by Wolf Specter
I sucked in a sharp breath, suddenly realizing how much I wanted that. Not that the baby was a dragon, necessarily, but that its life was wonderful. I already loved this little person that I hadn’t met yet, and I wanted my child to be happy.
I hadn’t bothered putting on a shirt since the cave stayed so warm, and as I looked down at the vast expanse of my belly it suddenly quivered. Even if I hadn’t been looking at it, though, I would have known.
I’d felt it from the inside. The baby had moved.
“Dane!” I reached through the bond without thinking. I knew he’d said he couldn’t read my mind, but I hoped he would be able to feel my excitement. I didn’t want him to miss this. “Come home.”
16
~ Dane ~
When I felt my mate reach for me, I was over the coast, riding the salt-scented currents that rose off the cold waters of the Pacific. For the first time I could ever remember, I was grateful for my dragon. Back in the cave, my emotions had threatened to overwhelm me, but he’d taken control, taken me away, let me empty the fire surging inside me in furious blasts that split the cool December air without harming anything.
He kept me away from Wesley until I calmed down, and then, when my mate called, he turned without any hesitation and brought me back to him.
I shifted as soon as I reached the cave. I’d clearly felt Wesley’s need for me, but my sense of him was frustratingly vague through our bond, and I had no idea of why. I raced inside, heart pounding as I imagined all sorts of horrifying scenarios, and then skidded to a halt when I found him.
My mate was settled comfortably on the couch I’d gone to some trouble to bring up here for him, the fussy little pillows he loved wedged behind his back as he flipped through one of the pregnancy books. He didn’t look up as I came in. Snaking white cords trailing down his chest and his bopping head told me that he had his earbuds in, and I paused, just enjoying the sight.
He looked delicious.
Then his hands moved over his round stomach. He got the sweetest smile on his face, and reality stabbed at my heart again. I was going to lose him. I sucked in a sharp breath at the sudden pain in my heart, and even though he couldn’t hear me, he obviously felt it through our bond.
His head jerked up, and as soon as he saw me he put down the book and started to struggle to his feet. He tugged the earbuds out, looking concerned. “Are you okay, Dane?”
I crossed the room and helped him up. Carrying my child had changed his center of gravity, and his awkwardness would have been endearing if it didn’t remind me, every time, of what was in store.
As soon as he was standing, I pulled him the rest of the way into my arms and kissed the top of his head.
“Are you okay?” I asked, wanting to hear it from him even though he looked calm and unharmed. “It felt like you needed me.”
He nodded, pulling out of my arms and looking up at me with shining eyes. I relaxed a little, realizing that whatever had prompted him to call to me, it clearly wasn’t anything immediately dangerous. My treasure grabbed my hands and pressed them against the firm curve of his stomach.
“Give it a minute,” he said, watching me expectantly.
His smooth skin was warm under my hands, and I realized with a start that I’d avoided touching this part of him for weeks. My dragon hummed, urging me to run my hands over my mate’s new shape, my other self enjoying the evidence that Wesley belonged to us.
And then his skin trembled under my hands.
“Did you feel that?” he asked excitedly, covering my hands with his own. “The baby moved!”
And then it happened again, harder.
I jerked my hands away, horrified, and Wesley’s face fell.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, biting his lip.
I’d hurt him again, even though I’d vowed not to. I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say. Or rather, I didn’t want to tell him what had to be said.
“Dane, you never want to talk about the baby.” I hated hearing the hesitation in his voice. Almost as much as I hated having to talk about this. “Don’t you want it?” he asked, pushing me.
“No!” The truth came out more harshly than I’d intended, and I hurt him again. Fuck.
Wesley just stared at me for a minute, finally lowering himself back down to the couch as his face went pale. I could sense everything he was feeling, and it was killing me.
I sank down to my knees in front of him, searching for the words that would help me explain — but I couldn’t find them. The truth was too awful.
“I don’t understand,” he finally said when I’d been silent for too long. “Isn’t this what your dragon wanted from me? You never answered me, earlier, when I asked if this bond was permanent. It’s not, is it? That’s why you left this morning? Because I pushed you about it?” His voice had been rising with every word, and my heart broke at the look in his eyes. “Oh, my God,” he whispered, shattered. “I’ve had it all wrong. I thought you wanted this. I thought you wanted me. I thought—” He suddenly gasped, covering his mouth with one hand and clutching at his stomach with the other.
“I do, treasure.” I grabbed his hands, pushing at him through our bond to make sure he felt the truth of my words. “I do want you. More than anything. Always.” But I wouldn’t have him always. I wouldn’t have him much longer at all.
“You want me, but not the baby?” Wesley finally asked, working it out. At least part of it. A little color came back into his cheeks. “But… why?”
“Because I do want you,” I repeated, knowing there was nothing left but the truth. “I love you, Wesley, but this baby is killing you.”
17
~ Wesley ~
“You love me?”
Dane stared at me as if I’d said something in a foreign language. He had just told me that, right? My emotions were stretched to the breaking point, and I grabbed on to his admission like a lifeline.
I understood why Dane had brought me to the cave. I was so obviously pregnant that there would have been no way to hide it from people if we’d stayed at my apartment. Our time together here felt removed from real life — like we existed in this little fantastic bubble of sex and magic separate from everyday concerns — but today, when I’d felt the baby move, the future had started to feel real.
We were going to have a child together.
And as magical as my dragon shifter was, what I wanted was a real life — an entire lifetime — with Dane.
I’d been so excited when he’d walked in that I’d rushed ahead, wanting to share the moment with him regardless of the fact that I knew he’d been upset about something when he’d left. Maybe I should have thought it through a little better, but having my excitement met with the one-two punch of learning that he didn’t want the baby, and that he thought I was going to die — God, if I didn’t hold on to the one thing I actually wanted to hear, I could definitely feel a freak out coming on.
“Did you say you love me, Dane?” I pressed him shamelessly.
He was still holding my hands, and with a sharp tug he pulled me into his arms. “I do, my treasure. God help me. But this baby is killing you.” He tightened his arms around me as he repeated the part that I had been determined to ignore for a little longer. “Your body isn’t made to carry a child, much less mine.”
Okay, now he was scaring me.
“Why not?” I asked, reflexively cupping my belly. “Is there something wrong with me? I thought this male pregnancy thing was normal… for dragons, I mean.”
“It is ‘normal,’ and it’s why I vowed never to take a mate.” He let me go and pushed to his feet, pacing in front of me. Not meeting my eyes. “Dragons have always seen humans as a species to be used for their convenience. Disposable. It doesn’t matter to most of us that the human can’t survive being bred.
“Before I found you, Wesley, I’d always assumed that I’d be strong enough to resist if my dragon ever wanted to take a mate. But…”
“I’m irresistible,” I fi
lled in when his voice faded away, trying to make him smile.
I smoothed my hands over my stomach. My body may not have been designed for this, but it felt utterly right. I loved Dane, and he loved me. I was going to bear his child. In a world where dragons were possible, why shouldn’t this be, too?
I remembered the first time Dane had shifted in front of me. He said that dragons saw humans as disposable, but when I’d stood in front of the magnificent creature, I’d felt nothing but cherished. I couldn’t believe that Dane — in any form — would do something that would put me at risk. If his dragon had chosen me as a mate, chosen to impregnate me, then I had to believe that it knew what it was doing.
Dane must be wrong.
“Tell me about it,” I said, my fears calming as I held onto the memory of talking with his dragon. I just knew I was right about this. “What makes you think I can’t survive it?”
Dane sighed, turning away from me and pinching the bridge of his nose as his face contorted with something between pain and anger. “Your body doesn’t have any way for the child to be born, Wesley.”
I was not going to freak out. Not. Going. To. Freak. Out.
“Well, obviously the baby will come out, so how does that happen?” I asked once I managed to slow my breathing down again. He’d brought up the very thing that kept making me nervous when I thought too hard about it.
“The dragon takes it,” Dane answered cryptically. “When the hatchling is ready, the dragon removes it from its mate. The human can’t survive it.”
“But why not?” I asked, feeling a little confused. “I mean, we’re not talking about some weird scene like that old movie Alien, right? Where the dragon — er, alien, I mean — bursts out of her stomach?” Oh God, I hoped not. But he had said “hatchling.” I gulped.
“No, treasure, it’s not like that. The baby will look human until it’s old enough to shift.”
Thank God. I mean, not that I wouldn’t have loved the baby, regardless. But still.
“So what’s the problem, then? I mean, if by ‘take it’ you mean you’re going to shift into your dragon and, er, like do a c-section?” Okay, it did sound a little scary, but not any more so than what women faced all the time. “It might be nice to have some kind of anesthesia,” I admitted, starting to get a little nervous the more I thought about it. “Or even have an actual doctor handle it… I mean, I could see how you may not want an actual doctor to do the c-section since he’d probably be pretty freaked out by all of this.” I gestured at myself. “But maybe you could take me to one afterward? To be stitched up? Although, I forgot to tell you—”
“Afterward would be too late, my treasure,” he cut me off, his voice breaking. “I’ve seen a hatching.” A pained look flashed across his face. “Even before the baby was… removed… the human’s body had been used up.” He reached out, stroking a finger down my cheek. “It’s already taking its toll on you. You’ve been so tired lately.”
“That’s normal,” I whispered, pointing toward the book I’d been reading and wanting it to be true.
Dane cupped my jaw, his thumb stroking my lips. He looked so sad that it scared me. “You don’t have a womb, my treasure. The babe is making room for itself at the expense of your organs,” he finally said. “It will suck whatever it needs from your body with no regard to what you need, until there’s nothing left to sustain you.
“If I could change it… if there were anything I could do to take it away, or give you the strength to survive it, Wesley, believe me, I would. Anything. There’s nothing I want more than to have you stay with me, love.”
Stay with me, love.
The words echoed in my head, tickling a memory that I couldn’t quite grab hold of — and then I had it.
“Your dragon said the same thing to me, the night you brought me here, Dane. That he wanted me to stay. He wouldn’t have said it if he thought the baby would kill me, right?” My voice cracked a little on the word “kill,” and, God, I had to admit that I was about to lose the do-not-freak-out battle. “You said it yourself — dragons are hard to kill.”
“You’re not a dragon, Wesley.”
No, but— I hadn’t had a chance to tell him what had happened while he was gone.
“But you are, and we’re connected. Look—” I held out my finger, then pointed to my foot. “Earlier today, I cut myself. Twice. But the cuts healed. Like, almost right away. Didn’t you say that fast healing was a dragon thing? And somehow, now I’ve got it too. So maybe I’m also hard to kill.” I held my breath, wanting him to agree. Wanting it be true.
Dane’s eyes widened, and he ran his hands over my skin. “I’ve never heard of that happening,” he admitted.
“So it’s not a normal part of, um, mating? Or… our bond?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Wesley, there have never been many dragons in the world. We’re very long lived, and fiercely territorial, which tends to keep the population down. I’ve never known another mated dragon. The hatching that I saw… I’m sure the sire wasn’t one who bonded with his human before mating him, but I don’t know if it would have made a difference. I just don’t know.”
He looked frustrated, but also the tiniest bit hopeful.
“I trust your dragon, Dane. I trust you. And so far, you haven’t let me down.”
He grabbed my hands, not seeming to notice when he squeezed them too tightly. “Wesley,” he said, his voice sounding much calmer than the urgent excitement I could feel thrumming inside him through our bond. “My dragon keeps pushing me to give you something. Something that I’ve resisted because I thought it would hurt you. But a friend pointed out that hurting you while you were breeding didn’t make sense.”
“Is it… fire?” I asked, reminded of the other words the dragon had said to me.
Take my fire when I offer it to you.
“Yes,” he said, looking startled.
“Do it,” I said, grabbing his hand tightly. “Please.”
He looked torn. “What if I’m wrong?”
It did sound a little scary. “Have you ever heard of another dragon, um, doing that? The fire thing?”
“No, but I’ve never really had a chance to talk to other dragons about the mating bond.” He hesitated, then: “There’s a dragon who holds the territory to the north. Anik. A friend told me that he was mated, once. If he allows me to enter his lands, he may know more than I do.”
“But…?” I asked when Dane frowned.
“But I can’t leave you,” he answered, cupping my cheek. “I don’t want you to be alone… but maybe if I take you to—”
“Ty,” I said.
“No, I was thinking of a dragon that I trust. In Wisconsin.”
“Why not Ty? He’s closer, and he’s my brother. He’s going to be the baby’s uncle. You know he’s not happy with the excuses we’ve been giving him about why he can’t talk to me. This would calm him down.”
“Calm him down?” Dane did that sexy half smile thing, and I could tell he was trying not to laugh. “To find out his brother is pregnant? He’s human, my treasure. He would never understand this.”
“He’s my brother,” I repeated. “He may not understand, but trust me, looking out for me is kind of his thing. Besides, love, he’s family.”
Dane argued a little bit longer, but like he was always telling me, I was irresistible.
And I had to admit, I was kind of looking forward to seeing the look on Ty’s face.
“Wes, what the fuck, bro?”
We knocked on Ty’s door at six in the morning. I was wearing a bulky winter coat, so his initial “what the fuck” was in response to me being out of touch for so long. I knew there would be another one coming, but I kept the coat on to delay it for a few more minutes.
“Byrne,” Dane greeted him, ignoring the death glare my brother sent him.
“Bennett. What. The. Fuck.”
Apparently my brother’s vocabulary had been reduced to those three words. I couldn’t really blame
him, though. First, it was Saturday morning and still dark out. My brother had never been a morning person. Especially not on the weekend.
Second, Ty had been increasingly frustrated with the fact that I’d disappeared for two months with a man who he’d had already relegated to the asshole department. There was no cell service at Dane’s cave, of course, but every time he’d gone on a supply run he’d made sure to text Ty from my phone. Apparently the cryptic messages assuring my brother that I was fine had failed to satisfy him.
Well, I’d known there would be some explaining, but first I had to make sure of the basics: “Tee, I need to stay with you for a few days. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” he answered automatically, still shooting Dane dirty looks over my shoulder. “But first I’d like you to explain where you’ve been. Fuck! Bennet shows up out of the blue and the next thing I know you take off with him! You’re paying rent on an empty apartment, bro, and shooting me a few texts does not cut it. Now you show up, and no disrespect, Dub, but you look like fucking shit. What the fuck is going on?”
I waited a second to make sure he was done. Okay. My turn. “Yeah, sorry about not being in touch, Ty. We didn’t have cell service. But Dane’s agreed to let me tell you everything—”
“Let!?” Ty quoted me with a scowl, but I ignored it and kept talking over him.
“—first, though, I think it’s probably more important to tell you why I’ve been gone. You may want to sit down, Tee.”
“I’m fine,” he said stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay. So, I know this is going to sound crazy, but…” I chewed on my lip for a second, trying to find the right words to tell my twin that his former friend was actually a dragon who had impregnated me.
Nope.
I had nothing.
“What, Dub? Just spit it out,” Ty said with an exasperated huff.
“Right. Okay. So, I’m pregnant.” I took off the coat, hoping that somehow the visual proof would help us get past the crazy faster.