.” Arvin rested a palm on his bump. “Roast chicken, she said?”

For a guy who didn’t want any lunch, he did justice to everything she’d made, including half of my sandwich and both brownies, which he pronounced very good despite the vegetable content. Then he flipped through the nesting printouts and got out his phone to find more ideas. Our town might not have fast food franchises but what it did have was a terrific bed-and-bath store.

As soon as I parked in front, he was out of the car and marching into the shop, determination in every fiber of his being. He’d been waddling lately, but there was nothing like that happening as he pushed a cart up and down the aisles then sent me to get a second one and filled that as well. He bought pillows and blankets and quilts and bolsters and some things I didn’t quite have names for, but he seemed to know what he wanted, and I was only glad I would have no trouble buying them for him.

After taking the first two carts to the front of the store and returning with a third empty, I found him staring at a big turquoise pillow in his hands. “Mate, are you all right?”

He nodded slowly. “The pillows in the dream… This was one of them.”

“Wow.” My mate was human, but he had quite the gift of dreams. “Maybe we need a clothesline, too.”

We bought one, just in case and loaded it into the car along with all the other things we’d bought, many of which he recognized from the dream. Then we headed back to the cabin, where I made the mistake of suggesting he rest after all our exertions and start again in the morning. But no way was that happening.

I carried it all in and he then had me move the dresser from our room into the guest room to make enough room for all of our purchases. He constructed into the most beautiful nest, all the colors of the rainbow and every shape and size folded and stacked and combined into a nest worthy of our eggs. Our twins.

And now we had to wait.

Chapter Fourteen

Arvin

“Can you explain to me what it is we’re doing again?” Stone followed me as I waddled toward the storage building where we kept the linens.

“I told you. We need to get something,” I replied. It was actually many somethings. I couldn’t let go of the dream I’d had. As perfect as the nest was, I needed it all it could be, and if that meant my little dragons wanted low-end motel pillows, then low-end motel pillows they were going to get.

“From where?” he asked, following closely while not being on top of me. He really was the best mate ever.

“Fine, just come with me. You’ll see.” I didn’t want to explain everything. I was already out of breath, the eggs pressing on my diaphragm. According to the midwife, they were going to be here any day now. I could only hope.

Stone had been a great support through this pregnancy. I wasn’t exactly handling it well, at least not emotionally. One minute I was happy, the next minute I was crying. I was exhausted all the time. I was already the size of a house—and yes, the cabin was small, but still, that made for one huge person.

One of the most difficult things to deal with was how hard my belly was. It was harder than hard and, even though I was told more than once that it was 1000 percent normal, it still messed with my head a little. Sometimes I even questioned whether I was turning into a robot, metal in my middle the only logical explanation.

Except it wasn’t logical at all. Not with eggs in the picture.

And what had to be the hardest was that I wanted my mate’s attention pretty much all the time. it didn’t matter if he was working remotely or reading a book or sleeping, I wanted him to be there for me. And not once had he balked. He’d been great. So beyond great.

We were putting everything on hold for the babies, or, more accurately, he was. He needed to find his brother, and I felt awful that he hadn’t managed to at this point. He assured me that his dragon was busy chilling curled up inside of him and wanted to stay here. I took that as a good sign.

But still, that wasn’t what I wanted for my mate. I wanted him to get where he needed to be, to meet the family he never knew existed until recently, the ones who weren’t going to pretend they didn’t know him the way I’d seen his otter family do in dreams. And, from what I understood, it wasn’t as far from the truth as I’d like, if not with his adoptive parents, with the rest of the bevy where he was raised.

Once we were at the storage building, I fiddled with the key. I probably should have changed the padlock six months ago when it first started sticking, but I didn’t want to have to explain to my boss why I had to spend the extra money, and it hadn’t been enough of a pain that I was willing to spend my own money. I got it open, and we went inside. I started grabbing pillow after pillow after pillow and throwing them into the laundry cart.

“Pillows for my nest.” I explained as my mate stared at me, mouth open.

It took him most of a minute for him to reply in words, but he instantly helped me grab the pillows. “You already have a nest. Do you need us to fix it?”

“I need these to go with it.” What part of this wasn’t he getting? Probably the part that only made sense to me because I was the pregnant one.

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