Page 63 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

They shook their head. "I doubt it. Not for me, anyway. He might visit our children, Chance, Lux, and Galen."

I hoped so. I wanted to meet him. I had dream-like memories of a kobold beta telling me stories and flying with me when I was younger. I needed to know if I'd made up an imaginary friend, or if I remembered my father.

After my family left for their own cave, Mac burrowed into his tablet, shoulders hunched and fingers pecking at the virtual keyboard. I left him to it. I released the spell I'd used to clothe myself and snuggled down with our eggs. This was different from the hours I'd spent moping before. Now, I felt only excitement for their arrival.

* * *

Every time I woke from a nap, I found Mac typing away on his tablet.

"Are you writing a book?" I asked after a full month of watching him work while I cradled our eggs close and fed the warming spell.

"I'm looking for your father," he said. He glanced up at me and his cheeks darkened with embarrassment. "That was supposed to be a secret."

I grinned. "I love secrets! Who shall we keep it from? My family?"

He turned a deeper shade of red. "I was keeping it from you, silly."

Oh. I didn't like the sound of that. "Why?"

"So you wouldn't be disappointed if I couldn't find him."

"I will never be disappointed in you," I promised. "Once we can travel again, I intend to find him myself."

While traveling with Rapture, I'd picked up on his method of interplanar travel. I needed more magic to practice, but I would start with a trip to the village farthest from The Spike and hone my trajectory until I could hop to places as close as The Grid with a single thought. I could also turn myself into a bus or airplane to carry my family on my back for vacations to Earth.

The thought of Earth vacations made me yearn. "Let's watchNational Lampoon's Vacationagain."

We snuggled down in the blankets, each curled around an egg. Mac propped his tablet against the stone wall at the edge of our nest, and we propped ourselves up on pillows until we wouldn't strain our necks. I fell asleep halfway through the movie, but I woke up when it stopped.

"Good night," Mac whispered as he kissed my forehead.

We had been sleeping in this same position, each wrapped around our eggs, but tonight, it didn't seem close enough.

"Cuddle?" I asked.

Mac slipped between me and our dragon egg and pulled our kobold egg to his chest. I helped him pile blankets and pillows around us to aid our warmth spell overnight.

Then, I snuggled up to my mate. I dropped the clothing spell to remove my shorts and leave me blessedly naked against Mac.

His soft pajama shorts were not a spell. They kept my thoughts from straying too far toward kissing every inch of Mac and making him beg me to fuck him.

We didn't have enough collective magic to raise a sound barrier spell over the eggs, and neither of us had enough energy to make love. That didn't stop me from shoving my cock between Mac's legs and pulling down the back of his shorts with my ovipositor.

Mac closed his thighs around my cock and moaned. "Behave, Galen."

"I want you," I whined. "Do you think my siblings will make good babysitters?"

"I hope so." Mac's movements rubbed just right against both my cock and the tip of my ovipositor. "I already want another vacation alone with you. One where we never leave the hotel room, and we don't know anyone around us for miles."

I wanted that, too. I drifted into a dream of a fantasy world, neither Ignitas nor Earth, but maybe the water plane where we'd vacationed in our youth. Water everywhere, white sandy beaches, and shade trees lining the beach as far as the eye could see. The best part, Mac and I were alone on that beach, with the sun as our only witness.

The longer we were on the beach with no distractions, the more I felt I was missing something, or someone. Definitely someone. I tried to focus on Mac, but the feeling grew steadily worse.

In the dream, Clementine came to my rescue. She ran down the beach, grabbed us both by the hand, and pulled us back to Ignitas.

"Wake up!"

In the dream, Clementine yelled it, but as I opened bleary eyes and pulled Mac closer to me, I swore I heard the simultaneously young and old voice of our little girl calling from her egg.

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