Chapter Sixteen
Fred
I lifted Nelum onto the counter to catch his breath and find his wits and held out a hand to help Elio to his feet. I pulled him in for a long, slow kiss enjoying the feeling of his lips pressed against mine and his tongue tasting of our new mate’s pleasure. Turning, I stood between Nelum’s legs, rubbing my hands up and down his soft, slightly hairy thighs. I drew circles on them with my thumbs as he leaned his head back against one of the cabinets. Elio opened the fridge to grab out some water bottles for everyone and I made sure Nelum finished his. He smelled like he was in heat now and that was a road paved for dehydration if we weren’t careful.
Once the water bottle was out of the way, I held his face in my hands and stared into his eyes. My dragon shifted mine to his and gazed inside Nelum looking at his slightly furry dragon. My inner beast brushed against my ribs, letting out a purr that rattled my ribcage. Elio started and then both my omegas laughed as Elio hugged me from behind.
“You’re a human vibrator,” he teased me.
“You already knew that,” I laughed before giving Nelum a long kiss.
I lost myself to his mouth for a moment. His legs wrapped around me or tried to. They ended up sorta wrapping around me and Elio as if we were all desperate to touch as much of each other as was possible. Elio’s hands dropped from my stomach to my crotch, grabbing my dick through my pajama pants. My nostrils flared and a ring of smoke escaped my nose. We were all dragons. So we let it be and it rose toward the ceiling as Elio gave me a few teasing strokes before grabbing Nelum’s hand and putting it on my dick. Nelum froze in place, and I almost backed away to give him space thinking things had gone too far or too fast for him. Then he sucked my bottom lip into his mouth and stroked my dick.
“It’s alright,” Elio whispered against my shoulder.
And it was alright. I was there with both of them. Nelum was back with me. He was here in the flesh, kissing and stroking me. His other hand rested on my back, his nails grazing against my flesh as they always did when he was really worked up before. Death could interrupt time itself, but it didn’t interrupt us. It couldn’t interrupt love.
Nelum’s scent filled my head and I broke the kiss long enough to nuzzle into the shoulder that held one of his claiming glands. There on the left, where I had marked Lotus, so long ago. The mark wasn’t there of course. Some things had zero chance of surviving reincarnation, but I’d put it there again soon. I’d have him all the way back inside my head again soon.
“Do you two want to move to the bedroom or are you okay in the kitchen?” I asked them.
“Take him to the bedroom. I’ll straighten up and be there in a few minutes,” Elio said, patting me on the butt.
I turned and stole a kiss before I whisked Nelum away into the bedroom. He was a dragon and not a fox this time around, but he was light as ever in my arms, just like a little flower.
“Little flower, huh?” Nelum chuckled as I toed open the heavy bedroom door and flipped on the light with my elbow.
“That flight link is gonna get me into so much trouble,” I chuckled.
“You called her—me that, didn’t you?” he asked, as I laid him out on the bed before crawling in next to him.
“I did,” I nodded, running a finger up and down the center of his chest just to keep touching him. “But it’s not something I have to carry on. I think my brain is just recalibrating things, trying to push past everything that feels surreal.”
“Is that why you cooked so much?” Nelum asked.
“I was hungry. I wanted a feast for you and Elio, but I didn’t want anyone else around you two either. That’s not even really my call to make but I made it at the time,” I admitted.
“I don’t want to be around anyone but you and Elio right now. I’m naked, probably in heat, and I don’t want to think about the rest of the world. I don’t want to think about the farm or what anyone else is up to.”
“If they need help on the farm, I’ll find someone to go help them,” I said. “It probably wouldn’t even be hard.”
“They’ll be okay. They’ll send me a letter if they need help.”
“If not for the egg, I’d drag you all back to Earthside with me. I’ve known a lot of writers, poets, musicians, and the like in my life. I usually have words for most things but not this feeling. It’s something like the past and the present coming together to make things upside down but in the most spectacular way. I want you and Elio all to myself, but I also want to drag every one of my kids back together too. That’s not even fair to you because I don’t know how they’ll react and you’re not her. I don’t have words in any language that would do justice to all these things mingling together.”
“I am, though,” Nelum flashed me a sad smile. “I was the one you missed, and they missed too. I’m not saying I don’t want to be in their lives. I just can’t be her again. I can’t turn back time or turn back into her.”
“No one expects you to. Teddy---” I sighed. “Bad time to bring him up, huh?”
“Go ahead,” Nelum nodded.
“Teddy has big emotions. He adored Lotus. He still does. It’ll take him time for the surreal to wear off too. He’ll probably always be extra protective over you but that extended to Elio once Minter hatched. So, it’s just who he is.”
“He sounds like a great guy and one day I do want to meet the rest of them. I want to know all about your life and Elio’s. I want to know the people you care about because I’ll shoot someone over them already. You should know that. I once shot someone straight through the hand for groping my best friend at the market. He wasn’t into it and when the guy yelled about my friend kicking him in the shin – I just had to do it.”
“Good,” I laughed. “Next time Darian sets his hounds loose on me, I’ll have backup of my own.”
“Who’s Darian and why did he set dogs on you?”
“He’s the patriarch of a wolf pack and they were wolves who could shoot arrows. It was over my eldest. He has a different carrier than Teddy and them. He was unconscious in some vampyric thing, and I went to get my kid because what else was I supposed to do? I’d only recently found out about him anyway. But they didn’t shoot me. They ended up shooting some famous boyband guy. It turned out okay. Boyband guy turned out to be an okay stepdad for Duke – my eldest – too.”
“How many people have you had babies with?” Nelum arched a brow.
“Ah! You wound me with that judgmental look,” I smirked. “Three. Blake, Lotus, and Elio. Don’t ask my body count. Unless you mean kill count. That would probably impress you but the other one, eh, people have mixed reactions.”
“As long as you didn’t have babies with all of them,” Nelum laughed. “You made it sound like Blake had his own boyband mate but did he fight with Lotus?”
“They were best friends before I ever met Lotus,” I shook my head. “She helped us navigate a lot of the situations that arose.”
“Hi, Elio,” Nelum waved.
“Oh! Babe! How long have you been standing there?” I glanced up at the doorway to see Elio standing there still naked.
“A bit,” Elio shrugged. “It was nice listening to you two talk about everything.”
“I think you’ve heard all my stories by now. All the good ones at least,” I laughed, reaching my hand out for him to join us. He rounded the bed and opened the nightstand drawer. Elio had been on birth control since his c-section. We hadn’t wanted to risk another egg so soon, especially with possible complications. We would have another egg brat in the future but we both needed some time to plan how that might go. Still, we had condoms in the nightstand drawer. He opened it and slid onto the bed on the other side of Nelum.
“Time for the egg talk, huh?” I laughed.
“Egg talk? I’ve been around other eggs before,” Nelum said. “I know what to do and what not to do.”
“Not that egg talk,” Elio chuckled. “Do you want hatchlings? I know we talked about it a bit before, but this has to be a conversation we’re all involved in. While it’s most likely that Fred would get you or I pregnant, it’s possible that one of us could get the other pregnant. It’s less heard of but we wouldn’t be the first omegas it happened with. I’m on birth control and have the backup meds in the cabinet from before too. I know I don’t want to lay another egg right now. The last one took a lot out of me because of the c-section and everything.”
Nelum stared at the ceiling for a long moment, and I waited for him to blush. He’d blushed at almost everything else, but he didn’t smell embarrassed or flustered. Instead, his scent was pensive as if he considered Elio’s question from every angle.
“And you don’t get to tell us what you think we want to hear either,” Elio said. “We can’t help you with what you want if you don’t let us know what that really is.”
“I’m considering a few things. How are the dragons here with dragons who don’t look like them? I don’t want to have hatchlings who never fit in,” Nelum said.
“There are now a few babies on world who aren’t dragons,” Elio said. “We’re all one flight. I don’t know how much of the Starscale history you know. Yes, we left Earthside to find our own world but not because of furry shifters, vampires, or something. We left because the humans were horrible tyrants who thought they were the be all, end all of everything. They were greedy and violent and even the best of them couldn’t admit that they only cared about people who were carbon copies of themselves. We wanted more than that for ourselves. Our ancestors wanted a place where we could live like normal people – you know, in a community where we actually cared and were all invested in our mutual survival and thriving. Sorry to get up on my soapbox, but I think a furry dragon would do fine here. Maybe they’d be too warm and need a hair trim in the summer but socially? They’d be fine.”
“And our hatchlings could still visit your home world too,” I added on. “The Other World gateway is here now and it’s not going anywhere unless someone really pisses Liatris off.”
“Selt or Xav would eat their faces,” Elio laughed.
“Or Teddy,” I added on.
“Or anyone who wants to explore somewhere else,” Nelum said.
“Any other questions?” Elio said, resting his hand on the lean, muscular plain of Nelum’s stomach.
“Would two or three eggs at one time be too much?” Nelum asked.
“Do dragons where you come from normally have multiples?”
“Not always. Maybe not even usually, but there is a good chance even if I lay one egg, we’d have two at the same time.”
“I can handle that,” I nodded. “Two isn’t that bad. Even three is doable. Four would be a stretch but we’d make it work.”
“Well, three eggs and Minter would be four,” Elio chuckled.
“I think we could handle it, though. I think we could handle a house full of hatchlings,” I said. “I think it’s good to have them in batches close in age. That way even if they’re not the pure definition of a clutch, they’ll socialize as one.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Nelum said.
“It’s easier to have multiples here than in some places, I think,” I told him. “Here, food is a given. They have a lot of social safety nets in place that would help out if we all three burnt out at once.”
“Plus Teddy, the crew, and Marsin and them too,” Elio added.
“And my parents would take the kids sometimes too,” Nelum nodded.
“Not my parents. They’re fuckers,” I sat up.
“Did I kill the mood?” Nelum asked.
“No,” I shook my head. “I’ve never been good at sitting still for a long time unless I’m asleep. Then I’m a boulder.”
“He really is from what they told me,” Elio laughed. “So, now or later?”
“For romping? I’m down,” I said as a bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck.
“Hatchlings,” Elio said, sliding his hand down toward the nightstand drawer.
“Condoms or no condoms?” I said, looking down at them as I stretched my back standing at the foot of the bed.
“No condoms,” he shook his head. “Unless you guys want to wait.”
“I’m good with no condoms,” I said and glanced at Elio.
“I’m okay with you possibly conceiving if that’s what you want, Nelum.”
“You’re on birth control,” Nelum teased Elio.
“I am and you should know Fred’s vers when he’s in the mood. I think that covers everything,” Elio said.
Nelum looked at me and I shrugged. With far off worlds, one never knew what was considered the norm sexually within the culture. I wasn’t sure I was normal on Earthside but here, alpha dragons who shared my interests, were a dime a dozen, but if you asked nicely, they’d not even charge you the dime.
“I know we just left the kitchen,” Nelum said and bit his lip.
“But you’re hungry,” I filled in the rest for him.
“Let’s go eat,” Elio said, sliding out of bed and holding out his hand for Nelum to join us. “What? We’re dragons. We expect you to eat a lot.”
“I want you to eat right now. I think it’s a good sign that you’re hungry. That isn’t always the case when someone’s in heat.”
“I know,” Nelum nodded.
“Don’t worry,” I grinned at him. “We won’t let you starve.”