Mated in the Stars (Starscale Mates #6)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Fred

Two Months Later in the Guardian’s of Glitter Bomb Territory

Living in the GGB was different when you had two kids and another egg on the way. We had squeezed in a few nights at the Glitter Bomb but so much had changed it was like walking into a whole new world. Feral kept a lot of my themes and a lot of the same usuals showed up with new faces mingled in the crowd. Way more lions than I remembered. In my younger days, I was there at the club way past the time the sun rose but now we were usually out before midnight. There were kids to take care of and a nest to build. We’d brought our nest pack with us from Starscale 1 but we still had to put it together. Minter wasn’t a huge fan of the new nest and never quite understood why we couldn’t just bring the other one here. Even once Nelum laid his big yellow egg, Minter didn’t change his mind about things. If anything, he grew more upset that his sibling’s egg was in the wrong nest. He was a Starscale through and through. At least, after the egg was laid, he’d take his naps in the nest with it and Baby Amaranth who grew more every time I blinked or looked away.

It was nice to catch up with Feral and Ty and everyone else. It was so surreal to see the queens who had helped to build my scene from the ground up be parents now. Grandparents even. Time marched on and now we were all older. Most of them still performed from time to time but new faces dominated the sets and DJs had names I never heard of while music I didn’t know pounded into my veins. Except for Throwback weekends where it was all the music from when I was younger. Those were the weekends it hurt to leave the bar when I wanted to stay and shut it down with the rest of them. Only going home to my babies and relieving the sitter felt so much better than that would’ve.

We had a lot of video calls with Daliah and Rosemary as we planned their wedding. Feral was more than good with it taking place at the club. Even Sequin joined in from time to time because he wasn’t about to miss out on his sister’s wedding even if they hadn’t fully made up. Some fights you don’t come back from. Sometimes growing up and growing into who you’re meant to be cracked a lot of foundations in your life. Sometimes good things filled in those cracks and other times everything fell away that your feet weren’t still touching.

Teddy made good on his statement of returning to Starscale 1 right after he ensured Minter had everything he needed here. He called every day to talk to Minter for at least for a few minutes. It made me happy that he kept his younger brother in mind even as his life moved on. There was no doubt that after the wedding and our egg hatching that we would return to Starscale 1. It was home now but this was a nice vacation, and it meant we saw more of my adult children I hadn’t seen in a while, and I’d be here to walk Daliah down the aisle. I was surprised when she asked me. Traditionally, it’s the omega who gets walked down the aisle, but Rosemary decided that both of them should get that. I wasn’t against it. It was their wedding. It wasn’t like Sequin was going to be old fashioned and let me walk him down the aisle and that was his right.

One night while the three of us lounged in the nest and the kids dozed peacefully the egg began to rock. Minter opened one eye and let out a long sigh.

“Why at night?” he asked me.

“I don’t know, buddy. Babies come when they want.”

“But I want to sleep, and I want to see it, but I want to sleep,” he rubbed his eyes. “Wake up baby?”

“No,” Elio shook his head hard and fast. “We let Amarnath sleep. He won’t remember anyway.”

While we talked, Nelum crawled closer to the egg he’d laid. I scooted in with him and rubbed small circles on his back. The rocking meant something would happen eventually, but it could be a long night before the baby even poked a tiny finger or toe out.

And it proved just to be that sort of night. Minter dozed off and on while all three of us kept our eyes glued to our yellow egg. It rocked and rocked and eventually fell onto its side. It hurt not to pick it up and put it the right way again but the rocking stopped and the scratching began. The scratching went on until noon. Elio and Nelum dozed while I made Minter a PBJ and a glass of milk and hurried back into the nest. At noon everything went silent and for a moment my heart tried to pound out of my chest.

Then a crack resounded through the room, and everyone woke up. Baby Amaranth let out a wail that could’ve woken our ancestors a thousand generations back in time. Elio soothed him as the uppermost part of the shell rolled away and our little hatching lay belly down kicking and flailing his arms as if we should’ve known he chose that exact second to enter the world.

“Baby,” Minter rubbed his eyes. “Baby.”

“Yes, baby,” Nelum nodded picking up our newborn and wiping away the eggshell from his little pink body. The star-shaped scale on his chest was as yellow as Nelum’s own. Soon, we’d call Doctor Philip McCoy to look over him but for now he was ours.

“Lolem,” he whispered the name.

“I think it fits him,” Elio scooted closer now that Baby Amaranth had been soothed back to sleep. “Little Lolem.”

“Low-lem?” Minter tried out the name, hitting the syllables correctly.

“Good job, baby,” I leaned over and kissed him on the head.

We’d need the healer to stop by before we all fell asleep, but we settled in for a rest and some bonding time with all of our little kids before inviting the world in. We’d come so far, all of us, to be together. Once upon a time, I believed my life was over, but that wasn’t what fate had written out in the stars for me. I never wanted this life to end. I wanted to hold onto them all forever because I really was the luckiest dragon alive.

READ ON to find out who meets his true-mate at Daliah’s wedding!

Hello and thank you for reading! Whether this is your first book in this universe, or you’ve been around since the beginning, thank you! It means the world to me to be able to continue expanding this universe to new and exciting places! We’re so close to bringing some characters together who started this series off and I’m psyched for what’s coming up in the next couple of books.

Some housekeeping notes:

1) Yes! All the crew members and Marsin will find their mate in this series!

2) This one was new to me, but a few readers have asked questions that I’d love to answer in slice of life stories. The first five of these are live on Amazon now. You can find the series here . More of these will come out probably in the new year. I plan to do the next three of these after I finish book 6 of this series. I have a maybe surgery next year. So, it might be around spring before these come out. Maybe soon. I can’t really predict how things will play out in my personal life right now.

3) We have family trees ! Really – trees in the plural! Thanks to the awesome Riley Morgan ! Thank you so much!

4) So many of you have asked what I’m going to do about (if anything) some of Xenos and Barry’s kids – this is still in the making! I know it feels really far away since we’re now on a world that isn’t even Earthside, but if things go as I plan this is coming!

5) Someone recently asked me why I hyphenated true-mate. When I first started writing my first book, I thought the words true and mate just looked a little separated and needed to be tied together because of what their joint meaning was. So, it became the way everyone in the Hemlock Universe wrote it.

6) You can follow me here to keep up with all the upcoming releases and other fun stuff 3 3 3

7) Should this one have gone first? Yes, I’m changing my pen name to Avery Hemlock. I won’t bore you all with the reasons but for the rest of this series the books will say Avery ‘Maggie’ Hemlock. After that, they’ll say only Avery Hemlock. I thank you in advance for your support on this and in helping me get the word out to your friends and fellow readers who also read my books.

8) For those of you just discovering, I’m trans. It’s okay. You don’t need to apologize for misgendering me before you knew. I only came out a few months ago at the time of publishing this book. Thank you for your concern, though.

9) Thank you all for your ongoing support. Y’all mean the world to me.

~Avery