Page 77 of The Dragon at the End of This Pregnancy

"What if they hate me?" I asked.

"Why would they hate you? If anything, they will thank you for giving them an excuse to meet. Speaking of which, someone is here to meet you."

There was a softness in Mac's gaze I didn't expect, and a flash of a shared thought I didn't understand before he focused on memories of Slate and Opal. He'd been doing that a lot lately. Before, I thought it was sweet, but now, I realized he was mentally blocking something from me.

"Who is it?"

I squeezed through the dugout doorway and allowed my true form to wash over me. I stepped away from the small building so I wouldn't smash it with my tail and turned back to where Mac stood with a kobold half his height.

I dropped to the ground on the kickball field, sending up a cloud of dirt. I extended my neck so I could scent the newcomer. He smelled familiar. Welcoming. He patted my snout.

"Galen. It's wonderful to see you again."

"Father?"

This was Goff, my paragon's beta mate. His stripes had darkened to the same black as Mac's, but they had dulled with time. He wore a simple short-sleeved work shirt beneath grass-stained coveralls. He studied me with a discerning gaze.

"You called me Papa," he said. "Don't you remember?"

Papa. The word jarred a memory of him leaning against my chest with a book open so we could both read it.

"Papa."

He was real, not a figment of my imagination. And he was here.

I started to shrink into my alpha kobold form, but he shook his head. "Let me see you as a dragon. You've gotten so big."

His eyes sparkled with unshed tears as he looked me over from snout to tail.

"You're still the same beautiful black," Papa said. "You always wanted to be the black sheep of the family, remember?" He laughed.

I didn't remember, but it sounded like something I would have said when I was a child.

I sniffed him again, noticing how similar his scent was to Mac's. He was much smaller, an earlier version of the hybrid gene pool, but larger already than the original kobolds.

"You're a hybrid." Even my whisper carried a few hundred feet, thanks to my overzealous dragon lungs.

He nodded. "I am. Your paragon was furious when they found out."

"Chance and Lux …"

"Also part human." Papa nodded resolutely, "as are you. I told your paragon burning the kobold villages wouldn't fix what was already done, but they refused to listen."

"Have you spoken with them?" I asked.

"Not alone. I overheard them telling a group of dragons what happened to the kobolds on the other planes."

"Would you reconcile with them?" Mac asked.

"That isn't up to me," Papa said. "It never was. I have always loved them. I have always loved you." He patted my snout again. "I ran, hoping they would see our beautiful villages and the positive changes we'd started, but instead, they saw only unwelcome change that led to destruction."

"We went to Earth," I said. "I was worried human genes would have a negative impact on our children, but?—"

"They didn't have a negative impact on you three," Papa said. "That was my argument from the start. You were healthy babies and smart students. Until your paragon went on their rampage, you were happy children."

"We went to Earth for nothing."

"We went to Earth, so we both had a better understanding of our human ancestry," Mac said, patting my jaw. "We had a great time adventuring and eating our way through West Des Moines. It was fun, and I wouldn't change it for the world."

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