Aengus could not only see the burn of the pain radiating up both sides of her stomach, he knew this was likely the last exam he would have the honor of conducting. The last day her mates would get to spend with her before descending into yet another long period of Widower’s Madness.
She’d made the full gestation period that Fenrir Prime had designated for her species, even when carrying a drakkon. And that put her in the top ten percent of Dories.
But there was no guarantee that Diarmuid’s plan to increase her conditioning and stamina would yield the results they wanted.
It was not, as their Prime had pointed out, replicated science.
“Annggghhh!” Dorie’s entire torso lit up with pain as the hatchling they had endeavored to turn so he would come out tail first wriggled into position above what Dorie referred to as her cervix.
Aengus retracted his tongue and eyelined their prime once again.
Omicron: She is close. The hatchling is already positioning himself for presentation.
Their prime immediately answered.
Fenrir Prime: I am almost there.
Flying as Fenrir Prime was now, Aengus could not see his heat signature. But he did not need to read their prime’s flame to know what he was thinking.
983 deaths upon the day of her labor.
The statistics were not on their side.
Cycle1000
Twice Aengus had lost variants of Dorie to unmet heats.
He now feared he would have to do so again. Perhaps in the same horrific manner as Dorie 346, the zookeeper who had been on an unsanctioned outing to see the bear shifters for herself when she went into heat.
Drakkon were born with natural internal clocks, but time seemed to click slower as they waited to be released from the Reverence thrall.
The moons rose in the sky shortly after her departure from what Dorie 999 had called the Library of Me, striking another chord of fear in Aengus’s heart.
This Dorie did not use such coarse language, but she was even more cunning than any of the Dories that had come before her.
Instead of running from Fenrir Prime’s quarters when she first had the chance, Dorie had explored, finding her way into a room that had only ever been reluctantly revealed to her in previous cycles.
She’d also used Reverence to command Aengus to tell her all about how it worked before Fenrir Prime’s arrival.
And so, though Dorie 1000 had no means of tracking chronological time, she knew how long she had to hide her burn from them.
Dorie 346 had been the first to die of heat denial, but not the last. Dorie 988, the stay-at-home mother, flashed before his eyes.
She’d snuck away in the night so as not to betray her past mate and daughters. By the time they found her, it was too late. Under the force of two full moons, her heat had come on so strong, her heart had given out immediately.
Who knew how far the current Dorie variant had gone this time?
“Letting her die instantly when her body broke from the fall would have been a kindness,” their prime pointed out from his frozen position. “If she dies in the same manner as Dorie 988, I will never forgive you.”
Aengus would never forgive himself.
If she died like that, tortured and alone in her heat, he would hand the knife to their prime and request for him to use it to end this cycle of his worthless life.
Finally, the Reverence thrall wore off.
Fenrir Prime being closest to the door was the first to turn and dash away, as if he’d been straining against the thrall’s effect from its start.
Diarmuid and Aengus raced after him, only to nearly run into his back a few tail lengths from where his cavern let out into the gallery their East, West, South, and North sleep quarters surrounded.
