Chapter Ten
Nelum
I spent more time researching this Lotus lady than I’d ever admit to anyone else. Accessing Earthside’s internet data base was easy enough whenever Sunny left his phone lying around. She was way more high maintenance than I’d ever be. Liked flowers a lot more than I did too. Except, she kicked ass. Maybe none of them had seen it but she did. Hell, she kept it together for decades despite knowing she was gonna die in pain. How was that not badass? Her parties were beautiful. Her wedding and her birthdays. Her children’s birthdays. Her mate’s birthdays and anniversaries. Everything she touched turned fucking beautiful. I almost remembered what all those flowers smelled like. Almost. Her funeral was beautiful too. Someone laid me – her – out surrounded by flowers. Someone loved her. A lot of someones from all the memorial pages I found.
“Thought you didn’t believe in looking to the past,” Laken grunted sitting down in the armchair with one of the twins nursing from his chest.
“Everyone keeps calling me mum,” I shrugged. “Had to know whether it was an insult or compliment.”
“You know, I don’t know if you are Lotus. I have no way of knowing except maybe that your star is yellow. What I do know is being compared to her isn’t an insult. If you are her, sure you’ve changed, but dying does that to a soul. You have a whole new life. Dad’s a spell hunter and mom’s a pig farmer?”
“Something like that,” I shrugged. “They work hard. We have enough. Well, enough eggs anyway,” I laughed. “Everything else we work for.”
“Why don’t you eat the pigs you farm?” Laken blinked at me.
“Oh, no. We raise wooly pigs. You don’t eat wooly pigs. You shave them and then have to process the wool. We have chickens for their eggs and we hunt for the rest of our meat. It’s not hard when Dad’s not pregnant. He’s a spell hunter. A couple words and his arrows never miss. I on the other hand did not pick that up. I shoot straight but that’s not always enough if the hide is tough.”
“Makes sense. Will they be okay without you? Do they know you’re okay?” Laken asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. All of it yeah. I sent them a letter through that overgrown Earthside dragon.”
“Which Moony?”
“My dad,” Sunny sighed coming through with the other twin.
I could never remember the babies’ names. They looked too much like one baby copied over to have their own names yet anyway. I couldn’t imagine having four or five of them of my own. Well, maybe I could. Not on the farm. I loved my parents. I even loved the wooly pigs but sometimes I wanted food I didn’t have to shoot myself or pluck out from under a bird’s bottom.
Sunny’s phone rang and I almost answered it but he snatched it up from me before I could.
“Talk to me,” he said, walking back through the house before turning right around and swapping babies with Laken so the other twin could have a snack too. “I told you Minter would tell him sooner or later. Kids can’t keep quiet.” He paused and sighed before walking through the house.
“Do you think they’re going to expect me to wear a dress?” I laughed.
“That’s not funny,” Laken rolled his eyes. “You might be nervous about this but that’s not funny. Wear what you want but don’t poke fun at others. Besides, Fred ran a club with drag night. So, really don’t be that guy.”
“I just meant---”
“No, they’re not going to be upset that you’re a guy. You are a guy, right? I mean we all just sort of assumed and didn’t ask.”
“I’m a guy,” I nodded.
“Okay then. Fred is about as pan as they come. I think Elio is gay, maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, they both like guys, obviously,” Laken sighed. “Don’t do that thing younger dragons do where they act like assholes because they’re afraid someone won’t like them. It’s not cool and before you say you’re not, yes, you were.”
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. “You just think you know everything.”
“No, I don’t know everything. I’ve just spent plenty of time around dragons who are afraid or who just had their asses kicked. It comes with my line of work.”
Sunny walked back into the room and rested his arms on the back of Laken’s chair for a second before he ran his hands down to his mate’s shoulders. Would my guys be like that? If they were my guys? I waited for him to say something but the longer the silence stretched on the more certain I became that the two of them spoke over their mating link.
“They can,” Laken sighed. “Though, if anyone starts fighting in my house, I’m going to toss them so far, they’ll have to fly from the Vila Ice Belt back here. Maybe having their testicles frozen off will cool down tempers. I’m not putting up with any pissing contests. Get that enough from you and Selt.”
“Selt and I don’t---” Sunny started and then stopped. “We haven’t done that in a while.”
“I know. You two have to learn to get along. Teddy has enough issues without you two competing for best platonic friend. I told you what I thought about you and him. You said it wasn’t like that. If it’s not like that, drop it. If it is, well tell him. Liatris doesn’t share. So, Selt has never been your competition, Sunny. You’re his best friend.”
“I better be,” Sunny grumbled. “You might want to get dressed or whatever you do to get ready, Nelum. Fred and Elio are coming over. Teddy won’t be around to save you from Xav either if he comes with them. He’s staying with the egg and Minter.”
“Xav hates me,” I laughed.
“Xav doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t trust you. He’s been through some shit – some double shit at that,” Laken frowned. “Once we know who you’re with everyone will trust you a lot more.”
“You trust me,” I arched my brows.
“I do because I know I can kick your ass. So, I trust myself more than I trust anyone else. I could kick your ass with this baby still on my ni---” Sunny squeezed his shoulder and Laken fell quiet. “Yeah, I’m going to have to go back to the arena soon.”
“No arena until those hormones level out, mate,” Sunny teased and kissed the top of his head. “Don’t want you accidentally snapping someone in half. Maybe Frey can come over and wrestle you or something.”
“You don’t get to watch.”
“Such a shame,” Sunny growled and kissed his temple.
“How long until Fred and Elio show up?” Laken asked.
“Eh, not too long. He said like an hour,” Sunny said.
“You,” he pointed to me. “You’ve been here long enough. You’re on a baby duty for about twenty minutes.”
“Huh?” I blinked as he stood up and passed the baby off to me. “Okay, maybe an hour. I don’t know.”
Sunny smirked and tugged Laken’s hand and they both disappeared down the hallway. I stared down at the tiny baby in my arms and wondered which one he was. It didn’t really matter. All babies more or less looked the same to me. He wasn’t ugly but he wasn’t as cute as everyone said babies were. Maybe you had to have your own babies before all those fuzzy, floofy feelings kicked in. Still, I didn’t mind helping out. We were all tiny, helpless creatures at one point in our lives.
***
An hour later, Sunny and Laken had taken their children back and went off down the hall for a nap. I sorta wished that Laken stayed up to toss one of them off to whatever ice garter he had threatened to if things went south.
“At least they won’t call us mummy,” my dragon muttered inside my thoughts when the doorbell rang.
I almost didn’t answer it. I almost left them standing outside. Sooner or later, Sunny would come sprinting through the house to get the door. I mean, I didn’t actually live here. I stayed here as a favor to Teddy. Though, since he let my dinner go free about a week ago, I figured he owed me a favor more than I owed him one.
For a fraction of a second, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet my true-mates at all. Most normal people had one. Up until recently I had been a pretty normal guy for where I came from. I understood Fred, Elio, and Lotus’s backstory but that’s all it was to me: a story.
“Sunny?” A deep voice called through the door.
“Coming!” I called, praying he hadn’t woken up the babies.
“That’s not Sunny,” another man said.
“I think that’s him,” the deeper voiced guy said.
“Him who?” I called back because despite Laken’s warning, I couldn’t not be an asshole.
One of them laughed and I smiled despite the tightening of my insides. Everything inside me wanted to scream or run away from them or maybe toward them? I wasn’t sure which option was the scariest.
“Him you apparently,” the deeper voiced man called back.
“Him who you? Fuck! I mean, which one are you?” I asked, putting my hand against the dark, wooden door as if that would pause time long enough for me to figure out what to do.
“I’m Fred,” the deeper voiced man said.
I let myself stay quiet and take a long, deep breath. I couldn’t smell either of them. The Starscales had a way of hiding their scents almost everywhere they went. This extended to not smelling people outside the house while you were inside. Back home, I’d have called this a safety issue but here crime seemed not to exist. You could walk into any store and eat whatever as long as you told the person at the counter who you were and what you were taking so they could update their records.
“And I’m Elio,” the other dragon said after I was silent for a beat too long.
“I’m Nelum,” I managed to say. “I’m going to open the door, but I want to say some stuff first, okay?”
“Okay,” Fred said. “We’re listening. We’re not big, bad wolves going to blow it down.”
“Umm… Do wolves here have tornado breath? I’ve seen it in sheep but never in--- You know what? Never mind. This isn’t the time to talk about livestock or predators. I don’t know if I’m Lotus. Well, I know I’m not her now. I don’t know if I ever was her. I’ve had dreams of Teddy as a little boy surrounded by these other kids. I remembered how to do a dance called a waltz trot the other night. I’ve never heard of such a thing until I remembered it. So, maybe I was her or maybe I wasn’t her. If I am her, don’t like me just because of that, okay?”
“Lotus is dead,” Fred said. “My wife has been dead for a long time. Have I waited on you if you are her? Yes. I have.”
The air was thick with so many unsaid words. I wasn’t sure if he was going to say more or if it was my turn to speak again.
“But we will love you because you were her. You couldn’t be who you are now without being her first,” Elio said.
“You know this would be funny if you’re not her at all,” Fred said, laughing.
“Is it bad that I sorta hope I’m not? Not because you guys aren’t great from what Teddy’s told me but because then life would be simpler.”
“That sounds like such a fucking Lotus thing to say,” Fred laughed.
“Can you open the door now?” Elio asked.
I could but I wasn’t sure I was ready to. Would I ever be ready to? Being stuck in limbo wasn’t a great place to be but what if I was the mate they were waiting on and they didn’t like me? Or worse! What if I didn’t like them or only liked one of them? What if I hated them both and Teddy lied and they were horrible people who ate wooly pigs for dinner?
“Calm down,” my dragon grunted. “There is only one way to find out if they belong to us. There are a million options flowing in both directions for either answer. There is no way to narrow it down except to open the door.”
“I’m going to feel like an ass either way, aren’t I?” I asked him.
“Probably. Love and sex and mates make giant asses out of us all,” my dragon nodded his giant head.
“Are you ready?” I asked, buying myself a few more seconds.
“Have been for a long time,” Fred said, and I unlocked the door.
I took a few big steps back from it until my legs found the chair arm. Then and only then did I tell Fred and Elio to come inside.