Page 39 of Mated in the Stars

“What’s up?” Fred asked, his scent turning to worry.

“That stuff I left for myself on Earthside. I think I need to see it,” I said, following him across the lawn to the designated place to clean and skin hunts.

“Okay. Clarence found the easiest way between here and Earthside, that’s definitely something we could do. Now, it’s my turn to feel like an asshole, though,” he said and met my gaze.

“We have to wait until the egg hatches. Maybe mine too if I lay before then. I don’t want to get stuck on Earthside. I mean, it’s probably not a bad place…. Actually, I don’t know why I don’t want to get stuck over there,” I laughed.

“Being stuck anywhere but home feels like a pain in the ass.”

“I don’t know that I want to be stuck in her life, honestly,” I admitted after taking a second to think about it.

“We wouldn’t stay in London. We’d get things taken care of and then we’d visit somewhere else. Probably the GGB. If we got stuck, I’d rather be stuck there. We could have a fresh start or at least a real vacation. Then we could come home after our egg hatches.”

“The place with the dancing place,” I smirked.

“Yep. Glitter Bomb. My eldest was conceived above that club. Hell, I think a lot of babies were conceived in that clubapartment over the years. I think one of my cousin’s kids live there now. So, maybe more babies are being conceived there. It sort of tickles me to have built something that breathed literal life into a place.”

“FRED! GET THE KIDS!” Elio shouted from inside the house.

The yard filled up with dragons instantly as if every warrior was summoned to a battlefield that I hadn’t known about. Teddy flitted past us, his wings outstretched with Minter on his hip, gripping onto a neon green crayon for dear life.

“What’s wrong?” I grabbed Freddie’s hand.

“It’s the egg!” Elio shouted again, quieter this time and almost everyone stopped in their tracks.

Running into someone’s nesting room uninvited wasn’t a good idea. Before I had time to ask if I was invited to watch the baby hatch, Freddie scooped me up over his shoulder and sprinted toward the house.

“Spray down with the hose first! You’re not dragging guts into the nest!” Elio called out as Teddy and Minter slipped into the house.

Marsin, Elio’s brother, was there to spray us down without much warning. I cursed like a sailor in the language of my birth but Freddie only laughed as the water drenched us. Inside the house, I stopped to change but Freddie didn’t bother. I guess water was allowed in the nest.

Chapter Twenty-One

Elio

My heart skipped a beat as the baby’s foot kicked its way out of its red shell and Teddy and Minter scrambled into the nest like a pair of little kids who had never seen an egg hatch before. As far as I knew, that was only true for one of them. Still, I didn’t want Teddy to miss the hatching of his newest sibling. Especially, not after what he and Fred had discussed. Minter was gonna miss that dragon something fierce when he took a hiatus to get himself straightened out. I pushed the thought away and focused on my youngest working their way out of the eggshell.

“Oof! Oof!” Minter said, bobbing his head back and forth as the foot disappeared, withdrawn back inside the shell. “Oof! Where go?”

“They’re figuring things out,” Teddy laughed.

“Me look in hole?” Minter asked, but Teddy and I both took one of his hands in ours.

“We have to let them figure it out,” Teddy reminded him.

“Just look!” Minter insisted, trying to pull away.

He squeaked a second later, when a sopping wet Fred scooped him up and stepped into the nest.

“Let’s not spy on them yet, kiddo,” he said, sitting down with the baby on his lap. “I’m sure they’ll figure it out.”

“And they might poke you in the eye if you look,” Teddy teased him.

“Color the baby,” Minter said, snatching his dropped neon green crayon up from the nest floor.

“No, we’re not coloring the baby,” I said as an arm came out of the hole, a little hand groping around for something to hold onto. The little hand found Teddy’s big toe as Nelum climbedinto the nest on my other side. Teddy sat up, ramrod straight, as Nelum settled in. I wasn’t sure whether his anxious scent was induced by Nelum or the baby grabbing onto him. Maybe it was both.

“Come on!” Minter cheered! “Get out of there! We’re having ‘moked’ deer soon!”

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