“This is all for the egg.” My mate stroked the quilt. “My dragon has instructed me that the egg needs warmth from all sides and not just body heat.”
I knelt beside him and rested my hand on the small of his back. His skin was warmer than usual, but that was what happened to dragon shifters before they laid an egg. Tales passed down through the centuries told us this was the omega’s body preparing to deliver the egg by stoking an internal fire to give the egg everything it needed.
I gave Percy a thumbs-up. “Is it finished?”
“Almost.” He shifted a pillow an inch to the left. “Now it is.”
The rest of the evening we spent on the sofa. I rubbed my mate’s back while he dozed. Every so often he'd wake with a start and press a hand to his belly.
Is this it?my beast asked each time.
I’ll let you know.
When Percy climbed off the couch, I got up too, thinking we were going to bed.
“It's time.”
How does he know?my dragon asked.
Instinct, just as you understand how to fly and swoop and kill a deer.
We’d been anticipating this moment for months, and now that it was here, I wasn’t the calm, assured alpha who thoughteverything through. Our egg that was protecting our little one was coming.
This is not the moment to freak. Do that after the baby’s born.My dragon was telling me to get it together.
I helped my mate into the nursery and undressed him before he lowered himself into the nest. He got in the center on his knees and gripped the cushions. I crawled beside him as his breathing became slower and deeper than usual, and I was pretty sure his dragon was breathing with him.
Percy yelped, and his body tensed. He grabbed my hand and squeezed. Wow, he had quite a grip. “It’s a cramp.” He groaned, and his head fell forward.
“I’m right here. My dragon and I will breathe with you and your beast.”
Percy panted, and I mimicked him. My chest heaved as my beast did the same. I wished there was more I could do as I wiped sweat off my mate’s face.
When the cramping passed, he leaned against me. “That hurt.”
“On a scale of one to ten?”
“Twelve. And don't you dare make a Station 12 joke.”
My dragon warmed my palms, and I pressed them on my mate’s back, hoping it would ease his discomfort.
“That feels good.”
The cramping came in waves, and the interval between each got smaller. Between each one, he complained the egg was taking its time, and during the peak of a contraction, all four of us, including the dragons, breathed and willed the egg to arrive safely.
The contractions were a minute apart, and Percy murmured as if he was in a trance, “Pain with a purpose.”
I rubbed his back and told him how well he was doing, until he asked me to distract him.I told him of the first time I metmy dragon and he took his scales. Heat had been building inside me, and I raced out to the woods behind our house and waited to transform.
“Keep going.”
“That night we flew so close to the stars, or so I thought. I expected to touch them, until my dragon said we could admire them, but we only reach them in our dreams.”
“That’s so beautiful.”
My mate had been laboring for hours and the egg hadn’t appeared, but the cramps were so close together, he wasn’t able to recover between each one.
“I’m going to push, Larkin. Don’t let the egg break, please.”
