A few times during the shower, he’d grab his belly or hold onto the wall. One time his nails dug into my shoulder. But for the most part, he was doing all right standing on his own. There was a bench there if he needed to sit, but he hadn’t.
When he was all clean and dried off, I carried him back to the nest and set him inside.
“Make me tea,” were the next words out of his mouth.
I didn’t want to leave. Goddess knew it was the last thing I wanted, but I did as he asked, taking the stairs three at a time, not wanting to waste a second.
They say a watched pot never boils, and whoever they were wasn’t lying. But eventually, after what felt like four zillion years, I came back up the stairs with his tea only to find him squatting, holding onto each side of the nest for support.
I nearly dropped the tea, only barely able to manage to set it on the bookshelf before racing to his side. I wasn’t willing to chance dropping it and having him tell me to go get him another one.Now that he was in this position, I was definitely not walking away.
“Your tea’s here.”
He gave me some serious eye-to-eye.
“I don’t want the tea. Get behind me so I can lean on you.”
“Anything for you.” I climbed in as he directed, and it was like his body had been waiting for me to be there, the contractions almost instantly hitting hard.
It wasn’t long before he was pushing. I wasn’t experienced with this at all, but it felt like everything was coming at lightning speed. His arms trembled, his legs shook, his breath hard and heavy as he cried out, pushing out the first and then the second back to back with little to no break between them.
And then everything stalled. Or maybe not stalling so much as slowing down. After the second egg came, I’d thought the third would follow in a similar manner. I thought wrong.
He’d been pushing for an hour and nothing. Had my phone been close enough, I’d have called for Vexus already, pleading with them to get here.
But leaving him, even for that second, wasn’t going to happen.
Instead, I stayed with him, supporting his body with mine and being the best hype team I could be. I was about to break andleave for my phone, fearing that if I didn’t, things would go wrong, when he delivered her last egg. It was huge.
He fell back against me, our three eggs lying on our side. He looked up at me and said, “I think we know the answer to the twin question.”
“Sure there’s not triplets in there?”
He growled. “I think we’ll have our hands full with four dragonets.”
“That’s true. Think about how full our hearts will be.”
It sounded like a cheesy greeting card, and I did not care, because it was true. I was fully alive for the first time in centuries, all thanks to Rythe.
Chapter 22
Rhythe
When the idea of ClutchCare first began to form out of the idea that we needed to make things easier for new parents of dragons to find childcare, I never expected it to get as big or to move as fast as it had. But the more people we mentioned it to, the more the excitement built and the more people offered to help. It had taken on a life of its own, and I couldn’t be happier about that.
And today I was in my nest with my three eggs, putting on the final touches before we officially launched the app.
I appreciated that Ollie was willing to come here to work on it with me. He traveled farther than anyone else, and he brought a perspective that we needed. That, and he had grown to become a really close friend. I enjoyed our time together.
Some omegas were able to leave their nest in the care of others, or travel with their eggs in a specialized travel nest. And maybe if we had lived someplace where I could put them in the back of a van, I might have considered that option. But flying down with them just wasn’t working with my anxiety. It was hard enough to watch when my brother came with his kids in their car seats. I just couldn’t do that with the eggs.
Thankfully, not once did anybody push for me to do so. I did talk to my mate once about the possibility of an all-terrain vehicle as a way to travel with them, but I was halfway through asking about it when I realized they would be jostled far too much for it to be a viable option.
Instead, I was staying put. One of the people that worked with my mate told him about nest desks, and he’d had one custom built for me. It allowed me to work while being snuggled with my eggs. It was genius.
We opted for a two-sided model. It was perfect. It allowed my mate and me to dine together, and when I was working, it made it possible for two of us to have our laptops going at the same time. It was an interesting way to desk share.
It wasn’t only Ollie and my brother who helped with the organization part of the project. Between the three of us, we were really at the finish line.
