Page 70 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

"I will help your siblings find their mates," Paragon said, "and then I will pick one of the ancestor caves as my own. I wish your father was here to see it. He always liked the one that looks like a dragon. I told him I hated it, but the priestesses have kept it clean over the years. Now that you've disbanded them, I can pick up where they left off."

"Are you mad about the priestesses, and the temple?" I asked.

They shook their head. "No. Dragons don't need to be worshiped. We also don't need to worry about how quickly these new kobolds reproduce. Several dragon planes have no kobolds. It will take millennia to repopulate them all."

I had more questions about the other planes, but I didn't want to stay too long away from our babies. "We'll talk more tomorrow," I said. "Tell Chance and Lux I can't wait to see them."

Paragon rubbed their snout against mine, the same way they'd done when I was little. "I will. Take care of those babies for me!" I closed my eyes against the downforce from their wings, and then I shrank back into my kobold alpha form. I patted the little dragonet still huddled resolutely by the door and returned to our nest.

Our little ones were still wrapped around each other on their sides. Mac stood over them with his tablet, snapping picture after picture.

Once he sent them to all our friends, we lay on either side of the little nest, facing each other above the blankets. Our babies were more compact now than they had been in their eggs.

I reached across the expanse and caressed Mac's cheek before resting my hand on his shoulder. We fell asleep like that, curled around our babies in our love nest.

ChapterTwenty-Five

Mac

With both a koboldand a dragon baby, I'd worried Galen would give more time and attention to Slate and leave me to worry about Opal. The opposite happened, instead. Galen spent so much time with our little girl, I worried she wasn't getting enough time with Slate. The curious little dragon followed me everywhere, which made it easy to include them in bath time, meal prep, and even taking out the garbage. They stopped short of following the bovinji and beef bones over the steep ledge into the refuse pile.

I'd noticed a wild dragonet flying around our trash and wondered if she was the one responsible for Sunny's hatchlings. I hadn't seen them in months. I had a feeling they weren't little anymore.

Dragonets left our larger kobold children alone, but I didn't know what she would do with our babies. I made it my mission to catch her so I wouldn't have to find out.

I had help. Rapture followed us each time we left the cave. If Slate strayed too far, he herded them closer to me with wings spread and long neck guiding them.

The fresh bones were too tasty for the wild dragonet to resist. She swooped in after I threw a handful into the pile, picking them out one by one.

This was my chance. I still had a few bones in the lined grocery bag slung over my shoulder. I gathered Slate from where they and Rapture had been playing and took them back inside.

"I'm going to catch her and take her to the barn," I told Galen on my way back out. "I'll let Han and Sunny know Rapture is staying with us, too."

Galen shook their head. "I don't like you leaving, but it will be easier to catch her now." The ancestral birthing cave sat atop a ridge of mountains. The bone pit was a narrow dip between three peaks. I assumed that was the main reason the cave was left for temporary use instead of a permanent residence. The times between uses allowed for most of the bones to decay, but daily use would pile up quickly.

The small area worked to my advantage. I removed Rapture's harness and tucked it in my hand in a way that would be easy to slip it over the wild dragonet's head. Rapture and I flew to an adjoining peak, and I tossed the remaining bones into the pit.

She was too hungry to care there was another dragonet nearby. She lunged for the bones, and we swooped from the peak.

As much as I wanted to think I hopped from Rapture's back and landed gracefully on the wild dragonet, it probably looked more like falling to the untrained eye. It felt like falling, too, with how hard my tailbone hit her spine. She roared and spit fire into the bone pile, but Rapture had already wheeled away, headed back to protect our little home away from home if I failed to capture and tame her.

Glory. I would name her Glory.

She was still hungry. I eased into our bond by offering her a snack back at the paddock, and then, all the food she could eat for a few days until she returned to her full adult weight.

Our bond snapped into place at the promise of food. The temporary bond between us would be easy to pass to anyone willing to give her a treat.

Through our bond, I showed her where I wanted to go, to the dragonet barn. She already knew of it, which reinforced my guess that she was the mother of Sunny's hatchlings. She probably followed them at a distance, too afraid to attack the little kobold child with her baby dragonets in his pockets.

I felt a stab of anxiety for my own babies. I wouldn't want anyone to come along and take them from their nest, either. I passed my empathy along to her and reassured her she would see them again. If there had been any fight left in her before our brief discussion, it disappeared at the mention of her little ones.

When we landed, I gave her a jerky snack. When she followed me to the closed barn door, I gave her another. Han answered my knock, surprised to see me. "What are you doing here? Your little girl hasn't molted yet!"

"I couldn't resist the chance to bring another dragonet home to roost. This is Glory."

Han knew the drill with dragonets. He had a pocketful of snacks ready and handed her yet another one for being such a patient girl while Sunny pushed the door open for us.

"This is their mom!" Sunny recognized her right away. "Here! We'll take them out to the paddock so they can be reacquainted."

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