Emma came outside and lowered herself carefully into the chair beside Erwan, wincing slightly. Five hatchlings in one day had taken a toll, but her eyes were bright and warm.
“Congratulations,” she said. “On all of it.”
“You too. Five, Emma. All five.”
“It’s a miracle, Erwan. A miracle from the gods.”
“Yeah.” Erwan looked down at Ainle, asleep against his chest. His son. Rhene’s biological child, Yitro’s gift, but Erwan’s in every way that mattered. And now, growing inside Finlay, two more. His blood. His fire. His legacy.
He thought about his mother. About her final blessing, spoken with her last breath as she held her grandson andEmma’s unborn eggs.May the gods favor his sons and give them the mates to change the course of history.
His sons. She’d said sons, plural. She’d known, somehow, with a white dragon’s sight or a mother’s intuition or something beyond either, that Erwan would have biological children. That the bloodline would continue. That the fire she’d commanded into her children and her children’s children would burn on.
Two eggs. Two lives. Two futures Erwan couldn’t see but that burned inside Finlay with the steady warmth of dragon fire kindled in love.
He didn’t know their colors yet. Didn’t know their sexes or their gifts or who they would become. Didn’t know that one of them—the younger, the smaller, the one who would hatch last and scream loudest—would be an omega boy named Lennor who would carry the White Dragon’s fire into the next generation and mate with three extraordinary men and change the course of history.
He didn’t know any of that. Not yet.
But sitting on the porch in the evening light, with his son in his arms and his mate’s joy ringing through the bond and the sound of his family celebrating around him, Erwan felt his mother’s fire pulse in his chest—steady, bright, and warm as a promise kept.
He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the porch post, and smiled.
