Page 10 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

I dropped it into her outstretched hand, and she scampered back to her parents, handing the gold off to Lark before hiding behind Punky's legs.

"What do you say to Galen, Clementine?" Lark asked.

"Scary Galen," she said. "He said he was going to eat me!"

"He was joking!" Even while leading a high-strung dragonet out of the barn's bay door, Mac tried to cover for me.

"I was joking, little Clementine," I reassured her. "I wouldn't tell you where I got the gold because I don't want to eat you."

She stepped out from behind Punky and gave a sharp nod of her head in my direction. "Good."

"Are we all arranged?" Mac asked. "You all still look like kobolds to me."

"We'll only need a sixteen-hour spell," Lark said. "There's enough gold here to pay for a world cruise, Galen. Are you sure?"

It was one nugget from a cave lined with gold. If I wanted more, all I had to do was knock a chunk off the wall. "I'm sure."

I had a feeling my kobold father had stolen some of my paragon's gold to pay for trips to Earth behind our backs. Without either party available to confirm, I had no way of knowing. I didn't know if I was fixing past mistakes or making them worse.

* * *

Punky and Lark combined their power into a spell strong enough for their family of six for sixteen hours. Their glamour spell was powerful, but I could see through it. I was glad. I wouldn't have been able to tell my friends apart. Human families all looked alike, according to Mac. To me, that only made it harder to tell them apart with my human sense of smell.

Finally, it was my turn to travel to Earth to see what all the fuss was about. We hopped on our respective mounts. Mac directed the dragonet to follow Lark's dire weasel, Odessa, since she knew where we were going.

This wasn't my first time to another plane besides Ignitas, but I had been a young dragon then. My family and I had gone to a world filled with islands and clear water teaming with fish. It had been the most beautiful place I'd ever seen.

I hugged Mac to me as the sky seemed to brighten with the light of a million stars at once, and then it dimmed to the deepest black. I stared into nothingness, and it stared back, finding my loneliness and exploiting it. I couldn't feel Mac against me anymore, and I panicked.

I opened my eyes to find the dragonet had turned into a large vehicle like the van the cartoon ghost hunters used. The spell was complex, similar to my shape changing spell. I wondered what it looked like on the outside.

"The dragonet's name is Rapture," Mac said. He stared at me, waiting for my response while our mount sped into unknown territory.

I had fallen asleep during the magician movie last night, curled around Mac to keep him warm. Rapture sounded like a spell. I didn't know what kind of spell, so I admitted defeat. "I don't get it."

"During the rapture, Christians believe they'll be transported to a place called heaven immediately when their savior returns. That's where all the good people go."

"You've named our interplanar vehicle after a religious transportation term," I guessed.

Mac chuckled and nodded. "Yes. You've been raptured!"

I shook my human head on my very short neck and sighed. "You are silly."

"Is that what the kids are calling brave and foolish these days?"

"I am not a kid." I chafed every time he hinted at my youth. I was almost two centuries older than he was, after all. Who was he to call me a kid?

"It's a saying, dearest. I meant no harm."

He sat so far away on the opposite end of the bench seat. I couldn't smell him with my inferior human nose. I unbuckled the belt at my waist so I could scoot closer to him and sniffed the side of his neck. "You're telling the truth."

"I am." He barked another laugh. "Is that why you're always sniffing me? Is your nose some kind of lie detector?"

"Yes."

Instead of being angry that I had been using secret intelligence tactics on him, Mac grinned. "Good. You should know by now. I could never lie to you."

Now that he'd said it aloud, and I smelled the truth in his words, I did.

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