Chapter Twenty-Three
Viraj
He’d be told that the memory of every egg he passed would imprint on him as special, the moment of their arrival a glorious thing committed to their dragon’s eternal soul.
Bullshit.
Everything screamed in his mind, his own heart thundering in his chest. A second egg came, coos of encouragement at its back as things seemed to reach out to his heart.
As if the three of them as mates were no longer the center of their worlds.
Little bonds, ties to magic, two new ones, snapped into place, opening this long-forgotten part of his heart.
Not since he’d had siblings, nested with Ryan, played with younger ones in dragon form for hours a day, a sea of pretty red scales on display for their father’s pride, had he connected souls with others in such a fashion.
Two mates, two eggs, and with a howl of pain, a third.
Gatlin squeezed, and Teige poised his tail. In their minds, they tangled limbs and souls, trying to separate and share the pain between them as something shifted and a lesser stretch and burn gave him a break as he pushed.
A softer voice joined Gaspard’s, more rustling as his dragon roused from his stupor to glare at the intruder—coyote and dragon. Bastien.
Muffled words echoed in Viraj’s head as copper and iron-rich blood stung his nostrils.
“Tearing?” He caught a single word from Bastien’s lips.
“Superficial.” Gaspard’s response eased him, letting him retreat beyond the fire burning his belly.
Viraj pushed, and he pushed, straining between his mates as the two worked tirelessly.
His mind echoed, losing track of his own body versus his mind’s.
Inside he burned, inside he flamed, tore apart, twisted. Everything culminated into a horrid scream that jumped from one mind to the other as the pain abruptly ended. Another egg. Another… A blank.
He lost count as the stench of blood grew.
Healing magic burned its way through him—too soon! Multiple hands, another Drake—Marc Dior.
“Heal his tract closed—” one said.
“No. Ryan’s done this before. He will be nestbound. We’ll need to keep him in his scales for a few days. If he shifts back, that’s when the damage will heal wrong.” Gaspard had sealed several things at once.
No need for Viraj to go to Ashwin’s funeral? Probably.
Days before he could wrap his human flesh form around the bulk of his eggs, to let them know his flesh.
“At least a month before any funny business, ideally two,” Marc added, and that pissed him off.
Viraj’s dragon snarled, I refuse.
“Drakes can get creative with their maws,” Bastien said with a snicker. “And you do have more to get creative with—lucky bastard.”
In dragon form, among Dettes, Viraj was practically king in that way, the only Dette he knew of that had any phallus in dragon form, even if a prepuce, as they’d called it.
It almost made up for his human form. Almost.
But Gatlin and Teige had never made an issue of it. It’d never bothered them.
They shared him and one another, lavished him with affection.
And after so very many years?
Viraj gave a miserable croon as healing fire burned through him, and a singular push yielded something wet, slippery, and textured.
A rupture.
Both Drakes clutched to him flinched and snarled, their misery echoing back and forth until a reassuring pat to his flank, and a reassuring voice told him it’d just been a blank.
A wet mess wrapped in a towel had been brought to his nostrils for a quick sniff—his dragon sure that whatever lay within had never been alive.
“Antibiotics,” someone said.
A piercing pinch clenched somewhere in his neck, and his Drakes parted from him with muted bellows of joy.
Viraj opened his eyes, his dragon and flesh uniting within his mind for a beautiful glance at their sea of mossy jasper eggs. All nine of them. A perfect clutch, one that would have made his father proud if he’d only known from the beginning he was a Dette.
But a Dette, to him, he’d always have been.
And with a single sweep of his weak tail, Viraj circled his eggs and let the world around him fade away. Rest well-earned came with a deep and endless breath—his first in weeks that wasn’t burdened by the gruesome weight.