Amethyst Storms (Primordial Protectors #1)

27. Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Alex

Floating was the only time I felt comfortable these days. Reclined in my dragon’s scales, with my head pillowed against the base of his tail, I could stretch out and give the eggs a little more room to shift, not that there was much space for them left inside of me. Sarah said that we just needed to buy them a little more time, to be sure that each egg would soak up enough nutrients from me to sustain the babies inside until they were ready to hatch. Because two of them were encased in one egg, they’d need more than the others, something she wasn’t comfortable that they had yet.

So we floated in what had become a daily ritual since our last trek into town, and at times even spent half the night down here, when I couldn’t sleep because the eggs were having a rock ‘n roll eggstravaganza inside of me. Dragon had immediately started cracking up when I’d described it that way, while it had taken Ionus a moment to get it. Once he did, the two of them spent half the night chuckling over every movement while I groaned and grumbled, unable to draw a full breath with the way they were poking me.

“You two are just so pleased with yourselves, aren’t you?” I muttered as one of the eggs shifted and I squirmed against my dragon’s scales, drawing my knees up to try and ease the pressure in my hips that had been growing all day.

Admit it, human, you are pleased with us, too.

I stuck my tongue out at him, well, up at him anyway, and grumbled. “Being pleased and being comfortable are two completely different stories, and you may stop referring to me as human now, Dragon.

Yes, I will. Which means I will have to find something else to call you, so that we aren’t calling each other dragon and dragon.

“That means I’ll have to find a name for you, too,” I replied. “In fact, I think I’d prefer it. You are more than just a dragon. You need a name that is just between us.”

I look forward to hearing it cried out to the heavens.

“As long as you know that it’s going to be awhile before I let you stick anymore eggs up in me,” I informed him. “There will be romance first, and proper dates, and a vacation, somewhere warm and tropical where I can stare at you in a speedo all day and sip little drinks with bright umbrellas.”

Those are conditions we can live with.

“Good, because they aren’t the only conditions, they are just the only ones I could think of at the moment. There will be more, many, many more, and please, for the love of my liver, try not to go for a grand slam next time. Two would have been a perfectly acceptable number!”

Two. Pfft. Any dragon can manage two.

“Yeah, well not every omega can manage four, so have a little pity on my poor bladder next time.”

Who knew dragon claws could be so gentle, and yet, when he let the claw wrap around my side so the pad could caress what had stopped being a mere bump weeks ago, all I felt was tenderness and love. I was obscenely round now and feeling a bit like a beach ball as we lazily spun in the water.

“Have they locked in on any potential locations for the Wynter clan?” I asked, since I’d yet to hear any new updates in days.

“No, they are still working to trace what is proving to be a very interesting family tree, one appearing to be an offshoot of the Wynd and Wyse clans, or the combination of them,” Ionus said. “That’s where Baird and the others are working to fill in the blanks, though it’s going to be difficult to determine a starting place to begin the search when everything they’ve discovered thus far suggests that they are slumbering deep within the ice of the Denali region of Alaska and perhaps even farther north, which is a whole lot of frozen emptiness to search.”

It left me wondering if the Gorynych had tried, or if the Wynter clan had found one of the few places on the planet where no one would dare to pursue them.

Oops, best not to think too hard about things that were potentially stressful. Anytime I did, one of the eggs rolled, jabbing at my organs like they were trying to remind me that they were there. As if I could forget. Sheesh.

They’re warning you.

“Ya think?”

Someone is testy today.

“Because someone’s insides now know what a mortar and pestle feel like,” I groaned, squirming as I drew my knees up again. That helped, a little. The wider I got them, the less it felt like my pelvis was attempting to dislocate itself to get away from the egg that was playing at the base of the upside-down pyramid today. With the way the other two were pressed together on top of it, the next thing I expected to feel was one of them trying to crawl up my throat.

That is not physically possible.

“No, really? Are you sure? Because I could have sworn I read something along those lines on a fanfiction website a few weeks back, or maybe it was in a webcomic. Monster porn is really hot these days and some of it is a lot of fun to read.”

Monster porn, huh, and why would my mate need that when he has me?

“Because there is no room for you with your eggs inside of me!”

Yup, testy.

“You’re lucky you’re adorable.”

I started giggling the moment I felt the dragon tense up beneath me. That would teach him to mess with me.

I am a dragon. I am fierce. Magnificent. Wrathful. I am not adorable.

“Awe, did someone get their scales in a bunch?” I teased.

Pfft. My scales are as pristine as ever.

“I don’t know about that. I’m the one lying on them and they feel pretty bunched up to me,” I said, gliding my fingertips over a section to make my point. “Yup, bunchy as hell.”

He snorted puffs of gray smoke, like a cloud that wrapped around me, so I tickled his sides, forgetting for a moment that I was lying on him. My dragon was ticklish, and his rocking treated me and thus the eggs to a mini earthquake as he chuckled.

I will get you for that, human, once it won’t be so uncomfortable for you to laugh.

“And I will find a very special way to get you back for picking on me when I’m in this condition.”

Your condition looks good on you.

“And it feels like I’ve swallowed a blender.”

Remember, love, it’s only temporary.

“Fine, then I’ll make sure whatever I dream up is just as temporary,” I growled, because the pressure was back again and damn it all, even squirming wasn’t helping this time. My knees were as wide apart as I could get them, which still didn’t feel like enough. As soon as those eggs were out of me I was gonna take up yoga and anything else that improved flexibility. Oh ow, ow, ow.

Mate, is all well?

“Just your eggs tuning up for their next performance,” I muttered. “One of them is going to be a drummer, I just know it. I hope you like heavy metal, Ionus, ‘cause in about twelve years, it’s gonna fill the house.”

I much prefer amethysts and other gems, though there are some precious metals I’ve grown fond of over the years.

Giggling at least eased the pressure a little, but the moment I tried to take a deep breath it was back.

“Not heavy metals, dragon, heavy metal music,” I explained. “Loud, fierce, aggressive music that I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Our mate, however, might need to invest in some top-of-the-line noise-canceling headphones.”

With our hearing, I doubt even the best human engineering could manage to tune out a decibel or two.

“Something tells me the teenage years are really gonna be interesting.”

Yes, especially when they stretch on for decades for our kind.

Oh crap. I’d been about to suggest a subscription to earbuds of the month for me, when it dawned on me that wouldn’t work, either, not with the way my dragon had been growing inside of me right along with our eggs. Perhaps we could noise-proof a wing of the house for whatever pursuits they got up to and hope they confined any drums, or chemistry experiments, to that particular space. I’m sure it would be better for everyone’s scales, and eardrums, that way.

You’re picturing them, aren’t you?

“And you slowly going gray with every new shenanigan they get up to.”

Pfft. I might fade to orchid or even lavender, but I could never be so dull to be a dreary gray.

“You’d look lovely lavender, with a wreath of flowers around your neck and one of the little ones napping on your back while you sunbathed.”

My fierce, wicked dragon let out a sound almost like a giggle, the pad of his claw caressing the mound of my stomach again, only the eggs had finally, mercifully stopped shifting. They just sat there now, heavy while my hips ached worse than they had before, so that even the water was barely helping to keep me comfortable.

I look forward to an afternoon in the sun with them.

I could feel his joy and eager anticipation of the day when that moment would become a reality. It would be a photo for the scrapbooks when it did. In my head, I visualized the four exhausted hatchlings draped across his back, each contently slumbering, having been lulled to sleep by the feel of him breathing.

“I wonder which will be the ringleader,” I mused, having finally grown somewhat comfortable again. “There’s always a ringleader with siblings, right? Who was it, between you and your brothers? It was you, wasn’t it?”

You’d be mistaken. I was more often the victim of whatever pranks the other four dreamed up. As for the ringleader, Odem will deny it, of course, but I know he was the one who came up with some of the messiest and I must admit, creative escapades they got up to.

“He told me about trapping you.”

Which time?

“There was more than one?”

I should have kept my thoughts to myself.

Pfft. You have known this for a long time, Ionus, and still you persist on chiming in.

He did tend to be silent during these moments Dragon and I shared, but I was curious now, and my hips were really beginning to hurt. A story might be just the thing to distract me from the growing discomfort the eggs were causing me today. If they kept it up, I’d get even less sleep tonight than I had last night, when I’d only managed about two and a half hours before giving up and begging Ionus to sear something thick and juicy for me and serve it up with a very large, boiled crustation.

“I’d like to know just how many other times they trapped you and just what kind of trap did they use?”

Traps, plural, my brothers could teach a master class in everything from snares to pits, and I have been caught in all of them. The aim in their designs was never to land something we could have for supper, the benchmark for success was always whether it caught me and how long it held me for.

“What’s the longest you were ever stuck in one?”

Almost half a day. By then Quint’s guilty conscience got the better of him and he returned to let me out. It didn’t stop him from participating the next time Odem presented them with his newest set of blueprints.

“Whoa, that’s way more elaborate than I’d imagined.”

That’s the only thing that kept my pride from taking too much of a beating. The schemes he dreamed up were never simple, or boring. I’d have found it all far more entertaining if I’d been a part of their plans, rather than the target.

Hearing that from him made me wonder if the grumpy dragon I’d met hadn’t been made that way, at least a little, by the early relationships between the brothers. We’d need to watch out for that with our brood and ensure that none of them was becoming the target of the others or the butt of their jokes. I doubt they’d meant to make their elder brother feel excluded. I could even see how it would feel natural to them to single him out, as the first born, since that would have been the only real distinction between them.

Was there a parenting manual out there that focused just on sibling relationships? If so, I wanted to add it to the growing list of books I’d been consuming, mostly in audio, since even turning pages was exhausting. Today, even my eyelashes felt heavy. I’d never imagined eyelashes had a weight, but right now, there were about fifteen pounds of them smooshing my face.

My fingertips and the tips of my toes trailed over the water’s surface as we floated, his tail coiled up beneath me as I lay sprawled on my back like a sunbathing frog. Maybe I could get a little nap in, it would be so nice to just sleep for a little while.

I let my head loll to the side and started to give in to the pull of sleep when the pain in my hips flared up again, worse than before. Oh, holy shit, that was bad. For a moment, everything was a bright ball of misery, until slowly, the pain began to ease. Okay, I had another condition. I’d always wanted to go to Japan. He’d have to help me learn the language first, then I wanted a least a month to sample every dish I’d ever seen on Iron Chef and climb at least seven of the mountains on my bucket list. No, no, make that two months, and nine mountains and owie, owie, double fuckin’ owie, owie.

Mate, mate, what is wrong?

“How am I supposed to know, it’s your eggs that are doing it!”

While I writhed, waiting to feel something pop out of a socket, my dragon uncoiled. Water lapped around my sides for a moment, before I was plucked from the surface and whisked back into the house so fast I was certain we’d flown a little. That was good, though, right? Because Sarah could get to us easier, and I really, really needed her here.