Chapter Fourteen
Galen
I loved spending time with Punky and Lark's children, but it was even more fun riding the rollercoaster with Mac. Afterward, he looked like he was going to be sick. I took the occasional turns with the children so he could keep his feet on the ground.
After a few rides, I returned to his side with a bottle of water. "Are you feeling better?" I asked.
"Yes. It was weird, that's all. I've never had motion sickness before."
I stood closer than was appropriate and sniffed his neck. He didn't smell sick. I sniffed Clementine and then sniffed Mac again. "You smell different."
"Different, bad?"
"Different. I can't explain it." I could, but it didn't make sense. He smelled pregnant.
Beta kobolds couldn't get pregnant, could they? Where would they even eject their eggs? Their cocks didn't double as ovipositors, and even if they did, they didn't have slick to nourish eggs. For the first time in ages, I wished my paragon was around so I could ask them.
When we returned to the hotel, I let my horns loose and tried to push my worries from my mind. Mac would be fine. He had to be. Once we bonded, his life force would be tied to mine, and I could survive just about anything. Now that I'd had my final molt, the spike atop the kobold fortress was no longer a threat to me. I was also resistant to fire, so my paragon would have a difficult time subduing me if they returned.
None of that mattered now. I couldn't focus on the future. My mate was in the present, still unmated and worried he wasn't good enough for me.
While I showered, I felt him questioning our bond. I reached out to him through it. I hoped he sensed all my love. His response felt like a cool breeze through my cave on a hot summer day, a welcome reprieve from my own burning desire. He was my opposite in so many ways, and yet, he was perfect for me. I couldn't wait to mark him and make him mine.
I hastened my ablutions and hurried to the bed. I shifted to my kobold alpha form, since Mac preferred it to my human one. If he wanted me to be more like an omega, I didn't know how. I didn't create my own slick, and I didn't know if their cocks were always split open at the tip, or only when they laid eggs.
I shuddered. It was much better to be a dragon with a cock and a stretchy ovipositor. Instead of messy slick, dragon eggs needed only our magic once laid.
We had a special cave for egg laying and hatching, far from the villagers' prying eyes. I would take Mac there when it was time. He would nourish me so I could keep our egg's magic strong.
I chuckled as I heard and smelled him approach. He was already nourishing me with wonderful food. I cast a spell to clothe myself in lounge pants and met him at the door, opening it for him so he didn't fumble the paper bags.
With no room on the table, he resorted to setting the bag on a chair and piling the cardboard containers one on top of the other until we each had a food mountain before us. Pasta, salad, soup, and breadsticks.
Instead of diving in, I cupped his cheeks and pulled him to me for a slow, sensual kiss. He melted against me and groaned.
"Food first," he said. "Then we can do the rest."
"The rest?" I sat down.
Mac set the empty bag on the floor and took its place. "You should tell me what you want, so there's no confusion."
I chomped on a breadstick while I thought about it. Bread was still weird to me, but I didn't mind it when drenched in garlic butter.
"Won't that make it weird?"
"Galen, I'm a kobold mated to a dragon. It's already weird."
"I suppose you're right." I took a deep breath. "I want you to mate with me, you inside me. When we've joined, we can complete the mating mark to bind our lives together. And then we'll come and you will fertilize the egg inside me."
"Oh shit," Mac glanced at the wall between our room and the other kobolds. "You spelled the room?"
"I put up a privacy spell the morning we slept in late," I confessed. "I never took it down."
Mac laughed. "Good. This wouldn't be considered polite conversation for our young friends."
I nodded and dove into my salad next. I could do without vegetation, but I loved the tang of the vinaigrette. It wasn't as good as Mac's homemade marinade, though.
"You were really good with them today," Mac said. "Robin and Clementine, especially."
"I like children," I confessed. "I never had the chance to be around younger dragons." Since the return of the changelings, I had surrounded myself with young kobolds. I loved telling them stories and sharing my knowledge.
"You've always been a dragon, though, right? Kobolds don't somehow molt into dragons?"
I laughed. "Yes, I was born a dragon."
"Thanks to our fixation on mating, I know entirely too much about alpha and omega kobolds," Mac said. "I don't know much about dragons. How long will your pregnancy last?"
"I don't know." I shrugged. "When I asked Bale, they said, 'too long,' and that was the only answer I got from them. I have a better estimate for the weeks in our hatching cave. It will take thirty weeks for the egg to mature and hatch."
"Unless human genes complicate things," Mac said.
"We will find out." I tried a smile for reassurance, but that only made Mac smell more nervous.
We ate the rest of our meal in silence, though neither of us took more than a few bites. The pasta was cooked al dente for the perfect amount of crunch, but I still couldn't enjoy it, not when Mac looked so worried. I should have told him what I smelled on him earlier, but I didn't want to scare him even more.
I'd wanted tonight to be perfect, and now I was ruining it.
* * *
After we gave up on our unfinished meals, we delayed further by sharing a delicious slice of strawberry cheesecake. I ate slowly, savoring every bite Mac forked into my mouth.
I couldn't explain why I stalled. I wanted Mac, and he wanted me. This felt momentous, like our lives would change once we made our marks and connected our lives forever.
This was Mac, though. I loved him and wanted to be with him as long as I lived. He was no longer a random stranger with whom I felt a mate bond. He was my everything.
With a shimmer of magic, I removed my clothing spell. Mac had his back turned to toss the paper bag into the waste bin. I heard his breath catch when he turned around, but I was already on the bed, on my knees, ass up and waiting for him.
"Gods, Galen, you're a dream come true."
There was my wonderful kobold mate. I hadn't lost him to worry, after all. I felt his gaze on my back.
"Is this the form you'd like me to take?"
I glanced over my shoulder and caught him staring while he swallowed. "Yes. Prepare yourself for me. I want to see what you like."
With a spell, I coated my insides and three of my fingers with a liberal dose of the human lube. "Wait until I share this gift with the other dragons." Before, we'd taken baths together in pools of oil, the slick stuff coating our cocks and filling our orifices until we glided together. I hated smelling like the stuff for days, but it couldn't be helped.
Until now. I would take this human slickness to Ignitas and share it with all my dragon friends. If anything could make my paragon lighten up, it was this.
Nope. No thinking about parents in this moment, or friends, or children. This was between me and Mac.
Once I was as stretched as three fingers would make me, I flipped onto my back and beckoned him with my still-slicked fingers. I smeared them over his cock, and he added more with a spell.
"I want you to enjoy this," he whispered.
"I will." Mac's cock was a decent size for a beta kobold's, but I was a dragon. I could change my form to make the fit more comfortable for both of us if the lube didn't work.
That wasn't necessary, though. Mac's flared cock head and glorious sheath bumped along my entrance in the most wonderful way. I closed my eyes to better enjoy it. Gods, he was the perfect fit.
I loved the feel of his cock as it pressed against my prostate. I didn't have one as a dragon, but I'd made it part of my kobold alpha form when I noticed how much Mac enjoyed his. I was already too close, and he hadn't bottomed out yet, still working his way inside me with shallow thrusts.
We both groaned from the pleasure when he was fully seated inside me. He kissed me, and the world shifted. No longer were we dragon and kobold. We were melded together as one.
"Is it wrong for me to want to bite you now?" Mac asked. "Do we need to wait?"
"The magic already recognizes our union." I could feel it swirling around us, binding us together without the mating mark. "Bite me, Mac."
My stubborn kobold frowned at me. "I don't want it to fail."
I laughed. "If it does, we'll have the rest of our lives to get it right."
Instead of biting me, he continued to rock against my prostate with slow, smooth strokes. I grabbed my cock and ovipositor in hand. I was already so close, but I needed something more to push me over the edge.
Mac sped up, his movements fast and erratic. He shoved my knees out of his way and leaned into each thrust, driving his cock against my prostate and bringing me even closer to the edge.
When I approached the fine line between desperation and bliss, he dropped down to his elbows. His body skimmed over my cock with the perfect amount of friction. He dipped his head to my shoulder. His mouth was hot and his teeth so sharp, I didn't feel them break the skin when he clamped down on my sensitive flesh.
He released me and stretched his neck over my mouth, giving me the perfect angle to bite and claim him, too. The magic swirling around us entered through our bites and tangled in our shared orgasms. I groaned around the flesh in my mouth as his seed filled me. At the same time, the magic consumed us both, rending us apart and melding us together. For a moment, I was Mac, and he was me. I was a beta kobold, and he was a dragon.
The magic worked its way out of us, leaving us both exhausted and overjoyed.
Mac fell on top of me, panting. He licked the already healed bite on my neck and chuffed a laugh. "Mine."
I grinned. "Yours, as you are mine."
I kissed and licked over the bite I'd pressed into his skin, too, loving the smooth texture of the healed skin over my tooth marks. To Mac's kobold friends, it would look like any other kobold mark, but it would flare with my magic whenever another dragon was near, showing them Mac belonged to me. Any who tried to hurt him would die a fiery death.
"I don't have a knot," he whined when his cock slipped out of me.
"You are perfect the way you are," I said. "I can already feel my balls growing."
They weren't, not yet, but the change in my magic told me the egg had fertilized. Once it started to harden inside me, I wouldn't be able to hold my kobold form. I needed to be my full dragon self to give the egg room to grow.
Our child would be roughly the size of a kobold hatchling when their egg dropped from my ovipositor. Then they would continue to grow outside my body, using my magic and my bond with Mac to form until they were ready to meet us. I couldn't wait to meet our baby dragon.
I also couldn't wait to meet the baby kobold still tangled in Mac's scent as he drifted to sleep beside me. I hoped I didn't need an appointment to speak with Priestess Alma when we returned home. I hoped she wouldn't shoot at me with the spike for sharing our good news.