Chapter 17 #2
I shifted in the nest until I was more comfortable, tucking a pillow under one hip and smoothing the blanket over the curve of my stomach. “Okay.”
He hesitated on a title, then glanced at me with the first sign of actual uncertainty I’d seen since he’d carried the television in. “Seriously, if you tell anyone I watch this, I’ll deny it.”
He wasn’t threatening; he was joking. “What is it?”
Cassian pressed play before answering, and the screen filled with an aerial shot of a huge modern house built into the side of a forested hill surrounded by a tall wall, a sparkling pool in the huge yard.
Dramatic music swelled, a voice-over announced that twelve shifters from twelve species had entered one shared territory, and then the title appeared in bold white letters across the screen.
The Den.
I stared at it. “This is your guilty pleasure?”
Cassian settled on the floor outside the nest, one shoulder resting against the bed frame. “Yes.”
“It looks like a reality show.” Not that I’d watched many, but I’d seen enough to be able to identify them.
“It is a reality show.”
“Is it good?”
“No.”
“Then why do you watch it?”
He folded his arms and fixed his attention on the screen. “Because the raven shifter keeps stealing everyone’s spoons, and last season a badger tried to tunnel out under the pantry.”
I had to press my hand over my mouth because that was funny, and Cassian side-eyed me.
“You asked.”
The episode began with breakfast, which apparently involved four separate arguments before anyone managed coffee.
A fox accused a bear of eating his yogurt.
The bear denied it while visibly holding the empty pot.
A raven perched on the top of the kitchen cupboards and watched everyone.
A small otter shifter, gripping a pebble, kept sliding across the polished floor in socks and flailing into walls.
“This is ridiculous,” I said after three minutes.
Cassian nodded. “Completely.”
“I love it.” An involuntary laugh escaped me, and Asha shifted as if startled by the movement of my body. I rested my hand over her automatically, murmuring an apology, and Cassian’s gaze dropped to my belly for a moment before returning to the screen.
Halfway through the episode, there was great fanfare when the final shifter of twelve arrived.
The doorbell rang on screen, and the house fell into chaos.
Everyone guessed species based on scent before the door opened, arguing over whether the newcomer was bear, bison, elk, or something nobody wanted to name because the producers loved drama too much.
Then the door swung inward, and a shifter called Aldric stepped inside.
He was tall, broad, dark-haired, and the others went quiet around him.
Cassian sat forward, and his shoulder brushed the edge of my nest. “No way,” he muttered. “Dragon!”
I frowned at him. “What?”
“He’s a dragon.”
“There’s no such thing as dragons.”
“That’s what they want you to think. But he walked straight to the fireplace.”
“It’s cold.”
“He chose the chair nearest the heat source.”
“So do I, and I’m not a dragon.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re a heavily pregnant cat shifter, and it’s cold.”
I smiled at that, and my back complained.
I had to shift onto one elbow while holding my stomach because Asha decided this was the moment to press somewhere unhelpful.
Cassian moved immediately, then stopped himself before he crossed whatever line he’d drawn in his own head.
His hands stayed on his knees, fingers flexing once before going still.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” I breathed through the ache until it settled, and he was still watching me. “Your dragon startled the baby.”
“Our dragon.”
“You’re so wrong,” I said and wished I could take the bantering words back. He was alpha, I was omega, and bantering was wrong. I waited for him to do something, anything, that was a demand for me to agree.
Instead, he smiled and tapped my arm. “You’ll see.”
On screen, Aldric refused to answer three separate questions about his species, made tea without asking where anything was, and arranged spoons on the table in order of size, before pocketing the shiniest ones. Cassian pointed at the screen as if the matter had just been settled in court.
“Hoarding behavior.”
“Because he stole cutlery?”
“Yep, it absolutely makes him a dragon.”
The program was stupid. Nothing happened except people arguing about food, sleeping arrangements, territory marking, bathroom schedules, and the ethics of shedding fur in shared spaces.
But every time Aldric did anything remotely unusual, Cassian added it to the dragon theory with complete confidence.
Aldric ordered the hottest curry on the takeaway menu.
Dragon.
Aldric slept with his window open, and three blankets folded at the foot of the bed, but not over him.
Dragon.
There was a suspicious fire near the bear’s collection of yogurt pots.
Dragon.
By the time the episode ended, I felt lighter.
Not because the program was clever, although parts of it were funnier than I wanted to admit, but because Cassian was unwilling to concede that Aldric might be anything other than a dragon, and he’d included me when he explained all his theories and made me smile.
Cassian caught me staring at him during the credits. “What?”
I shook my head. “Do you really think dragons exist?”
Cassian didn’t answer immediately. The credits rolled into a preview of the next episode, but he muted it before the narrator could recap the previous episode. Outside the window, the light was fading, and the room was warm enough I could feel myself beginning to drift.
“My Grandma Clara said they did,” he said eventually.
“She believed there were still some left, but they were rarer than anyone knew and better at hiding than the rest of us.” He rested his head back against the bed frame, gaze on the muted screen.
“Rarer than omegas who can carry, which is saying something. Although she always said dragons could bear young.”
I ran my hand over my belly, contemplating registries, bloodlines, and how people turn rare bodies into property. “If they could carry, no wonder they hide.”
Cassian’s jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
I reached for the remote where he’d set it on the bed and held it out. “Another episode?”
Cassian shook the remote. “You want to watch another one?”
More importantly, did he want to watch another one? It was easier if the alpha decided. Alphas liked making decisions. If they were happy, they stayed calm. If they stayed calm, nobody got shouted at. Nobody got hurt.
“Do you want to?” I asked cautiously.
“Duh,” he said, then played the next episode, and I shifted lower into the nest while he focused on the screen, where Aldric was refusing to participate in group yoga, and wait…
was that smoke coming from his nose? Cassian certainly thought so, but I was growing restless and needy and couldn’t concentrate on what we were watching.
“Cassian?”
“Yep?”
“Will you sit inside here with me?” I asked. A nest carried scent, safety, and need, and inviting an alpha into it should have terrified me.
But it didn’t.