Page 63 of The Monster at the End of This Molt

While Robin tucked our little ones into bed around the remaining egg, I pulled up their group chat on my phone. I didn't have a text history with Clem, or Robin's brothers, for that matter, but I had labeled each with their names. I started a new private message to her while Robin blew up the group chat with pictures.

"The next time you stop by, I need a little magic refresher. How soon before they can light the house on fire?"

"Ha ha,"she responded."I think I set my first fire after my third molt."

"Sounds dangerous."

"I know this is for a bet. I'm feeling sorry for you because you bet against Robin. Just so you know, he always wins."

I didn't doubt that in the least."I don't mind losing to him, as long as I get to keep him."

Clementine didn't have a comeback for that, only a"See you when I see you. If I don't learn something new in the first five minutes, I'll bail."

"Deal."

If she stayed longer than five minutes, I would consider myself a pretty damn good teacher.

In the meantime, I needed to learn what it meant to be a father, beyond the deep love coursing through my body. I’d never felt anything so pure and absolute, except maybe the first time I’d seen Robin. I’d been afraid to love my first clutch, and we’d lost them. Now, I already loved them too damn much, even our little girl who had yet to show her face.

ChapterTwenty-Three

Robin

Two days later,a solid crack woke us. Outside our window, stars still hung in the sky.

"I would call you an early bird," Weld whispered, "But you're late."

They'd been two long days, and while we both called our littlest egg our daughter, we hadn't yet given her a name. For me, it was superstition. I didn't want to give the dragon goddess a reason to curse us again.

As silly as Weld thought I was, he hadn't called her by the name he'd picked out, either. We'd talked about names the first night after I'd laid them, and I had blanked. When I offered Weld the job of naming our kids, he'd taken it and run with it. If it had been up to me, I would have fretted over them and possibly generated less slick because of it. I didn't want that kind of responsibility.

I was grateful for Weld’s thoughtfulness. Our boys' names were delightfully strange, as all kobold names should be.

My siblings and I had unusually human-sounding names. I'd always been envious of the Aragorns and Rosencrantzes of Ignitas. Our boys wouldn't have to worry about that. Nobody would forget a Boober, Wembley, or Gobo.

Thanks to her two-day delay, no one would forget our little girl, either, no matter her name. I had a feeling Weld would tack "The Late" to whatever name he gave her.

With the delay, we'd kept the nest in the middle of our bed. The boys snuggled around the base. Only Wembley had stirred from the loud crack, but the other two had perked up when Weld spoke. They must have sensed their sister needed space. Wembley and Boober crawled into my lap, and Gobo climbed up Weld's bare chest to sit on his shoulder, leaving scratch marks that Weld healed over with a brush of his hand, his focus solely on our remaining egg.

Nothing happened. Fifteen minutes went by. The stars vanished from the horizon and the sky outside turned lighter and lighter blue until the sun had fully risen. Still, no movement from our egg.

"Is she okay?" I asked

Darkness fell over our window again, and a loud bang echoed through the room.

Weld frowned at his dragonet through the glass. "Is she waiting for him?"

Kermit was smaller than Slate, but his wings wouldn't collapse close enough to his body to allow him to fit through the door. He could stick his long neck in through the window, though. I handed the babies off to Weld and hopped up to inspect.

The window didn't open, and there was no easy way to remove it from its casing. Sensing the magic Axel had used to hold it in place, I traced my index finger along the inside edge. Carefully, I peeled back the spell, and Kermit nudged the glass, tipping it into my grasp. I shuffled it over to lean it against our closet door.

Kermit didn't wait for me. He snaked his head inside and rested it upon our bed, his snout inches from the egg. Another heavy crack sounded, and a thick vertical line appeared. With another crack, a chunk of the eggshell fell away, and Kermit scooped it up, depositing it in his inter-dimensional space.

"He wants to carry a piece of her with him, always." Weld placed both of his hands over the center of his chest, where his connections with me and the dragonet both nestled beside his heart.

I settled back on the bed beside him. He reached for my hand and held it to his chest, too, but he never lifted his gaze from the egg.

The egg shivered and shook, all while Kermit watched from his side of the nest and we watched from ours. Another crack split down the side closest to me, and that section of the egg fell away. Our little girl looked a lot like an omega, with dark hair and greenish-brown stripes, but so had Clementine when she was born. Weld tipped her over to confirm, and whispered, "Hi, Mokey."

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