The water drained away from his sides as warm hands traced his body, circled to rest atop his belly. Graylan’s encouraging words soothed as much as the tingling magic he pushed into Varis. “You did so well.”
“Tired,” Varis said. Despite breathing humid air and sitting in water, his throat cracked as if he were raw, dry, and broken.
A warm towel draped his shoulders, and his body lifted and rested in strong arms, surrounded by Ghreid’s spicy, masculine scent. Gold, fire, smelting furnaces, and rich cardamom.Expensive.Varis found he liked it and couldn’t remember ever taking the time to appreciate it so much. He inhaled deeply to savor it.
“Where’s the other egg?” Varis had seen the first one, but things had been hectic.
Ghreid shushed him and placed a kiss to his temple. “Rest. You are so amazing.”
“Rath is having the records searched to see if there was another,” Asha, who Varis hadn’t recalled being there, said as the comforting fold of silks surrounded him.
“Where’d all the blood—” Varis struggled with a breath, his body heaving as he wanted nothing more than sleep.
Ghreid’s warm body folded around him. A blanket covered them both and whispers silenced. A few muttered congratulations slipped into the ether.
Varis glanced up, eyelids so very heavy, sinking back to sleep with his last memory being that of Baltheir’s hastily painted erection.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ghreid
Ghreid stared at their eggs, nestled together next to them. He reached out to touch their surfaces one at a time. He wondered if he could tell who was who. The largest, the second born, had more gold than anything on it; the purple more of an indigo wash in little brindled streaks. He wondered if it was Kineer?
The first, the most unexpected of them, a perfect mix of both, a beautiful swirl. Was that his mo— Inessa? He reminded himself not to think of them as their souls, as the lives they were. But as he moved his hand once more, he rested his hand on the top of an unexpected third egg. The shape of it was slightly off, not a perfect specimen, as if the poor thing fought for space in his tract, but Graylan said it was healthy. The soul within was quiet, though. The meekness of it wasn’t reminiscent of any soul Ghreid recognized.
“Who are you, little one?” He traced a single fingernail down the unwelcome crease in the egg’s side, where calcium had redoubled, creating more of the bean shape of it. The shell, in its entirety, was a lovely lavender, and each ripple on the textured surface held a trace of gold, barely perceptible in the light.
As Ghreid had been told, he let his magic flow freely and reached from the eggs to Varis, letting everything he knew about healing magic flow through his hands. He caressed Varis’s swollen belly, every pass of his hands making the slightest difference.
Soothing touches couldn’t linger there, though, and Ghreid swore internally as he had to touch Varis in such an intimate place. Ghreid slid his hand beneath Varis’s limp tail, fingers circling his tender backside. There, he let magic flow, the areastill bleeding freely over the towels placed there. Every touch made Varis’s body twitch and flinch. But with Graylan’s magic tapped, it was up to Ghreid to do what he could there for as long as he could. And if Ghreid could heal Varis’s backside enough, Asha and Slath could step in for the rest.
“I blame myself. My desire for young, my nature of greed was too strong.” Ghreid had no idea how they’d handle three little ones at once. They’d need more help, for certain. More help which had come… Having Falustus there was a godse—fatesend. They’d known. There, in the independent port nation of Sauria, the two would be Vassal King and Vassal King Consort, and the school that Falustus built would be so integral to their growing kingdom.
Varis whimpered and sighed under Ghreid’s touch. There was a new soul they’d need to identify. Galatan hadn’t come with the rest of them, and a burning fear in Ghreid’s belly wondered if their brother had taken sleep and passed.
So many children needed their uncles.
And as the last of Ghreid’s magic slipped away, he too fell into exhausted sleep.
Please let our brothers remain whole.
***
Ghreid woke to a shriek of shock, an elbow to his diaphragm and a tail slamming haphazardly between his legs in a rather rude—but well deserved—awakening. “Mh! Varis? Love?”
“Why are there three? Where did the— Why—” Varis threw Ghreid off of him in his haste to go to his young, hand reaching between each of them with a light touch and eyes full of amazement. “They’re beautiful. Three? I thought…”
“None of us suspected. They’re checking if there’s been any unaccounted deaths.” Ghreid’s voice came out an octave higher in pitch than he was comfortable with, his aching groin still bearing just punishment.
As he rubbed over his soreness, he thought, with admonishment to his genitals.How dare you do this to our mate!
Though, Ghreid was very pleased with the result. And, if his cock had its way, it’d be giving a smarmy little grin full of satisfaction.
We have done well. Our clutch is large, our mate very fertile, and we will have many more.Ghreid’s dragon purred with fat, happy contentment. Not since he’d eaten a full cow and lain out in the sun like a rug for a whole evening as a young man, had his beast been so proud and content.
Not for a long while, we will no,Ghreid snarled back at his dragon mentally and waited for his mate to speak again. He stared and touched his eggs with such fascination, the moment unendingly intimate. His backside, fully exposed, bore the bruises and swollen marks. Streaks of blood still stained his flesh and his skin, swollen and slack at his midsection, solidified the gravity of what had happened. And, despite the change in his form, Ghreid found him so much more beautiful than he had been.
Varis would recover. His body would mostly repair, leaving little evidence, but no matter what he looked like after, the marks were testaments to their love. Despite all the healing Asha had done, his scales had taken on golden-tinged stripes at his side, like that of a jungle cat, and they’d not healed away, evidence of his body’s sacrifice. Ghreid wondered if Varis would bear his own stripes.
