Page 73 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

Coz pointed to Sunny, who was asleep with his hands wrapped around Rapture's neck. "Our boys are getting ready to molt again," he said. "They've been tired and cranky."

"Ours, too," Punky said. "I was hoping we could stay longer, so Mint and Juniper know what they're getting into." Mint, a newly adult alpha, and Juniper, an omega my age, had recently discovered their mate bond.

Tuft laughed. "We babysat for you, and it didn't discourage us."

"That's why we teamed up," Coz said. "They're watching the other nine kids at Punky and Lark's."

"We'll be lucky to have a house left," Lark said. My alpha best friend pulled me into a rough hug full of back thumping and congratulations.

"We'd love to watch your little ones sometime, to give you a night off," he whispered in my ear. "On one condition. Can Slate breathe fire yet?"

"Third molt," Galen answered. "Their eyes change at the second, but their little furnaces aren't big enough to do more than smoke."

Lark nodded. "Cool. How does two weeks from now sound?"

"Wonderful," I said. After hugs all around and a promise to bring Opal and Slate to the dragon pavilion to meet everyone soon, our friends left.

The quiet overwhelmed me after the rush of the day. Now, the hard work began. We had to learn how to be parents.

Galen approached behind me and wrapped me in their embrace. Their breath was warm on my nape as they kissed and licked their way to my shoulder.

"That feels too good," I muttered.

"We still need to decide how to decorate our room," Galen said, "and then I thought we could?—"

A peal of laughter from the entertainment room made us both blush and pull away from each other.

"Wait," I said. "I don't want our kids to think touching each other is weird or embarrassing." I held out my arms and Galen stepped into my embrace. They held me close for a moment before dropping a chaste kiss on my lips.

"We should feed them and get them to bed. Then, we can work on our room."

I liked the sound of that.

ChapterTwenty-Six

Galen

Adulting was hard.Every night for the first week after we returned home, I fell into bed too exhausted to give Mac more than a kiss goodnight and a gentle caress of his shoulder before taking my dragon form and falling into dreamless sleep.

After so many months of staying in my alpha kobold form, I craved my dragon, especially while I slept. Our bed was a giant round mattress set into the floor of our new space. It felt like sleeping on a cloud, which didn't make it any easier to get up in the morning.

Hunting bovinji was easiest at first light. When they woke, they headed for the nearest water source, and that's where they met me. The stream flowing down the side of my mountain joined another stream at its base. I did my best hunting at the water's edge.

Mac butchered my daily kills, giving all the best parts to Slate. I finished the rest and left meat on the bones for Rapture. I still didn't understand the dragonet's pull toward our daughter, but I welcomed it the same way I welcomed him into our home.

We even made him a giant bed like the ones Mac showed me for dogs on Earth. Rapture was the size of a van, not a dog, but he could tuck himself into a tiny enough ball to fit in the corner of the entryway, and his trilling alerted us to all visitors, even the birds who swooped in and out.

Mac and Opal ate their strange blend of human and kobold food. Opal was already showing signs of her second molt, and her vocabulary grew every day. She spoke for Slate, too. They still had their own method of communicating beyond what we could hear.

Mac's magic was potent enough to pull meals from the fortress now, which meant we hadn't left the cave since we arrived home. All that was going to change today.

After breakfast, Mac strapped the children and himself into my new family-sized harness. I blanketed them with a spell to keep them from falling off, though with the harness we probably didn't need it, and then I scrabbled onto the landing.

Rapture followed me into the air and landed beside me in the dragon pavilion. Sunny and his brothers greeted the dragonet, and Lark helped Slate and Opal off my back before Mac slid down my side, giving me room to transform into an alpha kobold.

"I still can't get used to that," Tuft said behind me. "Do all dragons shapeshift?"

"Only adult dragons." I turned and held my arms wide for a hug. "I prefer this to bumping you with my snout."

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