“I believe I have a sister to deliver,” came a voice from the doorway to the bedroom, followed by an excited squeak.
Everard was there, along with Harrison, and Grimbold allowed himself to relax. With his son present, nothing untoward would be allowed to happen to his mate or child.
The labor, unlike what Everard had predicted, was very rapid. Before Grimbold could even ask if moving the birth to a hospital was perhaps the right decision, Walter was crowning.
“Too late now, Father. Your first daughter is determined to be born at home.”
Walter screamed, even with Everard’s magic dulling his pain, and squeezed Grimbold’s fingers so hard they might have broken, had he been mortal.
Harrison stood on Walter’s other side and also manfully bore the pain of the omega’s desperate grip. “Push, Wally. You can do it. She’s nearly here! This is so very exciting! Rather like egg laying, but a lot messier.”
“Push just a bit more, tiger lily,” Everard encouraged Walter. “You’re almost there. Just the shoulders now and we’re nearly… there.”
Another scream rang through the room, this time from an infant with very strong lungs. Everard quickly tied off the umbilicus—such a strange-looking thing—then had Harrison clean the babe while he tended to Walter.
Harrison presented Grimbold with a very tiny blanket-wrapped bundle. “Congratulations! You have a fine, healthy dragonet!”
Grimbold sat on the bed next to Walter and handed him the baby. “Our daughter,” he said.
Walter’s smile was a sunbeam of pure happiness. “Our daughter,” he agreed.
“Have you decided on a name?” Harrison asked. “Not that Ev will ever call her that, of course.”
Everard frowned at his mate. Harrison ignored the scowl.
“Joy,” Walter said. “Her name is Joy.”
Epilogue
Wally
Tucked away safe in Grimbold’s hoard, Wally basked in the sunshine coming through the room’s south-side windows. Joy was cradled in his arms. At six months old, she wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but Wally enjoyed her company all the same. As he shifted his weight from thigh to thigh, Joy stirred from her nap and cooed. Wally kissed her forehead. It was hard to think that anyone could look at a child like her and believe in their heart of hearts that she was a Disgrace. There was nothing disgraceful about her. She wasperfect,and Wally would fight anyone who tried to tell him otherwise.
Across the room, theclinkof a coin falling from atop its stack distracted Wally from his daughter. He sat back in the gilded Louis XIII chair he was relaxing in and listened. Sure enough, he heard the telltale voice of the man he’d been hoping would find him.
Where? Want. Mine.
“Hello, Grim,” Wally said before Grimbold could appear. “Did everything go well today with the council?”
“Yes.” Grimbold stepped into view, careful not to stand in the way of Wally’s sunlight. He was still dressed in one of the suit and tie ensembles he only ever wore to council meetings, and his dark hair was tastefully slicked back without a strand out of place. His eyes sparkled not from the sunlight, but from the love with which he looked at his family.
Their family.
Wally’s cheeks heated. It wasn’t a new concept, but it still made him blush. After so long spent alone, certain that he would meet an untimely end, Grimbold had chosen him, and now they had a daughter to share their lives with. It was the happily ever after he’d thought he didn’t deserve, and one his heart now couldn’t live without.
“Today in particular was productive.” Grimbold came to the side of the chair and stroked the back of Joy’s head, smoothing her shock of short dark hair. “In addition to action being taken against the superintendents who allowed inhumane treatment of the Pedigree in your cloister to come to pass, Harrison and Everard came to present their new findings on mating pairs and genetics.”
“Mm?” Wally was only half listening. Upon hearing the sound of her father’s voice, Joy had opened her eyes and was smiling at him. The sight melted Wally’s heart.
“Harrison has come to a new conclusion: any dragon can mate with any dragonet, but clutches will only occur when both parents are from clans with a color match.”
Wally blinked. “A color match?”
Grimbold took Joy from his arms. She cooed with delight. “It was part of Harrison’s original hypothesis—he believed only dragons with analogous scale colors could successfully mate and breed. So while an Amethyst dragon would be able to mate with a Sapphire or Ruby dragonet, he wouldn’t be able to mate with a dragonet from any other clan. Similarly, while a Topaz dragon might be able to mate with a Ruby or Gold dragon, no other pairings would take.” Grimbold lifted Joy into the air, smiling, then held her to his broad chest. “Further research—including our mating—has proved that hypothesis wrong. Color has no designation on which dragon can mate with which dragonet. The only bearing it has seems to be on the type of offspring that will be produced—it’s suspected that a color match is necessary to produce a clutch, while dragonets may be born from any color combination.” Grimbold settled Joy into the crook of his arm, his face softened with paternal pride. “At the moment, there isn’t enough data to know for sure, but Harrison suspects that dragonets born from non-analogous color pairings are mosaics, which is to say that they bear both parents’ color characteristics, and will be able to bear clutches with any dragon that matches their two innate colors.”
It was a lot to absorb at once. Wally spent several moments considering what Grimbold had said, taking stock of his body language and tone of voice.
“So,” Wally said at last, “does that mean we’ll never have a clutch?”
