Page 34 of Unhaunt Me

I was wobblier than I wanted to admit but managed to stay upright as we walked back up the flower laden path to the Star Room. Inside I plopped down on the sofa while Tritus went to grab up the sonic. It also looked like a ray gun from some old television show back home. Except it didn’t shoot anything out that I could see. It bounced back and dinged before announcing “Egg located. Please contact your local council.”

“Bossy machine,” I laughed, reaching out and taking his hand in mine. I pulled him onto my lap, and we shared a long, slow kiss before Castor and Axlin came back with takeout.

Chapter Eighteen

Tritus

Our life together moved on in a flurry of activity. As much as we both loved Castor, we decided it was probably safest for everyone if we nested in my house – our house by then. Along with putting together the nest pack we set up a bedroom for Baby Casalona and a guest room for Melon and Kelp. We didn’t expect them to use it often, but could both accept that there might come a day when all four of us needed to be there for her. They had their own egg waiting to hatch now and soon it would be our turn to take over the majority of parenting the cutest little baby girl in the whole wide world – worlds. Any of the worlds known or unknown. I loved her like she was my own little hatchling.

A week after the nest was built, I went back to work. Technically, I qualified for carrier’s leave but with already taking so much time off I missed my job. It was more than a job. Being a guide was a calling and one that echoed in my soul even when other happy things unfolded. Besides, I would take nesting leave when the time came.

The Star Room and our research into the nameless lady had carried on without me. A few stars had shown back up in their slots on the wall signaling the dragons who they belonged to would be reborn soon. Sometimes when I was in there by myself, I stared at them in awe. One of those star-shaped scales could very well be for our hatchling. I took to rubbing my belly whenever I thought about the baby growing inside me. Our soon to come egg was a welcome distraction from the fact we weren’t any closer to knowing who the unnamed woman was and it wasstarting to feel like we might never be able to connect the Other World gateways to the Starscale worlds.

Casimir was doting as ever after I returned to work. He took back up hanging out with Castor and doing his job around the ship to keep busy. He was great about not poking and prodding too much about why the search was moving so painstakingly at a snail’s pace. It wasn’t work we talked about when we found ourselves with time alone but our future together. We talked about what our kids might look like and what they might like to do. Whether or not we’d take them to see things on Earthside. The answer to that one was maybe. Which I understood more than he thought I did. It was one thing to want to see if all for myself. I was an adult dragon who could make his own choices and understood the risks involved. Kids didn’t have the mature and fully developed brains to understand danger. That’s why it was important to be a vigilant parent. We knew there was a fine line between vigilant and overbearing and we’d probably fall on both sides of it at different times during our parenting journey.

Slowly as time passed, the scale that served as a protective covering for Casimir’s claiming gland receded. He didn’t mention it and I didn’t bring it up right away. I still longed for the other half of our connection, but we’d be together forever. Our sex life was still just as incredible as it was before the tooth incident and might have carried on like that forever if Casimir hadn’t spoken up one evening.

We’d just finished enjoying a quiet evening of figuring out what came after the number sixty-nine. Casalona was back with Melon and Kelp for a few days, and we put our alone time to good use. My belly was barely showing the egg growing inside me, but the hormones hit hard, and I couldn’t get enough of my mate. So, I took the day off and we spent it together. In the middle of huffing and puffing to catch our breath after a pretty exhaustive workout of our mouths, he pulled me next to him andkissed me hard between pants. I laughed and rested my head against his. He was perfect. I loved him all the time, but I really loved him like this – out of breath and sweaty and smelling like me and pleasure.

“Do you wanna? I understand if the answer is no,” he said, his brows lifting and his eyes lighting up with hope.

“Do it?” I grinned. “You’ll have to get--- Oh! You mean finish it,” I said.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “The scale’s gone and we’re still in that post fellatious bliss and—”

I didn’t let him finish before I straddled his lap and kissed his gland, testing the waters. He froze immobilized and I kept testing to see if the scale would pop back up. I traced his gland with the tip of my tongue. He was salty from sweat but still delicious.

“Ready to have me inside your head forever? There’s no going back after I bite you,” I teased him.

“I think I’ve been ready for a while,” he said. “I know we never really talked about what you saw—”

“And we don’t have to if you don’t want to. I know it now and I meant what I said while we were inside the memory. You did what needed to be done. Life isn’t easy. It’s not fair and it’s certainly not usually nice. It’s messy and sometimes you have to fight. Sometimes you have to kill the threat even if you’re the good guy. Sometimes you gotta do it because you’re the good guy. I love you, Casimir. I even love that about you.” I swallowed hard, trying not to tear up. It seemed the hormones flooding my body to build our baby’s egg weren’t just making me horny as fuck. They were also turning me into an ever flowing faucet from my eyeballs. “It makes me feel safe. Some of the flight members are worried what might happen if we connect to the Other World gateways. With you, I know that if something bad does happen here, our hatchlings will be safe. You’ll listen to someone if theyscream someone is doing something wrong at the top of their lungs.”

“I’ll always keep you safe mate. I don’t have the stomach to sit around, and watch harm unfold again,” he said, leaning in close to me.

He was hard again. My hard work had been undone by my sitting on his lap. I stroked him as we shared a long, tender kiss. His tongue slipped between my lips and swirled around my mouth as if it might live there forever. I was still slick. I swore I had been slick since the second week after finding out I was carrying. Leaning forward, I moved his hard dick into place and slid down on him. His eyelids fluttered and he gripped my hips like he might fall off the planet without me to hold on to. I wrapped my arms around his neck as our bodies found the rhythm that felt most like home now. For a moment, I let my eyes drift closed and focused on the sweet, slippery friction building inside me. I moved over him, rubbing his dick all over my internal sweet spots.

As our passion built, I leaned in closer to him and once again asked if he was ready for me to claim him as my alpha forever. He nodded, leaning back against the pillows piled haphazardly by the headboard, giving me access to his shoulder that housed his squishy claiming gland.

Taking a deep breath and reveling in the pleasure pulsating through my body, I licked around his gland again one last time to double check that his trauma wasn’t preparing a sneak attack at the last second. My dragon wasn’t as hesitant as me. He didn’t lend me just one of his long canine teeth. He gave me both of them and shifted my eyes to his.

“Bite me, mate. Claim me,” he whispered, and I couldn’t hold back any longer.

I bit him and the sweet explosion of the clear magical fluid filled my mouth instantly. It flooded onto my tongue, tastinglike vanilla bean and something even sweeter. I chased down the tiny streams it flowed in. The magic didn’t take me back to the memories we visited, instead I saw Casimir, his cousins, and siblings all so much younger than I knew of them. They were adorable young adults with happy, fulfilling lives and futures. They had no clue what would eventually happen to them. I saw the grand opening of his and Castor’s shop. I saw Castor bossing him around as the Medwin 2 went from underfunded dream to full-fledged reality. I saw myself through his eyes standing there in the Star Room the first time we met. I was gorgeous through the lens of his perspective. I felt how much he wanted me right then and there and the confusion that swam through his veins as he realized what it all meant.

The clear magical fluid ran dry, and I was back in the present with him and the passion building up between our bodies. His hands slipped from my hips to my ass, squeezing and tapping, as I rode him harder and faster. He let go of one of my ass cheeks to grab my dick and stroke it in time with how our bodies moved together. I lost myself in the fiery sensations raining down on us as if we’d go up in smoke when we came. Our pleasure mingled together until I couldn’t tell what I really felt and what was pleasure dripping from my mate. I came hard, covering his belly in the proof of my pleasure as his throbbing cock twitched inside my ass. I rode him harder as I clung to him still riding out the waves of pleasure surfing through my cells. He came hard a second later, filling me up with his warm, sticky seed. He kissed my forehead and then my nose before finally whispering that he loved me and claiming my lips with a hard kiss. His warmth and satisfaction spilled into me over our mating link. I kissed him hard, taking it all in. This is what our forever would feel like. Our forever would be us living in the space between the crushing realities of life and the soft, sweet cocoon our love wove aroundus. I prayed that everyone I knew would find this space somehow someday.

Chapter Nineteen

Casimir

It was as if our egg waited until we accomplished actually sealing the deal on our claiming vows before it came out. After Tritus laid our egg, I didn’t go beyond the backyard except to pick up or drop off Casalona but, while I was gone, Tritus kept his end of our mating link wide open. Every instinct I had to fight against while Melon nested, Tritus embraced. He didn’t mind me fussing around with the structure of the nest and adding new bits and pieces whenever I spotted a place that didn’t feel secure enough. I polished our egg, night and day. When we could, we both stayed inside with our pink egg.

While we didn’t let visitors into the house, we did set up a screen to call Ren. A couple times a week she’d show up for the call. My sister’s eyes sparkled whenever she saw the egg that was her-colored growing in our nest. She was still where she had been when I left Earthside but some of Tritus’s hope leaked onto me. Maybe she would come back as the Ren we all knew and loved one day. Only, for me she was always going to be that Ren. Woman or dragon, she was my sister, and I wished she could share more of my life and I of hers like things had been when we were younger. Life wasn’t fair, but sometimes you got something just outside of fair and had to make peace with it. Tritus was right. As long as she was alive there was hope for her.

After seeing Zayton and Ren’s human form in my memories, Tritus commissioned a painting of us and Castor for my birthday. The artist had somehow captured every detail of us. It took me way too long to realize that’s because Tritus could show him over the flight link. That painting hung over our nest so that our hatchling would know they had a huge family who lovedthem – near and far, on this world and others, and on both sides of the doors of life and death.

I missed Castor and the rest of the crew while we sequestered ourselves away, but my dragon needed that time and space to heal. Like me, he’d been through too much. He had to do too much, and this was his chance to start over too. So, we lay around with our mate and watched our egg grow more each day until finally the day before Ren’s birthday our little girl cracked her way out of it by giving the inner lining of the shell a nice, hard headbutt. We startled from our nap to find our baby face down in the nest wailing her heart out and flailing her limbs as if she were disappointed that we hadn’t hosted a welcoming party.

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