Page 92

Story: Cullen

“I don’t know how we’re going to keep him on the ground.”

Cullen rolled his eyes. “We will just have to babyproof up high. I don’t see any sense in making something born to fly stay on the ground. That’s just mean.”

Orion looked at his mate and grinned. “Okay, ouch. You have a point. I hear you, and I guess you’re right. Dragons just don’t fly until they’re older, right?”

Cullen nodded. “I flew early, though. All three of us flew early, and who knows what our little one’s going to be?”

“Perfect.” Orion had no doubt. “We call her our butterfly.”

“She’s going to be amazing. The world has never had a baby quite like her born into the world.”

“She’s going to be all right.” Cullen put his hands over his belly, nodding to Arian. “She’s going to be okay.”

“Well, I don’t see how she couldn’t be? She has you and Orion and a new brother.”

Orion just kind of snorted. A half-unicorn, one-quarter dragon, a quarter fae. So, possibly a horn. Possibly wings? Possibly weirdly magical, but then all of them were in different ways.

Stop it, she’s going to be fine. These are butterflies. She’s moving. I’m not the size of a house, so she can’t be coming out in horse form. If you’d worked harder, you could have found yourself a nice, sweet, unicorn omega to bring home, but you chose me.Oh, he needed to be careful, Orion could tell.

I absolutely did one hundred percent. I walked up to your door.

Following the smell of grilled meat, even though you don’t eat it.

Orion didn’t point out that Cullen hadn’t had a single bite of meat at this point in weeks. He hadn’t asked for it. He hadn’t craved it. They hadn’t commented on it.

“Have you spoken to Zeke in the dragonlands?” Arian asked.

“I have.” Cullen grinned at her, his eyes twinkling. “They’re having another baby. Oh, they want a boy, I think, this time, but I don’t know. They seem to be kind of girl heavy, that pair.”

“They’re well?”

“They’re very happy. I’m busy. There are very many of them, and they’re starting to integrate with the other dragons in the village. Arielle and Sebby and Nevvy, they’re all growing so quickly. Even Little Stella, who I don’t think is ever going to get very big, she’s very fierce and happy. She’s incredibly happy.”

“That’s what I like to hear. And your mother, how is she?”

“Good. A little worried about Corbin and your nephew.” They all were, Cullen most especially.

“I’ll speak to her on that behalf. Not to worry. I know that she is overjoyed to see Elliot.”

Orion nodded toward the little boy, sound asleep next to his cunkle. “They have great fun together. Elliot loves to go see her, and they play in the gardens.”

“I’m so glad. It worries me a bit. That they found this baby, you know.”

Cullen nodded. “I didn’t even know—Surely someone would have known if they’d—Where do pegasi even come from?”

“We have them in the Glade. There are a few families, more families than there are unicorns, of course, but I haven’t heard of any gone missing.” Orion held up his hands. “Not that I’ve been home a lot, but surely someone would have told me—I mean, my job is to find lost children—had there been a lost child, I would have found it.”

“You did find it,” Arian pointed out. “Perhaps they were isolated enough that no one noticed.”

“Someone would have noticed if vampires got through to the Glade. My fathers would have noticed.”

“Well then, we must figure this out, because they didn’t.”

“Exactly. So where did this one come from? My fathers saw him, too, and they didn’t recognize him.”

“I will work within my own people to see what we can find out. But I’m not going to open any of the other doorways we have and send anyone out, because the vampires were waiting for Evander somehow.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Orion said. He glanced at Cullen. “But we need to heal Evander up first, and Cullen and I want to focus on his pregnancy now.”