Page 33 of Omega Haunting

Despite his shaky hands and his rush to get towels and hot water, Marsin took a second to laugh at my joke. That was the real test of a good mate. Could they laugh with you even when you were down to the wire? If fate didn’t allow me to live out my life and to be an old wolf, grey and white in the muzzle, I hoped to die laughing with Marsin. It wouldn’t make up for all the missed years but at least it would be a good last memory to carry into the Other World with me.

“Hey! No thinking about that! We’re going to live to be so old that you’re toothless from age and I lose all my scales!” Marsin said, sticking his head back under the bed. “Those are the rules.”

“Green!”I whimpered over our mating link.

“Green for? Talking? Being a smart ass?”

“Yes! Green!”

“And we’re gonna have so many pups that you don’t even have time to think about any doors unless it’s the backdoor where all the paw prints are,”Marsin continued.“We’ll have so many kids that your parents will finally buy that land behind the farm they keep eyeing just so we have somewhere to keep them all.”

“I hope you’re planning on carrying some of these kids.”

“If I could carry your baby I would,”Marsin said, and I sniffed the air.

He wasn’t lying. It was easier to offer to do something that was impossible, but I let it go. Starscale Dragons were a different breed and for all I knew he’d actually do it given the chance to put his money where his mouth was. Either way, he spent the next six hours cooing to me, massaging my belly, and feeding me the tiniest star-shaped ice cubes. They were fucking adorable and do you know how cute something has to be for someone in labor to notice they’re fucking adorable? They were that damn cute. Then again, maybe that was all the love hormones hitting my brain at once.

Those six hours might as well have been six days, six weeks, or six years because it was only much later I was told how long I was in labor with Baby Raylin. Six freaking hours.

But those six freaking hours were worth it once my grey little wolf pup with scales around his eyes and nose was suckling at my belly. He was beautiful and he was ours. He smelled healthy and had all the parts that one expected to find on a wolf pup even if his little eyes weren’t open yet.

“He’s so fucking perfect,” Marsin cooed, running a single big finger down Baby Raylin’s back. “You did so well. You’re so strong.”

He was laying it on thick, but I didn’t stop him. If there was anytime in life where developing a praise kink was appropriate itwas during childbirth and squeezing out a baby watermelon. So he could just keep the complements coming and he did until we both dozed off with our baby. Marsin wrapped his big draconic wings around both of us, putting us in a cocoon together. This was the good life. This was the life I worked my ass off for. This was the reason I was so willing to talk to Dern’s apple. Maybe I was a crazy wolf. Hell, maybe you had to be a crazy wolf to get fate’s attention and find your mate. It all worked out in the end, though didn’t it?

My thoughts had softened into a gooey, dreamlike state when someone banged on the door like they had the shits and we were tucked away inside the only bathroom in the house. Marsin chuckled at the joke but didn’t register the knock.

“Alpha,”I hissed over our mating link.“I think I need you to eat someone.”

He started to sit up, but I knocked his head back down onto the pillow with my paw until he remembered we were under the bed.

THUD! THUD! Whack!

The door crashed open, and I heard my mother growl. Teddy cursed and wings swept through the air.

“What the fuck?” Marsin swung out from under the bed. “Stay here!”

Magic crackled through the air and moved so I laid on top of Baby Raylin. The door slammed shut and the metal scraped against metals as the screws wound back into their rightful homes inside the hinges. The whole damn room smelled like metal and an angry omega.

“Dern?” I yipped.

“Sorry, y’all, but this is the way it has to be. We’re going to wait things out.”

Marsin growled and his feet disappeared from view. Dern dodged and snarled, “Call off your attack lizard, pup! I have agun and I’m not afraid to shoot him! I promised I wouldn’t hurt you, but I never made any such promise about him!”

My heart skipped a beat. The rest of the house was in chaos, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t leave Baby Raylin alone and from my angle under the bed I couldn’t even reach Dern’s boot clad toes. No! No! NO! No! NO!

“What do you want?” I growled.

“I have to do this for Ormund. We’ll just wait it out. If Marsin here calms his scaley balls down we can talk! I’m not some crazy old hound! I’m not imagining things! Just because you’re a witch doesn’t mean you know everything there is to know! I won’t have my story told like that and we won’t let Ormund’s promise go unfulfilled!”

“You’re fucking crazy!” Marsin roared and I cringed.

“Please don’t get shot! Please don’t get shot! We just had a baby! Please don’t get shot!”I chanted over our mating link.

“No one’s gonna make up the fact you were crazy because you are crazy! You’re insane! Who barges into a room with a fucking newborn in their own damn pack, waving a gun around like a fucking madman!”

Could dragons get shot? Could bullets pass through scales? I wish I paid more attention in shifter biology in school.

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