Page 19 of Mated in the Stars

“I better be,” Sunny grumbled. “You might want to get dressed or whatever you do to get ready, Nelum. Fred and Elio are coming over. Teddy won’t be around to save you from Xav either if he comes with them. He’s staying with the egg and Minter.”

“Xav hates me,” I laughed.

“Xav doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t trust you. He’s been through some shit – some double shit at that,” Laken frowned. “Once we know who you’re with everyone will trust you a lot more.”

“You trust me,” I arched my brows.

“I do because I know I can kick your ass. So, I trust myself more than I trust anyone else. I could kick your ass with this baby still on my ni---” Sunny squeezed his shoulder and Laken fell quiet. “Yeah, I’m going to have to go back to the arena soon.”

“No arena until those hormones level out, mate,” Sunny teased and kissed the top of his head. “Don’t want you accidentally snapping someone in half. Maybe Frey can come over and wrestle you or something.”

“You don’t get to watch.”

“Such a shame,” Sunny growled and kissed his temple.

“How long until Fred and Elio show up?” Laken asked.

“Eh, not too long. He said like an hour,” Sunny said.

“You,” he pointed to me. “You’ve been here long enough. You’re on a baby duty for about twenty minutes.”

“Huh?” I blinked as he stood up and passed the baby off to me. “Okay, maybe an hour. I don’t know.”

Sunny smirked and tugged Laken’s hand and they both disappeared down the hallway. I stared down at the tiny baby in my arms and wondered which one he was. It didn’t really matter. All babies more or less looked the same to me. He wasn’t ugly but he wasn’t as cute as everyone said babies were. Maybe you had to have your own babies before all those fuzzy, floofyfeelings kicked in. Still, I didn’t mind helping out. We were all tiny, helpless creatures at one point in our lives.

***

An hour later, Sunny and Laken had taken their children back and went off down the hall for a nap. I sorta wished that Laken stayed up to toss one of them off to whatever ice garter he had threatened to if things went south.

“At least they won’t call us mummy,”my dragon muttered inside my thoughts when the doorbell rang.

I almost didn’t answer it. I almost left them standing outside. Sooner or later, Sunny would come sprinting through the house to get the door. I mean, I didn’t actually live here. I stayed here as a favor to Teddy. Though, since he let my dinner go free about a week ago, I figured he owed me a favor more than I owed him one.

For a fraction of a second, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet my true-mates at all. Most normal people had one. Up until recently I had been a pretty normal guy for where I came from. I understood Fred, Elio, and Lotus’s backstory but that’s all it was to me: a story.

“Sunny?” A deep voice called through the door.

“Coming!” I called, praying he hadn’t woken up the babies.

“That’s not Sunny,” another man said.

“I think that’s him,” the deeper voiced guy said.

“Him who?” I called back because despite Laken’s warning, I couldn’t not be an asshole.

One of them laughed and I smiled despite the tightening of my insides. Everything inside me wanted to scream or run away from them or maybe toward them? I wasn’t sure which option was the scariest.

“Him you apparently,” the deeper voiced man called back.

“Him who you? Fuck! I mean, which one are you?” I asked, putting my hand against the dark, wooden door as if that would pause time long enough for me to figure out what to do.

“I’m Fred,” the deeper voiced man said.

I let myself stay quiet and take a long, deep breath. I couldn’t smell either of them. The Starscales had a way of hiding their scents almost everywhere they went. This extended to not smelling people outside the house while you were inside. Back home, I’d have called this a safety issue but here crime seemed not to exist. You could walk into any store and eat whatever as long as you told the person at the counter who you were and what you were taking so they could update their records.

“And I’m Elio,” the other dragon said after I was silent for a beat too long.

“I’m Nelum,” I managed to say. “I’m going to open the door, but I want to say some stuff first, okay?”

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