Page 31 of Mated in the Stars

“Ah! You wound me with that judgmental look,” I smirked. “Three. Blake, Lotus, and Elio. Don’t ask my body count. Unless you mean kill count. That would probably impress you but the other one, eh, people have mixed reactions.”

“As long as you didn’t have babies with all of them,” Nelum laughed. “You made it sound like Blake had his own boyband mate but did he fight with Lotus?”

“They were best friends before I ever met Lotus,” I shook my head. “She helped us navigate a lot of the situations that arose.”

“Hi, Elio,” Nelum waved.

“Oh! Babe! How long have you been standing there?” I glanced up at the doorway to see Elio standing there still naked.

“A bit,” Elio shrugged. “It was nice listening to you two talk about everything.”

“I think you’ve heard all my stories by now. All the good ones at least,” I laughed, reaching my hand out for him to join us. He rounded the bed and opened the nightstand drawer. Elio had been on birth control since his c-section. We hadn’t wanted to risk another egg so soon, especially with possible complications. We would have another egg brat in the future but we both needed some time to plan how that might go. Still, we had condoms in the nightstand drawer. He opened it and slid onto the bed on the other side of Nelum.

“Time for the egg talk, huh?” I laughed.

“Egg talk? I’ve been around other eggs before,” Nelum said. “I know what to do and what not to do.”

“Not that egg talk,” Elio chuckled. “Do you want hatchlings? I know we talked about it a bit before, but this has to be a conversation we’re all involved in. While it’s most likely that Fred would get you or I pregnant, it’s possible that one of us could get the other pregnant. It’s less heard of but we wouldn’t be the first omegas it happened with. I’m on birth control and have the backup meds in the cabinet from before too. I know I don’t want to lay another egg right now. The last one took a lot out of me because of the c-section and everything.”

Nelum stared at the ceiling for a long moment, and I waited for him to blush. He’d blushed at almost everything else, but he didn’t smell embarrassed or flustered. Instead, his scent was pensive as if he considered Elio’s question from every angle.

“And you don’t get to tell us what you think we want to hear either,” Elio said. “We can’t help you with what you want if you don’t let us know what that really is.”

“I’m considering a few things. How are the dragons here with dragons who don’t look like them? I don’t want to have hatchlings who never fit in,” Nelum said.

“There are now a few babies on world who aren’t dragons,” Elio said. “We’re all one flight. I don’t know how much of the Starscale history you know. Yes, we left Earthside to find our own world but not because of furry shifters, vampires, or something. We left because the humans were horrible tyrants who thought they were the be all, end all of everything. They were greedy and violent and even the best of them couldn’t admit that they only cared about people who were carbon copies of themselves. We wanted more than that for ourselves. Our ancestors wanted a place where we could live like normal people – you know, in a community where we actually cared and were all invested in our mutual survival and thriving. Sorry to get up on my soapbox, but I think a furry dragon would do fine here. Maybe they’d be too warm and need a hair trim in the summer but socially? They’d be fine.”

“And our hatchlings could still visit your home world too,” I added on. “The Other World gateway is here now and it’s not going anywhere unless someone really pisses Liatris off.”

“Selt or Xav would eat their faces,” Elio laughed.

“Or Teddy,” I added on.

“Or anyone who wants to explore somewhere else,” Nelum said.

“Any other questions?” Elio said, resting his hand on the lean, muscular plain of Nelum’s stomach.

“Would two or three eggs at one time be too much?” Nelum asked.

“Do dragons where you come from normally have multiples?”

“Not always. Maybe not even usually, but there is a good chance even if I lay one egg, we’d have two at the same time.”

“I can handle that,” I nodded. “Two isn’t that bad. Even three is doable. Four would be a stretch but we’d make it work.”

“Well, three eggs and Minter would be four,” Elio chuckled.

“I think we could handle it, though. I think we could handle a house full of hatchlings,” I said. “I think it’s good to have them in batches close in age. That way even if they’re not the pure definition of a clutch, they’ll socialize as one.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Nelum said.

“It’s easier to have multiples here than in some places, I think,” I told him. “Here, food is a given. They have a lot of social safety nets in place that would help out if we all three burnt out at once.”

“Plus Teddy, the crew, and Marsin and them too,” Elio added.

“And my parents would take the kids sometimes too,” Nelum nodded.

“Not my parents. They’re fuckers,” I sat up.

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