Page 29 of The Dragon’s Stone Hearted Mate (Mori’s Mementos #1)

Rho

Earthside customs cracked me up. Everyone seemed to think that the alphas were in charge of everything but omegas would always be the keepers of the hearth.

And as such, I told Morvan he wasn’t stepping a single taloned toe back into his childhood home until Mori, Crilus, and me made it habitable again.

The house was a beautiful old dragon brick stone but the energy was thick and gooey, and I didn’t want it all draping itself all over my dragon again.

So, the three of us set to work. It took two weeks to clean the place from top to bottom and for Mori and Crilus to cleanse the place of all of the bitterness that resided in energy form within the walls.

Morvan offered to pay the guys for helping us, but he might as well have gouged them in the eyes for how well they took that.

I reminded Mori that he was trying to start a business but apparently, he wasn’t starting it yet and his carrier would beat him around the knees with a broom if he charged for spiritual cleansing.

“I’m paid in information,” he teased me as we wiped down the downstairs hall that held the most gooey-uck energy.

It was where Torvan’s bedroom had been. We sealed it up for now, locking in the energy but leaving it alone in case the day came where Morvan wanted to revisit the space his brother had called home.

“Info, huh?” I blinked at him.

“Yeah, you’ve told me all about being a gargoyle while we worked. That’ll probably come in handy someday. Besides, I’m stuck in London because of the Postcard Men. Fuckers won’t tell me what’s up but apparently, I’m needed here. Maybe this was why.”

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Morvan’s still willing to pay you, though.”

“It doesn’t feel right to take his money.

He’s lost his brother and who he thought his brother was.

That’s a lot to lose and you all are family.

Crilus has claimed the triplets in one way or another.

He’s my cousin. That makes us family. Just make sure I’m invited to the mating feast. Preston too.

He keeps complaining about the London food.

He’s cooking up a couple of pot roasts tonight because he’s starving,” Mori chuckled.

“Well, we can’t have a bear starve on our watch and of course you’re invited to whatever feasts we have. Cutter will be there too.”

“Poor Cutter,” Mori frowned. “As a kid I had nightmares about being stuck like he is.”

“I think he enjoys some parts of it. Mostly the all you can eat parts of it,” I said. “It’s not an ideal place for anyone but he’s making the most of it.”

“Hey! What’s that?” he asked, setting his towel down on a nearby table.

“What’s what?” I shot back at him and looked down the hall.

“No,” he shook his head. “What’s that yellow thing on the back of your hand.”

I glanced down at my hand holding the towel and found nothing. Then at the other one and my heart skipped over itself. Most of our previous children had hatched from eggs but occasionally one was born the way all gargoyles are brought into this world: by stone.

I dropped the towel and put one hand over the other.

“Are you okay?” Mori asked.

I opened my mouth to say I’d never been seen in public in this condition but then remembered Mori was a shifter and not one who had spent a lifetime being my lover. He didn’t know the grape-sized stone growing on the back of my hand was a baby.

“Yeah. Umm… I think I need to go home. Shit! I don’t vroom—Drive?” I’d forgotten the word for operating one of the modern metal travel boxes.

“I can take you home. Do you need help?”

“Um…. Your dads are midwives, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “They deliver a lot of babies.”

“Ummm… This is pregnant,” I said, nodded at my hand that was still covered by the other. “I need to go home. It’s not great to be out and about. It can fall off. It will fall off when it’s ready and I don’t want anyone --- It’s not you. You wouldn’t step on it on purpose or Crilus but---”

“Mate?” Morvan’s voice cut into my thoughts.

“Come get me! Come get me! Come get me!” I said over our mating link and slid down the wall with my back pressed hard to it.

Despite being in the Other World visiting Cutter, he made it to me in less than twenty minutes. I met him on the porch shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

“Do you remember the stone baby thing?” I asked, my voice hushed as soon as he was within ear shot.

Morvan thought about it for a moment and nodded.

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Mori stepped outside. “The house is cleansed more or less. I can have it ready by tonight.”

“Are you ready to move, though?” I looked to Morvan.

“I am at home wherever you are,” Morvan nodded and took my pregnant hand in his. He turned his back to Mori, blocking the wolf’s view and examined the shiny yellow stone on the back of my hand.

“How long?” He asked.

“Not long. A few weeks before the stone figures out how to grow into a baby.”

“Are you excited? Does it hurt?” Morvan asked.

“Excited and no pain,” I shook my head.

“Cutter’s going to be over the moon. He keeps going on and on about what great parents we’re going to be!” Morvan grinned.

I bit my lip and held back a stray thought but sometimes as a carrier you should trust your intuition because even if it sounds crazy in your own head it may just come out that way in the end.

“Hey, do you remember the time it was the diamond behind your ear?” he asked, knocking the thought out of my head for now.

“Ouch! I do,” I nodded. “She was such a big stone! Thought my neck would forever lean to the left before she fell off!”

“Fell off?” Mori asked.

“Ummm… I’m not comfortable talking about this right now,” I said. “I trust you with my life but this is someone else’s life. Someone that I’m responsible for.”

Mori’s face fell a bit, but he nodded his understanding. Maybe one day I’d explain it all to him, but I wasn’t ready to explain this one aspect of my reproduction with anyone.

***

It wasn’t until we laid in bed that night – our first night together at Morvan’s house – that I talked about it at length with anyone.

“I’m still confused about one thing,” Morvan said, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth and mischief dancing in his eyes.

“No! This isn’t a new question!” I said, pointing a finger at him.

“Do you know what I’m going to ask? I’ve kept it off our link. At least, I think I have,” Morvan laughed.

“You’re going to ask how my hand got pregnant because you didn’t cum there.”

“I probably have at some point since we met but there’s no--- umm…. Nowhere for it to go,” he said, flashing me a sheepish smile.

“If you weren’t blushing, I’d kick you. Do you want me to explain it again?” I asked, resting my pregnant hand on his stomach.

“Please.”

“Do you not remember, or do you just enjoy listening to me talk about it?” I asked my dragon.

“Both,” Morvan said and leaned over to steal a quick kiss.

“It’s spiritual reproduction, sort of. If the baby was going to be a normal rock dragon, I’d carry and lay an egg.

We all know I’m equipped for it. But the baby is going to be a gargoyle.

So, the same life magic that brought me to life will bring them to life.

It can happen anywhere on my skin because the magic travels around until it finds a spot in my stone where another stone can grow from.

It can be any sort of stone, but it grows from mine.

When the baby has absorbed what they need from me the stone will fall off and begin to take shape.

Sometimes the process is quick and other times it takes quite a while for the baby to take a shape.

When the baby’s chosen shape solidifies enough, they will become flesh and be a gargoyle like me.

Most of our children can also shift into dragons. ”

“They’re already beautiful,” Morvan said, his eyes now locked on the yellow stone growing from my hand.

“Do you think I was mean to Mori?” I asked. “I feel bad about not explaining it to him but it’s…”

“None of his business,” Morvan shrugged. “Seriously, I get that you two are friends now but that doesn’t mean you have to explain our sex life to him or how we reproduce. I like Mori. He’s a good guy but he’s nosy.”

“He just looked so damn sad about it.”

“He’ll hear no a lot in life. It’s good for him to get used to it,” Morvan said. “Look, I’m the last person who want to be an asshole but drawing a firm boundary isn’t being an asshole. I’ll field any dumb questions that come in if others see it. Curious or not, they can mind their manners.”

“Shit,” I sighed and rolled onto my back. “I didn’t even think about that. Everyone is going to ask a million questions.”

“I’ll punch them if they get too insistent.”

“What if they’re an omega?” I laughed and side-eyed him.

“I’ll get Cutter to do it. You’ve seen him kick ghost ass.”

“I’m surprised you’re not mad at me for not telling you about him sooner,” I said.

“It wasn’t your story to tell and unless he wanted me to know it really wasn’t my business either.

That’s the thing. If everyone minded their own business, the world – all the worlds – would be better places,” Morvan turned on his side to face me.

“Not knowing he was a ghost didn’t hurt me.

Mori not knowing how your hand came to be in that delicate condition doesn’t hurt him.

Though, if he asks again, I’m going to tell him to go ask his parents to give him the talk because he should know where babies come from by now. ”

***

Cutter didn’t move into the house with us.

He didn’t show up for our mating feast to which I wore a glove to protect the ever-growing yellow stone on the back of my hand.

It was like he disappeared into the nothingness.

Morvan was worried but I told him maybe he finally got to move onto wherever dead people go.

Maybe he took a chomp out of Torvan’s scaley tail on the way to one of the good places, but he worried as if Cutter wasn’t a grownup who could make it on his own.

He’d survived his death this long without our help.

Our mating feast took place a little later into our relationship that most celebrations of that sort but those who came to celebrate us didn’t seem to mind the wait.

The triplets came all the way from the west stateside coast to celebrate with us and brought their mates and children along with them.

Their babies were still so tiny and smelled so --- well, new.

Robin, Steel, Iris, Midnight, and Powder.

I said their names over and over to myself so that I might commit them to memory.

Soon we’d have a little baby of our own.

I made sure by the end of the feast that I had a chance to hold them all.

How long had it been since I saw a baby?

Held one? At one time it felt as if the whole point of my life was to raise little ones and ensure they were ready for whatever life threw at them.

I had missed it almost as much as I missed Morvan.

After Steel’s carrier, Odell, took him back, I spotted Crilus sitting by himself at the edge of the big garden.

The others were occupied with catching up with each other’s lives and he tried to look like he belonged but he looked as if he was sitting on a row of cacti instead of a stone garden wall.

So, I joined him. No decent host allows anyone to feel that left out.

“Sorry if I’m bringing down the vibe. I don’t think I thought this through,” he said as soon as I joined him.

“You’re not. You’re allowed to sit on your own,” I said.

“Though, if you’re sitting on your own because you think that the mates of the triplets don’t like you because you’re part of their mates’ past, I hate to inform you, that I really don’t care if that’s the case.

I don’t think it is but if it is, well, forget them. You’re our guest.”

“I don’t want to ruin their good time,” he shrugged.

“By breathing?” I arched an eyebrow and rested my ungloved hand over my gloved hand out of habit.

“Having an interesting sex life has it’s downsides.”

“Did you and Morvan ever hookup?” I asked.

“No,” Crilus shook his head. “Morvan was never really part of the bar scene. Would you like me less if I had?”

“No,” I shook my head. “He deserved a life before I was in the picture.”

“The dog is watching,” Crilus pointed out.

“Ah, Guardie. The dog who isn’t a dog.”

Guardie started out as traumatic magic trapped within Odell. Now, he was a full-fledged bodyguard who took on the appearance of some Irish dog. He was a beautiful creature, but his birth was a little unnerving. I hoped Morvan’s trauma was never trapped within him like that.

“Come and eat with us,” I invited him.

“I’m not sure I should. I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted,” Crilus said, flashing me a sad smile.

“You are wanted. It’s my party. Well, mine and Morvan’s and we want you here.

That’s why we invited you. I won’t hold it against you if you don’t want to be here, though.

It’s a lot.” I took a deep breath and tried not to be ‘nosy like Mori.’ I nearly failed and almost asked if he was still in love with one of the triplets, but I was better off not knowing.

Like Morvan said about so many things, it wasn’t my business.

“Speak of Frost crawling out of the pit,” Crilus nodded across the grass. “Your dragon is coming over here.”

“He’s bringing food. He doesn’t think I eat enough to support a growing stone,” I grinned. “He’s bringing two plates.”

“Thought you two might be hungry,” he said, handing off the plates piled high with catered food from one of the companies Medwin Moonscale, the first mate of the Moonscale Dragon Flight, used for his large gatherings.

They’d outdone themselves on providing a variety of foods.

Morvan handed me a large plate piled high with spaghetti and Crilus one filled with foods that reminded me of a Yuletide dinner.

“You remembered,” he laughed.

“Remembered what?” I asked, looking between the two.

“I once told Morvan I could eat Yule every day,” Crilus laughed and some of the tension he’d been holding onto fled his shoulders.

“I try,” Morvan grinned and sat down in the grass in front of us.

Soon one by one, our other guests made their ways over to where we sat. If anyone had a problem with Crilus being there, they didn’t make it obvious. Then again, no one liked to piss off a pregnant carrier.