Page 83 of A Dragon's Miracle (Fires of Fate)
Ryan glanced down at Sky, who was starting to get fidgety. Probably hungry. I knewIwas. Ryan took a deep breath and directed his gaze back at me. “Do you want a paternity test?”
What? Was he seriously asking me if I... ? “Why would I want that?” I looked at Sky, and he looked back at me as if he knew we were talking about him. “He's mine. I keep telling you that. I don't care about any sort of test. Have I given you any reason to think different?”
“No! You've been wonderful. I just wanted to clear this up before...”
“Before what?”
“I've been thinking... about what he might look like when he shifts.”
“When he shifts?” I hadn't thought about that before. If our kid wasn't freakishly early like Adrian's kids had been, we probably had another year or so before we needed to worry about that.
“I know that you don't care, that you don't need to know if you're his biological father, and I love that about you, I really do, but what if he shifts and he doesn't look like you?”
I tried to picture it. Jin had looked very different from me in dragon form. Ryan was right. Sky's parentage would be obvious once he shifted. Jin was a whole other type of dragon. He'd even breathed ice instead of fire. “Holy sun flares...” I felt myself go pale. “Is that why you didn't want him baptized?” For dragons, at least on this island, that process included being doused in fire.
“I don't know if he's immune to fire,” Ryan admitted. “I didn't want to find outthatway. But one way or another, he's a dragon and I can't keep him from shifting.”
“No, you can't.” I swallowed, suddenly glad that my family wasn't overly religious. Back when mother had first mentioned getting Sky baptized, Ryan had claimed he wanted to wait until he was feeling better to have the ceremony, and we'd kind of kept postponing it until we forgot about it.
Now I took our baby from Ryan and pressed him to myself. He babbled something incoherent. Of course he did. “It doesn't matter what kind of dragon he is. He's my son. Nothing's going to change that.”
“I know he is.” Ryan's eyes were getting a little teary now. Hehatedthat he couldn't say for sure who'd gotten him pregnant, probably more than me. I never blamed him. He inhaled and closed his eyes for a brief moment before looking at me again. “But what are we going to tell him?”
“Is that what you're worried about?”
“I don't ever want to tell him about Jin. I want that man as far out of my life as possible, and I don’t want to give Sky any reason to think he wasn’t wanted.”
“No, Sky was our miracle, no matter how he came to be.”
“I just want him to know that too.”
“He will.” I rocked my son a bit as he abandoned his rattle to play dig his tiny fingers into my shirt. “And if he turns out to be a Chinese dragon, so what? We’ll tell him he takes after you.”
Ryan blinked. “Does it actually work that way, though?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t think too many interracial omega/dragon relationships have been studied. You know there’s only one way for us to find out if it works that way.” I felt the corner of my lips tug up.
“Yeah?” Ryan raised an eyebrow at me. “What’s that?”
“Have more kids and see how they turn out.”
Ryan laughed and all tension seemed to fade from him. “I promise once we get rid of my cancer, you can have as many kids as you want. As long as you don’t want more than three, anyway.”
I laughed too. “You mean three plus the one we already have, right? So four.”
Ryan shook his head at me, still smiling. “Let’s handle the one we have first before we talk about having four.”
“I guess you’re right.” And as if on cue, Sky started crying in my arms. He didn’t cry much, and when he did, it was usually because… Yup, someone needed a fresh diaper.
“Looks like you’re up, Dad,” Ryan said.
“Yeah, I got this. You go down to dinner and we’ll be right with you.” I stood and carried Sky to the changing table. I didn’t mind doing this. I enjoyed taking care of my family, and just as I’d told Ryan, Sky was my son, no matter what. And I planned on being the absolute best Dad I could be.
The End