Galen
Dragons weren't supposed to have anxiety. We were the top of the food chain. The next greatest creatures were our tiny cousins, the dragonets, and their rivals, the dire weasels.
I had nothing to fear from other dragons, but that didn't convince my heartbeat to slow. It pounded in my throat as I contemplated the mass of dragons and beta kobolds outside the kickball dugout. The wooden structure hid my alpha kobold form from the crowd while I tried to regain my composure.
Kobolds and dragons alike read Mac's emails and came to see us! I swallowed hard. This wasn't anxiety, at least, not all of it. Excitement made my heart race even more. We'd called everyone together for the first dragon reunion in over a century, and they came!
Even more surprising, the betas came, too. Dragons used to fly from village to village searching for their fated mates, but now, we could unite all eligible betas and dragons in one place and see what happened. I hoped at least one dragon found their fated mate at the reunion.
Mac knocked on the wood frame around the door opening. "It's time to be a dragon," he teased. It was customary for dragons to look like dragons at the reunion. That was the reason the original pavilion was so large.
"What if they hate me?" I asked.
"Why would they hate you? If anything, they will thank you for giving them an excuse to meet. Speaking of which, someone is here to meet you."
There was a softness in Mac's gaze I didn't expect, and a flash of a shared thought I didn't understand before he focused on memories of Slate and Opal. He'd been doing that a lot lately. Before, I thought it was sweet, but now, I realized he was mentally blocking something from me.
"Who is it?"
I squeezed through the dugout doorway and allowed my true form to wash over me. I stepped away from the small building so I wouldn't smash it with my tail and turned back to where Mac stood with a kobold half his height.
I dropped to the ground on the kickball field, sending up a cloud of dirt. I extended my neck so I could scent the newcomer. He smelled familiar. Welcoming. He patted my snout.
"Galen. It's wonderful to see you again."
"Father?"
This was Goff, my paragon's beta mate. His stripes had darkened to the same black as Mac's, but they had dulled with time. He wore a simple short-sleeved work shirt beneath grass-stained coveralls. He studied me with a discerning gaze.
"You called me Papa," he said. "Don't you remember?"
Papa. The word jarred a memory of him leaning against my chest with a book open so we could both read it.
"Papa."
He was real, not a figment of my imagination. And he was here.
I started to shrink into my alpha kobold form, but he shook his head. "Let me see you as a dragon. You've gotten so big."
His eyes sparkled with unshed tears as he looked me over from snout to tail.
"You're still the same beautiful black," Papa said. "You always wanted to be the black sheep of the family, remember?" He laughed.
I didn't remember, but it sounded like something I would have said when I was a child.
I sniffed him again, noticing how similar his scent was to Mac's. He was much smaller, an earlier version of the hybrid gene pool, but larger already than the original kobolds.
"You're a hybrid." Even my whisper carried a few hundred feet, thanks to my overzealous dragon lungs.
He nodded. "I am. Your paragon was furious when they found out."
"Chance and Lux …"
"Also part human." Papa nodded resolutely, "as are you. I told your paragon burning the kobold villages wouldn't fix what was already done, but they refused to listen."
"Have you spoken with them?" I asked.
"Not alone. I overheard them telling a group of dragons what happened to the kobolds on the other planes."
"Would you reconcile with them?" Mac asked.
"That isn't up to me," Papa said. "It never was. I have always loved them. I have always loved you." He patted my snout again. "I ran, hoping they would see our beautiful villages and the positive changes we'd started, but instead, they saw only unwelcome change that led to destruction."
"We went to Earth," I said. "I was worried human genes would have a negative impact on our children, but?—"
"They didn't have a negative impact on you three," Papa said. "That was my argument from the start. You were healthy babies and smart students. Until your paragon went on their rampage, you were happy children."
"We went to Earth for nothing."
"We went to Earth, so we both had a better understanding of our human ancestry," Mac said, patting my jaw. "We had a great time adventuring and eating our way through West Des Moines. It was fun, and I wouldn't change it for the world."
"Neither would I," I admitted. Both of our children were conceived there.
Mac blushed. For a moment, I thought I'd said the quiet part out loud, but he cleared his throat and motioned Papa toward the pavilion, where Clementine sat on a bench with Slate on one side and Opal on the other. At first, I thought they were watching something on a tablet, but then I realized she was holding a thin book with bright illustrations.
"These little ones are ours," Mac said, "and the older girl is Clementine, our friends'—"
"Clementine is our friend," I interrupted.
"Our friend, yes." Mac grinned at me. I got the impression he was teasing me, but I could be friends with a four-year-old kobold if I wanted.
Clementine was more than Punky and Lark's daughter to me. She'd shown me anything was possible, even breaking my paragon's curse.
Maybe my proximity to Punky during his pregnancy had nothing to do with her birth, but I liked to think she was my gift to The Spike, to show them what was possible. Now, we also had the gift of Opal. Already, three omegas at The Spike had hatched female eggs since Opal.
With the curse broken, there would be even more female hatchlings and beta mates. We had plenty of time to discover what that meant for both kobolds and dragons, starting with the days-long reunion party already underway.
Clementine shook Papa's hand with a solemn nod when I introduced him. She had just turned four years old (eight in human years, according to Punky, who had based it on a child development handbook from Earth), and already she was taller than my kobold father. It would have been easy to believe he was no different from the other beta kobolds of his time. Now, everyone but our two children towered over him.
"Are we taking the dragon bus to the other side of the pavilion?" Clementine asked. "Lux wanted us to meet up with them."
"I would like to see my other children," Papa said, though he frowned at my paragon's proximity.
"They want to see you," Clementine whispered.
"Not Rain. They'll wish I hadn't come."
"You don't know until you talk to them." Mac hoisted Slate onto his shoulders and lifted Opal from the bench, balancing her against his hip.
I lowered my neck to the ground again to give Mac and Papa better access to pull themselves onto my back. Slate and Opal were already adept at climbing, and Clementine scrambled up my side without help.
It was much faster for me to walk and carry them to where my paragon and siblings stood across the pavilion from us. Paragon scoured the crowd, smoke pouring from their nostrils. I knew they could sense Papa getting closer, but they didn't know where he was.
"Stay on my back. Papa. Hold Slate in your arms."
"They won't hurt me," he grumbled.
Slate moved to protect him anyway, their little claws digging into the soft flesh between my scales.
"Look who dared to show up." Paragon's voice rumbled across the last twenty yards. Sensing their fury, the kobolds mingling around them hastened to the food stands along the edge.
"Papa?" Lux squinted at the kobolds on my back. "Slate's almost as big as you!"
I heard our papa snicker as I slowed. Mac patted my shoulder to be let down, but I wouldn't let them debark, not yet.
"You can be civil," I said. "No fire, and no swearing." I added the last part for Opal's benefit. She had picked up a few curse words from someone whose name started with M and ended with C, though my dear mate tried to blame Punky. When Mac then claimed she learned them from Clementine, I burst out laughing and almost lit the playroom on fire.
I did not want a fire here today, not after all Axel's hard work to build this beautiful pavilion for me. For us. This was a place for everyone at The Spike to come together. My paragon and siblings hadn't yet earned their place.
"There will be smoke," my paragon said. "And some selective word choice."
Good enough. Papa was the first to slide from my back, followed by Clementine, who helped both babies down my wing and led them beneath me, where I could shield them with my body if needed.
Mac stood by my side, his hand still on my wing as though considering climbing back aboard for a quick exit.
"Goff." Paragon lowered their head at an angle so they could sniff him from his feet to the tips of his ears. "You smell the same." They sank to the ground to see him better. "I've … missed you."
Papa staggered on his feet at the words, and I had to blink a couple of times to confirm I wasn't dreaming. Mac clasped his hands to his chest the way he did when watching a heartfelt movie scene.
"You did?"
"You were my mate far longer than you've been my enemy." They sighed. "I think I am my own worst enemy, though. I should have trusted the kobolds' decision."
"It's much easier to say that now," Papa said. "Two centuries of dragon births without any rage issues or birth defects."
"Dragon births?" They glanced around at the assembled dragons, giving me a chance to look, too. There were a few juveniles no older than I was when I attended my first dragon reunion.
"The rift between kobolds and dragons hasn't kept us from finding our fated mates, though it's rare. This meeting will help."
"We assumed they were dragon pairings," Chance said.
"Nimbus is." Papa pointed. "Sve is Bale's with his mate, Olaf." He rattled off the names of more young dragons whose parents I didn't know.
"Kobold hybrids were around longer than we knew," Mac said.
Both Paragon and Papa grunted in acknowledgement.
"That was the crux of our argument," Paragon said. "It seems so silly now, after what we saw on other planes. Our kobolds were the only ones who survived."
Paragon shrank into a kobold alpha form with black hair and stripes. They took Goff's hand. "I am so sorry. I should have listened. You were right. Our children are nothing like humans. They are smart, and kind, and giving. So giving."
They motioned to Lux and Chance, who had both left dragon hatchlings on another plane. "They are nothing like the dragons of old. While I don't approve of humankind as a whole, their genes have made us stronger, when all I could see was weakness."
They dropped Papa's hands and held their arms out toward me. I shifted into my kobold alpha shape, which put me several yards further away, but I didn't care. I ran to their arms and hugged them close.
"You were little more than a baby when we left and look at what you've done. You brokered peace with a furious kobold population. You made enough connections with other dragons to bring them all here, and you found your fated mate."
"The last was pure fate, not me," I said.
"Maybe so, but you weren't afraid to act on it, and for that, we are so proud of you."
"We are," Papa agreed.
Mac joined me as they let go, and we made room for Chance and Lux to have their own hugs in their kobold forms. All around us, dragons had taken smaller forms to meet and greet the kobold welcoming committee, led by Tuft and his beta assistants. I overheard him telling a dragon I didn't recognize about an evening dance in the pavilion, supervised by Alma and the other former priestesses.
"We've already had a dragon find their fated mate!" Tuft's cheery voice traveled, and several dragons turned their heads.
"Who found their fated mate?" Paragon asked, glancing suspiciously at Chance, and then at Lux.
"I don't scent mine on the air." Lux sounded disappointed. "Maybe he is in a small backwater too far from kobold technology."
"Chance?" Paragon turned their sharp gaze on my sibling, who cowered.
"I haven't met him yet, but I know he's here."
I joined Lux, and together we squeezed Chance within an inch of their life. "I'm so happy for you!" I said.
"Gods, it worked." Lux sniffled. "I wish mine were here, too."
"You haven't met everyone yet," I reminded them. "Most of The Spike's betas have work to do before they can party tonight."
Lux frowned. "Don't get my hopes up. I would know if my mate had been this close."
"Not necessarily," I reminded them. "You haven't met nearly enough kobolds?—"
"I've met that one," Lux pointed in Tuft's direction. "He knows everyone."
"They have a point." Mac laughed. "Though he doesn't interact with many betas besides his coworkers, so there's still hope."
"Ugh." Lux rolled their eyes and smoked billowed from their nostrils. "Fine. I'll wait until tonight."
Mac took my hand and led me to our children, who climbed on Papa and Paragon while they talked.
"We can take our babies off your hands," Mac said, holding out his arms for Slate. They couldn't fly yet, but they could glide from Papa's shoulder to Mac's arms. Opal climbed down from Paragon's shoulders, careful not to rip their clothes. She scampered over to me, less concerned about my dress pants and polo shirt. "Aragon," she whispered in my ear.
"Hey, baby girl. We love you."
"Wuv oo," she cooed back. "Wuv Sate. Wuv Ahp." Sate and Ahp were Slate and Pop. One more molt, and she'd be talking as well and as fast as our friends' kids. Kobolds grew up too fast, if you asked me. I was glad Slate wasn't talking yet. Our dragon baby would be our baby a little longer.
Even so, there was nothing sweeter in the world than hearing our little girl so full of love for us, as much as we were for her and Slate. I took Mac's hand and led him to the ice cream stand. Beside it, a farmer offered bovinji meat kababs for the dragons. They were just Slate's size. With food in hand, we found a bench in the shade of the fortress and sat down to enjoy the day.
"I'm glad I already know where my mate is," I said. "I would have been so embarrassed to meet you like this, in a huge crowd with everyone watching."
"Maybe you didn't notice." Mac leaned over to whisper in my ear. "Every kobold at the fortress, including the changelings you brought back when you destroyed the circle, saw me leave on your back. Every single one."
My kobold alpha face felt too hot, which must have been a defect in my spell casting. I would fix it later. "I suppose when you've met your fated mate, no one else matters."
Mac leaned against me and rested his head on my shoulder, earning a disgruntled noise from Slate, who scooted over to give him room.
"Nothing else matters but us."
THE END