Page 6 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

I chuckled. We'd been over this. "Kobold/human hybrid."

They flipped their feet out from under me and lunged, pulling themself onto my lap, straddling my legs, and pinning me to the flattened pillows. "What do humans look like? Show me."

The tips of their blunted nails dug into my scalp behind my ears. It reminded me of the Vulcan mind meld.

I didn't grow up on Earth, but I had watched every human movie I could find. If it was science fiction or fantasy related, I'd seen it, even parodies likeSpace Balls.I'd seen them all, and I'd loved them.

I wished I had my phone and tablet with me, but I'd left them behind in case the kobold villages we visited didn't have human technology. I shouldn't have been concerned. Most had their own version of magic-powered media. Their alphas and omegas had been to Earth, too, thanks to the old changeling circle.

Galen snorted, which wasn't nearly as intimidating in their kobold form. My cock reacted to their proximity, same as always.

This was the first time I held them in my lap, though, and very naked, and looking every bit like an adult kobold alpha with an extra appendage between their legs. Beside their large but flaccid cock lay their ovipositor. They were usually contained in a veil of magic for aerodynamics. Now, with them shrunk down to kobold size, it took all my willpower to keep my gaze on Galen's face.

They sniffed me again and grinned. "You smell aroused. I want that, too, but first, you need to show me what humans look like. Close your eyes and imagine them clearly."

I shouldn't even like the dumpster fire human who popped into my mind, but I couldn't stop myself. He'd played my favorite character of all time, a swashbuckling, conniving space pirate. In real life, his actions were far from attractive, but on my tablet, he was a god among men.

"Ooh. You like the look of this human, but you dislike them as a person."

"How are you able to read my mind?" I asked.

"I can always smell your thoughts when I am a dragon. It's harder now. I must touch you like this. Or maybe you want me to touch you the way he touches his partner?"

"Maybe not?—"

Yes, it was exactly like this. The dashing young hero had hurled an insult at the space pirate, and the pirate had responded with a silencing kiss.

Galen's kiss was chaste, a soft press of lips like the one I'd memorized from too many rewatches of the same movie.

The difference was, Galen kept kissing me, and it turned into so much more. It felt different, like our faces had changed shape, flattened so we could press our mouths together more deeply, and so Galen's tongue could easily glide across my bottom lip, demanding entrance. I opened for them, falling back even further against the pillows as they plundered my mouth.

They tasted like smoke and amber, and they were liquid flame in my arms. I wanted more of this, more of them, all of it. This was far more than I'd ever thought possible. I'd been dreaming of fucking a giant dragon for years now, and to think, they'd had the ability to morph into a kobold-sized creature this whole time.

Galen broke the kiss with a sharp laugh. "Not this whole time." Their lips moved against mine as they spoke. "I had my final molt while we were away."

I'd noticed their scales flaking on our last trip from The Grid, our nearest neighbor to the west, to The Drawbridge farther southwest. When we arrived, they shut themself up in a cave with the resident dragon, Elder, while I worked with their priestesses for a few days. I assumed they were ill. When they emerged, they looked the same, though their scales had been glossier. We never spoke about it afterward.

"What does that mean, exactly?" I asked.

"I am ready to mate with you now."

I nearly choked on my tongue. "What?"

"I have known you were my fated mate since the first time I smelled you on Lark and Punky."

I'd been nowhere near the pair on the day they'd first visited the dragon cave.

"You raised the dragonet they rode to see me."

It was uncanny how Galen kept answering my unspoken thoughts. It made the hairs at my nape rise.

"You made several trips to Earth with the alpha," they continued, "and you were part of the extraction team for the omega. My sense of smell is far stronger than yours, my little kobold. I knew you were my mate before I met you."

"And then I agreed to serve you."

Galen wrapped their arms around my shoulders and squeezed me with far more strength than a kobold alpha would have. "Yes, and then our mate bond began in earnest."

They weren't wrong. My stripes had darkened over the years, from beta brown to black, and now the black scales glowed a deep blue like my dragon in the sunlight.

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