by J. R Fox
He couldn’t take being so close to the man, and yet never really touching. Even in class, where he’d moved to the very back row, his body would flare up at the sight of Holt, as if calling out in hopes to be taken again. Holt had only ignored him outright every chance he got, and it hurt Chris to know that he was the only one feeling alone.
Until Holt stopped Chris one day after class.
“Come to dinner with me.”
The invitation took Chris by surprise, and he suddenly wasn’t so nervous about being the last one out of Holt’s classroom. He looked at the professor, at those piercing blue eyes that missed nothing, and blushed.
“What did you have in mind?”
They couldn’t very well go to the student cafeteria, but it still took Chris by surprise when the man shared that they’d be eating at a restaurant famous for their salmon in the next town over.
“Humans have no place dictating a bond between two drakes, but it would be foolish to blatantly ignore their social norms,” Holt explained when Chris had asked why. “And we are breaking two: homosexuality, and a teacher-student relationship.”
“So you admit that we have a bond?” Chris asked, keeping pace with Holt as he led them to the outskirts of the campus under nightfall.
“The heat was a success,” Holt said with a shrug.
“Then why did you avoid me for so long?” Chris looked up at him.
“Because,” Holt sighed. “I had hoped that it hadn’t been.”
Chris pretended that his chest hadn’t seized up when Holt had admitted his worst nightmare, but, distraught and distracted, he almost walked right by Holt after the drake had already stopped.
“Here is good,” he called to Chris, his hand catching the twenty-two year old’s wrist. Before Chris could ask what he meant, Holt dropped his hold and closed his eyes, blinding Chris with a burst of light that wasn’t unlike the flash that the wyvern had made back in the basement.
Chris blinked away the spots dotting his vision when it was over, widening his eyes as he tried to adjust to the darkness of night again. “Holt?” he asked, looking for the professor. “Holt!”
“Here,” Holt’s voice echoed around Chris like it’d been shouted from the mountain tops. He looked up, his ears ringing, and froze.
A giant white dragon was looking back at him, its blue eyes fierce against the night sky.
“H-Holt?” Chris breathed.
“James,” Holt huffed, and Chris almost collapsed where he stood. “Come,” Holt said, lowering his head. “We’ll be late.”
Chris felt like he was going to have a heart attack as the dragon’s teeth pinched the edge of his jacket and lifted him up, practically spitting him out onto his shoulder.
“Hold on,” he warned. Before Chris could protest, they took off into the night sky, Chris’ scream drowned out by the flaps of Holt’s powerful wings.
They flew for what felt like forever to Chris, his whole body tense as he hung on for dear life while Holt flew happily over the city of Oslo and into Fredrikstad.
“Chris,” Holt said once he’d landed them in a field. “You can let go now.”
The last thing Chris was going to do was trust the dragon that’d just carelessly flown him across a town, and he only budged when Holt offered a hand. Chris moved his death grip from an odd scale to Holt’s giant thumb, a stream of ohmygodohmygod running through his head as Holt moved him to the ground.
The moment Chris let go, another flash of light burst through the night and suddenly a human-sized Holt was standing next to him again, his clothes impeccable and hair not a strand out of place.
“I think I hate you,” Chris declared.
“You can’t hate me,” Holt smirked. “I’m your mate.”
It was the first and last time that Chris allowed Holt to fly him anywhere, which meant that any future dinner dates were off the table. So, Holt improvised. He invited Chris to a finger food only night in his apartment, and a chocolate candy bar another time. But it wasn’t long before he had run out of ideas, and Chris had long run out of patience.
They finally tumbled back into bed with each other after one of Holt’s less than inspired dinner ideas: “Wine n’ Dine.” Chris was far from underage, but that didn’t mean that he’d become a champion in the year that he’d had to drink legally, and the thick foreign alcohol Holt had given him had only made his body burn hot.
“Come on, Alpha,” he’d finally begged. “Let me warm you up.”
Sex became a part of their routine after that – not that anything about it was boring. Holt had only grown bolder, jumping Chris every chance he got, and Chris had simply preened under the attention.
It was something that Mary did them the favor of ignoring.
“So, Chris,” she said, making a point not to look up as Holt brushed some of Chris’ red hair out of his eyes. “I hear that you’re staying in Norway?”
Chris frowned. “I—”
“Yes,” Holt cut in. “He decided that Oslo would provide him with the hands on experience that his study hall in America never could.”
“Uh-huh,” Mary said dryly, clearing not convinced in the slightest. “And you want to stay?” she said, looking over at Chris.
“Um,” Chris blushed, glancing down at his lap. His hands were clasped together on his right leg, Holt’s newest gift bright on his middle finger.
“It’s been passed down for generations,” Holt had told him proudly.
“It’s beautiful,” Chris had breathed, staring down at the ruby ring that Holt had slipped onto him after an especially amorous round of sex. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Holt had kissed his knuckles. “For giving me someone to give it to.”
“Y-yes,” Chris told Mary with a fierce nod. “I want to stay very, very much.”
Holt could only grin. “Well, there you have it.”
Mary still didn’t look convinced, but she let it go. “So long as you’re happy,” she muttered, and Chris squared up his shoulders to cover his red ears as he smiled to himself.
Chapter Eight
“Chris,” Holt called. “Ready?”
“Yep,” Chris shouted back, struggling to yank on his favorite sweater. He finally threw it off with a huff of frustration, kicking it away with a betrayed scowl. That made the third shirt that he’d failed to fit into this week, and he didn’t know how much more he could take. Norway wasn’t like America, with cheap clothing available on every street corner. They made things to last, and while they were all very beautiful, he certainly didn’t want a closet full of fluffed sweaters and knitted tank tops.
“Chris?” Holt said, his voice getting closer.
“Coming,” Chris sighed, grabbing his jacket instead. At least he could still fit into that.
Chris and Holt sat next to each other on the bus, but they didn’t split off and take one another’s hand until Mary had dismissed the other students and left the two alone in her search to find a cup of good wine. Chris tugged Holt down a busy street to the farmer’s market, the booths bursting with food now that spring had arrived.
“Oh,” Holt said, gravitating towards a table covered in plain jewelry. “Handmade, authentic,” he muttered, his sharp drake eyes picking out the genuine metals among the fakes. “Chris, what do you think of this?” he asked. When the omega didn’t answer, he looked up. “Chris?”
The younger drake was a few steps away, his eyes on an automatic newspaper dispenser.
“What’s up?” Holt asked, coming to stand up beside him. “You want a copy?”
But Chris just shook his head, “No.” But he said the word slowly, as if mulling it around on his tongue.
Holt frowned. “Well, come on then. We’ve only got till three.”
“Mhm,” Chris hummed in agreement, but even as they walked away, he couldn’t help but glance back at it.
The next one was a gumball machine.
“You want some gum?” Holt asked, an eyebrow raised in question.
; “Nah,” Chris said, though he didn’t look away.
“All right,” Holt said, a little worried at his mate’s odd behavior. “Why don’t we stop at a café? Look, there’s one. We could grab some hot chocolate.” It was a drink that they often shared together in times of bonding.
Chris shrugged. “Sure,” he agreed emotionlessly.
They walked inside, Chris at Holt’s back as he ordered the two drinks and a meat cake. He kept waiting for the omega to grab his hand like he so want to do in public, but the younger drake made no move toward him. It unnerved Holt, and he didn’t try to hide his frustration as he handed the clerk the coins that he owed her.
He didn’t expect Chris to pluck a fifty-øre from his hand and toss it into his mouth. And, if the omega’s horrified face was anything to go by after he’d properly gulped it down, Chris hadn’t either.
“What is wrong with me?!”
Holt had finally gotten them back to his apartment, but, as he tried to calm Chris’ hysterics, he wondered if maybe he should’ve just flown them away rather than wait for the students to file back to the bus at three o’clock like a good professor.
“Nothing is wrong with you,” he told Chris gruffly.
“I ate a coin!” Chris whined. “That isn’t normal!”
“For drakes, it can be,” Holt relented, and Chris’s scrunched face immediately dropped into one of hope.
“Really?” he asked. “Why? Is it a treasure thing? Do we eat gold?”
“Fifty-øre pieces don’t have gold in them,” Holt said with a small smile. “They’re copper.”
“Copper?” Chris frowned. “Do drakes like copper?”
“Pregnant drakes do,” Holt said dryly.
And immediately regretted it.
“Chris, please calm down.”
“No!” Chris shouted, his talons catching the light as he slashed the air whenever Holt got too close. It worried the older drake, especially when he noticed that Chris’ teeth had elongated into sharpened points as well. He needed to suppress the half-drake before things got out of hand.
Holt waited until Chris dropped his arms before moving.
“Agh!” Chris growled, snarling as Holt tackled him to the bed.
“Chris,” Holt warned, trapping the omega’s wrists in one hand as he grabbed the back of Chris’ neck with the other. “Calm down.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Chris said, his words small as he seemed to deflate underneath Holt. “Women can’t even give birth easily, and I’m…” he shook his head and closed his eyes.
Holt couldn’t help the way that his heart stopped as he realized the significance of Chris’ words.
“My mom died when I was born.”
“Chris,” Holt said gravely, loosening his arms to properly curl them around Chris in a protective embrace. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—” But he did. He’d always known that this could happen, that their fierce mating was indicative of a successful conception. It was why he’d half-hoped that they hadn’t properly mated, and why he’d avoided Chris for a week afterwards. The omega was young, after all, and far too naïve to be stuck in a bond with an old drake like him.
“I’m sorry,” he tried again. “Pregnancy isn’t something that drakes usually avoid. It’s welcomed, and I didn’t think to mention it because you’re a half; because I’d never thought to hope that my seed would take. But,” he said, squeezing Chris in a hug. “If you’re pregnant, then it means that you’re strong enough to carry the baby to term. You’ll be fine—”
“But James,” Holt gave a ragged breath. “What if we lose the baby?”
Holt hadn’t thought of that.
“We won’t,” he promised.
As drakes’ pregnancies only lasted about four months, it didn’t take much convincing for Chris to take the next quarter of college off. And, as he spent more time in Holt’s apartment and properly spread his scent among the ice drake’s, Holt noticed his instincts kicking in more and more.
The omega had started nesting, for one. Holt first caught him doing it when he came home early from work, only to find Chris resting on the bed underneath a half-hearted pillow fort. Only, the fort hadn’t stopped growing since. Last time he’d checked, it was an odd assortment of couch cushions and torn up winter clothes that should’ve been folded up in their boxes. Still, he didn’t mention it to Chris. The last thing he wanted was for the drake to feel bad about his motherly instincts, of all things.
Holt, on the other hand, was following a few instincts of his own.
“Um, James,” Chris said, watching him from the kitchen doorway. “What’re you doing?”
Holt had been, quite literally, caught with his pants down, but he just looked over his shoulder at Chris and continued to urinate all over the four golden trinkets that he’d set up in a row under the windowsill. “I’m marking,” he said simply.
“Oh, excuse me,” Chris said sarcastically. “I didn’t realize that drakes were related to dogs.”
Frowning, Holt zipped up his pants and marched over to Chris, leaning over the shorter omega as he put a gentle hand on his rounded stomach. “I don’t think I like your attitude.”
“Funny,” Chris grinned. “I learned from the best.”
As Holt’s classes dragged on and Chris’ stomach continued to swell, the two found it harder and harder to keep away from the other. In fact, Holt was just considering putting his paid vacation days to use when he received a call from Chris’ cell.
“Well, hello there,” he answered with a smile as he leaned back in his chair. He was on lunch break, and he had a good hour to talk if Chris was feeling lonely.
“H-hello?”
Holt froze. There was a male’s voice calling from Chris’ number, but it wasn’t Chris.
Meaning there was a strange male in their nest.
And he’d somehow wrestled the phone away from Chris.
Images of broken fingers and bloodied red hair flooded his mind, his talons sharpening of their own accord as he jumped up and snarled into the phone. “Who are you?” Holt demanded, his voice a guttural growl.
“Whoa, hold on there,” the man said with a nervous laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you. Or Chris, for that matter—”
As if Holt was going to believe that. “What do you want?”
“No, you have it wrong. I’m—”
Holt frowned as something huffed in the background, then, “Hey, James.”
It was Chris.
“Where are you? Did he take you somewhere? Who—”
“Jesus, take a chill pill,” Chris sighed. “Look, my dad is with me. He flew halfway across the world to see me, and just in time too, cause—Oh, wait, did I mention that he’s the dragon? Mom was the human, and he never told me cause I’m a half, didn’t think it’d affect me, but anyway, he flew himself here, like, your kind of flying—”
“Chris,” Holt growled.
“Right,” Chris agreed. “So, I’m in labor.”
Holt didn’t know how many more surprises his heart could take. “I’m coming home,” he announced, grabbing his jacket as he rushed to the door.
“James—”
“I’m coming.”
Chris watched his father with half-lidded eyes as the man bustled around in their kitchen. He himself was laid out on the table, his legs spread as his father had instructed him to do for the hatching. Holt was sitting beside him, a hand on Chris’ stomach.
“I’m tired,” Chris mumbled, blinking slowly.
“That’s normal,” his dad called, thumbing through their spice cabinet. Chris just blinked at him, then slowly looked to Holt for reassurance. He didn’t care if his dad had just shown up and pulled him up off the floor, proclaiming his excitement as he showed not a shred of shock at his son’s pregnant stomach – Holt was his sarcastic alpha, and the one that he looked to for guidance.
“Do not be afraid to succumb to your exhaustion,” he smiled.
“It’s all a part of the process,” hi
s dad said as he walked back over to them. “Don’t worry.” When Chris just narrowed his eyes at him, his father just sighed. “Don’t give me that look. I would’ve told you that you were a drake if I’d ever sensed another near you, but we aren’t exactly the most common of beasts.” Dumping some parsley into his palm to blow it onto Chris’ stomach, he shrugged to himself and said, “Sorry if I didn’t scout out all of Norway while I was at it.”
“I just,” Chris licked his lips. “I thought mom—”
“Your mother was a remarkable woman,” his father said. “She was human, and yet she still managed to bring you into the world. And for that,” he said, leaning down to kiss his son’s forehead. “I’ll be forever grateful.”
Chris blinked, forcing his eyes to reopen. “Is that going to happen to me?” he asked.
His father sighed. “Chris—”
“Of course not,” Holt interrupted them. “So don’t trouble yourself with worry, all right?”
Chris breathed out a sigh, but ended it with a small smile. “Okay.”
He awoke to the sound of a baby crying.
Blinking away his blurry vision, Chris looked up at his father. “What happened? The baby.”
“He,” Holt said, “Is perfect.” Chris paused at the sight of the bundle in the ice drake’s arms, a small pale thing with purple scales and yellow hair.
“Blonde?” Chris frowned. “How’d we get a blonde?”
“Drake blood works in mysterious ways,” his father shrugged.
“My mother was blonde,” Holt offered. When Chris just looked at him, he said, “Yeah, I don’t look anything like her.”
“Was she an earth dragon, by any chance?” Chris’ father asked.
“No,” Holt shook his head.
“Why?” Chris asked suspiciously.
Chris’ father just smiled. “A drake born of fire and ice? I wonder,” he winked.
“Whatever,” Chris huffed, staring down at his son as he quieted in his arms. “He can be a drake of cardboard, for all I care.” Holt slid in behind him on the bed, wrapping an arm around Chris’ hips. “He’s perfect.”
Holt kissed his neck. “You both are.”