Page 82 of A Dragon's Miracle (Fires of Fate)
Finn
FINN
One day, about seven months after Sky's birth, I came home with big news. A band meeting had kept me late and, like so often, the smell of my mom's cooking filled the house as I entered. I headed for the kitchen to see her stirring something in a large pot.
“Smells good,” I said, almost bouncing into the spacious room.
“Oh, you're back.” She looked up from her cooking for only a moment. “Dinner's almost ready.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I took a deep breath and water gathered in my mouth at the smell of cooking meat. My mom had been super helpful supporting me and Ryan since the baby had been born. Speaking of which... I looked around and found the little rascal on his play mat in the corner, playing with his favorite rattle. He was on his belly again, not crawling yet, but Ryan and I thought it was going to happen soon, probably.
“Hey, baby!” I scooped him up and he waved his rattle at me. I kissed the soft hair on his head. He was still a bit small, but Ryan and I were both on the short side as well, so we decided not to worry as long as he was otherwise healthy--and that he was. Happy and healthy. He was babbling now, telling me all about his day in repeated syllables and made up words that I pretended to understand.
“Are you going to wake Ryan for dinner?” my mom asked.
“Yeah.” After all, I hadnews.I grinned to myself, hugged my little chatterbox tightly and carried him up the stairs with me while he giggled over some joke he must have just told me.
I laughed, because I was sure it had been a good one. “You're gonna be a comedian when you grow up, hm?”
Sky banged the rattle on my shoulder. I took that as a no.
“Yeah, I know, Papa's talking nonsense. Let's see how Daddy's doing, huh? Then you can repeat that joke for him.”
Sky cooed agreeably and stuck his hand in my face. I snorted. I could come home from a long day of practice or feel exhausted because we'd spent a whole day at the hospital and this baby still managed to crack me up every time. I had the best baby. Thebest!
That night I wasn't feeling exhausted, though. I was giddy. Baby in arm, I strode into the room Ryan and I shared and took in my mate's sleeping form. He was getting radiation therapy now in addition to the chemo, and that was wearing on him, but he was okay. The treatment was working, and I had no doubt that we would leave all of this behind us in the future. Maybe have another child or two. After all, we seemed to make pretty good babies.
“Daddy's sleeping,” I told Sky. “Should we wake him? I think we should. Be a shame if he missed out on dinner.” And Ryan always wanted me to wake him when I got home. Never mind that I couldn't stand to keep my news to myself any longer.
I set Sky on the bed where he continued to babble happily as I leaned over him to kiss his daddy awake. I started by pressing my lips to Ryan's forehead before working my way down, placing feather light kisses just above his eyelids and the bridge of his nose until I felt him stir. When I raised my eyes, I found his looking back at me. I smiled.
“Dinner's almost ready. And Sky here can't wait to tell you about his day.”
The corners of Ryan's lips tugged up, gaze searching until he found his baby. With a yawn, he sat up, stretched, and pulled our little chatterbox into his lap. “Didn't mean to sleep so long.”
“It's fine. You know Mom doesn't mind watching him.”
“I know. I just...” He paused as Sky wrapped his hand around one of his fingers and giggled. Ryan gazed at him in adoration and shook his hand a little. “I don't want to miss anything.”
“You won't. But you need to focus on getting healthy now. And actually, I have some really good news!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!” I gave Ryan my biggest grin. “Zed just informed me earlier that they've finally managed to make your medicine themselves. He thinks they can probably improve on it too!” How was that for awesome?
“Really? That's fantastic!” Ryan was grinning too now, dark eyes sparkling with joy. His relief was palpable to me. Jin had kept his promise and never failed to supply us with medicine, but neither of us liked to rely on him, and I knew that Ryan especially hated that I still had to see the guy every now and then.
“Jin will be out of our lives now,” I said. “We'll never have to deal with him again.” And I couldn't be happier about that.
“That's the best news. Seriously, I'm so happy!” Ryan leaned over and brushed our lips together. It was a short kiss, but not one lacking in emotion. If not for the baby between us, I might have chased his lips and pushed him back into the mattress.
But we had the rest of the night for that, if Ryan felt up to it. Some nights he didn't, but that was cool too. Just being close to him was pretty awesome in itself. I would never force myself on my mate when he wasn't feeling well. Or at any time, really. That wasn't the kind of dragon I was. And though Ryan rarely talked about it, I was sure he'd had plenty ofthatwith Jin. I never ever wanted him to feel like he had to put out again. One of the reasons I mostly waited for him to initiate--and to my luck, he never made me wait long.
Now though, his mind seemed occupied with something else. His mood changed from joyous to... apprehensive, for reasons I couldn't quite follow. He put his arms around Sky and licked his lips.
“There's one thing we should talk about,” he said eventually. “I keep putting it off...”
“Well, what is it? You should know by now you can tell me anything.”
