Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
NISSIA
Ido harbor feelings of inadequacy, though I know it’s irrational.
We’ve come so far, the three of us. Every day, I learn new things about my king and my captain. Papa treats us well. He watches over us, cares for us, shows us how best to please each other and him.
Ragnakor and I pivot our sparring sessions into riding sessions, as hunting season is now upon us.
I practice shooting with a bow and throwing the spear on horseback, and when Ragnakor finds my form sufficient, we tag along on a hunt for elk because a herd was spotted rather close to the outskirts of the city.
Daina runs with the other hunting dogs who have picked up the scent.
When we come upon the herd, our dogs and our horses give chase.
It’s thrilling to feel the wind in my hair and watch as one of the hunters raises his bow and shoots, pinning a doe in the hip.
She goes down, and he shoots once more to end her life.
We secure one additional kill, and then the horses drag them both home rolled up in a pole-framed canvas. My heart is still beating wildly when we get back to the castle.
“Did you enjoy it, my queen?” Ragnakor asks me, his tail caressing the back of my thigh. This is the most affection I generally receive from him in public, and it makes my skin heat. “The thrill of the hunt?”
“Oh yes. I would very much like to do it again.”
“Work on your throw more, and we’ll try for bigger game.”
I wrap my arm around his as we return to our shared quarters, Daina following close behind. “I can’t wait to see a moose.”
As winter settles on the kingdom, I find myself wanting. Craving. Now that we are all together, I want the next stage of our lives, where we create a new life and then care for it, the three of us.
Still, nothing. We grow concerned that something is wrong, and so Vizarios arranges for the most renowned healer in the kingdom to come to Selvumrrest to examine us.
He is a wizened old dragon, even older than Quillion and more severe. But he understands our position. Unfortunately, his test requires an... extraction. He gives each of us a cup.
“If you would urinate in there,” he tells me. Then turns to Vizarios. “Your job will be a bit harder.”
He leaves us, and Vizarios covers his face in humiliation as Ragnakor and I both lick his cock until he’s hard and moaning for us. I hold out the cup as Ragnakor strokes him, and Vizarios meets his finish, roaring as he unloads into it.
I return to the healer with our... collections, and he sets to work, asking not to be disturbed for two days.
It is an irritating two days.
Vizarios and I speculate about what could be amiss, but Ragnakor is silent. He has been encouraging and optimistic, though I think now he fears something that he hasn’t voiced.
Then, the healer summons us. He doesn’t question when Ragnakor comes into the room, as well, to hear the news.
“I am sorry to say,” the healer begins, looking among us, “that the problem lies with the king.”
My eyes dart to Vizarios, and his mouth falls open.
“How so?” Vizarios says, incensed. “Why me?”
The healer lets out a world-weary sigh. “You are not fertile, Your Majesty. You will never, ever sire an heir of your own bloodline.”
The words hit like a hammer. Vizarios stumbles back into a chair, eyes wide. Then he drops his head into his hands. I rush to his side, stroking his shoulder, but he only curls in deeper on himself.
Ragnakor still has not moved.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to my husband, knowing this must hurt him. He has become so eager these last few months to have a child.
He doesn’t respond. After the healer has left us, Vizarios eventually gets to his feet and pushes both of us away.
“I need to be alone,” he says, and locks himself into the bathing room.
Ragnakor and I sit at the table in silence, neither sure what to say to the other. Eventually, I reach across to him, needing to know that I’m not alone. He takes my hand in his and strokes my palm.
“He will recover,” Ragnakor says in a soothing voice. “It is just a blow to his ego.”
“It’s a blow to a lot of things.” I realize as I say it just how true these words are. “It’s his duty to the kingdom, as well as his own longings and desires.”
The captain nods. “He has wanted to put a dragonling in your belly for some time. To hold it in his arms.”
I sniff, finding there are tears in my eyes. I wanted that as well. I thought it was inevitable, and to learn it’s not... it has taken me by surprise.
Then, very abruptly, the door to the bathing room flies open, and Vizarios strides out. He has a burning fire in his eyes as he sizes us up at the table.
I get to my feet. “Are you all right?” I ask, knowing it’s a silly question.
“Yes,” he says, much to my surprise. “I am. Now that I have figured out the solution.”
Ragnakor and I glance at one another.
“What is the solution?” I’m truly mystified by how we could remedy his infertility.
A smile turns up the corners of his mouth. “It will not be me who sires the heir,” he says. His eyes land on Ragnakor. “It will be you.”
RAGNAKOR
A searing heat races from my throat down to my cock, settling in my balls until I feel like I’m on fire.
Me. Sow a dragonling in the queen.
Me.
It is deranged, an absolutely ludicrous suggestion. I get to my feet, ashamed and incensed and aroused all at once.
“No.” I say the word harshly. “I will not.”
My service has always been my life. That service has changed, morphed, but still one truth remains: they are my royalty and I am their guardian.
Impregnating Nissia changes that dramatically.
Vizarios’s smile falls. “Why not? We can have the healer test you while he’s here. I’m sure that you—”
“No!” I don’t mean it to come out so strong, but I can’t help myself. The idea of it, the carrot dangling in front of me, is painful to even look upon.
I knew very early that I would never have a child of my own.
I was only attracted to other male dragons, to begin with.
Fatherhood has never once crossed my mind.
My own family was never one to speak of, never one that I stayed in contact with after leaving the eastern territory where I grew up.
It was a cold home, one that I would certainly not wish upon anyone else.
I have lived under the impression that I would take a firm rear seat in raising the king and queen’s dragonling. Though they have welcomed me into their lives with open arms, I always knew that moment would come.
And yet, now, the king is offering me a very different proposition from what I had envisioned, and I am unworthy.
Vizarios is so shocked by my answer that he falls silent, staring at me. It is Nissia who approaches, running one hand down my arm. I flinch, but she doesn’t relent, stepping even closer.
“Papa,” she says in a soft voice. “Why does this upset you?”
I gnash my teeth because I don’t have the words.
“Please,” she intones. “Talk to me.”
“An heir would be royalty,” I say at last. “I am not royalty.”
“So?” Vizarios chimes in. “Any heir born of the queen is a rightful heir to the throne.”
“The wardens will not see it that way when the dragonling comes out looking like me and not you.”
That would be very serious, I imagine, for the kingdom to learn that the heir to everything is my offspring and not the king’s.
But Vizarios looks unperturbed. “Word has already traveled around the kingdom about our... situation. So far there has been no rebellion.”
“There does not need to be a rebellion to be unrest.”
All the while, Nissia stands quietly, listening and stroking my arm. Her hand winds down to mine, and she interlaces our fingers together.
“There will be more unrest if there is no heir,” she says. “If there is no security for the future, that will certainly lead to a more disastrous political scale.”
I hate that she speaks wisdom. No heir is worse than an heir of another sire, as long as she is its mother.
“Besides,” says Vizarios. “Perhaps we could make it official, instead of hiding. We could make you our consort, so any of your children would be heirs to the throne, too.”
My mouth simply falls open. “You would make me... your consort?”
“Of course.” Vizarios steps closer and runs a hand up my chest. “You are royalty to me.”
The worst part is that my cock has already heard this conversation and lifted its head.
My belly feels warm at the idea of my seed finding a home inside our queen, my seed growing in her body.
It would be ours, mine and Vizarios’s, and it would perhaps be a gift that I could give him.
I know how he longs for a child, and I could provide it.
I turn my head away, humiliated at how my emotions rise and fall, twist and turn like the sea.
“Papa.” When she says it, I tilt my head down to look at Nissia. “I understand if you don’t want this. I would never ask it of you against your will. No kingdom deserves that sacrifice from you.”
But I do want it, painfully so, now that the idea has been presented—which is what makes it impossible.
I shouldn’t want it. I shouldn’t crave it. To see my dragonling sucking at Nissia’s nipple, to see it in Vizarios’s arms, sounds like a world beyond my comprehending, and I do not deserve it.
I choke as I manage to say, “It would be no sacrifice. It would be... my greatest honor.”
A smile splashes across my king’s face. He has taken this so well, the news of his physical malformation, that I don’t know what to make of it. He slaps me on the shoulder as he wraps his other arm around Nissia.
“Then it’s settled.” He picks a cup up off the table and holds it out. “Though you will have to pay penance to the cup.”
I feel as if I’m in a dream as my king and queen both kneel before me, licking me and sucking me and stroking me until I can’t hold back any longer, and the dam breaks. I leak into the cup, and when I’m finished, Nissia cleans me off with her mouth.
I can see the same anticipation in her eyes that I feel, and I shiver all over.
The healer takes my seed away, and we’re left waiting and wondering for two days. When we spar, my mind is elsewhere, and the queen is able to get through my defenses easily.
When the healer returns, we are not surprised by the result.
“Potent,” he says, looking rather impressed as he surveys me. “Should be no problem for you.” Then he glances between all three of us, shakes his head as if he can’t understand the ways of youngsters, and departs.
When Nissia peers up at me, her eyes are glittering. A tingle rushes down from my lungs to my cock.
“Vizarios,” I say in a serious voice, wrapping a hand around his arm. I lean down and pull him against my side, wanting his reassurance. “Tell me that this is actually what you want.”
His brows shoot up. “You doubt me?”
“I am about to impregnate your wife!” I hold him tighter, wanting him to understand the gravity of what he asks and also hoping he doesn’t change his mind. “Are you sure that—”
“Papa.”
The sound of his voice settles me. Vizarios turns me to face him, then plants one hand on either side of my face and looks me dead in the eyes.
“Do you know how wonderful it would be for me? To know that my child has you in them? That we all made them together?” He tilts his head up and runs his nose along my muzzle, telling me how he feels in this one gesture. “I’m hard as a fucking rock thinking about it.”
He’s not the only one.
Nissia giggles, and he steps aside to bring her in close.
“Is this what you want?” Vizarios asks her. “It is your life, your body.”
She tilts her head up at me, a smile pinching her round cheeks. I love her long lashes, how the fur above her brows is so expressive.
“Who makes the baby doesn’t matter to me,” she says. “As long as we all get to love it together.”
I grab her and pull her against me, squeezing her tight with both my arms. She gasps, surprised, as I bury my nose in her hair.
“I love you,” I tell her firmly. I don’t know that I’ve put it into words so clearly, but now is the time. “Just as I will love any dragonling that emerges from you.”
“Thank you.” She buries her face in my chest. “I love you more than you know.”
Her hand trails further down, over the crotch of my armor.
Vizarios moves behind me, unclipping my pauldrons, then the strap across my tail.
I release the queen so I can remove it. When I’m naked, Vizarios repeats this gesture with Nissia, removing her belt and then her robe until she’s also exposed, brown skin shining in the candlelight.
“Little king,” I say, assuming Papa’s commanding voice. “I will need your help.”