Chapter Seven
Marcus
I could still taste the bitter words he wrote. Burning them wasn’t enough. He would not be fucking my clanmates. He wouldn’t ever— Of course not. I soothed myself with the fact I was the only unmated male in the keep.
He’d bathed not hours before, when he’d arrived. But it wasn’t enough; I could still smell the mark of others on him. And he acted like it was normal. Like it was another chore he was expected to earn his food.
I’d feed him whatever he wanted. I’d give him all he ever craved if only it would make him smile and fix him.
But he wasn’t broken, was he? He smiled and appreciated so gleefully.
Mute as he was, he wasn’t mentally unfit.
My mind reeled as I gathered an outfit for him and marched him out of my quarters and down the halls to the communal playroom.
A room that had once housed me, where I spent my idle hours while Lyphus and Marcus fawned over me, read me stories, and showed me all the affection I never expected from my birth parents.
And his hair… The choppy locks sat on his head like a mop.
He needed a real haircut. He needed spoiling, touch, another scrub because, by fuck, I could still scent that rancid odor on him of fear, of disinterest, and another man’s cum.
But it wasn’t his fault, and I needed to remind myself to make sure he knew my reaction wasn’t for that.
I wasn’t angry at him. I was angry at others.
His instinct, as he’d proven to me, was always to fawn, to lay and take it, to not fight.
I squeezed his hand and brushed his hair back from a soft forehead, revealing the snow-pale expanse of his skin.
His mouth was mine, though. His mouth wasn’t touched.
His breath still had a note of my own on it, my toothpaste, my tongue down his fucking throat.
I huffed as his innocent stare penetrated me, that lapin submission resigned to his fate. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He held up his hands in uncertainty.
Fuck it all, I wanted him, but my dragon snarled at that scent.
But his mouth, pale lips parted, I claimed.
I leaned in and kissed him once more, reveling in how inexperienced he was to it.
Still, he reciprocated, cock hardening through his trousers as the faintest scent of arousal rose and I pulled away panting. “I’ll bring you something to eat.”
And by the look at him, he could have very well eaten me.
I stormed off down the hall to cool my temper and ransacked the kitchen for whatever I could shove into an air fryer from the freezer. We had some jalapeno cheese things and mozzarella sticks and curled fries that I leveled off and hit the magic go button of goodness.
It gave me fifteen minutes, exactly, to brood. Fifteen minutes I would not get.
“Good morning, baby.” Baba strolled in and leaned over to give me a one-armed hug and a kiss to my lower cheek, highest he could reach on me. “Sleep well?”
I didn’t miss the insinuation curling in his voice.
“I slept like the dead, but not because of that.” I huffed as the air fryer blasted too many scents out of it.
“Well, so long as it’s going well. Your dragon knew best where your mate was.
” Baba rummaged in the fridge and pulled out an unlabeled glass bottle.
A medicine that Malkim brewed for him. Baba had far more magic than a dragon should have had, but too much of a good thing could hurt a dragon.
The concoction dampened the side effects.
“Mate?” I grumbled as my dragon snarled about its new treasure. “Not going out searching. I told you. I’m staying. Take care of my new treasure.”
Baba rested a hand on my shoulder as the tangy scent of his beverage flitted past my nostrils. “Your treasure? Honey, you added him to your hoard. That’s your mate. He’s not a thing or a pet.”
My heart froze in my chest and flopped. I was a fucking blind idiot. I’d been so consumed with owning him that I’d not even stopped to think about why it was I needed him.
“I—” I stared at the air fryer, my mind humming. My dragon purred in my head, the word occurring to him as well in a gentle rumble. Mate.
“Ohhhhh boy.” Baba laughed and gave me a one-armed hug.
“But he’s not a dragon.”
“Neither was your biological father, but here you are.” Baba rolled his eyes.
“But…” I stumbled as he kept talking.
“I remember the day those two mated. Olson was all,” Baba said, putting on a nasally voice for my omega father. “Lyphus, this wolf! Why do I want him like treasure? I want to polish him and hide him in my gold.”
I stared at Baba unamused.
“And there Jackson was, all brooding and scowling. Olson’s dragon succeeded in burying him a few times before they caught on and he gave your father a mating bite.” Baba snickered. “Ahhh, those two were a match made in hell.”
My birth parents had a complicated relationship, but they loved one another. They were two halves of the same feral whole. “Had to be. I came out of it.”
“And six others, last I heard.” Baba laughed.
“I’d never do that. Be that callous. I couldn’t…” I shook my head and glanced at the time on the fryer before checking the contents and giving them a jostle.
Baba shook his head and took a deep breath, the one that always came before a lecture. “I know you don’t mean it the way that sounded. But they gave you to us. And we love you and are so happy with you. Are you happy with us?”
Gods, that made my heart ache to hear from him. “No. You know I love you. I loved my childhood, and I want to stay here and be a family. When I told you I don’t want to leave, it’s because I want you as my family still. Always.”
Baba nodded, his pained face forcing its way into a smile.
“It is the way of things, that some of our kind were born without the instinct for child-rearing. It does not mean they do not love you. It means, they keep having children because they can, because others like me and Malkim cannot bear children.”
I shrank in place a little, a scolded child before my baba with no apology good enough. “Do you know what happened when Olson and Jackson gave you to me?”
I shook my head. “They said they realized that I wasn’t what they were made for.”
Baba scoffed. “No.”
I waited patiently for him to keep speaking as he held his bottle up and swilled it.
“I take these daily. It stops me from ovulating, and it dampens my magic.” He huffed and swallowed hard. “Olson and I were hatching little ones at the same time. I ended up nesting with you as much as my own egg.”
I’d not known that, and when tears sprang up in Baba’s eyes, I reached out to give him a hug. I held him like he’d held me at one time. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want.”
“You’ll be mated soon, so you should hear it. Understand what a noble thing it is for your parents to do.” Baba huffed, clearing his throat. “Malkim and I have born eight eggs. We have no children to show for it. Olson had watched me birth egg after egg, and they’d never hatch.”
He cleared his throat to hide a sob once more. “And I hatched you with him. I helped him raise you and I fell gravid once more, and I knew it’d be it. That’d be when we had our own.”
I flinched.
“But he never hatched. He slept in his shell, and Olson came to me and said that since I was so attached to you already, and that he and Jackson were not the most loving of parents they could be, that they wanted to know if I would raise you as my own. They have children, for those of us who cannot.”
“Baba.” I held him tighter and swallowed hard. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s nothing. I have you, and I will take all the grandbabies you want to give me.
Malkim and I are meant to be parents, but we cannot make our own young.
We both carry a defect in our blood that has made our young unable to develop past a certain stage.
” He rubbed at his eyes. “There. Now you know the shitty truth. Your parents did not get rid of you. They blessed us.”
I gripped tighter and let my magic and warmth flow with my baba’s. “I love you so much, Baba.”
“Love you too, baby. I always told you that you were a gift to me. And you still are.” Baba patted my back and pulled away, wiping at his eyes. “Now go get that food to that pale thing before he fades away. I’m going to go read for a while.”
“Mind if I go into the next town over this afternoon?”
“Sure. There’s a list on the fridge, and you know the drill. Whoever is leaving has to grab the list.” He waved me off, and I nodded right as the air fryer beeped.
I pulled the drawer out to dump the contents into a plastic mixing bowl, and when I turned around, he was gone.