Page 5 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

"When we … what?"

Galen snorted again. "You promised to serve me, Mac. Stop being so obtuse. I like them brave and foolish, but you test my patience."

Oh, I knew what copulate meant. Galen wanted to put one, or maybe both, of their as of yet hidden sex organs inside me. At least I wasn't an omega, and I couldn't get pregnant. I couldn't imagine something the size of a dragon egg pushing its way out of my cock, the way omegas laid their eggs! Speaking of cock, theirs had to be massive. I loved alpha dick, don't get me wrong, but dragon dick was another level of gargantuan, or so I imagined.

Unfortunately, it would be three more years before I had my fill.

ChapterThree

Mac

Three yearslater

I was so glad to be home. I loved visiting the other kobold villages, but we'd been gone for six months. Every time we returned, it was nice to skip the bustle of the fortress and slip into Galen's cave to relax.

I dropped my travel backpack by the massive nest at the back of the cave and sat down on the stone floor to yank off my hiking boots, extra careful not to jar my talons. Once my sore feet were free, I leaned back on the soft pile of blankets and throw pillows Galen had amassed over the years and huffed a happy sigh.

Home, yet after the last several months of travel across Ignitas with Galen, I knew the truth. Galen was my home. I was falling more in love with them by the day, and they were oblivious.

They expected to be worshipped. They damn near demanded my complete devotion. They didn't recognize my actions as love, only obedience.

"Mac?"

The way Galen growled my name had always made my stomach feel light, like it was going to float out of my body. After a few years by their side, I could now tell when my dragon was happy. They were glad to be home, and they'd practically begged me to stay the night with them.

They found me already in their nest and let out another happy sound deep in their throat. "There you are. I thought you'd left."

"I told you I would stay. I meant it."

"Yes. You are always true to your word." They curled around me, tightening the circle until they had flattened the ring of blankets and pillows around me and replaced the bedding with their body instead.

They protected me from their sharp scales with a thin magic shield while they moved. They dropped it once they settled, allowing me to rest my head against their warm and pliant scales. It never ceased to amaze me how comfortable and comforting it was to lie with my back pressed to them.

"Tell me about Earth again," Galen rumbled. They'd stopped asking about it while we visited the other villages, but dragons were creatures of habit, and our familiar surroundings must have refreshed their memory.

"Well, it's more populous than Ignitas, by far." Overcrowded, in my opinion. I'd enjoyed my trips to Earth with Lark and his dire weasel, Odessa, and even with another alpha, Weld, and my dragonets in training, but I would never want to live there. Our alphas and omegas had lived there from the time they were newborns until their twenty-fifth birthdays. I'd only visited to bring our alpha and omega changelings home.

"I don't really know any humans," I shared. "I've visited Lark's adoptive parents several times, but they knew about us, so they didn't freak out."

"Is freaking out a thing humans do often?" Galen knew what I meant by the term "freaking out," because they claimed that's what many of the kobold omegas had done when they'd first been introduced. Galen had higher esteem for Punky and Tuft, omegas who had both stood their ground and not wet their pants at the sight of my hulking black dragon.

My dragon, who was not as large as usual, and shrinking by the second. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"Testing my magic." They rocked their head on their long neck, rolled it around once, and shrank further. I had no other way to explain it. They shrank until they were a little taller than me, and broader. My back was now propped against two kobold feet, though the talons were longer and sharper than mine. Their horns had shrunk, too, but they remained on top of their head, angled backward in an aerodynamic way for a dragon but conspicuous on a kobold. We didn't have horns.

"What do you think?" they asked. "Would I pass for human?"

I laughed. "Absolutely not."

Their face had much more expression in this form, and the way they scrunched their nose made me think somehow I'd insulted their parents. Had they been making that face at me all these years, and I'd unknowingly hurt their feelings?

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"How can I pass for human?"

"You'd have to know what a human looks like first. I'm not human."

Galen leaned toward me and gave me a full-body sniff that put us face-to-face. "You're not a kobold, either."

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