Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Ronan
Dragons.
Mates.
Baby Dragons.
Eggs.
I was carrying an egg or eggs and now someone named Raven was on her way to what? Tell me just how many? Odem was a dead man, or a dead dragon, or whatever the fuck he was just as soon as I got him alone. The least he could have done was warn a guy before bouncing me on his cock!
Okay, so it was an impressive enough cock that turning him down wouldn’t have happened, but no way would I have let him come with that monster dick inside of me if I’d known this was going to be the fucking outcome! At the very least he needed to have a warning label tattooed across the damn thing.
Watching him with his niece and nephew, maybe all the brothers were hung.
Three eggs! Four babies! Oh, hell to the god damned no!
Not out of this tiny little body! It wasn’t happening.
Glancing down at myself, I couldn’t fathom how one egg was supposed to grow without wrecking every trim inch of me.
Vain much? You’re damn right I was. Though I couldn’t deny that his size was part of what had drawn me to him in the first place.
And those intensely glittering eyes that had always promised wicked things.
Long hair had always been a turn on for me too and he wore his loose and flowing to the middle of his back, the deep, crimson shade woven through with streaks of ruby strands had led me to ask, multiple times, where he got his hair colored at because no one in this town could pull off a dye job like that.
Only now I wasn’t sure if it was dyed or if those golden eyes were contacts the way I’d always thought because the shade had always seemed otherworldly and unnatural, especially the starburst pattern around the irises that reminded me a bit of flames.
Didn’t he have some moral obligation to disclose that he wasn’t human before pinning someone to the wall and fucking them stupid?
Okay, so yeah, I’d begged for that fucking and all the others, but babies? Eggs? My head spun and I was forced to close my eyes, lean against the back of the couch, and slowly sip the rest of my water with a shaky hand that spilled some of it down my front.
“If it’s any consolation, I got to find out I was pregnant after vomiting up everything I’d ever eaten in my entire life,” Emerson said. “I think I may have even puked up a few things I’d thought about eating and never gotten around to.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I muttered as my traitorous tummy gave a lurch.
“At least it was only once,” Alex pointed out.
“I begged and begged Ionus to just put a bed in the bathroom for me, I threw up so much. One day I could have pickles, the next they made my nose wrinkle and my stomach revolt. Things I’d have cringed at the mere thought of putting in my mouth were absolutely delicious, while some of the foods I absolutely loved, like green beans, sent me fleeing to the nearest commode. ”
“We are about to find out if potted palm trees survive being puked into if you keep this conversation up much longer,” I declared, refusing to open my eyes.
The tiny sips of water were helping, while the snickers that followed my statement pissed me off enough to snap my eyes open to glare at them, only to discover that it wasn’t me they were laughing at.
Odem, with both infants in his arms, had wrapped his tail around the potted palm I’d been thinking about puking in and used it to haul the plant further away from the couch.
With his tail.
He had a fucking tail!
“I’ll grab a trash can in case you need it,” Alex declared, while Odem peered at me like he was personally offended on behalf of his plant.
O-kay.
When he turned to cross the room with the infants cuddled to his chest, there was a flap hanging from the ass of his jeans where that tail had torn through and damn, there was no way I was dreaming this.
My imagination wasn’t this good and that’s what dreams were, right?
Overactive imagination and residual memories colliding?
“Give me those babies and go cover your ass,” Alex said when he returned to the room with an empty trashcan with a fresh bag in it.
Thank fuck, because the smell of food right now, especially old, rotten food, would have fuckin’ killed me.
“Had to save my plant,” Odem declared as he passed the babies over.
And because it seemed like a strange statement coming from him I just had to ask, “What’s so special about that plant?”
“It’s the first thing I’ve ever tried to grow,” he admitted as he headed for the large, arched doorway at the far end of the room.
“It’s magnificent,” Emerson said. “Caro will be so proud of you.”
Watching his bare ass flex as he walked away gave me something to focus on other than my upset stomach, but the moment he disappeared I closed my eyes again, his words still echoing in the back of my head.
Why did it feel like there was more to that simple palm tree than the fact that he’d grown it?
If I asked, would he tell me the full story?
Did I even want to know?
Maybe? Even if I was still pissed as hell at him.
The couch beneath me was soft and wide enough for two people.
It would have been fun to ride him on it, if he’d ever brought me here, but no, we’d always fucked wherever we happened to be when we ran into each other.
It sure would have saved my ass from scraping against brick if he’d fucked me here instead of up against a wall.
Or in a bathroom stall.
Or the park, on the ground, where the knee of a very expensive pair of designer jeans had wound up caked with dirt because he’d only given me enough time to get one leg out before tackling me.
I was starting to feel like a dirty little secret, someone he’d been too ashamed to bring home with him, which fired up my anger all over again.
Had I not gotten knocked up, would he have just discarded me like I was another fuck toy?
While I pondered that question another thought entered my head.
One that reminded me that he and I had never been about having a relationship.
There hadn’t been dates or even much conversation outside of dirty talk.
We’d both been all about fucking one another stupid and ending the night on an orgasmic high.
So, maybe I’d have gotten bored and discarded him. That’s what usually happened, anyway.
And now suddenly I was his mate?
What the fuck was that supposed to look like?
At least, after seeing him with the babies, I could picture him as a father, though that didn’t mean he’d necessarily be thrilled about sharing parenting duties with me.
I couldn’t decide if I was pleased about that or pissed at having wound up in this predicament.
Still, he hadn’t denied that we’d been together, or tried to shift blame by claiming that the life, or lives, inside of me belonged to someone else, so I guess that was something.
Honestly, this whole mess was completely surreal and made even more so when Emerson tapped me on the knee.
“Raven is here.”
His words prompted me to open my eyes to the sight of a beautiful woman with long hair and a bright, knowing smile as she peered down at me.
“Another Denarious mate has been found, I see,” she declared. “But where is Odem?”
“Right here,” Odem declared as he came skidding around the corner, arms windmilling as his foot caught on the edge of the carpet before he tripped and wound up laying at her feet.
Emerson snorted, Alex snickered, and Raven just shook her head at him while I was flooded with a brief flash of concern over his wellbeing before he chuckled and grinned at her, flashing that panty melting smile as he sat up and attempted to smooth his wrinkled t-shirt.
He didn’t look the least bit ashamed as he shrugged and stood back up. “Oops.”
“Talk about making an entrance,” Alex said. “I think you might just have riveled the dude who tripped coming down to the ring at the Royal Rumble and wound up sliding underneath the ring.”
Wait? What?
“I know exactly who you’re talking about,” I admitted. “That was one of the best missteps ever.”
“You’re a wrestling fan?” Alex asked with this hopeful, excited look on his face that sent a tingle of pleasure through me as well.
“It’s one of my many, many guilty pleasures,” I replied.
“We have got to hang out and watch the next mega show together,” Alex said. “Preferably over here, while Ionus, Gramps, Great-Gramps and the rest of the family wrangle my brood.”
“Over…here,” I muttered, glancing over at Odem, who didn’t seem the least bit thrown by Alex inviting himself, and me, to his house to watch wrestling.
“I’ll take care of the snacks and whip us up one of those deep-dish pizza monstrosities you love, heavy on whatever Ronan can keep down,” Odem declared, shocking me into silence.
Was this man…dragon, what the fuck ever, actually agreeing to us invading his space and offering to provide food in the process? Deep dish pizza at that.
Hold the fucking phone.
Could he cook? Okay, maybe it was time for me to reconsider whether or not this was a dream, because holy shit on a shingle, having a man cook for me was definitely something I’d dream up.
“Before we start planning pregnancy foods, let’s make certain he is pregnant first,” Raven declared.
“Oh, I’m knocked up,” I declared, showing her the now rumpled sonogram. “So, if this is how he thinks he’s going to weasel out of it, by bringing some, some, umm priestess over to claim I’m not, then I’m out of here!”
My stomach protested my rapid movement when I attempted to leap back to my feet only to have Raven hold out her hand to stop me.
“I assure you that I am not here to help him weasel out of anything,” Raven declared, her voice both soothing and firm. “I’m here to assess the damage he’s done; in terms of how many eggs you’ve been stuffed with.”
Well damn, when she put it that way I guess I could sit still long enough for her to tell me how fucked I was.
“Why don’t you lay back and get comfortable,” Raven said. “I was told that you were feeling a bit queasy.”
“Wouldn’t you if someone told you that you’d gotten knocked up by a dragon and had suddenly been elevated from fuck toy to mate?”
She snickered while Odem let out a little gasp.
“Ronan, we don’t talk that way in the presence of the High Priestess,” he actually had the nerve to say.
“Oh no you did not just admonish me after what you did to me!” I snapped.
“And you can cuss at me all you want when Raven is through examining you, but in her presence, even I’m respectful.”
“Maybe you should have had some respect for poor, unsuspecting bedpartners and tattooed a warning sign on your, your….is there a polite word I can use for that anaconda in your pants, so I don’t offend anyone?”
“You just used it,” Alex said, snickering.
“Can we just get on with it, so I know what to put on the paperwork when I march my happy behind down to the courthouse to file for child support?” I grumbled.
“Umm, technically you can’t do that until after they hatch,” Emerson pointed out, so I shot him a scathing look too. I was so over all of this.
Still, I lay down like I’d been asked and didn’t move while her hands hovered over my body before the brightest smile creased her face.
“Well, it’s not as bad as it could be,” she said as she straightened up. “I sense two eggs and two life forms. You have been blessed with fraternal twins, which will be far easier to birth than the double egg Alex was tasked with pushing out.”
“I swear it was a literal dinosaur egg,” Alex declared. “Zero out of ten on the fun scale. Would not recommend.”
His rambling words were not comforting in the slightest and I whipped my head to the side to see Odem standing there looking far too pleased with himself for my liking.
“Two eggs? Two? You couldn’t just knock me up could you? Oh no, not you, you had to go double or nothing!”
“Better than a grand slam,” Odem replied, hastily backpedaling as I rolled off the couch and stalked his way. “Okay, okay not the time or place.”
“It will never be the time or place for you to joke about this!” I snapped.
“What am I going to do with twins? How am I supposed to take care of them? What happens after I lay the eggs? Do I have to sit on them until they hatch? Oh my god, I’m going to wind up with bruises all over my ass… ets if that’s the case.”
That I’d managed not to swear in front of their High Priestess again was a miracle. I just hoped there wasn’t a rule about no bloodshed in front of her because I was fixing to carve pieces off him.
“Dragons don’t sit on their eggs,” Raven explained, calmly stepping between us while Odem stood with the corners of his lips twitching like he was about to laugh.
“They do, however, create nests for them and spend a great deal of time turning them, keeping them warm, talking to them, singing to them, and letting the dragonets become accustomed to the sounds of their voices before they hatch.”
He’d better not laugh or so help me, he would pay more than I already planned to make him suffer.
“And Odem already has practice helping with nest building,” Emerson said. “Caro and I didn’t have ours ready, so Odem helped when I went into labor. He didn’t even run screaming when I lost my temper and started yelling that he and Caro weren’t doing it right.”
“So, he has experience making a mess of a nest,” I grumbled and watched the smile crumble off Odem’s face.
“Joy. Thanks be to whoever is in charge of the universe for that one.
Can he actually cook or is the deep-dish pizza he promised one that will arrive in a box and miraculously wind up in a pan with him attempting to pass it off as his own creation, ‘cause been there, done that, no repeats necessary, thank you.”
“Mates don’t lie to each other,” Alex explained, the jovial mood in the room having faded to one of somber looks and shocked expressions as they all stared at me. “They don’t try to deceive one another either. He’d never do that.”
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear to all of you,” I said, stomping my foot to make my point. “I might be knocked up by this overgrown, overly fertile doofus, but I am not now, nor will I ever be, his mate!”
Calm as could be, with my head held high, I stalked towards the nearest doorway, hoping like hell that it lead to the way out of this place.