by Lizzy Bequin
Katrine’s channel squeezed around him. She felt the tick of his pulse in the veins of his cock.
“Fill me up,” she whimpered. “Oh God, Skal, I need it so fucking bad.”
He was so deep inside her now, his head grazing and massaging her epicenter. That ticklish feeling was stirring at her deep core, the beginning of one of those intense cervical orgasms that felt so strange and so good.
Even though her mate had spilled his fluid inside her over a hundred times now, Katrine still hadn’t gotten used to it.
“Atma…” Skal grunted.
His cock pulsed and erupted inside her, flooding her depths with his molten love. The warm, sticky sensation sent Katrine over the edge, and she climaxed harder than she had ever done before, screams of pleasure ripping from her throat as her muscles quaked and shuddered.
But this time, something was different. The explosion of pleasure was laced with a sharp pang.
Something cramped inside her.
“Kat?” Skal murmured, recognizing the signs of pain on her face. “Kat, are you okay?”
His dick withdrew from between her legs, releasing clouds of pale protein fluid into the water. The air filled with its salty odor. A second wave of cramping spiked Katrine’s insides, and she clutched her belly.
“Atma, did I hurt you?”
Katrine shook her head and answered through clenched teeth.
“Not you,” she rasped. “The egg. Skal, I think it’s coming…”
***
A few minutes later, Katrine and Skal were back in the nest chamber. Though the dragon had thoroughly dried Katrine’s body with his warm breath—he was better than a hair drier—Katrine’s body was already wet again. Sweat drops prickled along her hair line and pooled in the hollow of her neck.
Another spasm of contractions squeezed at her center, and she threw her head back against Skal’s hard chest with a grunt of pain.
“I’m here,” Skal purred. “I will help you, atma. Everything will be fine.”
Skal was still in his humanoid form. He was in the nest too, holding Katrine’s body from behind, letting her recline against him. His strong hands massaged her belly, helping to relieve some of the enormous tension there.
“Should we get Nora and Blair?” Katrine wheezed. “To help?”
Her two friends were in a different section of the fortress now. Nora was especially interested in the various materials and technology stored in Skal’s treasure trove. With Blair leading the way, the two of them had gone down there to see what all they could find.
That meant Skal and Katrine had the central part of the fortress to themselves.
“There is no need,” Skal whispered. “I will care for you. Everything will be fine.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who—“
Katrine’s words got lost in a pained cry as the worst contraction so far cramped her lower belly and pelvis.
“I know it hurts, little one. You can share your pain with me…”
Katrine wasn’t sure exactly what Skal meant, but instinctively she reached back and up and grabbed hold of his broad shoulders.
When the next contraction struck, Katrine squeezed hard, biting her nails into the snakeskin of the dragon-man’s muscles.
And something amazing happened.
The contraction still hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as the previous one. The intensity of her pain had dissipated, a portion of it flowing into her mate like water.
“Yes,” Skal grunted. “Good…”
Her dragon was truly full of surprises. Katrine knew that they shared a psychic bond that allowed them to communicate. And she remembered during Skal’s brutal fight with Mordragg how she had even felt a hint of pain at her mate’s wounds.
This, however, was on an entirely other level. She was was pouring her pain into him, and the dragon was drinking it away.
“But I don’t want to hurt you, Skal,” Katrine whimpered.
“I can take it, atma. I’m a dragon, after all. And I wish to share your pain. I wish to share everything with you.”
When the next hard contraction clenched a moment later, Katrine let the dragon-man absorb a share of the pain.
The sensations were changing. Katrine could feel that her cervix was fully dilated now. The weight in her belly seemed to drop. The egg was moving into her birth canal.
“Skal, I think it’s coming…”
“Yes, atma. I feel it too. It is time for you to push.”
Katrine didn’t even need to be told. The instinctive urge to push was already sweeping over her body. While Skal continued massaging her lower belly and pelvis, Katrine spread her legs wide and pushed.
She felt it move. The egg was inching its way down her birth canal.
The pressure was immense. Even though the egg was smooth, the size of it stretched Katrine’s insides, and it felt as though she would be torn apart. The damn thing felt as big and heavy as a bowling ball coming out of her, though she knew that was impossible, of course. It would have to be small enough to fit through her pelvic bones.
“Breathe,” Skal reminded her. “Breathe…”
Katrine drew a deep lungful of firewood-tinged air and expelled it in short, rapid bursts as she pushed. She repeated the process again and again. The mass of the egg dropped lower.
“You’re doing it,” Skal encouraged. “Keep pushing, atma. It is almost there.”
Katrine grunted with exertion. It was a totally unladylike sound, but she didn’t care. Her body was greasy with sweat. Her hair was drenched like she’d been underwater. Her hole burned with pain as the egg started to crown. Hot tears sprang to her eyes, blurring her vision of the firelit ceiling of the cave.
“Oh fuck, Skal, it hurts so bad.”
“Share with me,” he insisted. “Share your pain. We will get through this together, atma.”
Though Katrine felt guilty, the pain between her legs was too much to bear on her own. Her fingers clenched hard on Skal’s shoulders. She felt the pain ebbing. He was sucking the pain away from her nerves.
“Together,” Skal whispered. “Both of us…”
Breathe. Push. Share.
Katrine repeated the cycle a second time. A third. Even with the dragon absorbing her pain, the pressure around her vulva was overwhelming. She was terrified to look down.
She focused all of her thoughts on the little heart she knew was beating inside that egg.
Breathe. Push. Share.
“It’s almost there, atma. It’s almost there.”
By now the pressure was almost too much to bear. Her arms and legs felt weak. Her muscle fibers were boiled pasta. Her bones were jelly. Even her blood felt tired and sluggish in her veins.
She needed this egg out of her now.
With a feral roar, Katrine bore down with every drop of energy left in her body. She shoved with all her might, refusing to let up until she felt a suddenly blessed release of the tension in her pelvis. A hollow, empty feeling of relief.
The egg was out.
She had done it. They had both done it.
Together.
***
“Can we touch it?” Nora asked.
Nora and Blair had returned from the excursion, and now they were gathered around the nest where Katrine was sitting, wrapped in a silken sheet with the egg in her lap. Skal, in his humanoid form, cradled her in turn. He leaned over her shoulder, gazing lovingly at the egg.
Katrine translated Nora’s question to Skal, and the dragon man nodded.
“Yes, it is safe for your friends to touch. The shell is exceedingly strong, and it is impervious to germs.”
Katrine translated this back to her Nora.
Tentatively, the woman placed her hand on the egg. Her blind eyes were aimed at nothing in particular, but her expression showed that she was visualizing the size and shape of the dragon’s egg in her mind’s eye.
Nora began to tear up.
“Oh, Katrine. It’s so warm and beautiful.�
�� Nora found Katrine’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m so happy for you, babe.”
Katrine squeezed back, crying too. Even Blair, who was normally stoic, was getting a bit misty-eyed.
During the past month Katrine had sometimes worried about this moment. Had worried that the other women would look at her differently. She had just laid a freaking egg after all.
But somehow it didn’t feel the least bit weird now that it had happened. Something about it was so perfect, so natural.
After she let go of Nora’s hand, Katrine moved back into Skal’s arms, snuggling against him. Everyone just stared at the egg for a while, in an almost reverent silence. The only sound was the warm, comforting mutterings of the fire in the hearth.
It was Nora who finally broke the silence again.
“So, um…when will it hatch?”
EPILOGUE 2
two months later
“It’s hatching…”
Skal went from sleepy to fully alert in the space of a single heartbeat. He had been slumbering in his dragon form, as he always did. Katrine loved sleeping with him like that, nestled against his crimson bulk. It reminded her of sleeping with a giant, protective dog, only scalier.
But now, in an eyeblink, Skal had shifted into his humanoid form and rushed around to the other side of the nest.
The egg was bracketed between its parents’ bodies.
“It’s really hatching?” Skal’s yellow eyes gleamed with excitement.
Katrine took Skal’s huge hand in her much smaller one and directed his fingers to the place where the shell had already started to crack. Skal’s mouth twitched in a smile.
“Yes…it is hatching!”
Right away, the egg moved again, wobbling slightly on the soft bedding of the nest as the tiny life inside struggled to get out.
“Skal, we should help,” Katrine said.
“Just a little. Not too much…”
Skal reached down and with the tip of his index claw he carefully picked at the place where the egg had begun to crack. Inside, there was a thin, soft membrane, which he tore, and he widened the crack a little.
“That’s all?” Katrine asked.
“It is important for the hatchling to use its little muscles. Don’t worry, atma. The baby will be strong enough.”
“So now what?”
Skal reached across the top of the egg, touched Katrine’s arm, and drew her a little closer. Now their two bodies formed a sort of nest within the nest, cradling the quaking, slowly cracking egg between them.
“Now we watch and wait.”
As the minutes wore on, the egg shook with even more energy. Sometimes the young life inside would pause to rest before returning to its hatching with even more vigor. Katrine’s heart beat faster with anticipation. The crack began to widen until it completely circled the egg, which was now broken into two halves.
Something poked from the crack, and Katrine gasped.
A wing.
A tiny red dragon wing.
The webbed appendage stretched. Other small limbs were moving inside the shell as well, pushing the two halves apart. A small but surprisingly strong voice started to cry.
“Now we may help,” Skal rumbled.
At the same time, Katrine and her dragon mate reached down and carefully pulled the two halves of the broken shell away, revealing a little bundle of tender pink skin.
It was a baby boy, his eyes still squeezed shut. He was very small, the size of a premature baby born by normal human methods. But he was healthy and strong, and within moments, his cries filled the chamber and he flexed and flailed his baby arms and legs.
Gently, Katrine scooped up the tiny, helpless being and held it to her breast. There were tears in Katrine’s eyes.
In addition to the babies small stature, which Katrine had expected, considering the size of the egg, there were other differences too. There were the wings, of course, the first feature of the baby that they had seen. There was also a small nubbin tail wiggling above his little pink butt. And few more nubs around his head indicated he would eventually have horns like his daddy.
“Skal, he’s perfect,” Katrine cried.
Skal bent close and nuzzled his newly hatched son, snuffling him. The baby squirmed ticklishly under that warm breath. Already, the infant’s cries had turned into curious mewling.
“Yes, perfect,” Skal rumbled happily. “Perfect and healthy.”
The dragon man brushed Katrine’s short curls.
“Just like his mother.”
Katrine had not known exactly what to expect when the egg hatched. All she had known was that she would love with all her heart the baby inside, whatever form it took.
Skal explained to her that newly hatched dragons usually favored their mothers. For that reason, the infant’s natural form was mostly human—with the exception of his cute little tail, wings, and horn nubs.
When he got older, the child would learn how to shift into a dragon like his father, and after he fully matured, the dragon form would become his natural one.
Katrine just smiled, bobbing the little thing in her arms and thinking of all the life that lay ahead for her baby. As the infant dozed, Skal cleared away the pieces of egg shell and Katrine lay the baby onto the cushions of the nest.
“What should we name him?” Katrine asked at last.
Katrine herself was at a loss for what to name her baby boy. It wasn’t like she could just name him John or Bob or something. He was going to grow up to be a dragon. He needed a dragony name.
“How about Cat Dragon?” Skal offered.
Katrine gave her mate a deadpan look, trying to discern if he was joking or not. It seemed he wasn’t.
“Cat Dragon?”
“You know, since your name is Kat, and I’m a dragon…”
Skal’s voice trailed off, realizing his suggestion was not going over well.
“I think we can do better than that,” Katrine said. “Aren’t their any, you know, traditional Arcturan names?”
Skal thought hard, stroking his square jaw.
“Well, there was a legendary dragon king, the long-ago hero who united the five homeworlds into the Empire of Arcturus. His name was Theris the Great.”
“Theris,” Katrine whispered. “I kind of like that. What do you think, baby boy?”
On the soft bed of the nest, the squinty, chubby little thing stretched his arms and legs, yawned, and let out a tiny squeak. Katrine smiled.
“Theris it is, then.”
She leaned down and kissed her son, Theris, on his soft cheek.
In the morning, Nora and Blair would be so excited to meet him for the first time. But Katrine decided not to wake them yet. For now, she just wanted to share this special night with her new family—her dominant and protective dragon mate and the special little child that they had made together.
Katrine loved them both intensely, with a love that burned brighter than any fire.
When she had first come to this place, she had thought it was just a dream. Now, however, it was a dream come true.
THE END
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Their Human Vessel
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Also by Lizzy Bequin
Alien Warrior Romance:
Their Human Vessel
Machine
Alien Warrior’s Bounty
Claimed in the Alien Arena
Quarantine Omega Series:
Marked Omega
Shared Omega
Ruined Omega
Primal Alphas Series:
Primal Urges
Primal Impulse
Primal Needs
Primal Alphas Collection
About Lizzy B.
Hailing from the D
eep South, Lizzy Bequin enjoys writing dark and steamy romance stories that explore the primal side of love and lust. When she’s not writing or reading, Lizzy is serving the whims of the two evil feline overlords who rule her home.
For more info and news about upcoming releases, visit me online!
Website: lizzybequin.com
Facebook: @lizzybequinauthor
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