“There were the dragonets too,” he said. “I love being their favorite uncle and spending time playing with them each day. It doesn’t just strengthen my bonds with them, but with the twins, I’ve been able to help them better control their fire, since it’s my element too.”
“Fire?”
He flushed and rubbed the back of his neck, squirming instead of smirking now.
“Odem?” I hissed. “You had better explain what you meant about the twins and fire, because I am not prepared for babies that can torch the curtains. Wait, they make fireproof curtains, right?”
I snatched up my phone without waiting for the answer, immediately tapping away on the screen to see if I could find any to add to my cart.
Oh phew, they existed.
Click, click, click, we’d just get a few for the living room and my bedroom, and…
“They don’t go up as fast, but dragon fire burns hotter than regular flames,” he said. “So eventually, they burn just like the rest.”
“Joy.” I clicked back through and ordered double.
“All dragons breathe fire,” he explained. “But not all of them do so as uncontrollably and in such unpredictable amounts as Alex and Ionus’ twins, Hunter and Kane. There’s no reason to think that our twins will run around singeing tutus.”
“Singeing…”
“It’s okay, I swear, our babies are also immune to fire, so there is no risk of them being harmed if one of them accidentally burps a fireball at the other.”
“How can you stand there and calmly talk about our babies’ burping fireballs at one another?” I yelped, voice raising at least two octaves just thinking about it. “What happens if something else catches fire? Am I just supposed to keep a fire extinguisher handy and hope I don’t have to use it, like at the diner anytime Patrica manned the grill?”
He was hesitant to answer. In fact, he was squirming again and looked rather sheepish, which told me all I needed to know about those fire extinguishers.
“So, are you going to install one in each room or will we be keeping them in a supply cabinet?” I asked.
“I will get them installed,” he said.
“Anything else you think I should know?” I asked.
“There are baby carriers we can strap to our chests to carry our eggs around with us,” he said. “And at night, we’ll curl up with them in the nest until they hatch. They need to be close to us at all times. If there is any room in the house that you enjoy spending time in we can put a bassinet in there, so you have a place to tuck them. For Emerson, Caro put one in the office he created for him, as well as the library, because those areEmerson’s favorite places. I know he carved out a stone bassinet in his horde too. Cade still spends time napping in it.”
“Back to hordes again,” I said. “See, that should be proof right there that I’m not a dragon. I don’t have a horde.”
“Three hundred pairs of shoes would be considered a horde,” he pointed out, smirking again. “Add in your makeup collection….”
“I do not have that much.”
“There are more nail polish bottles on the dresser in the spare room than in the makeup aisle at the drugstore.”
“How would you know?”
“I was just in there the other day getting one of those Warmies sloths for Cade. Lavender sooths him.”
“What, exactly, is a Warmies sloth?”
“A stuffed animal that gives off the aroma of lavender when you heat it,” he explained. “Emerson doesn’t even have to pop it into the microwave, he just raises his body temperature enough to heat it, then gives it to Cade to cuddle. Luna had a pink kitten. I look forward to picking the perfect ones for our girls.”
“Only if we do it together,” I said. “I know you’ve got all the baby experience, but these are my first eggs.”
“Our first eggs,” he corrected.
“Fine, but at least you’ve been around eggs before,” I reminded him as a thought popped into my head. “Do they make egg sweaters? Well, I guess they wouldn’t require sweaters, since the eggs won’t have arms. Egg socks, maybe? Or warm, furry pillowcases we can slide them in.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
