Page 13 of Singing the Dragon’s Heart

Chapter

Thirteen

K ami looked down at himself. “Are you sure that this is cool? I mean…”

Was it cool? Why would he care?

Okay, so he cared because it was important to Reno, but Kami didn’t have a whole lot of clothing options. He just hadn’t come equipped with tons of things—a couple of disguises, a pair of jeans, some soft pants, a handful of T-shirts. Today’s T-shirt was Rainbow Brite, in fact.

“I think it’s perfect.”

Kami had to admit that Reno was dressed similarly—he had on jeans and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, so…

“Are we supposed to bring anything?”

Reno shook his head. “No, they ordered in. If we brought something, we would just be bringing something that we ordered. So might as well just have them handle it.”

“Okay, cool. And are we going to have all of the kids there?” He liked to know the lay of the land.

“We are going to have all the kids there for supper, and then the teenagers are going to take the children next door with the nanny, and they’re going to try a slumber party slash babysitting slash probably some weird social experiment. So you’ll have to deal with children for a short period of time, but then we’ll have adult time.”

“Fair enough.” He was prepared; he could handle it. In theory, he liked kids. He’d just never been around them.

Soft rapping came to the door. “Uncle Reno. It’s time. The food’s here. Soffar got patty melts and French fries for everybody.”

Reno sort of bounced to the door like a Minion from the movies and opened it. “Tempest!”

Reno got a delighted grin, her purple scales shining. “I missed you.” The girl jumped into Reno’s arms and squeezed him. “It’s been such an exciting time. There are so many new children, and you haven’t met any of them.” She peered over Reno’s shoulder at Kami, nodded, and then she frowned. “You’re the one who brought them all here, the omegas.”

He nodded. “My friend Talon and I helped get them out. Reno here brought them in.”

“But you’re going to be the one that helps everybody new.”

Kami blinked at her. Huh. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I go out, and I help omegas that want to get free. Alphas too. Whoever.”

She shook her head at him. “No, no, that’s not right. You think it’s right, but that’s not how it works.”

Her eyes began to glow, and he tilted his head, staring at Reno. No weird “seeing” stuff. And I am not ready for this.

She’s just—she’s a seer. It’s a thing. She can’t help it.

But we’re going to play games. Games, no weird seer stuff.

I’ll try. “Come on, Tempest. Focus. Dinner and games.”

Nope, still glowing.

“You can deny all you want. You’re going. To help all the new ones, every single new dragon in the keep. And some old ones.” Her voice was kind of a monotone.

“Well, thank you.” What the fuck does that mean?

What does anything any seer ever said mean?

I don’t know. Well, at least he didn’t feel like he was that far off in left field. Seriously, if Reno wasn’t going ‘you have to believe the little purple seer’ then he didn’t feel like it was necessary to be all awed by her pronouncement.

“Come on, let’s go play games. I mean, I know us kids are going to play games in the other apartment. But it’ll be fun to have a big game night. The babies are gonna play go to sleep.” She rubbed her hands together and laughed like a Disney villain.

“I hope so, for everyone’s sake.” Reno took his arm and just hauled him and Tempest both back across the hallway to where the door was wide open, a baby gate standing in front of it.

Boone waved from the door. “Hey, there. Everyone’s trying to escape. They’ve been watching Tempest go in and out and to your apartment, and I think they’re figuring it out.”

“Don’t say that.” Lake seemed more than a little bit confused and worried about this whole thing. The little silvery blue dragon was just about hysterical, actually.

“Don’t worry, hailee. I won’t let the babies escape.” Boone winked and took Tempest from Reno, looking totally unrepentant. “But I am going to leave the baby gate up until we don’t need it anymore.”

The floor was filled with tiny crawling beasts. Actually, only one of them was crawling.

Most of them were walking, or kind of swaying around with their bowed little legs, lurching toward each other and everyone who walked in. It was at once creepy and kind of adorable.

“I can’t believe how big they’re getting,” Reno said. “Every time I see them, they’ve grown.”

“Apparently that’s something that happens with these dragon creatures. They just keep getting bigger.” Durango winked at him as he walked by, scooping up one of the children. “Hey, Kami, I’m glad you could make it.”

“Thanks for inviting us, I appreciate it.” I don’t know what to do, Reno. What am I supposed to do?

Let’s go find a place to sit and let the kids come to us if they want to.

Should I offer to help?

Help what? Pass out plates? The teenagers have this. It’s all right.

Reno led them over to a low sofa, and Reno sat in the corner, pulling him in close. “Soon we’ll have visitors.”

“Will we now?”

Sure enough, within seconds, a bright blue-scaled little dragon popped up, a huge smile on his quirky little face. “Hi.”

Kami looked at him and then leaned down close. “Hey. I’m Kami.”

“Blue.”

“No, I’m green. You’re blue.”

“Gween?” The little boy’s head tilted.

“Yes, I’m green.”

“Gween.”

A little girl baby with the darkest, reddest curls he’d ever seen appeared next to the blue dragon.

“Dis gween,” he pronounced.

“Gee?” She stared at him. “Scawet.”

“Yeah, you’re Scarlet. I’m green.” Too cute.

“Geen?”

The little blue dude shook his head. “Guh. Ween.”

“Gaween.”

The little blue dragon nodded. “Uh-huh. Gaween.”

She stared at Kami for a long moment, and he could see the smoke just barely pop out of her nose. Just barely. “Gaween. Hi.”

Then she pulled the little blue dragon away.

“That was Blue and Scarlet. Indigo and Violet are around here somewhere.”

“Those are their names?”

“Yep. They all were rescued from a keep, and Lake adopted them. About seven seconds before he had little Daniel.” Reno was too amused for words.

“That long, huh?”

“Yes, and unfortunately, I think that they’ve just decided that your name is Gaween.” Lake gave him a little bit of a sheepish grin. “They haven’t quite gotten to the point where they can differentiate themselves from colors, yet. I wouldn’t have named them colors if I thought about it first, but it just seemed so easy at the time, and I was very pregnant.”

“So how did you come up with Daniel? I mean, you’re a Lake. That’s a Boone, whatever the hell a Boone is. Oh.” It hit him all of a sudden, “Right. Daniel Boone. I get it. Never mind.”

Lake kind of chuckled softly. “At least I didn’t call him doggy. Like boondoggie.”

“Or baby like boom baby.”

“Or Ka like Kaboom.”

Oh, that was bad, and he couldn’t help but laugh, though. Okay, there was a hint of wickedness in Lake, maybe more than a hint.

“It must have been a real thing to go from no babies to five.”

“What was the worse thing, believe it or not, was going from five to six. That was unexpected. I love them all, but I may or may not have threatened to eat someone at some point, and I’m incredibly thankful for Samantha. Everybody needs a nanny.”

“I think it’s great that you have help.” That was noncommittal, right? He knew nothing about childcare. Or nannies. Or anything.

God, he was so out of his league.

Reno grabbed his hand and squeezed. “So Kami has no idea what to do. Do you guys need help?”

“Um…” Lake looked at Durango.

“Why don’t you guys come help me set up the game tables?” Durango asked.

“Sure.” Kami popped back up right away. “Thanks. I need to be busy if I can.” He followed Durango to where a long, folding trestle table leaned on a wall well away from all the staggering infants. They picked it up and let the legs down before settling it on the floor.

“Come on. We’ll get all the cards and games and all.” Durango winked at him.

“You rock.” He just had all this nervous energy.

Once he’d helped with that, Eyv had him help set out food, and he got to do all sorts of little things until Reno came to fill a plate and take him to sit again, this time with a drink and a bunch of food.

Better. Hands and mouth full. He was way less likely to make an ass out of himself that way.

You okay? Reno glanced at him while sipping his beer.

I am. I was just getting in my own head too much.

Okay. I want you to be comfortable with my friends.

I know. I’m trying. So are they.

Yeah. They really are.

“So, Kami. You really went on rescues?” Eyv asked.

“I did. Me and Talon here. We make a good team, huh, buddy?”

“The best.” Talon’s grin made him chuckle. “We’ve done dozens of missions.”

“That’s really cool. I mean, where we come from, omegas would be absolutely discouraged from anything like that.” Eyv rolled his eyes. “So annoying.”

“Yeah.” Lake snorted. “We’re like Victorian human women, I think. Expected to be all soft and useless. Keep culture. Graake.”

“Dragon tradition?” Kami was learning a lot of the words he hadn’t been taught as a kid.

“Exactly.”

They chatted, ate, and the kids gradually fell asleep. Then they were all taken off to play games or go to bed, and it was to the game tables.

This was way more his scene. Kami shuffled cards to play Spades with Talon and one of the recruits from Reno’s teams, with Reno as his partner. “Prepare to go down,” he told Talon.

“Ha! You forget I know all your tells.”

“And mates don’t get to do brain talk,” Lake said.

“Oh, no fair,” Reno moaned. “I finally get to brain meld and you all call it off-limits.”

Kami chortled. “Yeah, but really, how are they going to know?”

Reno laughed with him. “Good point.”

Two rounds of beating Talon and his partner’s ass later, they switched to playing a board game with Lake and Boone. Lake was damn competitive. Kami liked that about him.

They raced around the board, him and Lake way ahead of the alphas. They were just better at this stuff. Reno might be great at chess, but damn. He and Lake were really good at rolling dice and taking risks.

“Who wants dessert?” Lake said once Kami won the game. “We have lemon meringue mini pies or chocolate cream cakes.”

“Yum. Can we have one of each?” Kami asked. He was starving, even though he’d eaten a ton of food. He was getting better every day.

“You may have as many of each as you want.”

Kami popped up. “I’ll help you bring them around.”

“Oooh. Wait staff.” Lake jostled him on the way to the kitchen, and he laughed, the roughhousing surprising him. He really liked this guy now.

Which was too cool.

He could really use a friend who wasn’t trying to have visions about him all the time…

And who was going to stay put. He had a feeling if he wanted back into the field, he was going to have to fight for it.