“Well, so long as it’s going well. Your dragon knew best where your mate was.” Baba rummaged in the fridge and pulled out an unlabeled glass bottle. A medicine that Malkim brewed for him. Baba had far more magic than a dragon should have had, but too much of a good thing could hurt a dragon. The concoction dampened the side effects.
“Mate?” I grumbled as my dragon snarled about its new treasure. “Not going out searching. I told you. I’m staying. Take care of my new treasure.”
Baba rested a hand on my shoulder as the tangy scent of his beverage flitted past my nostrils. “Yourtreasure? Honey, you added him to your hoard. That’s your mate. He’s not a thing or a pet.”
My heart froze in my chest and flopped. I was a fucking blind idiot. I’d been so consumed with owning him that I’d not even stopped to think about why it was I needed him.
“I—” I stared at the air fryer, my mind humming. My dragon purred in my head, the word occurring to him as well in a gentle rumble.Mate.
“Ohhhhh boy.” Baba laughed and gave me a one-armed hug.
“But he’s not a dragon.”
“Neither was your biological father, but here you are.” Baba rolled his eyes.
“But…” I stumbled as he kept talking.
“I remember the day those two mated. Olson was all,” Baba said, putting on a nasally voice for my omega father. “Lyphus, this wolf! Why do I want him like treasure? I want to polish him and hide him in my gold.”
I stared at Baba unamused.
“And there Jackson was, all brooding and scowling. Olson’s dragon succeeded in burying him a few times before they caught on and he gave your father a mating bite.” Baba snickered. “Ahhh, those two were a match made in hell.”
My birth parents had a complicated relationship, but they loved one another. They were two halves of the same feral whole. “Had to be. I came out of it.”
“And six others, last I heard.” Baba laughed.
“I’d never do that. Be that callous. I couldn’t…” I shook my head and glanced at the time on the fryer before checking the contents and giving them a jostle.
Baba shook his head and took a deep breath, the one that always came before a lecture. “I know you don’t mean it the waythat sounded. But they gave you to us. And we love you and are so happy with you. Are you happy with us?”
Gods, that made my heart ache to hear from him. “No. You know I love you. I loved my childhood, and Iwantto stay here and be a family. When I told you I don’t want to leave, it’s because I want you as my family still. Always.”
Baba nodded, his pained face forcing its way into a smile. “It is the way of things, that some of our kind were born without the instinct for child-rearing. It does not mean they do not love you. It means, they keep having children because they can, because others like me and Malkim cannot bear children.”
I shrank in place a little, a scolded child before my baba with no apology good enough. “Do you know what happened when Olson and Jackson gave you to me?”
I shook my head. “They said they realized that I wasn’t what they were made for.”
Baba scoffed. “No.”
I waited patiently for him to keep speaking as he held his bottle up and swilled it.
“I take these daily. It stops me from ovulating, and it dampens my magic.” He huffed and swallowed hard. “Olson and I were hatching little ones at the same time. I ended up nesting with you as much as my own egg.”
I’d not known that, and when tears sprang up in Baba’s eyes, I reached out to give him a hug. I held him like he’d held me at one time. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want.”
“You’ll be mated soon, so you should hear it. Understand what a noble thing it is for your parents to do.” Baba huffed, clearing his throat. “Malkim and I have born eight eggs. We have no children to show for it. Olson had watched me birth egg after egg, and they’d never hatch.”
He cleared his throat to hide a sob once more. “And I hatched you with him. I helped him raise you and I fell gravidonce more, and I knew it’d be it. That’d be when we had our own.”
I flinched.
“But he never hatched. He slept in his shell, and Olson came to me and said that since I was so attached to you already, and that he and Jackson were not the most loving of parents they could be, that they wanted to know if I would raise you as my own. They have children, for those of us who cannot.”
“Baba.” I held him tighter and swallowed hard. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s nothing. I have you, and I will take all the grandbabies you want to give me. Malkim and I are meant to be parents, but we cannot make our own young. We both carry a defect in our blood that has made our young unable to develop past a certain stage.” He rubbed at his eyes. “There. Now you know the shitty truth. Your parents did not get rid of you. They blessed us.”
