Page 33 of Alpha Dragon’s Mating Contract (Babies For Broken Dads #3)

PREGNANCY

Walren’s heart skipped a beat. “Um!”

Raptor watched him with a patient smile, so different from Larei that Walren’s reservations melted away.

“I... I guess we can talk about it,” Walren said breathlessly.

“Good. First question: We’re definitely keeping the baby, right?”

“Yes.” Walren ignored the discomfort in his stomach. Even though the pregnancy had happened anyway, and even though Raptor didn’t know about the contraceptive spells, Walren still felt guilty for keeping that a secret. “I agreed to that in the contract, didn’t I?”

“Just in case,” Raptor rumbled. “Because it leads to my next point.”

Walren nodded slowly. “Okay?”

“If we ever decide to bond, you are not going to give birth while we’re walking the Circle.”

“Wh-what?” Walren squeaked.

Raptor met his eyes solemnly. “Ivo’s baby was hanging out of him when they walked the Circle. I do not want that to happen to us.”

Walren had heard about it. But that wasn’t what his brain had latched onto. “B-bonding?!”

Bonding was for life. Why were they already talking about it?

At that, Raptor looked sheepish. “Well. I may be getting ahead of myself. It’s just that I prefer to consider the different outcomes of a situation, and this is one of them.”

“I think we need a bit more time before we can talk about bonding,” Walren said weakly.

He wants to bond with me?

Then he realized that maybe Raptor was thinking about bonding because of their unborn child, and not because he actually wanted Walren.

His shoulders sagged a little.

Raptor nodded earnestly. “Yes. I will have to work on the courtship. You’re right.”

“Courtship,” Walren echoed.

“I gave you some courtship kisses, remember?”

Yes, Walren remembered. Even if Raptor only wanted him for their baby, the courtship kisses were still special. His face grew red.

“Aww, Walry!” Raptor’s gaze turned soft and fond. “Are you flustered?”

“No!”

Raptor snickered. “Of course you aren’t.”

Walren tried valiantly to change the subject. “Anyway, I’m not going to walk around with a baby hanging out of me!”

Raptor gave him a look. “I hope we didn’t just jinx ourselves.”

“Things like that don’t happen,” Walren said. “There’s no such thing as jinxing.”

Raptor gasped. “No, don’t say that.”

“But jinxing is just superstition—”

Raptor clapped his hand over Walren’s mouth. “Shhh! No! The air has ears!”

Walren frowned. “Who’s listening to us?”

“I don’t know. But you can’t tempt fate like that,” Raptor whispered. “Especially not with something so important!”

“All we have to do is not set the bonding—” Walren flushed. “I mean, all we have to do is not schedule anything important around the due date. It’s not as though we’re going to bond for sure, anyway—”

Raptor gave him a sidelong look.

“I mean, what are the chances that I’ll actually go into labor during something important? ”

The alpha clutched his head. “Noooo. Now it’s definitely going to happen.”

“ No, it’s not, ” Walren said as firmly as he could.

Raptor opened his mouth. Then he thought better of it and nodded. “Right. Moving on. Because we don’t need to tempt the universe further. We’ve never actually discussed our parental rights—”

“We can discuss them?” Walren blurted.

“Yes, pumpkin.” Raptor nuzzled him. “I know the contract says I get a hundred percent of the rights, but... That was before I got to know you properly. Now that I understand you better, I think you’d want some of the rights, too.”

Walren stared at the alpha, his throat growing tight. He had to swallow before he could speak. “Uh. Yeah. I—I would love that, actually.”

“What about fifty-fifty? The baby would live with me, but so can you and Zebbie. You would get better protection this way.”

Relief soaked into Walren and loosened the tension in his body. He was nodding even before Raptor finished speaking. “How long would Zebbie and I get to live with you?”

Raptor frowned. “There’s no end date on that. I wouldn’t evict you, sweetheart. I don’t want your stay here to be conditional. We’re friends. And I would like you to be my mate.”

Walren blinked hard. “We’re friends?”

“ Yes. We’ve been getting along, haven’t we?” Raptor gave him a wide-eyed look, as though he wasn’t sure Walren wanted to be his friend.

Just that Raptor had been the one to extend all the gestures of intimacy. He had shared his expensive teas with Walren; he made Walren laugh, and he had gone above and beyond to cook delicious meals for Walren and his son.

“Y-yeah,” Walren mumbled. “But surely there’s someone who deserves your friendship more...?”

Raptor sighed. “Walry. Did you know? Before you came along, I had been interviewing people for your position three times a week. For nearly a year. Some of them made it through a few days on the job. Others didn’t even pass the interview. And that’s after Hassel vetted the candidates.”

Walren scrunched up his forehead. “How? You’re offering a lot of money. And it’s not as though being your rut partner is so difficult.”

The alpha rolled his eyes. “Some of the candidates didn’t think I had the money to back it up, because I interviewed them in the Nood’s Good kitchen.

Where I’m covered in sauce splatters. Some of them signed the contract, but they made faces when I sang fun songs.

I terminated those contracts and kicked them out.

Then there were those who got bored, or they found an alpha on the side, or they tried to steal my things. ”

Walren sagged. “That’s terrible.”

Raptor blew out a breath. “So you see, you’re pretty special.”

“I’m just a regular decent person!”

The alpha looked horrified again. “Have I not done enough to show you’re special?”

“You have! You’ve been doing plenty!” Walren thought fast to stop Raptor from going overboard with his courtship. “You’ve never told me how you ended up with uncontrollable ruts. You said they only started recently.”

Raptor’s gaze slid away. “I might have, ah, accidentally offended a witch and gotten cursed.”

Walren sucked in a sharp breath. “Can you get the curse undone?”

“No,” Raptor sighed. “At first, I thought I could. But Uriel took a look at my magical energy, and he said the curse has changed my body permanently.”

Walren winced. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it’s not the worst kind of permanent curse. At least I’m not spitting out crabs whenever I talk.”

“Ugh!” Walren shuddered. “I guess a rut problem isn’t so bad, after all.”

“As long as I have you to help me out.”

Walren nodded.

“Now, I have another very important question,” Raptor said. Walren eyed him warily. “How do you like your pickup lines?”

Abruptly, Walren remembered the pickup line he had written for Raptor. It was tucked away in his clothes, lost on the floor somewhere. Right now, he didn’t feel brave enough to present it to the alpha.

What if it wasn’t good enough?

In an attempt to hide his worries, Walren blurted, “Sunny side up.”

Pure delight filled Raptor’s face. He cackled and tackled Walren onto the bed. “Oh, you are precious. I am definitely keeping you.”

“You say that, but you don’t know how grumpy I get during a pregnancy.”

“I’m all in on this challenge, Walry-babe.”

It had been four weeks, and the sock puppets were getting on Walren’s last nerve.

“Make it stop!” he wailed, burying his face in Raptor’s chest. “Make them stop looking!”

“Who? Make what stop?” Raptor looked around, somehow missing the countless sock puppets everywhere.

“The sock puppets!” Walren cried. “Why do you like them so much?”

“Oh.” Suddenly, Raptor had the guiltiest look on his face. “Ah. Them.”

“Rap,” Walren grumbled, scowling.

“Oh, you’re adorable when you get mad,” Raptor purred.

“That’s not helping!” Walren scowled harder. “Why do you have so many sock puppets?”

Raptor licked his lips. Then he looked nervous, which was impossible. “What would you do if I told you that they’re, ah, actually hiding something?”

Walren’s jaw dropped. “This... This whole time they’ve been staring... You don’t collect sock puppets because you love them?”

Raptor snorted. “Nah. Hass and his Butler Brothers gathered up all the socks and sock puppets they could find in a couple of days. It’s not because I love them or anything.”

“What can they possibly hide, that’s worse than sock puppets?” Walren whined. “There have to be two thousand googly eyes around the mansion!”

Raptor made a face and looked around. After a moment’s consideration, he yielded. “Alright. I guess you could pull off a sock puppet and see what’s underneath.”

Walren waited a beat in case Raptor took his words back. But the alpha didn’t.

He stalked over to the nearest puppets—a neat row on the foyer’s sideboard, all of them loosely wrapped in tighty-whities, with googly eyes stuck to their tips.

Walren pinched a pair of briefs, held his breath, and pulled them off.

Underneath was a green sculpture of an erect cock, smooth and shiny.

“Is that jade?” Walren asked.

“Yes. I picked the jade stone and had a master sculptor in China carve it out for me.”

Walren stared. Then he lifted the briefs off the next dildo—this time the cock had been carved out of a huge blue stone.

“Lapis lazuli,” Raptor offered. “Not the highest grade, but sufficiently rare.”

“This gives a whole new meaning to ‘blue balls’,” Walren mumbled.

Raptor laughed. Then he sobered. “You see why I had to dress them up.”

Slowly, Walren unmasked the rest of the dildos on the sideboard. They were all carved from colorful stones—yellow topaz, pink quartz, orange sunstone, and purple amethyst.

For a long moment, Walren stared. Then he glanced at the sheer number of sock puppets sitting around the mansion. “So under all those puppets...”

“Are dildos, yes.”

That made sense, because these were lewd enough to match Raptor’s personality.

“That’s a lot of effort trying to hide dicks from me.”

Raptor’s smile was lopsided. “Not from you. I’ve been trying to hide them from Zebbie.”

“ Oh. ” Things suddenly made so much more sense. “Well... I don’t think Zebbie even knows what a penis is.”