But now, the sound came from the boys.
The first time it happened, Midas had approached Elowen while she was tending the fire—one hand resting absentmindedly on her lower belly, her face serene anddrowsy with the quiet exhaustion of growing something new. He’d reached for her, quick and eager to greet her after returning from a long hunt.
And Kalen growled. He stepped between them, teeth bared, stance wide, like a wolf cub bristling before a shadow.
Midas stopped, startled. The boy blinked, confused by his own reaction—but didn’t step aside. Elowen laid a hand gently on his shoulder. “It’s all right, love. It’s your father.”
Kalen’s body eased slightly, but his eyes stayed sharp.
It happened again two days later. This time, Midas came up behind Elowen while she was hanging herbs near the entrance of the cave. He placed a hand on her back—and both boys turned in unison, their small chests vibrating with the same low, instinctive warning.
It wasn’t born of fear or defiance, butprotection. They wereguardingtheir mother.
Elowen chuckled, turning to glance at her mate. “You’re going to have to stop sneaking up on me before they attack.”
Midas didn’t laugh at her teasing, and instead stared at his sons, feeling something inside of him bloom.
And by the week’s end, they were bringing her food.
It was usually small things—handfuls of berries, roots clumsily cleaned, dried mushrooms piled beside her blanket. They hovered when she ate, watching intently, nudging more toward her if she so much as paused.
Elowen shot Midas an amused glance as he returned from cleaning fish at the cave’s entrance, her boys close behind, carrying the basketsfor her.
“They’ve declared themselves the official attendants of my womb,” she whispered.
Midas didn’t answer at first. He only crouched beside them, watching as one of the boys carefully pressed a warm stone against her feet to ease her soreness.
Nothing could match the beauty of this: his sons, dragon-blooded and born in a world so cruel, choosing tenderness not because they were told to, but because they had seen Midas love Elowen this way, and so they treated the mother of their pride with the same care and respect.
Because they knew, in their bones, that she was everything to them. Midas reached out and rested a clawed hand on Kalen’s head. The boy looked up, eyes shining.
“You are becoming men,” Midas said softly. “You are learning what it means to protect something not out of fear, but because it is precious.”
Both boys nodded solemnly.
“She’s our mother,” the younger one said. “She made us. She makes more of us.”
“She has fire too,” Kalen added. “Just…a different kind.”
Midas looked at Elowen. Her eyes were wet.
Forty-One
Laughter echoed through the cavern,bright and wild and wholly alive.
It started as a flick of a tail, a playful swipe of a claw. One of the twins, Kalen, had darted beneath Midas’ great foreleg, squealing with delight as Auric launched from a rock ledge and landed squarely on his father’s back with a tiny roar.
Midas twisted his serpentine neck with exaggerated slowness, golden eyes wide in mock offense. He let out a growl, low and rumbly, the kind that once sent whole villages scattering.
The boys only giggled in their dragon forms, having learned to easily shift without the exasperation that plagued their father when he did the same.
You dare challenge me?he said in the old tongue with feigned offense.
They shrieked and fled as he gave chase, wings half-unfurled and scraping the cavern roof, talons tappingagainst stone as he lunged and rolled with a grace only a creature of his age and size could wield.
Auric was caught first, scooped up in a massive claw and deposited—gently,alwaysgently—into the unrelenting curl of Midas’ tail.
Kalen tried to climb his father’s tail to save his brother, only to yelp when it lifted and flipped him neatly onto his back with athumpof giggling limbs.
