Page 40 of The Dragon's Stormwoven Bond

He’s always been there for me. And I was going to do the same for him.

Chapter 23

Pep

My foolish notion of working while sitting with the eggs and waiting for them to hatch had been tossed aside pretty quickly. Try as I did, it wasn’t happening. I was too distracted by our sweet little babies waiting to come into this world.

And my dragon? He was being a butt, not allowing me the peaceful moment with me and my clutch. Nope. He spent the days insisting they couldn’t hatch here. The cabin was too small, too unsafe, and too far.

He never said far from what, which added a whole extra level of stress. While his communication was minimal, his insistence wasn’t. He kept on pushing and pushing and pushing. There was no convincing him things were as they should be.

Trying to sate my beast, my brother and I spent multiple days in the nest with my laptop and extra monitor setup, looking at home listings, looking at properties where we could build a house, and looking at the feasibility of building out here. It became pretty much our full-time job. Each day, shortly before Valen was scheduled to come home, we’d put it all away as if we’d just been chilling and doing the brother thing.

Valen was already feeling a lot of pressure… pressure to be the father he wanted to be… pressure to continue fixing his relationship with my father, his best friend… pressure to get his team as ready as he could before he took time off. He didn’t need to add house hunting to that mix, and he definitely didn’t need to be worried about my dragon.

When I first blurted out that this space was too small, he’d offered to take it over for me and pre-search so I could focus on our clutch, and I appreciated that, I really did, but this was one thing I could do to take something off his shoulders.

When he gave me the last list of homes, I assured him that it was fine for us to wait. And at the time, I hadn’t lied. What difference would waiting six months make? Waiting until after we got settled into our new lives as parents? There was enough room here to get by that long. Right?

Wrong. My dragon decided that my plan was crap and began to push and hard. He got worse and worse and worse until I couldn’t ignore him. He was a freaking pain in the ass.

And I understood why. We were about to become parents. There were five little dragonets nearly here who would need us to do everything for them. Right now, they were safe and protected, but in the next day… week… month, we didn’t know exactly, they’d be out of their protective home. They would need more than just this nest.

My phone buzzed and my brother tossed it to me. I’d barely accepted the call when my mother asked, “Want me to make dinner?”

She’d been doing her best to give me the space I wanted, while being available if I should need. I appreciated it, a lot. There were some times you just needed your mommy and daddy, and these last few days were some of them.

“You don’t have to make anything. We’ve got stuff in the fridge we can heat up. People have been dropping off casseroles like they were at a Midwest potluck.”

One meal after another showed up on our doorstep. It was great. We loved it. Not only did it give a sense of community, but it also came with the recipe to add to our dinner rotation if we wanted. It was nice to know that our dragonets were coming into a world filled with so much support and love.

“I know I don’t have to make you dinner. I’ll stop at the store and swing by—”

“Oh, you’re making it here?” That was a first.

“Of course I am. I want to spend time with you. My baby’s about to have their babies.”

She’d been pretty sentimental about the whole thing. Despite her initial response, she didn’t mind me being mated to Valen. She saw that he was a wonderful mate to me and was working hard to be the best father he could be. But if she had her way, she’d have preferred that we met in another fifty years. My age worried her, especially after the C-section. I blamed Vexus for that. He said my age played a part in that happening.

As if I could change when I was born. And I couldn’t be upset about the way my eggs came into the world. How could I be? It might not have been the most fun time I’d ever had, but now I had four beautiful eggs with five wonderful babies waiting to come forth into this world.

I let my mother know that she was more than welcome, and about an hour later, she showed up with the fixings to make my favorite seafood pasta. It was one of those quick-and-easy meals that tasted like someone spent hours over a hot stove. If my brother had known that was what she was fixing, he’d have probably stayed.

“I have time before I have to do the final steps.” She came and sat by the nest and handed me a folder I hadn’t noticed before. “This is for you and Valen.”

“For me? This is from you and Dad?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s just from me. I haven’t told your father yet. It’s a surprise for him too.”

“Dad doesn’t like surprises.” It made planning his birthdays especially unfun.

“No, suppose that’s true. But this one he’s going to like.” She pointed to the folder.

I opened the folder, and it was a picture of their house. “You need to explain some things here, Mom…”

She tapped on a house that wasn’t more than a speck on the page. “See that there?”

I nodded.

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