by Alisha Basso
How silly was it to miss something she’d never wanted in the first place?
How silly was it to feel sad?
Chapter 7
Five hours later, rain pummeled the roof. Dampness penetrated the walls of the guest bedroom, but Jin threw off the covers, her face glowing with beads of sweat.
She was in pain, though she never said a word. She just stoically lay on the bed in their guest bedroom, holding on to her stomach. Only once did Lila suggest a visit to the emergency room, and mother and son looked at her as if they suspected her brain connections had just shorted out. Even Mystic, Noah’s black cat, stared at her as if wondering about her IQ.
Lila winced. “Never mind.”
They all three shifted their gazes away from her. Letting her recover from her stupidity by pretending she’d never said anything.
She wasn’t even sure if she could trust the cat.
She tried to think of someone she knew who would help her quietly, but in this world of social media, some things were better not even whispered.
Things like My boyfriend and his mother are dragons.
And I might be a little bit dragon, too.
And His dragon mama—who might be more than ten thousand years old, but who’s counting?—is pregnant.
The hours wore on. Jin sipped water then lay on her back with her hands over her rounded belly, staring at the high ceiling.
“Do you know how many months you are?” Lila asked as she wondered whether Jin even had periods. She looked to be in her late thirties by human years, similar to Noah. Lila didn’t consider herself to be vain, but she wouldn’t mind if enough dragon blood stayed in her to keep her looking young for a few decades.
Noah shook his head, as if she shouldn’t have asked.
Jin turned her head to her. “Perhaps almost ten.”
“Ten weeks?” Lila asked, because Jin couldn’t mean—
“Months.” Jin stared at the ceiling again.
Ten months? Holy crap! Lila gulped and looked at Noah, who was frowning at the floor and looking uncomfortable.
“What’s the normal gestation period of a dragon baby?” she asked.
Jin clenched her teeth and hissed. Seconds passed before her muscles relaxed and she spoke again. “As a dragon, time is different. I believe five seasons passed before I laid an egg.”
“That would be approximately fifteen months,” Noah said in his calm voice.
Lila stared at him. Hadn’t he heard what his mother had said? An egg?
“You laid an egg,” she said.
Jin smiled with amusement that changed to a wince of pain. “That’s what dragons do. We lay eggs.”
“But now...” As Lila gestured at her, thunder boomed. She looked out the window to see lightning streak across the sky.
“I need to...” Jin moaned and rolled out of the bed.
Mystic squawked and fled out of the room as Noah and Lila jumped forward to catch Jin.
Sweat dotted Jin’s forehead and cheeks and neck.
“What’s wrong?” Lila asked, even as she noticed that there was something odd about the sweat. It was ... gold colored.
Jin’s breath huffed out and sucked in. Out and in. In and out.
Like a woman about to have a baby.
And the sweat on her face... Disbelief slammed through Lila. It wasn’t sweat at all. It was scales. Shiny scales. Metallic scales popping out. Like on a fish. Or a snake. Or a lizard. Or something else not human.
Holy dragon fire. How had this happened? This wasn’t physically possible, was it? And weren’t dragons cold-blooded...?
Though, really, who would know? They were supposedly mythological. Not real.
But in this room, Lila could attest that they were very real.
And she could also attest to the warm blood that flowed through Noah’s veins.
Didn’t they need to be warm-blooded to breathe fire?
Or did they need to be cold-blooded to keep the heat from burning them?
She didn’t know. There were no textbooks on this, and Noah would rather talk about a favorite blues musician than about a dragon’s physiology.
Besides, how could she have turned partially dragon last year if dragons were cold-blooded?
Jin moaned, and Lila jumped to her feet. “I’ll get warm water.”
“Cold.” Jin gasped. “Get.” Gasp. “Cold.” Gasp. “Water.”
Lila hurried to the kitchen. When she returned with a large mixing bowl filled with cold water and a washcloth, more beautiful golden scales dotted Jin’s face, and she was breathing heavily, with her legs open.
“Are you having it now?” Lila set down the bowl.
“I—” Huff, huff. Jin bent forward, her hands protectively holding her rounded belly. “Don’t—” Huff. “Know.”
“I’ll get a nightgown.” Lila backed up then whipped around and out the door to her bedroom. She wasn’t an expert on having a baby, but one thing she knew was that you couldn’t do it in slacks.
When she returned, Noah had placed several blankets on the floor. Lila crouched next to him, and he helped her take off his mother’s clothes, showing no sense of discomfort or embarrassment at his mother’s nudity.
And why should he? His mother looked beautiful in her naturalness. Golden scales covered her belly and dotted her thighs and her legs. As Lila pulled down the pale pink cotton gown, the side of her hand brushed the scale-covered body, and it felt soft instead of metallic. She wanted to touch it again, but she didn’t.
Lila’s hands shook a little. She was awestruck. This was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Then she looked down. Where Jin should have had toenails, she had claws now. Lila winced. She was pretty sure that, like the scales, the claws had recently popped out. Jin wouldn’t have been able to wear shoes with those things sticking out. But even without shoes, that must have hurt.
Wasn’t it hard enough to pop a baby out of your vagina without growing giant claws out of your toes?
Despite the claws, Lila ached to take a picture of her. Someday, the baby would grow up and might want the picture. But she restrained herself. She couldn’t take the chance that it might get into the wrong hands.
She stood again.
“What now?” Noah asked.
“I think I’ll get hot water, too. In case we need it.”
He raised his eyebrows, but she ignored him. Giving birth was messy. She suspected it was even messy for dragons. Besides, she felt more helpful when she was doing something, even if it turned out to be useless.
In the kitchen, she filled another deep bowl with warm, soapy water. She brought it back, along with more washcloths and a couple of towels.
Then she went to get more towels, this time bath towels, while Jin and Noah looked at her as if she were a crazy woman. A crazy human woman.
When, really, she was being calm, preparing for everything.
“Now what?” Noah asked as she turned to the hall again.
She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m going to get my tablet.”
He raised his eyebrows in a question.
“To look up what to do when a baby egg is born.”
She glanced at Jin and held back a gasp. Jin’s arms were covered with scales. Lila whipped her head around and hurried to the bedroom for her tablet. She needed to find out about that egg stuff fast.
It didn’t hurt to be prepared, and she wasn’t going to let Noah’s and Jin’s astonished looks stop her. She’d learned long ago that it was best to be prepared for the good and, maybe more important, for the bad.
As she picked up her tablet, thunder rolled.
Chapter 8
More hours passed; the afternoon turning into the evening. Noah didn’t relax. None of them slept. He and Lila ate a large salad and chicken leftovers from the day before. They both sipped green tea to keep them awake.
His mother only drank water. Lila looked worried, though she didn’t say anything to Jin. Instead, she read i
nstructions on home birth on the tablet as well as what to do with an egg. With her upbringing in a violent household, he understood that preparation was a form of protection.
The storm worsened, and he ignored it the best he could, though he could see it unsettled Lila. His mother seemed not to be aware of it. She and he had lived through many storms, many earthquakes and droughts. Centuries of climate changes.
Besides, Jin had always been stoic. Though she was softer now in some ways—and perhaps so was he—stoicism was still their dragon nature.
Lila was more of a fighter. The reason she had a fifth-degree black belt in karate and could kill with swords and other weapons—or her hands and feet.
Music seeping into their rooms from the blues bar next door distracted him from the thunder. The storm was louder, but he ignored it to listen to the music, which he loved almost as much as he loved Lila. A local bluesman, a brown man in his mid-twenties whose voice he recognized, sang about working in the fields and his mama and baby brother and sister dying. Jin tilted her head, her eyes half-closed. The next song was about dancing all night with his woman and letting good times roll. Lastly, he sang about watching the river flow by.
Jin closed her eyes all the way and swayed. Noah wondered if she saw in her mind a river in China. Or was she thinking of a more recent river?
“Does the baby’s father know that it might be a dragon?” Lila asked.
Jin opened her eyes, her swaying stilled. “I told him it was a possibility.”
Noah frowned. “Why didn’t he come to Nashville with you?”
She clutched her belly. “He’s giving some final advice to his assistant winemaker, and then he’s driving here.”
“Do you think Claude knows about you and Hamish?” Noah asked.
“No. We’ve been circumspect, and he’s not a man attuned to the nuances between men and women.”
Noah nodded but he wondered. When people in love looked at each other, there was a hunger. A scent. They leaned toward each other, as if they wanted to touch. To breathe each other’s air. Just to look at the other one and be reassured to know they were nearby. That knowing was like breathing oxygen or feeling a strong beat of the heart.
He looked at Lila and saw she was looking back at him, her eyes soft. Then she took a step toward him. He took a step toward her ... and Jin’s breath hissed in.
He swiveled, and Lila moved swiftly to her side. As she did, the music stopped next door, the night ending. Without the soulful singing to dull the sounds outside, the wind howled and thunder rumbled. He glanced at the window by the bureau, and lightning zigzagged across the sky.
It did not seem to be an auspicious time to have a baby.
A strangled noise made him switch his gaze to his mother. She was on her knees with her legs apart, and she held Lila’s hand. From the grimace on Lila’s face, his mother’s grip was painful.
“You can do it,” Lila said, her voice encouraging. “You can do it. Just push. Push. Push.”
“I’m pushing.” The words roared out of his mother, who’d never raised her voice to him. Not ever. “Oh God, it’s big.”
“As big as Noah?”
“I was a dragon!” She glared at Lila as if she hated her. “I was bigger!”
“Ouch.” Lila put her hand on Jin’s arm. “You’re hurting me.”
“I’m sorry.” Jin whipped her hand away, her angry expression melting into contrition. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Noah stepped closer to her and held out his arm. “Hang on to me. You won’t hurt my arm.”
Jin gaped at him, and he stepped in closer, his arm inches away from her. Her brows came down, and for the first time in his life, he could see doubt in his mother’s eyes.
Then she screwed up her face in a grimace of pain and grabbed his arm.
In the next five seconds, he discovered he was wrong. She could hurt his arm. But he tensed his muscles and never said anything. Never drew his arm away.
Twenty minutes later, a powerful gust of wind shook the two-story building, hail pounded against the windows, and with an explosion of lightning, his mother lifted her head and shouted, her eyes shut.
He was looking at her face as Lila said, “It’s here!”
He glanced down and stared...
Chapter 9
“It’s an egg.” Lila heard the wonder in her voice. The egg was beautiful. Luminous. Large. Very large. A little taller than a foot, though not too thick.
She turned back to Jin, but Noah was wrapping a blanket around her, taking her up in his arms, and carrying her to the bed.
Lila got up. “I’ll clean her. You go gather a couple desk lamps.”
Bending over the bed, he peered up at her, his eyebrows drawn together. “Desk lamps?”
“To keep the egg warm tonight. Luckily it’s humid today. We won’t have to worry that it’s too dry. Tomorrow, we’ll need to build an incubator.”
He stared at her with his forehead furrowed. Men. She didn’t have time to explain anything more to him. She turned to Jin, who was staring at the high ceiling. Jin’s complexion was paler than when she’d first walked into the room, but Lila supposed that if she’d just laid an egg, literally, that was bigger than a football, she’d be pale, too.
“Well,” she said. “It looks like you had a baby egg.” She wasn’t sure what to say in a case like this, but she patted Jin’s shoulder. “Congratulations. Let’s hope it’s a girl this time.”
A small noise that might have been a cry or a laugh came out of Jin, and she gave Lila an approving nod.
Lila picked up the bowl of warm water that was tepid now. She wiped blood off the inside of Jin’s thighs. There was no new blood, and she knew from Noah—and her own experience—that dragons healed quickly.
As she washed Jin, the scales disappeared.
Finishing, she covered Jin up and turned around. Noah already had two desk lamps shining on the egg.
“Anything else I should do?” He hovered over the golden egg.
“Not right now.” She went to stand beside him. Her voice hushed, she said, “It’s beautiful.”
He nodded. “My half sibling is a beautiful egg.”
She slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. And even as she did, she wondered when the bad guy was going to find them. Jin’s half-dragon stalker.
Because it couldn’t be this easy. It never was.
* * *
Morning sunlight straggled into the room as Jin sat on the floor in front of the egg, cross-legged, marveling at the sight.
After all these many, many years, to have this happen to her again... Humans had a word for it. Blessed. Though it wasn’t a miracle, it felt like one.
“Are you sure you should sit like that?” Lila entered the bedroom.
“I’m fine.” Jin didn’t want to take her gaze away from the egg. Of course, she was sore. She’d done something that seemed impossible.
But impossible things were done every day. Many of them by human women.
Still, Lila winced, and Jin considered sitting on a chair.
But the egg ... it was so glorious. So perfect.
The thought of a perfect being inside of it made her heart squeeze. She didn’t care if it came with scales or skin or even fur. She just wanted to love it.
It was the maternal instinct that made her feel this way, but she trembled with the need to see her child, her baby. Whatever it might be.
“What if it’s a dragon?” Noah stepped into the room, and it was as if he’d read her mind.
“We planned for the possibility.” She glanced at him then back to the egg. Her beautiful egg. “I bought a place in New Mexico, near a lake. It’s a sunny area with a mountain and a lake and no near neighbors.”
“Ah.”
Jin heard longing in his voice. It wasn’t the cave near the cliff where they’d lived when Noah was a child, but it had the basics. She should have gone to the New Mexico house, but she was human now. At least, her body was mostly huma
n—on the outside. And maybe it was the human side that had yearned to see Noah.
He was her first child, after all. And her baby’s half brother.
Didn’t Noah deserve to know about this new development?
And now that it was over, she admitted the truth to herself.
She’d been scared.
She still was.
She hadn’t wanted to be alone. And she hadn’t wanted to be with just anyone. She’d wanted Noah, her son, nearby.
“You can visit,” she said, her voice husky.
“I will.”
“I’m making breakfast,” Lila said. “You want anything?”
Jin thought of asking for eggs, but hysterical laughter climbed up her throat. “Do you have chocolate?”
“Yes. Do you want fruit with it? We have oranges and strawberries. They’re organic.”
Jin agreed that strawberries and chocolate would be her celebration meal, and she would have tea, too. Then she looked out the window. It was another gray morning, though there was no rain yet.
“It’s so different this time,” she murmured.
“Well, you have a different body,” Lila said.
Jin cracked a laugh, but pain in a place where no woman liked pain—not even a dragon-woman—stopped it.
“Noah was born on a hot and humid day,” she said. “His egg was perched outside our cave, under the hot sun with the moisture from the ocean close enough to reach his shell, ensuring that it wouldn’t crack until he was ready to break free of the thin membrane.”
“We don’t have a cave or a cliff,” Lila said. “Noah’s building an incubator. He watched videos on YouTube.”
Jin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she just nodded. While Lila left to make the breakfast and Noah was getting parts for the cooler that would become the incubator, Jin edged closer to the egg and rested her cheek against the warmed shell.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I love you, little dragon. I’ll love you forever.”