Page 51 of Meet Me in the Stars

“A sonogram?” Izora asked.

“No, a sonic.”

“What’s a sonic?” Izora asked.

Elio thought hard about how to explain it as he looked around the room for the tool in question. The best as I could make out from his thoughts over our mating link it looked like a little horn-shaped device that sounded like a bat.

“Echo location?” I blinked at Elio.

“Yeah!” Elio pumped his fist in the air, sending his blonde hair twirling around him.

“It’s this little thing that you’d aim here,” he said, pointing at the spot right above his pelvis. “Then depending on how the sound bounces back, we know what’s going on. Mostly, they’re only in clinics, but they’re working out how to make them more portable and rechargeable at home. Right now, they all need a crystal charging station.”

“Well, ours sort of works the same way, but you end up with a sonogram or ‘photo’ at the end. Besides, will that work if the egg isn’t large enough to bounce the sound around?” Izora asked, his eyes lighting up with interest.

“The egg isn’t what bounces the sound back,” Elio shook his head. “I’m not sure about how it goes with other shifters. I’ve only ever met dragons, but in layman’s terms it’s all to do with the Alpha/omega gene. Where do you think all the magic in omegas goes if not to being giants like you all? It goes to housing the future generations. One of which ways that magic is used is securing the womb. The organ itself is a fist sized stretchy pouch, but the magic is so much more. The magic will bounce the sonic back different when that magic is engaged, and that magic engages way before it shows up on any of the blood or urine tests.”

“I gotta tell Dara about this,” Izora muttered under his breath about one of his friends. Then to us he said, “The ultrasound works the same way. It uses sound waves to create an image of what’s inside you. Though, it almost seems primitive ---”

“You mentioned that before. Like what it believes is inside me or what’s actually inside me?” Elio asked.

“What’s actually inside you. Outside of pregnancy, it can be used to find tumors and other problems within internal organs.”

“Incredible,” Elio’s eyes lit up. “I wonder if the sonics can do that too? Would those things have different bounce backs?”

“Probably, yes, if I had to guess,” Izora nodded, and crossed the room to open a shiny white drawer. “I also have these.” He held up a bright orange box.

“Orange just like Elio,” my dragon said, and I had to stop him from purring. His attachment to Elio and the dragon inside him came so easily after the claiming vows. He didn’t need the grand convincing I did.

“Within three days of conception this little guy can tell you,” Izora paused to open the end of the little cardboard box. “Not only if you are pregnant, but if your child/children are carrying an inner beast. Some folks call this one the egg predictor, because the answers aren’t just yes or no. They’re ‘no,’ ‘shifter,’ ‘egg,’ and ‘other/unspecified.’”

My heart skipped a beat. That damn thing would’ve been useful decades ago when only an ultrasound could tell you the difference.

“Oh!” Elio’s eyes lit up. “That would be needed for a lot of couples on Earthside, huh?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, trying not to laugh.

“So, you get to choose between---”

“I know it will probably take longer, but I want the photo!”

“Do they really not have these in the flight here?” Izora asked, motioning for Elio to get on the examination table.

I bit the inside of my cheek waiting for the old primal urge to rip the doctor’s limbs off to wash over me. It was sort of there, but I trusted Izora well enough. Maybe I was too old to think about eating the doctor’s face for no reason now.

“Not too old,” my dragon said, sinking onto his haunches to watch the ordeal. “Izora traveled all the way across the sky with us because he wanted to discover what medicines the Starscales had. Why would he hurt the first egg between our flights born of this reunion? He might be the first baby between our flights since the Sleeping Omega Prince.”

Elio reached out for my hand and I crossed the room to comfort him. His fingers trembled against my flesh. His nerves were more to do with if we were pregnant than anything Izora might pull out of the strange-to-him clinic.

“If I’m pregnant, we still have to figure out the Other World gateway thing,” he said while Izora prepared the ultrasound machine. Once the machines were huge hulking things. Now it looked like a handheld video game with a wand attached to the side with a curling cord.

“We will.”

“We have to. Marsin hasn’t found his mate yet and he’s already met Castor,” Elio said. “We can’t be those parents who forget everything they ever promised anyone else.”

“We will be – for a while,” I chuckled. “It just happens. Not forever, but for a while.”

“But the rest of us will still be here,” Izora reminded his patient. “I suspect most of our mates will have siblings and friends and the like too. We won’t be distracted with trying to figure out the money scheme or getting jobs.”

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