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Not yet.

Why haven’t you sent a photo?

Sorry. I took ten pics and sent them to him.

I’m coming back.

Okay. I love you.

Now it was my beast’s turn, though his messages were internal. We have to keep watching them.

I wasn’t planning on doing anything else.

In the mornings, Rudy would come and sit with the eggs while we showered. But I kept turning the water off, thinking he was calling us. The tin solder stayed at his post between the two shells, and Sheridan had started saluting and saying good morning to him. And I did too. It’d be a story we could tell our kids about how the one-legged guy looked after them.

One night when Sheridan was asleep cuddling both eggs, I allowed the fear I’d tamped down to claw at my throat, making it hard to breathe.

“I don’t know how to do this.” My folks now pretended I didn’t exist, and no amount of good parenting prior to that could undo that.

My mate stirred, putting out a hand to stroke one egg and the next. “I heard that.”

“You weren’t supposed to.”

“Radley, my darling, you found a community in Moonridge Place, and though you weren’t very sociable, people here cared about you, and they still do. And look at how you’ve opened up since we mated.”

I wasn’t exactly the life of the party, but I did interact more with the other tenants.

“And given your history, you’ll make sure our babies never experience what you did.”

He yawned and said he needed to use the bathroom. But he didn’t move, and I thought he’d fallen asleep.

“I heard something.”

I opened one eye. “It’s probably one of the twins.” Jon had caught them sleeping one night after they’d eaten a huge dinner plus dessert.

My mate nudged me and asked how my shifter hearing didn’t pick up that one egg moved.

“Are you sure?” Now I was wide awake, and I put my face next to the speckled egg. There was nothing different there. The blue one appeared to be in the same position, until I got on my belly and measured the distance between the toy soldier and that egg.

“You’re right. It wriggled a tiny distance from where it was originally.”

We both stared at it, with my dragon willing the egg to do something. I was taking long slow breaths, not wanting to make a noise when the egg rocked. It did it once and tipped a little to the side. I imagined the baby inside had turned over and put their weight on the shell.

“It’s s-stopped.” Sheridan’s voice wobbled, and he put his hand in mine. “What if that’s it and the baby never hatches?”

I picked up a small crack that I felt more than heard. Sheridan put a hand over his mouth as he jiggled and pointed at the egg with his other hand. But there were no more cracks. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Both of us were peering over the egg and whispering, “You can do it.”

Neither of us looked away, and finally, a thin line, like a hair, opened along the top of the blue shell. A second one appeared, and a piece the size of a fingernail lifted and fell onto the duvet. Something moved in the space under the gap.

“It’s our baby.” My mate was flapping his hands and pointing as tears streamed over his cheeks.

I held him close because this was a moment we’d remember until we took our dying breath.

“Don’t help the baby, love.” That was what I said, but what I wanted to do was rip that shell off and lift our baby out.

You can’t. The baby must do this themselves, my beast warned me. They’re strong enough to do it.

The shell came away in pieces and then all at once, and a tiny dragon with blue scales lay in the ruins of the shell. We caught a glimpse of his tiny wings before the dragon in him vanished.