My flight surrounded me; their eyes wide. Iyadre held his arms out and I placed the whelp in them. He drew him close, his face filled with yearning. Slowly, the whelp was passed from one of my wingmates to another. Iyadre nuzzled him. Vadriq petted him as one might stroke a kitten. But it was Nariti who didn't want to let him go when I reached toward him.
"He doesn't need to go back with her," he whispered.
I touched the tip of my nose to his, trying to quiet his nerves. "He isn't. He's coming home with us. So is she. We reached a deal. I'll tell you about it when we get in. Let me have him."
His eyes slid shut, his brows pinching together as he worked through the overwhelming emotion of holding a whelp. It was... a lot to handle, I admitted to myself. Few draconic omegas would allow their whelps, especially ones as young as the red in Nariti's arms, free range. That meant we'd only met a few hatchlings throughout the years; most of them our siblings.
After a moment, he released the child into my arms. I cradled him against my chest, listening to his keens and hisses, and carried him off to my car. Olivia stood there, frowning at me. "Can I have the whelp back so he can eat?"
"You found raw meat while here on the site?" I asked, opening the doors.
She slid inside and pulled a zipping storage bag from her pocket, shaking it at the whelp. "The snack lady had some shredded sandwich meat that she wasn't going to be able to use. I asked her if she'd give it to me for a stray dog I found. She was happy to do it."
"The woman must be a fan of the feed factory," I muttered, following her in.
I plopped the bundle in her lap and started the car as she offered him a slice of the cheapest beef I had ever had the displeasure of seeing in my life. My lunch had been a shaved lamb sandwich with gouda. This looked as if it'd come from the slaughterhouse floor, or perhaps some of the trash Hudson put in his dog food. I had to look away as we merged into traffic, but I was glad for it.
If nothing else, the boy would find better food in our home. He would learn to speak properly, to work intelligently. I was half to planning for his upper education when my driveway suddenly appeared in front of me. I went straight past it and cursed under my breath. Thankfully, my neighborhood was a quiet sort of place. No one bothered to think twice about my doing a three-point turn in the center of the street and zipping back into the drive.
I pushed open my door and went toward the house, but paused when I didn't hear the other door open. I looked back to see Olivia frozen in the passenger seat, staring at the home in front of her with her jaw wide open. I looked at the house, then at her.
Sometimes, one forgets to be impressed by the majesty of what they truly have.
"If you continue to allow your mouth to fall open that way, you will catch flies like a frog," I told her.
She slowly looked over at me. "Okay. You're a loaded dragon who wants me to play egg mother for him and it's all actually real. Like, sure, the whole egg hatching thing last night wasn't what convinced me. The big house is what convinces me. Great. That's just... that's just great."
Olivia shook her head and pulled herself out of the car without another word. She followed me inside, clutching the whelp a bit more closely than she had in the car. However much he had eaten, it had been enough. His head rested against her arm; his eyes shut for the moment. When I had been that small...
...It had been so long ago. Most of my young life had been running with my nest mates, eating the bugs and lizards we could find, then terrorizing the other nesting omegas. I couldn't remember when or how much I had eaten, but surely it had been more than a tiny snack bag. Was the hatchling sick? I wanted to draw him from her arms and check him over, make certain that he was maintaining a proper body temperature to digest.
My alpha instincts were kicking in and I shook them off like skin shed. I had to keep my cool while the whelp slept, else I would likely snatch him and coil him the moment he woke up, threatening anyone who dared try to touch my son.
Fathering instincts are strong in male alphas, but I hadn't realized they would be as strong as this.
God, I just wanted to eat him all up and kiss his little nose until he squeaked at me. I wanted to teach him to fly, to show him to hunt, to find him the perfect school-
"Welcome to the house," Iyadre said, as if he owned it.
He slid an arm around Olivia's shoulders and showed her inside. I glowered behind him, then turned to head into the kitchen and get a beer from the fridge. If I was going to share the little witch with the others, I had best be tipsy enough to do it. I picked up the entire 6-pack case and carried it off toward the living room. "Bring her back in one piece. We need discussion over supper."
Either he didn't hear me or he didn't care; odds were even it could be either when it came to him. I settled down on the couch and put my feet on my coffee table; who was going to stop me? Then I
