Page 65 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

"I'm surprised you can eat spiced meat, after what happened."

Galen tensed, and we both knew what the older dragon meant. Galen had told me the story many times, how the kobold priestess had brought them a bovinji roast covered in spices and sleeping herbs.

"Sorry for scrying," Lux whispered. "I had to know how you were doing. You were so small, and you looked so lost when we left."

Galen frowned at their paragon. "You knew when they raised the changeling circle?"

Their paragon reached to pat Galen's cheek, but they pulled their head inside the blanket like a turtle.

"We were too far away to do anything about it," their paragon said. "I knew from the ingredients, they hadn't tried to kill you."

"That doesn't make your story any better," Galen said.

I hurried to the sink with the dishes, not wanting to be in the middle of a dragon fight, if it came to that.

"Thank you for the lovely dinner, Mac!" Lux shouted a few moments later.

"We will be back in a week," I heard one of the others say to Galen over the rush of water in the sink.

They were gone when I returned to the nest. "Are you all right?" I asked as I peeled back the covers and took my place on the opposite side of our eggs.

"They knew, and they didn't care." Galen sighed. "I spent so much of my life worried they would see what the priestess had done and kill me for failing them, but they knew this whole time."

I shifted Galen's hand from sitting atop the dragon egg to pressed against my chest. I felt my heartbeat beneath their palm. I only hoped they could feel it, too.

"I'm sorry they left you behind. I know that made you feel a lot of unnecessary anxiety."

"So much." They sniffled. "I worried about everything, thinking I wasn't living up to their expectations."

"You didn't let that worry cripple you," I said.

"I did, until I met you." They coughed. "Well, when I smelled you on Punky and Lark, anyway."

"You're being too hard on yourself. You lived without them for a century. Those dragon books said our baby dragon won't be considered an adult until their final molt."

"I had my final molt less than a year ago." Galen nodded. "That doesn't make me feel better. What was so wrong with me that they couldn't take me with them?"

"Nothing was wrong with you," I said. "There were too few dragons."

Galen snorted a puff of smoke but stayed silent.

"They worried there would be even fewer dragons if they didn't go searching for kobold betas to mate," I continued. "You weren't old enough to mate, and someone needed to stay at the fortress, The Spike," I amended, using their word for my home, "to keep the kobolds in line. You did more than that. You befriended Punky and Lark, and Coz and Grindl. You gave Axel the idea for the dragon pavilion and gave us back the sunlight. For centuries, kobold children will learn about Galen the Great in school."

"I thought it was Galen the Grumpy," they chided.

"Galen the Great and Grumpy," I compromised with a grin. Galen had been so serious about their obligations to all dragons and to their family, but they'd done so much more by being themself.

"I am so proud of you," I said. "No one else can take credit for how well dragons and kobolds get along all over Ignitas, now that we've traveled to the other villages and made amends. That's all you." If any of Galen's family tried to take ownership of their accomplishments, I would learn to breathe fire at them myself.

Galen caressed my cheek and then laced our fingers together atop our kobold egg. My arm fell asleep before I did, but I didn't care. I would do anything for them.

* * *

Emails from kobold villages all over Ignitas rolled into my inbox. The villages with dragons were the first to respond. Of course they would come to the first dragon reunion in almost two centuries. The villages with priestesses were almost as fast, though they gave us more information, like the number of betas who would attend to see if they could find their fated mates.

I wondered why they were so quick to hook up with a dragon, but then I reread the email I'd written in haste after Galen's paragon first mentioned the reunion. When describing the betas' fated mates, I'd somehow inconveniently left "dragon" out.

I responded to those emails with a correction. I couldn't in good conscience let them think they were going to the usual alpha/omega meet-ups, only to find themselves in an audience with all the unmatched dragons on Ignitas.

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