Page 18 of The Dragon’s Emberlinked Mate (Dragon Flight Academy #3)

Rhythe

I awoke late in the morning like I’d been doing recently, the pregnancy taking its toll on me. I would go to bed, sometimes before dinner, and sleep past breakfast. And by go to bed, I meant that I fell asleep. Half the time my mate carried me to actual bed.

Emmen was usually up and to work before I even got out of bed.

At first he would hang around here until I had my breakfast, but I put a stop to that quickly.

If he went in late, he came home late, and that wasn’t any better.

Plus, when he hung around, I forced myself to rally earlier than I should.

It was a thousand times better to have him keep his schedule unless I felt uncomfortable being left alone.

Ha! Alone. That was a joke with all the staff we had. More often than not, I didn’t see anyone but the chef, but if I needed anything, they were at the ready.

Each day, since showing me his hoard, my mate had left me a note and a tiny piece of gold that he gifted me. The first day, it was a ring, then a chain, then coins. I wasn’t sure what I would find today.

I didn’t need the gold. But gods, my dragon thrived on receiving it from him. It was a thousand percent his love language.

When I went down to the kitchen, I found my breakfast waiting for me, just like I had every morning lately.

My mate took such good care of my needs.

With it was a gold bracelet with charms hanging on it.

I still wore the necklace he had given me and the ring.

I put the bracelet on. My dragon hummed with pleasure.

If he kept this up, I was going to look like a musician wearing all their bling.

After finishing my breakfast, I knew I needed to make a start. I couldn’t sit around the house. No matter how much my mate told me of the value I was providing, I still worried that I wasn’t doing enough. Staying here and chilling felt like letting him down, whether he saw it that way or not.

But even if I wanted to stay here today and be a slug, it wasn’t possible.

I had meetings with students to talk about the ClutchCare project.

They were working diligently on the app.

My brother understood more about the technicalities of that work, but from what I could see, it was coming along really well.

Meanwhile, I was reaching out to other academies and members of the clan to see where the interests lay. We had a lot of people ready to sign up for the service. Now it was time to find the potential employees as well.

Going in, I knew there was a need for something like this, but as we collected data, the scope of that need floored me. I hoped and prayed to the goddess that all the things would work out smoothly. I didn’t wish to fumble this project.

The school was active as usual when I arrived. Most people were well into their day. I knew most of the staff by name now, and I smiled and chit-chatted as I made my way to the conference room where I had most of my work set up.

It was a great location. There was something homey about the space, it was always stocked with snacks and beverages, and its location was centralized. An office couldn’t give me any of that, with the possible exception of some limited snacks.

I was met with acceptance and support from just about everyone that I interacted with.

That didn’t stop the nagging feeling at the back of my mind that there was more that I could do and that perhaps I wasn’t as good at this whole thing as I really thought.

I hated when those thoughts weighed down on me. No amount of assurance made it go away.

My pregnancy only exacerbated my emotions about all of this. When I looked at it objectively, I saw that. Only problem was, I rarely looked at it objectively, and that was on me.

I was just about to head to Emmen’s office when the sound of children’s laughter reached my ears. Not an unwelcome sound, but a surprising one since our students were all older.

The younger kids were in a different building usually. There were some who used an on-site daycare and others in the preschool we ran as part of our teacher education program.

I followed the noise until I found two young children, too young to be going to the school in this building, sitting on the floor next to the vending machine. They looked like they were playing with tiny figurines.

“Hi there,” I said, sitting down with them.

They gasped and looked up at me. Clearly they were immersed in their games and hadn’t noticed anyone else around them.

“We weren’t doing anything bad, mister. We promise,” the little girl said.

They looked to be the same age, one boy, one girl, twins perhaps, although one was definitely a dragon, the other a wolf. They both had the same red-tinted auburn hair and brown eyes.

“Well, of course you weren’t doing anything bad. I’m just curious what you’re doing here. Do your parents work here?”

They both shook their head.

“Our parents died,” the girl said, and she held her brother’s hand.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t imagine that level of pain and didn’t know what else to say that wouldn’t come across as patronizing.

“It’s okay. Our clan didn’t like that we’re part wolf, so they kicked us out,” the boy said.

How was any of that okay? It wasn’t. It was the exact opposite of okay.

“Oh,” I said. I seem to be getting a lot of information I had not expected. “What are your names?”

“I’m Mila, and this is Leo.”

“I’m Rhythe. It’s nice to meet you. What brings you to the academy?”

“Our uncle’s looking for a school for our older brother. He’s a dragon, just like he is,” Mila nodded toward her brother. “But I’m not. I’m a wolf. That’s why our clan didn’t want us anymore.”

I didn’t know which clan they were in yet, but I planned to find out and do something about this. What? I had no idea. I held zero power, but my dragon was demanding justice.

“Oh.” What more was there to say about that shitty clan? “I think different shifters are pretty cool. One of my closest friends is a mouse.”

Mila’s eyes got wide. “A mouse? Really?”

“Indeed, he’s mated to a dragon… a powerful one. When you grow up, remember that. Fate will send you your mate, and it doesn’t matter if their beast is like yours or not.”

“Just like our parents,” Mila said.

“Exactly like them. Should we go find your uncle?”

“We were kind of hungry. That’s why we went to the vending machine. But it’s not working.” Leo rubbed his belly. “Do you know how to fix it?”

“I’ll tell you a secret. This vending machine doesn’t have any food in it. It’s actually a project that one of our classes is working on.” And they really needed to put a sign up on it to avoid things like this.

Leo wrinkled his nose and eyed the vending machine skeptically. “You work on vending machines for school?”

I grinned. “Not always, but they’re trying to repurpose a soda vending machine to distribute books like a library. It’s just something for fun, for the engineering courses.”

“Oh. That would be pretty cool.” Mila tilted her head as she looked the machine up and down.

“Come on, I’ll take you to a place where I know there are snacks.”

They both got up, their hands slipping into mine, and we walked to the lounge. It wasn’t as cool as a vending machine for books, but there was a ton of sugar, and that was enough to keep them both smiling.