Chapter Nineteen
Casimir
It was as if our egg waited until we accomplished actually sealing the deal on our claiming vows before it came out. After Tritus laid our egg, I didn’t go beyond the backyard except to pick up or drop off Casalona but, while I was gone, Tritus kept his end of our mating link wide open. Every instinct I had to fight against while Melon nested, Tritus embraced. He didn’t mind me fussing around with the structure of the nest and adding new bits and pieces whenever I spotted a place that didn’t feel secure enough. I polished our egg, night and day. When we could, we both stayed inside with our pink egg.
While we didn’t let visitors into the house, we did set up a screen to call Ren. A couple times a week she’d show up for the call. My sister’s eyes sparkled whenever she saw the egg that was her-colored growing in our nest. She was still where she had been when I left Earthside but some of Tritus’s hope leaked onto me. Maybe she would come back as the Ren we all knew and loved one day. Only, for me she was always going to be that Ren. Woman or dragon, she was my sister, and I wished she could share more of my life and I of hers like things had been when we were younger. Life wasn’t fair, but sometimes you got something just outside of fair and had to make peace with it. Tritus was right. As long as she was alive there was hope for her.
After seeing Zayton and Ren’s human form in my memories, Tritus commissioned a painting of us and Castor for my birthday. The artist had somehow captured every detail of us. It took me way too long to realize that’s because Tritus could show him over the flight link. That painting hung over our nest so that our hatchling would know they had a huge family who loved them – near and far, on this world and others, and on both sides of the doors of life and death.
I missed Castor and the rest of the crew while we sequestered ourselves away, but my dragon needed that time and space to heal. Like me, he’d been through too much. He had to do too much, and this was his chance to start over too. So, we lay around with our mate and watched our egg grow more each day until finally the day before Ren’s birthday our little girl cracked her way out of it by giving the inner lining of the shell a nice, hard headbutt. We startled from our nap to find our baby face down in the nest wailing her heart out and flailing her limbs as if she were disappointed that we hadn’t hosted a welcoming party.
We scrambled, sleepy but somehow more alert than ever, to grab her up and brush off the excess eggshell and the stringy stuff that came from inside the egg. She was beautiful. I thought she looked like Ren, but Tritus insisted that she looked like me.
“Do Ren and I look that much alike?” I laughed as he put her in a diaper and swaddled her up nice and tight.
“You do. You all do or did or whatever. What about calling her Renmir? Do you think it sounds too masculine?” Tritus asked.
“You better retract that question before Roary hears it and comes to get you,” I teased him.
“Oh, shit. They would too,” Tritus said and bit his lip.
“I was giving you shit. I like that name. I think it fits her. I think Ren will like it too,” I said.
“I hope so. She’s one of the sweetest dragonesses I’ve ever met,” Tritus said, holding Baby Renmir close to his chest and settling in against me.
She was my second born and it seemed I was on a roll with daughters but if they were anything like Ren was growing up I was going to be an awesome girl dad. At least, I hoped they’d think I was awesome.
“I think you’re fucking awesome,” Tritus said, picking up my thoughts over our mating link and smiling like a fool now that he could listen in on me easily.
“Good. I think you’re fucking awesome,” I whispered in his ear. “I think we’re a fucking awesome family.”
“We are,” he nodded. “This long road was worth it.”
“I love you, mate,” I whispered and wrapped my arms around him and Baby Renmir.
“I love you too,” he said, leaning his head back against my shoulder.
I glanced at the painting above the nest. Ren and Zayton no longer haunted me. I remembered them both for who they were before chaos gobbled them up. Somehow, without ever meeting either of them in person, Tritus convinced them to unhaunt me.
READ ON TO DISCOVER WHO MIGHT RUN OFF TO BE A GLADIATOR AND GET MORE THAN HE EVER BARGAINED FOR.
Hello and thank you for reading!