Amethyst Storms (Primordial Protectors #1)

31. Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

Alex

I awoke to giggles and was instantly awake and studying my eggs in the low light of the room. A light I no longer needed as the dragon’s blood coursing through me had already enhanced my eyesight to the point where I could see in the dark. Nothing looked amiss, but as I ran my fingertips over the shell of Griffin’s egg, I felt tiny fissures in it.

Wake up, wake up, wake up. Torran, Ionus, wake up! I encouraged, nudging at my dragon’s side while calling to him through our mental link.

They awoke with a snort and a huff, instantly alert and swinging their big head around to see which direction danger was approaching from.

What is it? What is happening? Who do I need to char?

Giggling right along with one of our little eggs, I turned and pressed a hand to his face, cupped his scaled cheek and rubbed my face along his snout.

Keep your flames to yourself, big boy, I’m sure yesterday’s cricket was able to chirp out a warning to the rest of its swarm before you charred him to dust.

Cheeky insect, bringing all that noise in here.

He chirped three point five times before you broiled his ass.

Do crickets even have asses?

“Yes, yes they do,” I declared. “I’m pretty sure every animal has one, even a sea anemone, though I couldn’t imagine where that would be.”

I believe its mouth serves as both an intake and expulsion point.

“Ohhh, just like the folks from the county who used to come by.”

I imagine so. Now, mate, since it’s been determined that our nest isn’t being invaded in any way, would you care to explain why you woke us up?

“Griffin’s egg, feel it. It’s started cracking.”

I both felt and heard his sharp intake of breath right before some of his scales unfurled as he carefully maneuvered into a better position to examine the egg. With a delicate touch, he rubbed the pad of his claw over it and lightly turned it just as a chunk of shell along the side pulsed and fell off. Giggling followed, but it wasn’t from Griffin’s egg, it was coming from Luna’s, though I could detect no cracks in the beautiful lilac when I examined it.

“I believe she’s encouraging her brother,” I said as I caressed her egg while watching a long crack form along the side of Griffin’s.

Our son is almost ready to meet the world.

“I can’t wait to hold him.”

Nor can we.

I could feel Torran’s glee through our connection and knew he was eager for the moment when he could carry his son outside to introduce him to the rest of our family members and carry him on his first flight. From how aggressively those cracks were forming, I knew it would be soon.

We’d prepared for this moment, so I slipped from the nest as he watched over our boy, and brought all of the drying towels over. The books and Sarah had all explained that their scales would be damp and soft when they hatched, so we’d bought a pile of the softest towels we could find. It was probably enough to dry twenty hatchlings, but we’d been terrified of running out before the final hatchling emerged.

Our double egg had only rocked a few times over the course of the past few days, unlike its smaller counterparts, those had been rocking and pulsing like an all-night raver. I’d only been to one, enough to know that being cramped between sweaty bodies and accidentally have a full tray of beer-filled mugs dumped on my head just wasn’t my scene. Trying to prove to Gramps that I hadn’t been drinking after coming home with beer in my shoes had been positively terrifying. The only thing that had saved me was that he couldn’t smell it on my breath, just my clothing and hair. When I’d explained about crashing into a waitress and the tray she’d been carrying through the crowd, he’d laughed and asked if I’d gotten her number. That was the moment we’d both realized that my interests lay with men. It hadn’t even dawned on me to see it as a meet-cute and a chance to get a date. I’d just apologized and awkwardly tried to help her dry off.

It was memories like that one that would carry me thought the days when Griffin and the others came home from some misadventure. I knew from the few friends I’d had that other guardians would have started out yelling right off the bat, but not Gramps. He’d never lost his temper until he’d gotten all the facts and determined that he had a good damned reason to be pissed. That’s the kind of parent I wanted to be. That night, when I’d stood on the porch stripping so I didn’t drip beer in the house, I’d been shaking, and not just from the cool wind that was blowing down off the mountain. Gramps didn’t believe in excess drinking, and I smelled like I’d tried to down a brewery. Those were his words, when he caught a whiff of me. Then he asked questions, pointed, uncomfortable ones about where I’d been, who I’d one with, and why I’d wanted to go to something like that in the first place. In the end, he’d been pleased with my declaration that going had taught me that I never wanted to go to anything like that again. He’d said that trial and error were how we knew if we were going to like something, then he’d left me with a word of caution.

Just make sure you don’t rack up more errors than your ass can afford.

Words to live by. Thanks for that, Gramps, and so many other lessons you’d shared over the years. Knowing that he and Great-Gramps were here to share their life lessons with the eggs was a comfort, as was knowing that they’d have a wealth of protective uncles to help them grow into fine, strong dragons.

Our plum egg rattled, a crunching, crackling sound soon followed as more of the shell fell away. I felt Torran inhale, then before either of us could blink, the rest of it exploded. Shell bits flew at my face, momentarily blinding me as I turned my head away to shield my eyes. When I looked back, there sat Griffin, looking fierce as he sat in the remains of what was now just a jagged shell bowl. His little eyes blinked, then his tail flicked like a wrecking ball to demolish another section of his shell. Time to get him out of there before he cut himself on one of the shards. This was no chicken egg we were dealing with.

Without words, we worked as a tandem team. Torran lifted our son and pressed his nose to the hatchling’s belly, breathing in his scent while making the scowling little dragon wiggle and kick his tiny legs.

“You just had to make an explosive entrance, didn’t you, little one?” I asked him as Torran lowered him into the towel I held. Claws and fingers worked to rub it over the hatchling, who batted at it and huffed whenever we got it near his face. I could already see his personality shining through and oh boy, were we in for a healthy dose of stubborn when he reached his teenage years.

Hur! Hur! Hur! Pfffff!

“Did…”

I gasped as I stared at our son, who was doing his level best to kick the blanket away from his feet while his Daddy tried to dry them.

“Did he just pfft at you?” I asked Torran.

His laughter rolled through the space, joined by little Luna’s giggles.

I believe he did.

Oh joy, now you’ll both be pffting at me , Ionus grumbled.

His voice might have sounded rough and disgruntled, but I could feel how excited and in awe he was, too. Our first son was here.

“There now,” I said as I swaddled him in one of the soft, purple and yellow blankets we’d gotten to line the nest. “You may stop pffting and squirming everywhere before you tire yourself out more. Hatching had to be exhausting.”

When his tail flicked out to wrap around my wrist, I knew I was going to need more practice before I’d be able to contain him in a blanket. The dolls we’d practiced swaddling on hadn’t come with tails, something I had a brilliant idea to fix before my brothers-in-law faced the same challenges we did. I was sure that between my sketching and Odem’s creative brilliance, we could design a doll that resembled a hatchling, rather than the human ones we’d found at the store. Knowing him, he’d have all kinds of wonderful ideas for swapping out the tails, in case some were born with spikes, or an actual mace at the end of the appendage. For all the damage that Griffin had done to his shell, his tail was still as smooth as a serpent’s, though the raised ridges along the edge suggested that something might eventually protrude from it.

Oh Goddess. After everything I went through laying the eggs, I couldn’t imagine trying to give birth to a being with pointy teeth, sharp claws, and a spiked tail that squeezed as it clung to me.

“I’m not going anywhere, little one,” I assured him as I drew him carefully into my lap, his tail firmly clinging as he stared up at me.

We have more cracks!

My head jerked up as my eyes immediately sought the eggs. Torran had stretched out on his belly beside me, where he was close enough to touch Griffin while still watching over the rest of our brood.

Cradling Griffin in the arm he’d latched on to allowed me to stretch out my free hand to check the other two eggs. Our double one was still, but when I touched it, it felt like it was vibrating. I still didn’t feel any cracks in it, though. Luna’s, however, that one had the tiniest fissures running out from a single spot, one that pulsed outward, then contracted to lay flat again.

Giggles followed.

Then another pulse.

Griffin’s tail tightened, a reminder that while I might be excited to meet her, he wasn’t vacating my lap anytime soon. That was perfectly okay. Daddy had a big enough lap for the others if Griffin refused to share for right now.

Pfff. Pfff. Pfff. He sputtered, tail flexing and contracting while his sister giggled louder, her beautiful lilac shell pulsing again.

“Luna, are you playing in your egg?” I asked.

More giggles, and the flap of shell waved again, fluttered twice, then fell away to reveal a little lilac eye staring through the hole at us, blinking.

“Oh, there you are, little one,” I murmured, cooing to her and waving. “Look at you. Are you ready to come out and introduce yourself?”

At my words, she withdrew into the cramped confine of the shell once more, giggling as scales covered the hole, obscuring all but a tiny bit of damp lilac and a slightly darker hue I couldn’t make out.

I think she’s playing hide and seek with you.

“Or peekaboo,” I said. “Luna are you playing peekaboo with Papa?”

She giggled again. I’d already fallen in love with her laugh from the moment I first heard it hum inside of me. I couldn’t wait to see the way joy lit up her face when she was making that sound, but it seemed like I was destined to wait a little while longer before she’d grace us with her presence.

A sharp crack echoed through the space, startling Griffin, who let out several angry pffff, pffff, pffftttsssss before the two heads smashed through opposite sides of the eggplant-hued egg, because yes, it was the color of an eggplant and aubergine was too damned hard to say.

Kane and Hunter let out the most adorable cough, snort, grunts I’d ever heard, before both heads withdrew slightly, and twin roars proceeded the decimation of the rest of that shell. Suffice it to say, they came in like a wrecking ball and I just started laughing, tears of joy dribbling down my cheeks as I stared at the mess they made. Their scales were several shades of deep purple, with several lighter streaks rippling over the surface, a gradient of colors, all of them eggplant toned. There wasn’t a single shade on them that couldn’t be found on the vegetable. Then I saw their tails and realized that fireproofing should have been the least of our concerns. Those maces I’d been picturing a few minutes before, they had ones the size of my fist, with tiny blunt spikes studding the surface. They’d be lethal weapons when they learned how to use them, but that was still decades off. Until then, it was going to look like Godzilla stomping Tokyo in here and wait a minute, holy shit…

Had Godzilla been a dragon without wings?

I was floored by that thought and the sight of Torran bundling our little wrecking crew into towels to try and dry them while they proceeded to use their tails to reduce their shell to rubble. They must have been cramped and uncomfortable in there. While both were smaller than Griffin, they were still fairly good-sized hatchlings. It was no wonder the shell had stopped moving weeks before. They’d run out of room in there and had no qualms about letting the shell know how they felt about it.

Kane and Hunter were going to be handfuls, in the best possible way, though it might behoove us to see if there was a blacksmith or metalworker among the inhabitants of Dragon City. I could just see those mace tails reducing wood to splinters. We were going to need metal furniture, or at the very least metal frames we could easily replace the cloth on, something that could take a hell of a pounding before it had to be reforged.

Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam, I thought, giggling at the image that popped into my head. After the conversation with Great-Gramps about brontosaurus burgers, he was going to get a kick out of this.

The eggshells were practically dust now, and a glance down at Griffin showed him grinning a fang-toothed grin at his brothers. The mischief that those three would get up to was going to be legendary.

Aren’t they magnificent?

“They are. Just look at what we created together.”

They’re gonna level the playground.

“And they won’t need any encouragement from you to do it, either,” I reminded him. “I’ll be watching you, Torran.”

I love it when you watch me.

“I know. But that still doesn’t mean you get to invent new reasons to make that happen.”

It does to me.

Only when there was a pile of glitter-sized fragments where their egg had once stood did Hunter and Kane stop bashing their tails against it. Looking at them as they settled down and allowed their Daddy to finish cleaning them, it was impossible to spot anything different about them, until I really, really looked. Leaning in, I peered at them while Griffin squirmed, reminding me that I was crowding him in the process.

They are mirrors of one another.

Wh-what?

Mirror twins. Look. Look at the slash of lighter scales on one’s shoulder, it’s on the opposite shoulder of the other. That’s how we’ll tell them apart.

Torran huffed as he lowered his head to study them, and inhale their scent the way he’d done with Griffin’s. He must have hit a ticklish spot, because Hunter immediately started squirming while Kane peed on his nose. Sputtering, he jerked back, laughter flooding the line we shared while I reached for another towel and passed it to him.

“You may want to wait for them to be diapered before you do that again.”

You may have a point there.

Slowly, inch by inch, Griffin unwound his tail from my wrist and let out several pffts before beginning to squirm. From this vantage point, he could no longer see the twins, and that seemed to upset him. Carefully, I turned him over and lay him beside them, while we all waited for their giggling sister to emerge. That little lilac eye was back watching through the hole again, but the moment she realized we were all looking at her, she retreated.

“Awe, don’t be shy, sweetheart,” I encouraged. “Daddy, Papa and your brothers are eager to meet you.”

She was super smart already, my little dragon princess. She waved a wing tip at us through the shell she remained securely hidden in.

Hello there, precious. Daddy would like to hold you.

Torran stretched his neck out until his nose was right up against her shell, giving him a view into the hole and the little hatchling hiding there.

Won’t you come out, sweetie?

Giggling, she waved again, but didn’t emerge.

Please? Daddy would love to tickle some little toes and give you a reason to giggle.

And there she went again, only this time, instead of her wingtip, it was her clawed toes she waved at him.

Yes, those toes right there. Bring them out so Daddy can tickle them.

Brilliant dear that she was, she just shoved them through the wall of the shell, presenting them to Torran, who tickled her until her rocking and giggling made the rest of her shell fall apart. That’s how our dear little Luna officially entered the world, with her brother Griffin pffting at her and her twin brothers thunking their mace tails against the blankets, banging out a rowdy hello.

“Welcome, princess,” I murmured, as Torran scooped her up in one claw. I wouldn’t be holding her for a minute, not with the way she wrapped her tail around her Daddy’s claw the way Griffin was trying to wrap his around my wrist again.

It was the best feeling in the world, having our little ones there in the nest with us, and while I couldn’t wait to formally introduce them to the rest of the family, for now I was content that we had this moment alone with them. We’d done this, Ionus, Torran, Bront?, and I, and if we never achieved anything else in this lifetime, they would always be our greatest gifts to the world.