Chapter Sixteen
Galen
My paragon had returned. I knew they would be back after my final molt, but I hadn't expected them so quickly upon our return.
"Where have you been?" Chance asked. They were my oldest sibling, still larger than me by the size of one of the kobold cabins below. We were both larger than Paragon now. Chance's black scales had lightened to a bright blue with their final molt, while mine remained black.
"We have been traveling," I said.
"You stink of Earth." My paragon dropped onto me from above, the thick claws on their wing shoving my neck to the ground. They held me there with a hind foot. I tried to look up at them, but they snaked their head down to me. "You …" They glared at me for a long breath and then released me.
I shoved myself back to full height with my wings. I'd expected their return to be fiery, but the pain in my chest brought stinging tears to my eyes. They were still my paragon, and their actions hurt.
"You are already pregnant?" Paragon asked. "How can this be?"
My grief hardened into bratty indignation. "I found my fated mate here, in The Spike."
"The Spike." My paragon scoffed and spat a gout of flame in the village's direction. "They aren't worthy of you."
"He's my fated," I insisted. "Please. I need to know more about fated mates."
"It's a good thing you found them," my other sibling, Lux said. They now had a maroon tinge to their black scales. They shimmered in the sunlight like coals. "We didn't find any kobolds on the other planes."
"None?" I asked.
"They've been destroyed by disease," Paragon confirmed. "We found entire communities in mass graves."
"Why were you gone so long, then?" I asked.
"Their dragons demanded we stay and mate with them." Lux shuddered. "It was horrible."
"Against your will?" I asked.
"No. We wanted to help," Chance said. "At first. Then, they wanted us to stay and raise the children."
"I didn't even get to touch mine after they hatched." Lux glared at our paragon. "We left them behind!"
"We had to leave, or you would have stayed forever," Paragon said. "You did what was best for you. Now, you'll have a chance to find your fated mate like Galena has."
"Galen," I said.
They bowed their head, their dark eyes glittering. "Galen fits you."
"Where is your mate?" Chance asked.
I spread my wings before my cave door and made myself as large as I could. "None of your business."
"Galen," Paragon said. "I know I said you stink of Earth, and you do, but you are in far better shape than the dragons we left. If your mate is responsible, I want to thank him."
"If you hurt him, I will destroy all of you."
"Hurt him?" My paragon's teeth were suddenly at my neck, but they sniffed me instead of biting. "I mean it, child. I never thought these hybrid kobolds would amount to anything, but they alone survived the disease that decimated the other planes."
"You caused the disease," I said. "You made their females infertile."
"That was a curse." Paragon chuckled. "I sense you have found a way to defeat that, too. Where is your mate? I must meet him."
"You will not meet him as dragons. You will shift into kobolds."
"Fine." Lux was the first to shift into a true kobold form far smaller than Mac and the other human hybrids. They barely came up to my ankle in dragon form. Chance and Paragon dropped down to that size, too. My paragon took the female form, while both my siblings were betas.
"Thank you," I said. I transformed into my alpha kobold hybrid form. My siblings looked at me with interest, but my paragon still frowned in contempt.
"Mac?" I asked as we entered my cave. I sensed him in the kitchen area. He'd dug a pit to keep meat cold when we needed it, and that's where I found him. He'd flipped the prep table over on top of himself like a makeshift hatch.
"Are they gone?"
"No. They are in their kobold forms. They want to meet you."
"Is that safe?" Mac crawled from the hole.
"You smell like meat," I whispered. We hadn't stocked the cooler for months, but it didn't matter. The scent lingered. I wanted to lick Mac all over so my family knew he was mine, but I used my magic to pull him to the hot spring in the back. I shoved him in the pool with my magic. He was still spluttering and coughing when I dried him off with more magic.
"Much better."
"A little warning next time?" He asked. "I could have held my nose or taken a deep breath."
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
"Galen?"
I spun to face my paragon, who had followed us through the main room, into my private area. Mac tried to hide behind me, but I grabbed his hand and tucked him to my side. "This is Mac, my fated mate."
"Hello, young beta." My paragon grew before our eyes, taking a hybrid female form that still looked far more dragon than kobold. "You are also pregnant." She sniffed Mac's belly. "As I suspected."
Perhaps I should have left him smelling like meat.
"That's … impossible," Mac said as I crushed him to my chest in a hug.
"It's not," I whispered. "I smelled it before we left. That's why I wanted to talk to Priestess Alma."
Mac looked up at me in my kobold alpha form. "It's real? We're both pregnant?"
I nodded.
"Holy shit!" Mac gripped me around my middle. "That's wonderful!"
I still didn't know what was holy about shit, but he smelled happy.
"He's pregnant?" Chance asked.
"He'll break the curse." My paragon deflated, crossing their arms and rounding their shoulders in a sulk.
"What is the curse, exactly?" I asked. "I know you had something to do with making their females unable to bear children."
Mac turned to face my family, but I kept my hands at his waist, holding him against me, ready to transform around him and protect him with my wings if needed.
"I was angry with them for using human genes," my paragon said. "Have the alpha and omega bonds continued, or have they faded?"
"They still feel the pull to their fated mates," I answered, "even when they are children." I thought of Robin and Weld.
"They haven't been mated to humans, instead?" Lux asked.
"No." I was still angry at my paragon for leaving, but I understood their worry of the unknown. We had over a century of mating data on the kobold/human hybrids now. The only danger to their species was the eventual extinction of females, which had no rhyme or reason, except, "The curse."
"Right." Paragon continued their story. "We only needed enough of them to become priestesses, so I made a deal with the goddess. Only a female kobold born of a kobold beta and a dragon can break the curse, and only if she lives to see her first molt."
I cringed at the threat to our baby, but before I could ask what she meant, Mac waved his arms before his flat abdomen.
"But how? I'm not an omega! Where, how is the egg supposed to come out?"
"Magic," Lux said.
"Magic," Mac and I repeated.
"Magic," Paragon confirmed. "When it's time, the egg will let you know it's ready to join the nest. Until then, you will gestate it like a human child, safe within your body."
Mac took a deep breath through his mouth and exhaled through his nose. "I'm carrying a child?"
"A girl," Paragon confirmed. "A sweet girl to break the curse."
"And we'll have two eggs, one kobold and one dragon?" I asked.
"You will." My paragon perked up at the mention of my dragon egg. "And you will have family around to help you raise them."
I didn't want my family around. I wanted to hold my mate and talk through everything we'd just learned about our combined fates and the fate of both our species.
"We've been staying at our ancestral caves," Lux said. "We'll return there and let you think through everything Paragon has said. We know it's a lot."
"What? No." Paragon tried to resist as both of my siblings grabbed their arms and tugged them toward the cave entrance. "We're staying here, with Galen."
"No, we are not." Chance shifted into a kobold alpha form like mine and took Paragon's hand. "We will let Galen come to us when they're ready."
"Well, you must come to the ancestral egg cave when it's time to lay your egg. That's where you were born. That's where our family was born."
"I will," I reassured them, mostly to get them out of my cave. "When I'm ready."
"Good." Paragon broke free of Chance's grasp. I thought they would claw me, but instead, they clutched me to their chest in an awkward hug. "It is good to see you, Galen. I am sorry for scaring you and your mate earlier. That is the way of dragons. We are never sure how to greet each other."
"The way you left might be to blame for that."
I no longer felt the ache of sadness and its partner, anger, which surprised me. I understood their desire to restore the way of life the kobold/human hybrids had destroyed. While it should have made me even angrier to know they'd run off without me for nothing, it only further proved my truth. Mac was my mate. He and the other kobold/human betas were the future of dragonkind.
"I'm sorry we left you behind, my sweet." My paragon hugged me even tighter before letting me go and taking both Chance's and Lux's hands.
We followed them to the cave entrance, Mac gripping my waist as tightly as I clung to his.
"I daresay," my paragon said, "you are even more magnificent because you grew up without us."
"Speak for yourself," Chance said. "I missed you, little pipsqueak. Wish we could have seen you grow up."
"We scried, though," Lux said.
Chance hissed at them to shut up.
I didn't want to imagine them spying on my worst, or even best, moments. I needed to rush them outside before I died of embarrassment.
"Wait here until they're gone," I told Mac before I entered the light pool at the cave entrance. I took my dragon form again and pushed myself large enough to block the door once they were out.
"I will come to you," I said. "If I see you anywhere near my cave before we speak again, I will attack."
Paragon nodded. "You will have no need to attack us. Thank you for inviting us into your home."
"It's much cleaner than I remember," Chance said, ever the diplomat. They were the first to shift back to dragon form and take flight. Lux and our paragon followed. Paragon circled once and then disappeared from the sky.
I wheeled to face the entrance of my cave and crouched down so Mac could climb onto my back. He did so without question, and once again, my heart filled with joy. He was my mate in every way, and we were going to be parents!
I still needed to process all the new information my paragon gave us, but we needed to share with Priestess Alma and the kobold village as soon as possible. I needed to set the priestess free to find her own mate once we broke the curse.
* * *
Priestess Alma stared at me with a blank look. "What do you mean, you no longer wish to be worshiped? We all saw the other dragons in the sky! Maybe they want our love instead. You can't decide to disbar an entire profession on a whim!"
"It's not a whim," I said. "You deserve your freedom."
"I am free! I chose this profession when I was a child! I have always wanted to be a dragon servant."
"What choice did you have?" Mac asked. "You were too young to know what prostitutes did. Your parents probably claimed they were unsavory. Fated alphas and omegas often think less of them."
She nodded. "My parents did not want me to work in the brothels. However, I talked with the brothel workers before I committed to the dragon temple. They were witty and kind, but they knew as well as I did, I wouldn't fit in there."
"You have a choice now," I said. "Like Clementine, you can do whatever you want. Learn something new. Take up a hobby. Travel. Anything."
Priestess Alma frowned at me. "I suppose it would be fun to see more of the other temples, unless you're disbanding them, too?"
I shrugged. "I need to send word to the other dragons, but both Elder and Bale have questioned whether the temples are for us or for you."
Priestess Alma scoffed. "For me?"
"For kobold females who don't want to work in the brothels," Mac said. His voice was far softer than mine, and she relaxed a little.
"I don't want little Clementine confined to the same choices I had," she admitted. "I want her to do whatever she wants when she grows up."
"That's what I want for you," I said. "It's not too late."
She met my gaze with unshed tears in her eyes. "Am I that bad at my job? This is my life's work, and you're disbanding us like we've meant nothing to you."
"You have been a wonderful priestess," I reassured her. "For the longest time, I thought you were necessary for my happiness as a dragon. However, that's not fair to you, and it's not fair to little Clementine or the others. Now, there will be many others. Eventually, you may even find your fated mate, and I wouldn't want you to think this vocation should stop you from mating."
"I'm too old for a mate." She scoffed. "We're infertile, remember?"
"It's a curse," Mac said. "A curse that's about to be broken." He patted his flat abdomen, and she frowned.
"No." She shook her head. "Betas can't get pregnant."
"I am," Mac said. "Galen's paragon confirmed it."
"How will you give birth?" She seemed as skeptical as I had been.
I rolled my eyes, remembering how ridiculous it had sounded when my entire family chimed in with one word. "Magic."
"It better work, too," Mac said.
"Wait …" Alma grabbed Mac's hand and sniffed from his wrist to his elbow. A low growl rumbled from my throat.
"I can smell the child on you." She frowned. "We don't have anything about beta pregnancies in the archives."
I would need to ask my family for more advice, but not yet. I wanted at least one night with my mate where we could celebrate our union and our future.