Mated in the Stars (Starscale Mates #6)

Chapter Four

Elio

For a few days, Fred and I went back and forth on when to tell Liatris and the others we were ready for the permanent Other World gateway. Fred wanted to wait until after our hatchling was here, but some dragon eggs took years to be laid and hatched. Then he wanted to wait until I laid our egg but that was still longer than I was comfortable making my whole flight wait. Of course, Fred was Fred and making the flight wait didn’t weigh on his mind like it did mine.

“What if Lime --- I mean Liam --- has told Teddy’s mate about him the way he told Teddy?” I asked him about a week after we found out I was with egg. “What if he’s over there waiting for the door to show up so he can meet him? What if your kids have been told by some seer it will happen soon? What if you dick around so long that Duke becomes a great grandfather instead of just a grandfather?”

Fred rubbed the bridge of his nose for a long, silent moment. I leaned back in my chair taking in his expression. That’s when it hit me that Fred was a great-grandparent before I was ever a parent. Was there something I wasn’t seeing or understanding about the doors being here? Had I overlooked something?

“Only that I’m overprotective of you and the babies. That murdering someone in every life they live from here on out wouldn’t be good enough revenge if they harmed you or our eggs.”

“Oh, that,” I sighed, and he let out a chuckle. “You said it’d be fine.”

“And it probably will,” he nodded. “You’re right. It’s not fair for me to keep the kids waiting. It’s not fair for me to take Minter’s chance away from meeting the rest of his siblings sooner rather than later if they’re willing to make the trip here. Sunny misses his parents and I’m sure everyone misses someone.”

“Are you afraid that something will remind you of Lotus and you’ll pass back out?” I asked before I had time to stop the words from tumbling off my tongue.

“No,” Fred shook his head. “Teddy reminds me of her every day. Breathing reminds me of her. The color yellow reminds me of her. You’re right,” he said again, changing the subject. “We’ll call Liatris and the others after dinner and let them know we’re ready for them to go ahead whenever they want to. They’ll still have to get with Hush and the others. So, we’ll have time.”

Fred was right.

We did have time.

We had three months of time wherein Hush and the others argued over where the gateway should go. In the end, it was Starscale 1 that received the honor of hosting the permanent gateway. Progress was delayed again when the perfect location wasn’t close enough to home for Liatris’s liking. He and Selt had to move, and another house had to be built, and the land had to be prepared for such magic. It took nearly six months all together but eventually the land was ready, and a feast was held on each of the three worlds the day before the ceremony. Liatris told everyone who would listen that such things were overkill. The actual casting wasn’t much of a ritual, and he’d rather not have all eyes on him but the whole flight wanted to know what was going on.

I nodded along as I ate my fill of a bit of this dish and that. Like all our feasts all the dishes were prepared in the homes and restaurants that belonged to the flight. Everyone brought something and most brought a lot to share. Such a large-scale feast would throw off the food points system for months – giving everyone more points than they’d actually eat through until it self-regulated over time.

I still hadn’t laid my egg. It grew inside me barely showing from the outside. Fred still ate with one of his big hands covering my stomach. His dragon hadn’t quite settled down yet and I wasn’t sure he was going to any time soon. Telling him I was momentarily afraid that there would be no one to save me during a hypothetical emergency had set his dragon on edge. Guilt tickled the back of my throat, and I swallowed it down. We’d talked that in circles already. I knew I had nothing to feel bad about but hated seeing him so on edge.

“He’s not on edge,” Teddy laughed. “This isn’t the first time he’s done this. Mom loved to talk about how he got like that sometimes.”

Everyone fell quiet. No one ever knew what to say when Teddy brought up Lotus. Everyone on world who lost a parent since the completion of Starscale 1 lost them to old age. It was so rare for anyone to perish of illness here that no one knew what to say to him. Hell, I didn’t know what to say to him.

“You just wait,” Fred pointed his fork at his son. “You’re gonna be worse than me about it. You’re going to do something dumb and Moonscale like jump in front of the sonic because your dragon doesn’t trust it.”

“If we’re pregnant here, we’ll go to Izora because you’re right. He doesn’t like them,” Teddy laughed. “Looks too much like a gun.”

“He’s definitely yours,” I teased Fred, squeezing his knee under the table.

Fred had used guns plenty of times before. He made a point of never keeping them in his Earthside house while the kids were growing up. I wasn’t sure if Teddy knew how to shoot a gun or not but apparently his dragon didn’t like the healers here toting them around even if they were medical devices not hot metal projectiles.

“Never doubted it,” Fred laughed.

“How are you going to be watching someone grow your grandchild?” Teddy shot back. “You missed it before, but I’ll make sure my mate lays around all pregnant everywhere he goes just to keep you on your toes.”

“Egg brat, no one can magically stop being pregnant in one place. He will be pregnant everywhere he goes,” Fred laughed, face flushed from the spiced dragon wine he drank with dinner.

“Egg brat,” Liatris laughed.

It was probably the first time he heard my mate refer to his children like that.

“I’ll tell him to act extra pregnant,” Teddy laughed, leaning back in his chair.

Minter squirmed in my lap, reaching across the table to grab a piece of chicken from Teddy’s plate. He scooted it closer so his little brother could reach it. Would they all be as kind to Minter as he was? I didn’t worry about their eldest brother, Duke. He was a grandfather already. He knew kids and grandkids. Daliah met her mate not too long ago, but she and Sequin were the supposed snobs to hear Sunny talk about it. Though, what one person considered a snob might well be what another person considers private or shy.

“Dal and Seq are good,” Teddy groaned and kicked Sunny under the table.

“No kick!” Minter shook his finger at his older brother. “Go ouch!” He said to Sunny.

“Ouch!” Sunny groaned, drawing out the pain he probably didn’t feel.

“Go sorry, Teddy! Go sorry!” Minter insisted.

“Sorry, Sunny.”

“It’s okay,” Minter said. “Now be friends.”

Sunny gave Teddy a one-armed hug and Minter resumed eating his stolen chicken.

“Dal and Seq are good. Maybe not as outgoing or umm---” Teddy started but seemed stuck to find whatever word he was looking for.

“Boisterous, outspoken, willing to make a scene,” Fred offered up.

“Yeah, all those things. More Cromwell. Though, less so than they used to be. At least the last time I saw them. Even now when we talk on the phone and stuff they seem chiller. Sequin is b--- He’s ready to come over here to see if his mate’s here.”

“He’s looking for his omega too?” I asked.

Teddy and Fred shared a look I couldn’t read, and they both laughed.

“What?” I asked, looking back and forth between them.

“He would be looking for an alpha,” Sunny said. “Sequin is as big as the rest of them, and I think meaner than the rest of them. Everyone assumes he’s an alpha but ---” Sunny stopped short and squared his shoulder.

“What? Is omega a dirty word now or something?” I asked, fighting the urge to cross my arms because Minter was on my lap.

“No,” Fred and Teddy said at the same time.

“Then why is it so funny?” I asked.

“Just because everyone thinks that. He alternates between embracing it and being enraged that everyone assumes something so intimate about him,” Teddy explained. “It’s why Daliah is so protective over him. He’s still living with her even though she’s met her mate. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not as common in Moonscale London as it is in other places, though.”

“Eh, screw Moonscale London from the sounds of it,” Liatris shrugged. “If they have a problem with him being an omega because he’s tall or something it’s bs. If they care so much about where he lives and it’s not with them, it’s weird.”

“It is,” Fred nodded. “People love to talk, though. My parents included. That’s why they haven’t met anyone who came from Duke’s loins. I don’t think Dana and Drea, his eldest granddaughters, would even recognize them if they walked up and grabbed their noses.”

“They’d headbutt them and run away,” Teddy laughed. “It’s been a few years, though. Maybe they’re to punching and biting instead of headbutting now for all I know.”

“Chicky-chicky!” Minter said, looking up and down the table as if he could call the cooked flesh to him.

Teddy handed him another piece of chicken and he cheered as if he’d been given the first bite of food he’d seen all week.