Page 15 of Dragon’s Captive (Prime Omegaverse #1)

CHAPTER 14

MIDPOINT CRISIS

The universe has a sick sense of timing. Just when I've begun finding something like peace in this gilded prison, when I've started allowing myself small comforts between the larger indignities of captivity, everything shatters with the abruptness of glass hitting stone.

It happens in the library, of all places. The space that's become my sanctuary, the one corner of Drake's Peak where I can almost forget what I am—claimed omega, breeding vessel, captive turned reluctant collaborator. I'm balancing on the rolling ladder, reaching for a volume on pre-Conquest agricultural techniques that might assist with the territory proposal Kairyx asked me to review, when the first pain strikes.

The sensation is nothing like the morning sickness that's finally beginning to fade, nothing like the stretching aches as my body adapts to pregnancy. This is sharp, sudden, like a blade twisted deep in my abdomen. My vision whites out. The book tumbles from my nerveless fingers, and I nearly follow it, barely catching myself on the ladder's rail as a cry tears from my throat.

For one suspended moment, I hang there, halfway between floor and ceiling, as my brain struggles to process what's happening. Then the second pain hits, stronger than the first, radiating outward in concentric waves of agony. My grip falters. The world tilts.

I'm falling.

The impact never comes. Instead, scaled arms materialize beneath me, catching my plummeting body with such precise timing it seems impossible. Through tear-blurred vision, I recognize Kairyx's golden eyes, narrowed with concern rather than their usual predatory focus.

"Clara?" His voice sounds distant despite his proximity, as if reaching me through layers of water. "What's wrong?"

I can't answer. The third spasm steals my words, replacing them with a whimper I'd be ashamed of under any other circumstances. My hands move instinctively to my abdomen, still barely rounded at eleven weeks of accelerated dragon-hybrid gestation. The healers said I should be showing more by now, that the twins should be larger, more developed. Warnings I'd dismissed with the desperate hope that perhaps my body was rejecting what had been forced upon it.

Now I recognize the truth with terrible clarity—the twins aren't being rejected. They're in danger. My body is struggling to accommodate their hybrid nature, to provide what their partially draconic genetics require for survival.

"The babies," I manage, the words scraping my throat like shattered glass. "Something's wrong with the babies."

The transformation that overtakes Kairyx happens too quickly for human eyes to fully process. One moment he's in his more humanoid form, the next his features elongate, scales spreading across his skin like dark water, obsidian ridges erupting along his spine. His massive black wings unfurl with a sound like sails catching violent wind, stretching to a span that seems impossible in the confines of the library.

Yet it's his eyes that terrify me most—human intelligence receding behind primal draconic focus, golden irises engulfed by vertical pupils so thin they nearly disappear. This is no longer the calculated commander I've come to know. This is pure instinct, ancient and unstoppable.

Before I can process the transformation, he shifts me in arms that have elongated into scaled forelegs, cradling me against his chest with surprising gentleness given the lethal talons now tipping each digit. Without warning, he turns toward the library's massive windows.

"Wait—" I start, but it's already too late.

Glass shatters around us as his massive form launches through the opening, jagged shards glittering like deadly stars in the afternoon light. The mountain air hits like a physical blow, knocking what little breath remains from my lungs. We're airborne, my stomach lurching with sudden weightlessness as Kairyx's powerful wings snap downward, propelling us away from the fortress with terrifying speed.

The day, clear and bright moments before, has transformed with the sudden caprice of mountain weather. Dark clouds boil on the horizon, racing toward us like harbingers of doom. The wind shifts, no longer merely cold but actively hostile, battering against Kairyx's wings with violent determination.

Another pain spikes through me, sharper than the others, wringing a cry from my throat that's instantly torn away by the howling wind. Kairyx's massive body curls more tightly around my smaller form, his scales radiating protective heat that shields me from the worst of the elements. Against all reason, I find myself burrowing closer to that warmth, instinct overriding intellect in the face of immediate threat.

"Hold on," he growls, the words distorted by his partially transformed jaw, yet somehow still comprehensible. "Medical facility. Eastern ridge. Best healers."

The blizzard hits with the suddenness of an ambush. One moment we're flying through turbulent air, the next we're engulfed in swirling white fury. Ice crystals sting my exposed skin like miniature daggers. The temperature plummets until each breath burns in my lungs, frozen daggers stabbing from within. Only Kairyx's draconic heat keeps the cold from becoming immediately lethal, his massive body a barrier between me and winter's wrath.

His wings battle the gale-force winds with obvious strain, each powerful beat fighting against nature's determination to dash us against the mountainside. In the swirling white, all direction disappears. If not for draconic senses that transcend human limitations, we would surely be lost, just another tragedy claimed by the Appalachian peaks.

Time loses meaning. There is only pain and cold, punctuated by moments of lucidity where I recognize the desperation of our situation. The twins' lives hang by threads grown more tenuous with each spasm that tears through me. My own survival seems increasingly uncertain, human fragility exposed by both pregnancy complications and elemental fury.

When solid stone finally appears through the whiteout conditions, I almost believe it's hallucination—a mirage born of desperate hope rather than reality. But Kairyx's wings fold partially as he adjusts our descent, the change in momentum confirming we've reached some destination.

The landing is rougher than his usual precision would allow, the blizzard conditions forcing compromise between safety and speed. His talons scrape against stone as we touch down on what appears to be a wide ledge carved into the mountainside. A massive opening yawns before us, golden light spilling out to create a beacon in the storm.

Figures rush forward—some human, others clearly draconic, all wearing expressions of controlled urgency that medical professionals across species seem to share. Their voices blend into meaningless noise as another contraction rips through me, this one accompanied by wetness between my thighs that sends terror spiking through my system.

Blood. I'm bleeding.

The world fragments after that—snippets of consciousness floating in a sea of pain and fear. I'm vaguely aware of being transferred from Kairyx's forelegs to some kind of conveyance, of rapid movement through stone corridors far more clinical than Drake's Peak's ornate passages. Voices speak over and around me, using medical terminology that sounds like another language even when I recognize individual words.

"Hybrid adaptation rejection."

"Genetic synchronization failure."

"Accelerated placental abruption."

"Draconic mineral deficiency."

I surface from the haze when they attempt to separate me from Kairyx, some rational part of their medical protocol requiring the father's absence during examination. But his growl—low, primal, vibrating through the stone beneath us—makes even the most senior healer step back, hands raised in placation.

"Commander, please," a human female in healer's garb attempts, her tone suggesting this isn't her first encounter with protective alpha behavior. "We need space to work."

"I stay," he responds, voice barely recognizable through partially transformed vocal cords. No argument, no negotiation. Simple fact.

They don't press the issue. Perhaps they recognize the futility, or perhaps the woman who seems to lead them understands something fundamental about our situation that transcends medical protocol.

Time slips again as they work on me—hands moving over my abdomen with professional efficiency, instruments I don't recognize measuring things I can't name. Injections that burn like liquid fire through my veins before spreading numbing relief in their wake. Throughout it all, Kairyx remains a constant presence, his massive form shifted back to something closer to humanoid, though still far more draconic than the appearance he usually maintains around humans.

Slowly, the pain recedes. Not completely—there remains a deep ache, a wrongness I can feel in my core—but the acute crisis appears to be passing. The tension in the room shifts from emergency response to cautious assessment.

"The fetuses have stabilized," the lead healer finally announces, her expression guarded as she studies some readout I can't see from my position. "But this was a warning we cannot ignore. Her body lacks critical elements the hybrid offspring require for proper development."

"Fix it," Kairyx demands, the words more growl than speech.

The healer—a woman perhaps in her fifties, with steel-gray hair and the confidence of someone who has seen too much to be easily intimidated—meets his gaze directly. "Commander, it's not that simple. Human physiology isn't designed to carry draconic young. Her system is trying, adapting remarkably well considering, but the mineral composition of dragon embryos requires elements not naturally present in human biochemistry."

As they discuss my condition over my prone form, speaking about me rather than to me, I should feel objectified, reduced once again to breeding vessel. Instead, I find myself reaching for Kairyx's hand, fingers closing around scaled digits with desperate strength. The action surprises us both.

"Don't let them die," I whisper, the plea emerging unbidden from somewhere beyond conscious thought. The words shock me the moment they materialize—not because they're untrue, but because they're painfully, undeniably genuine.

Kairyx's golden eyes shift to mine, pupils dilating from draconic slits to something almost human in their roundness. His massive hand engulfs mine, careful of claws that could rend flesh with casual ease.

"They are our future," he responds, voice dropping to a register too low for the healers to hear. "The first of my bloodline to take root successfully." His grip tightens fractionally, scales warm against my cold skin. "But your survival matters equally."

The pronoun hangs between us, weighted with implications neither of us is prepared to face. Our future. Not his offspring, not my burden, but something shared between us. Acknowledgment of joint stake in what began as simple biological claiming but has evolved into something neither anticipated.

I should correct him. Should reassert the boundaries between captor and captive, between forced claiming and chosen connection. But the words stick in my throat, held back by the undeniable truth that somewhere in these weeks of captivity, these lives growing within me have become more than just the physical evidence of my biological subjugation.

The healer's voice cuts through the moment, dragging us back to immediate concerns. "We need to begin mineral supplementation immediately. Intravenous for now, then oral once her system stabilizes. She'll need regular monitoring—weekly at minimum. The pregnancy can continue, but not without significant intervention."

Kairyx nods, still holding my hand as if it's something precious rather than just another part of his claimed property. "Whatever is required. Spare no resource."

As medical staff bustle around us preparing various treatments, I find myself studying his face—the sharp angles softened by evident concern, the predatory features transformed by something that looks disturbingly like fear. Not for himself, never that, but for the lives he clearly already considers his legacy, his future, his bloodline continued.

And perhaps, though I can hardly bear to acknowledge it even in the privacy of my own thoughts, for me.

"How did you know?" I ask, voice barely above a whisper. "How did you reach me so quickly in the library?"

Something shifts in his expression—discomfort, perhaps, at being caught in what might be interpreted as sentiment. "Dragon senses. I detected the change in your scent the moment the complication began. The distress hormones, the altered blood chemistry."

The explanation is physiological, logical, devoid of emotional content. Yet it doesn't explain the speed of his response, the desperation evident in his flight through blizzard conditions, the way he refused to release me even when medical protocol demanded it.

For the first time since my capture, I find myself contemplating the possibility that what exists between us might transcend the simplistic categories of captor and captive, alpha and omega, conqueror and conquered. That something more complex and terrifying might be taking root alongside the twins growing in my womb.

The thought should horrify me. Instead, as the healers work to save the lives within me—lives I never wanted but now cannot bear to lose—I find my fingers tightening around Kairyx's in wordless acknowledgment of truth neither of us is ready to name.

We have evolved beyond our beginning. The question that remains, hanging unspoken in the antiseptic air of this hidden medical facility, is what we might become by the end.