by TJ Cross
He took me through every room, each tastefully designed with strong minimalist tones. It felt like I was entering a place designed by interior design magazines. Nodding along to everything he said about every art piece that adorned the various walls of the apartment, I kept thinking about one thing he said -- our family.
Yes, he was right. Married or not, alphas and omegas or not... there was one thing about us that was undeniable. We were a family. I was his mate.
He lingered on longest with his bedroom, showing off the various cool features he had installed from time-sensitive sun shades to communications panel that gave us a direct hotline to most emergency services in the city. There was even a moving TV in the room, as well as a ceiling-targeted projector.
Big boys' toys.
"You're more than welcome to have a bedroom of your own," he said, offering me any one of the various apartments down the corridor from his bedroom.
I arched an eyebrow. "Why? Because you don't see us sharing the same bed?"
"No, not that," he smiled, "I'm thinking you might want to have your own space as well. Everybody does, don't they?"
Maybe dragons did. I didn't need a lair of my own: I wanted to be with Everett. I decided to take him up on the offer all the same, using one of the smaller spare rooms, which enjoyed amazing light, as a studio so I could practice my art.
After I gave birth, I was going to start seriously trying to put my artwork out there. I was going to paint every day, I decided.
It wasn't like I was going to need to maintain a job or anything.
Not in this economy, I thought sarcastically -- only to realize that the Copperwinds were the 1% of the 1%. Nobody had even mentioned money but I already knew it was going to be in the tens of billions, if not more.
I had stayed over at Jodie and Rufus' place the other night for dinner and a movie night (Everett politely demurred) and Rufus told me he had done some asking around -- the Copperwinds were seen in the shifter world as the literal Rothschild family to them.
"Not even billions, man," Rufus said, laughing. "Trillions. Hoards of gold stored in vaults all over the world, protected by immortal servants. We're talking National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage treasure here."
"You know, I've never quite seen that movie," I said.
"What? Whaaaaat?!" Jodie said, flapping her hands in outrage, almost knocking her bowl of pasta around. "Rufus, baby, we're going to have to school our friend here. You've still got the DVD right?"
"Better, darling," Rufus said. "I have the Blu-ray."
I laughed. The happiness I enjoyed in my life had rapidly climbed in the last few days -- correlating, naturally, with the amount of time I spent with my gorgeous, dominant mate.
And the amount of time we spent in bed together, of course...
"So, tell me," Jodie said, looking serious now. "What exactly happens when you give birth? Do you shed all that excess weight? I mean... your body's got to magically transform back to normal, right?"
"Or not," Rufus suggested. "Maybe you keep the uterus and stuff inside you. It's all inside and your body adapts."
"Errr..."
"You must have done the resarch on this, Finn!" Jodie egged me on, looking more fascinated than I had ever seen her be. "Like, I've seen the belly and all, but how exactly is the baby come out? There's no, um, you know..."
"Birth canal?" I prompted.
"Yeah. I was going to say vagina. Or vulva, I suppose," she said airily. Rufus and I laughed immediately.
"I think it's all done Caesarean -- well... if you can even really call it that. Everett's become very serious about learning all the lore and traditions regarding a Chosen birth from a male pregnant vessel. He's not going to go to a hospital or anything for this."
"Most shifters don't use human medical facilities, anyway," Rufus added.
"But... won't that be really dangerous?" Jodie said, her eyes wide in shock.
I smiled at my best friend. "What can I say? It's all magic. I'm sure it'll hurt, I'm sure I'll still have to push or something..."
Jodie raised her hand. "Excuse me, you said Caesarean. You're not going to have to push!"
"Okay, okay, my bad," I laughed. "I guess the fact is there isn't exactly a lot of literature on this. Maybe somewhere out there, there's a doctor who specializes in this sort of thing."
"They should make a TV show about it," Jodie said, nodding enthusiastically. "Like Grey's Anatomy... but shifters."
"Or House, M.D., maybe that's a better example," Rufus concurred, eager to prove his pop culture credentials as well.
Jodie giggled. "It won't ever be lupus... unless a wolf shifter's the patient!"
I shook my head, laughing at the discussion. "I wish you guys could be there. The ritual's really private, apparently, and Everett himself is finding lots of conflicting information about the right way to hold a ceremony to bring a Chosen baby out to the world. But it'll just be me and him."
"Do you have to do it in a full moon, like some sort of cult ritual?" Jodie asked.
"No clue."
Here, now, at Everett's, he was telling me stories upon stories about recorded dragon births -- most of which were poorly-compiled chronicles written by the servants of the great dragon lords, which meant they were lacking an understanding on how the magic of birth actually worked.
"Have there been many male births in history?" I asked, rubbing my belly as I lounged in his most comfortable sofa, a custom design by one of the world's most well-known architects.
"Not too many. And certainly not in the last hundred years... possibly longer. However, shifter historians and scholars agree that we've firmly entered an era where omega births are just, for some reason, becoming a lot more common."
That seemed interesting. "Why is that?"
"Maybe it's because of the Revelation. Without the fear of being found out by humans, it's easier for shifters to do more things that are more acutely tied to their true natures," Everett suggested.
I had another idea. "Could it also be something to do with human politics, as well? Being gay's something that wasn't tolerated until maybe a few decades ago, but it's not until recently that most of what gay people do were protected legally. Like marriage."
Oops. It was clearly at the forefront of my thoughts, that it could have slipped out like that.
"Like marriage," Everett agreed, his flashing eyes telling me he caught what I meant although he said nothing to continue that particular thread of conversation.
"Omega birth is what it's properly known as, right?" I asked, patting my belly.
"That's correct."
"Does that make me your omega, then? By default? The moment I got pregnant?"
He looked up from the books he was scouring for information. "No, dearest, you become my omega when you tell me you're ready to take on that bond of responsibility. You've had a regular taste of it whenever we have sex... whenever we mate... but our bond of alpha and omega will truly begin when we decide to include it in all aspects of our life. So that it's not just in bed."
I bit my lip. "I want you to be my alpha. I want to be with you forever."
Everett smiled at first, but then abruptly stopped. I instantly felt worried, and I sought out his eyes for an explanation. "Well... this certainly makes things more difficult for me," he said tenderly.
"Oh no, what is it?" I said, unwilling to be rejected by the only man I could ever see myself being with.
He walked over to a desk drawer, pulling something out. I couldn't see what it was, and my heart was thumping so goddamn fast. Was he going to tell me he had decided against taking me on as his omega, that he wanted only to be with me as partners in an ordinary relationship?
"Because I was so excited to make an incredibly crazy, incredibly romantic, incredibly cheesy plan to sneak this to you," he said, smiling again, as he pushed something into my view.
Oh my God.
It was a ring.
My jaw had already dropped by the time Everett got on
his knee, beaming at me as he said those incredible words: "Finn Graystone, will you marry me?"
Of course I said yes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My soul felt a lightness when I came to, on a patch of grass and soil in the middle of one of the spare rooms in our apartment. I blinked awake, seeing that the room was lit only by candles and an inhuman glow coming from my belly.
It was time.
Everett stood over me, while I positioned myself as he had trained me to -- lying down in the circle of ash he had marked, surrounded by soil and grass, but arching my back upwards and spreading my legs open, my knees up in the air as I drew my feet closer to the rest of my body.
The pose of the pregnant.
I watched in awe as Everett spoke a hissing, shrieking language, walking in counter-clockwise circles around me. Everything I had been practicing for the last few days had been about this ritual, the magical ritual combining the elements of fire, blood and love to welcome our child into the world.
He had translated as much of the ritual prayers to English for me before our first rehearsal, but it was all ancient speak that flew right past me. "Essentially I'm going to be invoking not just my own reservoir of magic but also the powers of all my ancestors combined. The birth of a dragon is not just something for the alpha and omega couple to celebrate... but a great day for the entire lineage," he explained to me, before he donned the black robes he had gotten made for the event.
I knew that he was going to spend the large bulk of his performance in the ritual naked, though.
Not just naked, I corrected myself. In dragon form.
The soil that clung to my skin wasn't just any random dirt -- it was homeland dirt, the fuel of a lot of the magical rituals dragons performed. Helen had told me their clan was originally Norwegian, and they still maintained large plots of land in the far Arctic north in order to access the power of their familial soil.
I was half expecting the soil to be ice-cold, but that was a silly thought that instantly earned me the laugh I knew I damn well deserved. It had been shipped to Copperwind HQ just a few days ago, but that would have been dredged up, not like a solid cube of dirt from Norway!
"Let all the world see and know this: today, a dragon is born," Everett growled in English, repeating the words in his ancient draconic tongue.
I watched him intently as he began to shift into his dragon form for the first time since I had met him. I had clearly been taking for granted his human for this whole time -- yes, that was him, the real Everett Copperwind, but there was also another visage he went by.
The dragon.
The luxurious high ceilings of the penthouse we lived in allowed him to grow to his full size, amazing me as his human frame began to rapidly become scaly and dark, his arms dramatically bending as it elongated and sprouted wings. His back grew larger before the rest of his body did, and his legs shrunk to the smaller, thinner form of his species.
"Oh my God," I murmured, witnessing one of the most incredible sights in my life, right before me.
He rose to his full height, crowing a shriek that practically boomed throughout the room. The sounds he made were just impossible to decipher through the pitifully human understanding I had.
Now I understood how incredibly diverse the world truly was.
The shifter had completed his transformation and focused his gaze on me, his large eyes instantly recognizable as Everett's -- intense, passionate, protective, loving.
The dragon loved me.
I glanced to the long talons he sported, dread creeping up on me as I thought on the idea of what would come next: in his large, imposing dragon form, Everett would literally fly around me and then rest just in front of me, bringing down a sharpened, magical claw to my belly... and then slicing me open.
Primal Caesarean.
Inhaling sharply, I closed my eyes as he had instructed me. There was no reason for me to watch him work on me, and instead I allowed myself to settle into the magical flow of the energy that surrounded the room.
Images flashed through my eyes. It felt like the future: the version of me I reflected on seemed older, more mature. Everett stayed the same, but looked just slightly different enough -- a change of hair, of clothes, of poise. I saw us in bed, caressing a child that lay perfectly between us.
I was having prophecies of the baby!
Focusing as much as I could, I tried to figure out the gender of our child through the dreams and images. No matter what I tried, I couldn't pierce that mystery.
Instead, I saw flashes of other things -- fire, but not the destructive, devastating fire. Warm fire, welcoming fire. A fireplace at Christmastime. Hands rubbing away the cold. I saw me chase after a child on a soccer field.
And I dreamt of rubbing my pregnant belly again.
Opening my eyes, I chanced onto the magnificent, intimidating sight of the dragon leaning down to me. The goosebumps on my skin rose like nothing else, feeling both intimacy as well as terror as my alpha dragon neared me.
I could sense he was looking at me with the utmost compassion and caring.
Close your eyes again and embrace the dreams, Everett communicated to my mind.
Through our bond, enhanced by the magic of tonight, he must have been able to sense out what I was seeing in my mind's eye. Was it the future, or was it a possible future -- one of many?
I dreamt of Jodie and Rufus and other friends who I didn't recognize just yet, but felt warm towards. I dreamt of Everett holding me with love, holding me with aggressive romance, holding me with lust.
My dreams centered on sex with Everett, constant, nonstop pleasure.
Maybe it was just the magic, maybe it was the delirious delight that came from giving birth to the baby I had been awaiting through this entire crazy, rollercoaster pregnancy... but the feeling of awaiting its arrival was actually orgasmic.
There were no words for it. It felt like making love with Everett, his kiss on me as he thrusted into me. It felt like enjoying the tranquil post-coital joy of being together, settling in our sweat and trapped heat and talking the night away. It felt like his kiss, always hot on my breath.
It felt like the greatest pleasure I had ever experienced.
There were fireworks in my mind, not just explosions of light from some future festival but rather the exact pattern, as if I had memorized them all, of the five minutes of continuous fireworks that erupted that night I missed out on the New Year's countdown at the Pacifica Hotel.
When Everett had taken me as his for the first time.
The big difference there was that he was the playboy who cared only about sating his own lusts with no interest for romance or love. Now he was a father to be, a commanding presence in my life, the man who provided me in all things, for all my needs.
Everett. I loved him. I had loved him from the very beginning.
A rush of emotions came over me, overwhelming me to tears as I relived every experience I had with my alpha. Not just the short time we had fallen in love together, but also the past life. All past lives. Jordan wasn't the first soul I had embodied that found love in Everett -- I had known him for far longer than that, I knew, with sweat and sex and love always tracking back whole millennia.
I had known him before he was even Everett, when he in a previous incarnation. When he wasn't even a dragon shifter.