Page 19 of Delinquent Dette
“This is why I came. Hallr asked me to get him. He didn’t say much, and I did not ask.”
“Aww. Sweetheart. He cares about me.” Leo sighed and smiled. “We have pups. I’m Dior. I was raised by humans—”
“That explains much. Hallr, he is good to you? You will tell me if my son is bastard, yes?” Sten held onto the steering wheel as he went out onto the road.
“Oh, he’s a bastard, but he’s alright. It’s a love thing. Nobody paid a penny either way for us.” Leo shrugged. “Well… I dunno if it started as love. We mated one another like an hour after we met or something? I was out of it.”
Sten choked. “He is a bastard. Frikka won’t like that.”
“It’s a whole story I don’t want to tell my father-in-law. He found me out wandering in the woods in spring, trying to hide out.” Leo waved his hand. “My dragon saidmine,and I was like,whoa, what’s this little voice?And then I was his.”
Sten nodded along. “And you have pups? How long have you been mated?”
Leon tilted his head. “Five years, almost six. Yep, nine.”
“Gods, Dette! Nine in a single clutch?”
“No, we had eight in a single clutch. Luka, our ninth, was a singleton. Little Drake. One egg.” Leo snickered.
He’d never heard of a Dette going less than thirty years between clutches.
“It’s something to do with the nestblossoms. But, oh! If you don’t know you have kids, you really will get a kick out of Luka. Half the Nidhogg clans are frantic over it.” Leo grinned.
“Why?” Sten swallowed hard. Only one thing would make the Nidhoggs want a Nielsen Drake.
“He’s got the cutest little pearl belly and underwings. Like a little tuxedo.” The sweet smile and huff of laughter the Dette made showed how little he knew about how highly that particular color pattern was regarded. “Of course, it’s bound to happen what with him carrying the two-tone trait and me carrying a color-shift variant.”
“Color-shift?”
“Oh, I’m Dior, but my scales are silver. My brother, same clutch, also Dior, solid black. My parents’ next clutch, they had a white in there, too.” Leo laughed like it was no big deal.
It was a huge deal, though.
Frikka had suffered so much for the very future that he was about to see.
More pups than could be counted.
A silver Dette.
A king’s scales.
And freedom for Dettes.
So, when Sten finally arrived, he parked in a circular drive, and the moment he stepped out of the car, it was like no time had passed at all.
The clothes were different. The hair had been shorn. But it was Frikka.
“Bastard,” Frikka called out, but Sten didn’t care. He ran, scooping the menace into his arms and held him as tight as the Dette would allow. “I knew you’d be here, eventually.”
“You know a lot of things, Dette,” Sten whispered into his ear. “It’s just like you saw in your vision. Isn’t it?”
There was silence, a shudder, and tenseness in Frikka’s body that melted for a fraction of a second. “And so much more.”
The hug went on, a reunion so long in the making. “Is this what you’ve searched for? Are you whole?”
Frikka pulled back and gave Sten a long stare, his blue eyes full of a hardness they didn’t have when he was a jarl’s son. “I am healing.”
Sten reached into his pocket and pulled out a single gold coin. “I’ll always ask. Never had another. Never will.”
