Page 41 of Mated in the Stars

“Better than Selt?” I asked him.

“Probably. Selt isn’t horrible but Sunny’s known my egg brat a lot longer than Selt has.”

Later that night, we all woke up ravenous and dug into the deer smoking in the backyard. It was a midnight snack I’d never forget. All of us out there, tearing off chunks with our bare hands. Sometimes, dragons just need to eat.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Teddy

It took all my self-control I gained over the years not to bang down Sunny’s door. The weather on 2 was stormy with purple and green lightning bolts snatching at the sky. Rain poured down from buckets on me. I shivered like it might put of my fire any second now. I knocked quietly. Barely loud enough for them to hear but I didn’t want to wake up my god hatchlings if they were asleep. The kids needed all the rest they could get because the world was such a fucked-up place.

Before leaving home, I’d shoved a few days’ worth of clothes into a grocery bag. The first things I laid my hands on. I tried calling Duke before taking the shuttle over here, but he was out with his grand daughters, and I didn’t want to interrupt that either. One day, he might be gone and maybe today would’ve been their best memory of him if I didn’t fuck it up. So, I left them alone.

“Teddy?” Sunny’s sleepy voice called from the other side of the door as he undid the bolt. Laken might sleep with his door unlocked but Sunny was too much Clarence Moonscale’s kid to ever do that.

“It’s me!” I called back, trying to sound like my face wasn’t a storm of its own.

“Teddy? You’re fucking soaked, dude,” Sunny said, opening the door.

“My mum’s dead!” I shouted over the rain.

Of course she was dead! Sunny knew that! Sunny wasn’t all that born when she died. Dropping my grocery bag of clothes, I crashed into him and he caught me, stumbling back a few steps before we found our equilibrium. Laken appeared in the room,and I buried my face in Sunny’s chest. He grabbed my stuff off the porch and locked the door back up.

“I’ll put these in the dryer,” Laken said and disappeared again.

“I’m sorry. I know you have kids and stuff now. You have babies but my mum’s dead and I didn’t know where else to go. Nelum’s there all fucking safe and sound. It worked. She got back to Dad sort of, but my mum’s fucking dead and that man doesn’t change that!”

“I know,” Sunny nodded, tugging me over onto the sofa. “Come on. Stretch out. It’s gonna be okay. We’re going to get through this. We’ll get through it all.”

I clung to him because who else was there to cling to? Minter and Amaranth needed Dad. I knew all Selt’s problems but couldn’t imagine falling apart on him. Sunny had known me longer than anyone besides Dad and my siblings. So I clung to him because everyone was just dying or would die. Either they’d disappear on me or I’d die and leave them and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Sunny sniffled as I buried my face in his chest again, seeking out his heartbeat because I needed the reminder that we were alive. That for now we were alive and here and that had to count for something. Sunny cradled my head, and I let him as everything inside me tore me apart. The Starscale Flight link flooded him with my worries and thoughts, and I felt so fucking childish, but my mum was dead and one day everyone I loved would be dead too. Or I’d die and leave them. My thoughts spiraled and I held onto Sunny until I couldn’t hold onto anything anymore.

“I got you. I’m here,” Sunny whispered. “Laken and me? We’re not going anywhere, Teddy.”

Everything faded to black. Later, when I woke up, I’d wonder how Sunny managed to wiggle out from under my death grip.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Fred

Two weeks was all it took to prepare for a trip to Earthside. Clarence sent over a midwife to vaccinate both of the kids and both of my mates. Vaccinations had saved countless lives on Earthside, and I wasn’t risking some long-ago virus stealing half my family from me because they weren’t protected. While the Earthside healer was there, Izora swung by to show off his new pocket-sized sonic. The new healer was so young that I didn’t recognize her. Izora hadn’t worked with her either, but he was just as excited to show off the gadget as if he knew the other healer his whole life.

After all the medical stuff was done and I distracted Minter from headbutting Izora in ‘revenge’ for ‘stabbing’ him. We sat down for a good cup of tea straight from London. I was never a big tea drinker back in the day. I still preferred coffee, but that tea tasted like home.

Minter tottered off, bored of adult conversations while Elio held Baby Amaranth to his chest. Izora had been invited back by quite a few medical school professors to speak with their students, but he passed on every invitation. He wasn’t about to leave his mate, Nycto, behind.

“And I’m not taking him over there either,” Izora shook his head when the subject came up. “I don’t want my kids to see some of what happens over there. I don’t want Nycto to read a newspaper from over there. I’ve found living with most of my neighbors and all of my in-laws being wild non-shifting dragons to be a much more civilized experience than living surrounded by the remains of the human laws and other shifters. This is home now. Besides, we’re already talking about our next egg.”

“I check you!” Minter tottered back in with Izora’s tiny sonic in hand pointed it at Elio. It buzzed and the light on top turned red. “You!” he pointed it at Nelum and clicked the trigger again. It lit up green with a chime.

“Huh?” Nelum looked down at his stomach, setting aside his tea.

“Can I see that, buddy?” Izora asked him.

“You stab!” Minter said and tottered away to hand it to me. “He mean!”

“Oh, baby,” I said, setting the sonic aside and scooping up my toddler. “He’s not mean. He gave you medicine.”

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