“Walter knows who you are, Harry.” Grimbold set his hand on Wally’s shoulder and squeezed. “But thank you for the introduction. Will you set Steve aside so we can begin?”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Harry scooped Steve off the examination table and set him—of all places—on the floor. Granted his freedom, the lizard slithered off to do whatever it was that lizards in lab coats were wont to do. “I apologize about Steve. From time to time he gets an urge to crinkle the sanitary covering on the examination table. I think it’s therapeutic for him. I imagine it sounds rather like what it must sound like to eat a cricket.” As if he hadn’t said something utterly bizarre, Harry tore off the sheet of paper Steve had been sitting on and pulled a new sheet down to cover the table. “Will you come sit here for me please, Wally? I’m going to start with a general physical examination before we move on to anything too exciting.”
Wally wasn’t sure what Harry’s definition of exciting was, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. Reluctantly, he moved from Grimbold’s side to sit on the examination table while Harry disinfected his hands and snapped on a pair of sterile gloves.
Outside the examination room door there was a loud crash, then a series of giggles. The door was flung open a moment later. Alarmed, Wally tensed, only to relax again when he saw who had barged into the room—a naked young boy followed closely by the physician who’d been seeing to Wally’s well-being.
“Chuck!” the doctor intoned, exasperated. “Manners!”
The child promptly transformed into a dragon and launched himself into the air on shaky wings, rushing Grimbold in the process. Grimbold, whose reflexes were sharp, caught the whelp in his arms and held him to his chest. Wally blinked. The whelp was the size of a golden retriever, but much more pink. Satisfied, the whelp laid his head on Grimbold’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He let out a satisfied sigh. Smoke curled from his nostrils.
Under usual circumstances, the chaos would have made Wally feel vulnerable. Without routine and predictability, life was too uncertain and gave him no guarantee that he could keep himself safe. Seeing the way Grimbold stroked the small scales on the top of the juvenile dragon’s head and looked at him with reverent adoration, however, was an unpredictability that affected Wally in a different way—he found himself yearning to see more rather than wishing he’d never seen anything at all.
What if what Grimbold said was true? What if he was with egg? Wally stepped onto the stool in front of the examination table and sat on the paper, barely noticing the way the crinkling noise drew attention toward himself.
What if one day, Grimbold would hold their son the same way?
Heat flooded Wally’s cheeks. It was such an impossibility that he never should have entertained it as a thought, but he kept revisiting it. Grimbold would be an excellent father. He’d raised his sons to be exemplary men, and Wally was sure that he’d do the same with any clutch he produced.
“Excuse me,” Harry said, coming to stand by Wally. “Now that Darwin is settled and Everard is here to help, would it be okay if I started the examination?”
Wally looked between Harry, whose large glasses sat high on the bridge of his nose, and the doctor, Everard. He nodded.
“Fantastic! I’ll be starting with all kinds of tests that you probably think won’t make a difference, but that are essential to the process. Now, if you’ll just open your mouth and say ‘ahh’…”
For the next fifteen minutes, Wally was poked, prodded, and examined. Harry and Everard examined his nose, ears, and throat, put pressure on different parts of Wally’s chest, ribs, and abdomen, listened to his heart and his lungs, and monitored his pulse. They spent the most time investigating the mark on Wally’s cheek—the little swallow that made Wally feel like his birth name was something beautiful instead of something tragic.
“It really is quite bizarre,” Everard remarked as they took a skin scraping from the site of Wally’s mate mark.
“We’ve seen the mate mark take shapes like this before,” Harry countered, chipper as ever. “It doesn’t seem so unusual to me.”
“But a swallow?” Everard’s lips tightened. “You know I adore you, honey-baked ham, but you have to understand that in the eyes of the council it will seem a little too convenient.”
“The council will acknowledge the mark,” Grimbold grumbled, his voice dark and authoritative. The sound of it was a reassurance that everything would be fine. Its power made Wally shiver.
Everard’s lips thinned. “With Marduke on the warpath, you will be challenged.”
“Marduke,” Grimbold spat the name, “will not figure into this. Whatever he may or may not believe, Walter is mine. He bears my mark, and if necessary, we will prove it however the council sees fit.”
Of that, Wally had no doubt. Grimbold would take care of him. He had before, and he did now. There was nothing to fear.
And if Marduke dared come for them again, Wally wouldn’t hesitate. He’d been given claws, and in defense of the ones he loved, he’d proven that he wasn’t afraid to use them.
* * *
After the examination was complete, Everard took several vials’ worth of blood from Wally and disappeared into another room to run a battery of tests. When he returned, his brow was furrowed and his lips were worried at the corners.
“Well, child, what is it?” Grimbold asked. “What have you discovered?”
Everard cleared his throat. “It appears Harry’s hypothesis is flawed.”
“Do you hear that, Steve and Darwin?” Harry asked brightly. “We were wrong! How thrilling! That means we’re one step closer to being right.”
“Everard, explain yourself in simple language,” Grimbold said tersely.
Everard turned his head to look at Wally, curiosity alight in his eyes. A new kind of shiver ran down Wally’s spine—excitement—and when Everard spoke, that excitement ignited into delirious joy. “Against all odds, you’re pregnant, sunflower. Congratulations. We’ll need to see you again at the three-week marker to determine whether you’ll be heavy with eggs, or a child.”
16
