His Dragon Protector

by Jill Haven

  “You’ll get yours,” he promised, but his grin didn’t match his dire tone as he handed me his beer and made his way toward Haiden and a pathetically crying Charlotte.

  Mabel hustled to Seth and pulled him aside. I couldn’t tell exactly what she said to him, but his expression went from confused, to bewildered, to wide-eyed, and finally he was grinning from ear to ear. He looked up at me and nodded yes to what she was asking. Seeing his excitement, genuine and unforced, was such a relief. Until tonight, I wasn’t sure how he was feeling about the pregnancy, but that one naked moment with Mabel was enough to send relief pouring through me. We’d get through these early days just fine, so long as he was that happy to be with me and start a family.

  The week didn’t take long to pass. We were apprehensive as we drove into Charleston to get the sonogram done, and I think we both had our hasty retreat from last time in mind, but rather than talk about what was bothering us, we turned the radio loud enough to rattle our teeth and sang along to bad pop music while laughing over lyrics. When the hospital came into view, however, Seth flipped off the radio and smiled at me. He was beautiful as always, but his face was slightly thinner. He’d been getting sick far more often than I liked, but he refused to take anything for the nausea. I ran a finger over his cheek and then focused all my attention on the traffic mess to get into the hospital and find us a parking spot.

  Once we were inside, it didn’t take me long to find the rooms that Mabel worked out of, since I’d been here once or twice before to say hello when I had a patient in the hospital. She greeted us both with hugs.

  “Oh, I’m just pleased as peaches,” Mabel said. She had on pink scrubs today and she practically bounced in place as she gave Seth another squeeze that I was glad he seemed to tolerate fairly well.

  “You and me both. This kid’s about killing my appetite, though. And also, this is fuckin’ freaky.” Seth said with a small smile, but he didn’t look upset.

  Mabel laughed. “I’m sure, love, especially if you hadn’t given it a good think before you got yourself into this.” She patted his cheek. She led us into another room that was private, closed the door and locked it. She checked the lock a couple of times, and I knew why. We were all a little nervous when it came to being discovered.

  “Help him up there, Mason. You know the drill.” Seth rolled his eyes and hopped up onto the exam table by himself. He held his breath as Mabel bustled over and tugged up his T-shirt. She pressed a hand to his chest to get him to lie back. He got comfortable, snagging the flat pillow and mashing it like this was his new bed. I was a little surprised when Mabel handed me the wand from the sonogram machine. “Do you want to do the honors? Tickle your boy there on the tummy. You’re used to it, I’d wager.”

  “You’re hysterical, Mabel. Just a riot.”

  But Seth was snickering already, so I gooped the wand with gel and gently pressed it on his stomach in search of our baby. He gasped and squirmed and laughed under his breath, and I frowned at the flat gray on the screen.

  “That’s not right,” I mumbled.

  “What’s going on?” Mabel said under her breath.

  “Is it… you know, okay?” Seth asked. There was strain in his voice that instantly had me wanting to hold him. I handed Mabel the wand and stepped around her to take his hand in both of mine.

  “I think I’m just out of practice. Let’s let the expert take a look,” I said to him and leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead, dread building in my stomach. Was this a false alarm? Bracing myself, I kissed his cheek as well.

  “Oh, oh!” Mabel was all smiles again when she turned to us, but there was a furrow between her brow as well. “I’m sure it’s fine, but look, Mason.” She pointed at the screen and moved the wand around on Seth’s stomach.

  “Easy with the goods,” he grumped at her.

  “I don’t—”

  She sighed and took my hand. “Sorry for the intrusion, dear,” she said to Seth, and she pressed my hand hard against his slicked-up stomach. He gasped, but then, under her guidance, I felt the definite hardness in there.

  “It’s an egg,” I said, mystified. “Wait… I thought only full dragons could have eggs?”

  Mabel’s laugh filled the room. “Like we know what we’re doing? He’s got dragon in him, and he’s had a dragon in him.” She whacked my shoulder. “And now we’re just doing the best we can.”

  “Wait, there’s an egg in my belly?” Seth sat up fast and his face had gone a curious shade of green. He stared down at his stomach.

  “And, if I had to guess, you’re about what? Three, four weeks along?”

  “I wondered if it was that first time,” Seth said, and I was glad to see his color come back to normal.

  Mabel’s smile dipped. “Mason is aware, but how familiar are you with dragon anatomy?”

  Seth shrugged. “I knew, sort of, that this was possible, but… it always seemed really out there. I knew Haiden was pregnant, but it’s one thing for someone else to have something happen to them, another for you, you know?”

  Her smile stretched to the limits. “Oh, dear. Well, delivery for a dragon egg is at about eight weeks, unlike a live pregnancy.”

  Seth blinked at her, turned to blink at me, and then rolled off the exam table and bolted for the little bathroom attached to the room. The sounds of him dry heaving made my own stomach clench, and I’d thought I was completely immune to that at this point in my career.

  “Well, he took that better than I expected,” Mabel said brightly, then she walloped me upside the head with enough force to sting.

  “Ouch, what the hell was that for?”

  “You’re a doctor and a dragon, Mason Hardwick.” She smacked at me again, but I ducked. “You didn’t think to check him? Talk to him about this? What kind of a mate—and doctor—are you?”

  I flushed. “We were busy.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  We went back to Carlisle’s that night and started a routine that felt more like waiting than living—we were on an egg vigil. We ate dinner and Seth poked at his belly. We went to bed and Seth poked at his belly.

  “Can I crack it?” he asked in horror the next morning, while lying in bed, poking at his belly. He yanked his hand away from his stomach and his expression was so frantic I had to chuckle.

  “No,” I said, my voice rough with sleep.

  Larkin, Carlisle’s cousin, traveled to us with a trunk packed full of books, and Seth and Haiden helped him go through them all while I sat with Carlisle and tried to spin ways to best an old mobster so that he’d leave my omega alone. We didn’t come up with anything particularly workable.

  About once a week, Carlisle and I drove into Charleston, me to see patients and him to take care of the parts of his business he didn’t trust Agatha to handle. She hadn’t stepped aside when Carlisle started going back to work, and I was surprised that he didn’t seem to mind, but he was spending far more time at home than he ever had while I’d known him.

  Then one night, what seemed like no time at all later, it happened. Seth’s belly was the roundest, cutest little thing stuck out in front of him, but he’d been rubbing it all day and pouting while eating random junk food. He’d paced the house and driven everyone crazy cleaning up the counters, vacuuming, even scrubbing windows and opening them to air the place out with the warmer spring air that was finally starting to emerge from the winter.

  “Just so it isn’t so stuffy in here,” he’d said at each window as he made his way around the entire house. “Isn’t it hot in here?” he asked Jade as he ambled past her. She looked up from the book she was reading and frowned at him.

  “No.”

  We were barely in bed that night when he moaned and held his stomach, his eyes wide and scared as they locked onto mine.

  “Oh, it’s going to be okay,” I said as steadily as I could before I raced off to get towels. “The egg will pass easier than a baby. It’s smaller,” I said as I slid back into the room, my socks slick on the hardwood
floor. Seth had situated himself in the middle of our bed, holding his stomach while he sat perfectly still with his eyes closed, barely breathing.

  “Oh, not as bad as a baby, that’s a fuckin’ relief,” he snarked after a few seconds.

  “Don’t worry. I’m here for you.” He cracked an eye to glare.

  “Can you shut the fuck up, then? Be here with your mouth closed.”

  I propped all the pillows in our bed behind his back. He was the most stoic belabored dragon I’d ever witnessed. He sat there drawing in deep breaths, holding his belly, glaring at me every once in a while. I tried to sit beside him, but he bared his teeth at me, and I thought maybe if he could have transformed just then to bite me, he would have. He rubbed his belly in a hypnotic circle that seemed to have some purpose. It had been so long since I’d helped anyone deliver an egg that I wasn’t sure what to expect anymore, but he seemed to be acting normal as far as I could remember.

  “Sweetheart, let me help,” I begged when he took a particularly violent breath. He just shook his head and swatted at me as I got closer to him.

  “Stay away right now,” he said, the desperation in his tone clear. I paced next to the bed and finally there were tears on his cheeks and I couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped and approached him again, and this time he allowed me to lift his shirt. There was a large opening that had split apart on the bottom of his belly. I had to close my eyes as the room swam. It was one thing seeing the birthway on Haiden, but on my mate?

  “I should have asked someone else to come,” I whispered.

  “Man the fuck up,” Seth said through clenched teeth, and there was some amusement in his expression, at least. His belly heaved and he groaned, a low, pained sound, and the next thing I knew I felt woozy and swayed on my feet. When I got myself back together, he was holding a round, glossy egg about the size of a small beach ball. His arm trembled and his breath juddered. I went to take our egg from him in a towel and he shook his head. He let out a growl that carried some real dragon timbre in and had my heart racing with joy.

  “No, it’s mine. No,” he gasped.

  “It’s okay, I’m not taking it from you,” I said quietly. He held the egg while I dabbed at it with the towel. He wouldn’t set it down for me to clean him up, so I had to work around it, swiping with some hot washcloths at his stomach as best I could. I took the pillows he’d been leaning on and built a little nest out of them. He sighed when he saw the soft little hole and finally let me help him put the egg inside. His face crumpled as we both stared at what he’d made for us.

  The egg was breathtaking, there were no other words for it. Brilliant red shot through with gold that nearly glowed like sunshine.

  “You’re part Sun dragon, right?” I asked in awe.

  “I think so,” he said quietly, stroking a thumb over the egg the same as Haiden did to Charlotte’s cheeks every day. “My stomach doesn’t hurt that much. I thought it would be worse.”

  “Let me see.”

  He lay down on the bed beside the egg, as much as he could, anyway, and I pressed lightly on his stomach. Unlike when there was a baby with Haiden, it seemed like the birthway line along the bottom of his stomach was already beginning to close.

  “This should fade to barely noticeable,” I murmured. “I’m so proud of you. You did a good job.”

  He huffed out a sigh but smiled at me. I brushed some sweaty hair off his forehead and leaned down to plant a small kiss on his lips.

  “I don’t like this,” he said, sitting up, full of far more energy than he should be. My chest clenched and I rubbed at it. After my adrenaline riding so high, I felt like I was three steps away from collapsing. “Watch the egg,” he said, like he was giving orders to hold the frontline on a battlefield, and he was on his feet. He slipped out of the room.

  “Wait, what?”

  Less than five minutes later, he came back and reached into the nest.

  “What are you doing?” I asked and held my breath as he picked up our baby carefully and cradled the egg to his chest. He had a ferocious glint in his eye, and he didn’t answer me, but took off with determination on his face. My heart in my throat, I followed. Jade sat wide-eyed on a chair next to the denuded couch. Her long hair gleamed like dragon scale in the low light from the blazing fire, but she didn’t pay the slightest attention to me. Her focus was glued to Seth and the makeshift nest he’d placed by the fire.

  “We have to keep it warm,” he said to me, like I needed telling.

  “The bedroom would have been fine.”

  He glared at me and gently settled the egg in the divot made by couch cushions and a blanket he’d tossed over them. When he was done, he collapsed on the floor next to his pillow pile with his back to the room and his eyes on the egg.

  “It’s so pretty,” Jade said, standing to get a better look. She edged closer, and Seth sat up to glare at her.

  “I wouldn’t, Jade,” I said quietly. She nodded and smiled at him.

  “Your egg is magnificent, little brother.” She executed a regal head nod that left me feeling clunky and horribly awkward. Damned Cloud dragons.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  “Can I hold you?” I asked. “Do you want me to bring you anything?”

  “Water and yes,” he said with a sigh. He was curiously silent, but he cuddled himself close to the egg, one hand resting on it. I left him there to go get a few more pillows from our room. I lay down on the bed, just for a minute to rest my eyes.

  The next thing I knew, the sun was burning my eyes. I sat up and clutched at my aching chest. Something was wrong. The events of last night came rushing in on me, and I groaned as I rushed out of the room to find Seth. Would he be mad at me?

  In the living room, rather than finding Seth where I was certain I would, I discovered Jade sitting by the small nest he’d made, sharpening a wicked-looking blade with a whetstone. She ran her finger along the edge and then glanced up at me.

  “Is Seth… in the bathroom or something?” But I already knew. I could feel his absence ripping at my heart. She gave me a grim look.

  “He asked me to keep the egg, and you, safe.” She nodded at a piece of paper resting on the nest, and I flashed back to that horrible morning when I’d found him gone after we rescued him from Vladimir.

  My hand shook as I picked it up.

  I have to take care of this mess with Nonno. This isn’t a game. Don’t come after me. You have what you wanted from me, and if I fuck up, you’re needed right here.

  Seth

  “Damn it. I should have told him we were going to try to pay off his grandfather.” I growled and crumpled the note. “When did he leave?”

  “Three hours ago,” Jade said, lifting her blade to study it. The firelight gleamed on the silver.

  “Why did you let me sleep?”

  She stared at me and shrugged. “Justice.”

  Infuriatingly, she didn’t say anything else. I sank down to stare at all that I had left of Seth. I should go after him, but he didn’t want me to. He’d even asked someone else to watch the egg, so that meant he didn’t even fucking trust me to do that. My chest ached and I didn’t think it was just from the pull of our mating bond being stretched by the miles between us. My heart fucking broke. He didn’t even say he loved me in his fucking note.

  All I could do now was exactly what Seth had said, keep the egg safe and hope he knew what the hell he was doing. I studied the gem of an egg he’d made for us, the beginning of our family, and knew I wouldn’t be okay ever again if he didn’t come home. This baby needed both of its parents.

  15

  Seth

  The way my egg shimmered in the firelight when I left it in Jade’s care, and Mason’s handsome face—finally relaxed as he slept after helping me with the egg—would be burned into my mind forever. The gold swirled with gem-like reds on the shell, sweeter than a high-end Ferrari, and my egg was warm to the touch. I’d rested my ear against the shell and could hear the rush of a heart
beat inside. I almost didn’t go, but I was shaken by my Grandfather’s goons showing up in West Virginia. How could this baby, or Mason for that matter, be safe if we were constantly being followed and watched?

  They’d found me far from New York, and I hadn’t stopped worrying since.

  All I could think about was those men smashing my egg if they came busting through the front door at Haiden’s to find me. Maybe somehow catching Haiden and me when the others weren’t there. Maybe hurting Charlotte too. They’d found Mason’s house, so why not? The images choked me and wouldn’t let me sleep. Haiden was my friend, something I’d never really had before, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.

  The answer to the questions I kept asking myself always came back to the same thing: the egg—my baby—and Mason couldn’t be safe as long as I was around, and Grandpa was still searching for me and his missing money. I needed to take care of all this tire fire mess, once and for all.

  So here I was, back in New York. I’d driven Mason’s car and taken his credit card, so if he really wanted to find me it would be a no-brainer, but I hoped he’d stay and keep the egg safe. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew I wanted my little Eggbert to have the dragon book that was theirs by rights, and I knew I needed to get Grandpa to lay the fuck off, but I wasn’t sure how I would go about doing that, either.

  If Grandpa didn’t shoot me on sight, I figured he wouldn’t be ready to give me my book back either, so I made that priority one. It seemed like a lot of energy and problems had gone into one stinkin’ inanimate object already, but I was about due for some luck. I couldn’t leave that lying around for him to decide to peruse or have appraised, since it was old. He liked to know how much money things were worth. I needed to keep my baby, hell—my new dragon clan—safe.

  Resting in the car for a bit, I waited for the sun to set. The darkness covered my tracks as I slid along the chain-link fence outside the storage units where this all started and experienced some seriously shitty déjà vu. The crowbar I held was cold and heavy in my hand and the gun I’d borrowed from Jade was stuck in my pocket. That chick was a full-on psycho armed, and I liked that about her, since she was on our side. This time I was going old school. I wasn’t afraid to use either of my weapons.