Page 62 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

I'd expected Mac to watch his usual true crime documentaries and violent action movies, but our developing babies could hear inside their shells. He found a docuseries about Earth's animals, and we watched it together with our eggs.

"This is rather violent," I said after a lioness took down a gazelle and dragged it back to her young and the rest of their pride.

"It's no different from a dragon hunting a bovinji," he said.

I wanted to argue, but he was right. Seeing our pile of carcasses waiting to be dressed and cooked didn't give me the same gut reaction as watching the light go out of the prey's eyes.

"I'm glad I don't make eye contact with my prey," I grumbled. "I would have starved."

Mac laughed and patted my thigh. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something but shook his head. "I'm glad you're alive."

We spent that first day wrapped around our eggs, the warming spell keeping all of us toasty in a corner of our nest. I gathered the bedding around us, so we weren't lying on the cold stone, and then we settled in for the long months. While the gestation cave wasn't cold, we were getting closer to the rainy season, where the clouds would hover over the mountains for days before the sun peaked out again.

My paragon and siblings visited us when promised. They entered the depression in the rocky floor made by thousands of dragons circling around their eggs in this same nest. They rummaged around in the bedding for some cushions and pillows for makeshift seating.

They seemed to enjoy their kobold/human hybrid forms as much as I liked mine. Lux chose a beta form instead of an alpha, and my paragon continued with a priestess form. Chance was an alpha kobold, like me. I had always felt closest to them growing up, too.

I hoped my siblings would stay, even after we hosted the dragon reunion. I wanted to relearn their personalities after such a long absence. "You will stay for the dragon reunion, won't you?"

"Wait," Mac said. "Since when are you planning a dragon reunion?"

"Since we arrived," Paragon said. "You've built such a lovely pavilion for us. Why wouldn't we want to celebrate it?"

"After your eggs hatch, of course," Lux said. "We want to throw a birthday party for them."

"And meet all the beta kobolds," Chance added. "And maybe watch them dance for us on their fields."

I had told them to stay away from the village until I could return with them. From this distance, I understood how they'd mistaken the recreation league games for dances of a sort.

"If we invited all betas, even the ones from the other villages, would they come?" I asked Mac.

"We can send the invitation and see," Mac said.

Only two other villages had supervising dragons, The Grid and The Drawbridge. Bale and Elder had been my only friends after my family left. Most of the other dragons lived far away from the kobolds now. After learning about the curse, it made sense that the villages without dragons also had no female kobolds.

"Tell them about fated mates," I said. "It will be one big mixer."

Mac grinned at me. "That would have gotten my attention." He grabbed his tablet and started a new email to all the village elders we'd visited over the past few years.

I had a hard time believing my family, the dragons who had burned entire kobold villages to the ground, were now planning to meet with all available kobold betas on Ignitas. For a moment, dread overwhelmed me. What if they intended to gather them for slaughter? It was my worst nightmare.

My paragon focused on me with their sharp glare. "Stop thinking that, this instant."

"You can read my mind, even in these forms?"

"You will, too, with time." They patted my shoulder and scooted closer to me. "Never again will I destroy what the kobolds have created. I acted rashly, I know. I was hurt when Goff left, and I didn't understand all the changes in the village. The first time I saw a motorized vehicle here, I thought they had replaced their dire weasels and dragonets, and it was only a matter of time before they replaced us, too."

"Replaced us?"

"There were only male and female kobolds before," Chance said. "When they split to alpha and omega pairings, and beta and female pairings, what need did they have for us?"

"When they said they no longer had time to worship us, I lost it." Paragon sighed. "I thought it was the end for us. And then Goff … left, and I burned every village between here and the Midnight Sea."

They had unshed tears in their eyes. I offered my hand, and they took it, holding it in both of theirs.

"He knew I would follow. He thought I would see the beauty in their villages, and it would stop me from destroying them." Tears left shiny streaks down their face. "I've lost him forever."

"Maybe not," Mac said. "If you truly want a kobold and dragon reunion, I'll share the information with all the villages we've visited. Maybe your mate will come."

---