“But—if and when I do—am I going to give birth to adragonor”—I swallowed hard—“dragons?”
All the beggar did was grin.
“And that isn’t supposed to alarm me?”
He tilted his head. “Well, they—they will be verylittledragons.”
Fucking hell. He didn’t seem at all concerned about this.
“Raptor Clan runs to triplets,” he added.
My alarm sharpened.Triplets.“I thought the female line dictated that kind of thing.”
“Not in Drakes,” he said confidently. “A chemical in our donations cause the egg to split.”
Splitting eggs? “But you guys aren’t identical twins.”
“Shaftz no. I would not want to look like Rhodes. He is far too rangy.” When he noticed my expression, he elaborated further. “For mates, conception requires donations from all.”
Well, that cleared up very little, and only added more questions. I decided that this conversation needed to be shelved. Preferably permanently, if I could find myself some birth control. I wasn’t ready to be a mother to dragons.
Although the thought of a baby Xandrosling lit a tiny, disturbing flame of warmth…
I squished it without mercy as I shook debris off my cloak and put it on. Then I looked at Xandros, who was gazing at me with a glazed look in his eyes.
“We need your big red dragony body to get back,” I reminded him.
“Oh, right.” The bones began to move beneath his skin, and he grimaced.
“Does it still hurt?” I asked, concerned.
“It always hurts,” he confessed. “A little more than usual now. My bones are not fully knitted.”
I decided that as much as I loved to fly, I could forgo the shapeshiftingbit…
The wind was no longer at tornado status, but it was far from a light summer breeze.
Add in the darkness and the rain, and it should have been a miserable experience. Instead, as I sat behind the spikey crest on Xandros’s massive head with my fingers tangled in his hair, my heart was lighter than I could ever remember it being.
We were also synced in a way that I couldn’t quite explain. I imagined that I shared his own joy in the power of his body and the way every wingbeat carried him through the air. My newly enhanced vision deciphered minute details despite the gloom.
It was glorious.
He carried the metal pieces between his front talons. They were heavy—I’d helped pull them out of the broken tree branches—and they did act like sails. Every gust threatened to tear them loose from his grasp.
The storm seemed to be building again. It was a relief when Xandros finally hovered, and lowered himself to the mound of trees and foliage that covered theStardrifter.
As the lizard birds renewed the battle, we noticed that the ramp was down.
Yani had raised it right before we’d left. I sensed the Drake’s concern as he lowered his head for me to slide off. His speed in shifting to human reflected his worry.
I looked around as I handed him the cloak. “Maybe she had some work to do outside?”
“Then where is she?”
My gut clenched. Xandros strode up the ramp, and I followed him.
The aft storage bay door was open.
