by T. S. Ryder
Dressed regally, in a gown that once belonged my mother, she steps down the stairs slowly, cradling her very pregnant belly. My mother gets up, surprised and my father drops his fork.
“Delindor,” she squeals, delighted, “She’s pregnant.” She looks at me to confirm, to make sure that they are finally getting an heir or heirs. I nod my head. Her smile reaches her eyes as she almost runs to Cyrene, throwing aside her usual composure. She puts an arm around her and holds her hand in her own as she walks her back to the table.
“Hello, Cyrene. I am Delindor’s mother.”
Cyrene is chewing gum and goes all, “Yeah, I know,” on my mother.
“I heard what Minerva did to you. I am so sorry. If we knew earlier, we would have warned you, but Delindor never tells us anything.”
“It’s cool, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Very naive, that one,” my father whispers to me.
My mother takes off her shawl and places it on Cyrene’s shoulders. “This is for luck,” she tells her. “It is made of threads of pure gold.”
“I didn’t know dragons believed in luck too,” Cyrene says.
“Oh, we do. I do, at least. When are you due?”
The women break into chatter and I know Cyrene has already gained their approval. In the middle of the conversation, Cyrene looks at my dad and asks solemnly, “So, where is your nest?”
My father breaks into fits of laughter. “Nest? We are not birds, we don’t live in nests. We live in castles, dear.”
“I need to borrow Cyrene,” I say to my parents. They nod in unison.
I take Cyrene back to the glade where we had sex for the first time, the glade where my parents first met. It holds a special place for both Cyrene and me, so I know that it is only fitting that we make our next significant memory right here. I hold her hands and kiss her, then I kiss her belly and whisper to my children.
“What are you saying,” Cyrene asks. “Whispering is not allowed, not to the babies. We do this together.”
“We will,” I say.
Then I get on my knees and hold her hand and produce a sapphire ring.
“So, will you?”
“You have to do the whole speech, ask me properly,” she says.
“My dear Cyrene,” I begin. Since I met you—“
“Yes,” she says, cutting me off. “I will marry you.”
Chapter Eighteen - The Epilogue
Cyrene looks at herself in the mirror, no longer used to a flat stomach. She is wearing a plain white dress and her future mother-in-law’s gold shawl on her shoulders. The vanity table in front of her is filled with more jewels than she has ever seen in her entire life: rings, diamond tiaras, crowns, necklaces, bangles, items made of precious stones, gold, silver, etc.
She picks up two simple pearl earrings and a pearl necklace and puts them on. Her dress is strapless, backless, and fits her comfortably. Her hair is down and loose with the curls flowing freely just as Dell likes.
“Go now, Cyrene,” says Tiamat. “You do want to get married, right?”
“Yes, but I do look all right? I need to look perfect. I only get to do this once.”
“You look absolutely beautiful,” Tiamat tells her. “Now go.”
Cyrene pulls the sheer gold shawl over her head, like a veil, but then turns around. “My eggs, Tiamat, my children, I can’t leave them alone.”
“I am looking after them,” Tiamat says, shooing her with both hands. “Now go, the sooner you get married, the sooner you get back to your eggs.”
“If they begin to hatch, you call me back immediately.”
“Okay, now go.”
Dell waits underneath an arch of roses and jasmines, dressed neatly in a suit. The sun is rising somewhere behind the forest, but the foliage behind their wedding arch covers it, only allowing a soft blue light.
Cyrene walks slowly towards her husband-to-be, her mate, her eternal partner. The guests all rise up. Delindor’s mother lets out a cry of joy. Cyrene joins Dell underneath the holy arch of flowers and they exchange vows. Then she looks at him, in those sapphire blue eyes that reflect in the ring on her finger, the eyes that she wants to see herself reflected in forever. And he looks into her green eyes, the eyes he wants to wake up to for the rest of his life.
The elder dragons officiate the wedding, pronouncing them eternal mates. The new mates, Mr. and Mrs. Dell make out as the guests clap with joy, celebrating a dragon witch amongst their midst. Then they run into the forest and shift into dragons, and rise up, flapping their wings, their bodies intertwined, their mouths pressed together. They mate again, for the first time as proper, wedded dragons. Then Tiamat roars from the castle and they both fly back to the castle.
Cyrene and Dell sit side-by-side watching their first egg move from side to side. Cyrene almost cracks the egg to help her baby, but Tiamat stops her. The tip of the egg slides to the side as their first baby pokes his head out…
*****
THE END
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading “The Dragon Shifter's Babies” as much as I liked writing it. Please consider leaving an honest review here; it means a lot to me to hear from you.
T.S. Ryder
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Description
A BBW in danger PLUS a sexy alpha Wolf Shifter who is her ex PLUS a rival alpha and a deadly duel!
Desmond is the top dog in Louisiana and everyone knows it. When he gets an anonymous call about a group of blood enraged wolves attacking a local cabaret, he and his second in command go to investigate immediately.
Unfortunately, the place he’s led to happens to be the very place he’d been trying to avoid for years.
Now he’s being confronted with the love of his life, his ex, Marceline and becomes tangled up in her problems with the rival Louisiana alpha, Ramson.
Will he be able to get Ramson to back off of his mate? Or will Marceline leave his life once and for all?
Chapter One
Marceline’s. There was something off about the cabaret and it wasn’t that it had been ravaged by blood enraged werewolves from the rival North Louisiana pack. There was a draw here, something Desmond could feel deep in both his human soul and his beast spirit. A deep burn that left his stomach in a knot and his heart racing. Unexplained arousal and testosterone surrounded him in a cloud of musk so strong, even his own nose could detect it.
He’d tried to avoid this place ever since his mate had left him. He sure hadn’t expected the punch in the chest that seeing it, even in its ruined state, caused him. His heart ached at the sight of the ruined stage that he had helped to build...
With a rough shake of his head, he tried desperately to shake the thoughts away and focus on the task at hand. He tried hard to push away thoughts of her.
“Desmond,” Arin, his second, called out to him. He didn’t turn around, instead just listened as the other man picked his way past the splintered tables and upturned chairs of the strip club.
“Speak,” he ordered, once his pack mate had reached his side. The rich, iron tang of blood assaulted his nose, serving as a tell-tale sign of the other’s injuries. Not that he was surprised. When Ramson’s rouge wolf tipped him off that some of the rival alpha’s pack were plotting this attack, he’d expected some of his own would have to fight to drive them off.
“The place is cleared of wolves. Corwin and Larson took a few of the new bloods to track down the ones that ran off before we could finish them,” Arin reported. From the steadiness with which he spoke, his injuries couldn’t have been too bad.
“How many?”
“Total? Five. We killed three of them in here, the other two escaped. I ju
st wish we’d have gotten here sooner. There were a few humans still alive when we got here, but...” he trailed off.
Desmond didn’t need him to finish, though. He understood. They hadn’t survived the bites, either because the damage was too great, or their human souls rejected the chance to harbor their beast spirit and accept the change. Most didn’t survive a werewolf attack. Out of the ones that did, many would have to be killed by their alpha after their first moon if they couldn’t get both halves of themselves, both beast and man, to exist in harmony together.
That’s what he suspected had happened to these wolves, though why Ramson hadn’t put them down before they attacked, he didn’t know.
“Did you happen to find any wolf bodies that didn’t belong?” he asked. The question would have sounded offhand, had his voice not cracked with tension and fear. Arin understood the implications behind his question. The shaggy-haired man rested a hand against his alpha’s shoulder.
“We all looked out for her. We didn’t find her. She must not have been here when they attacked.”
Desmond hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until it whooshed out of him in a great sigh of relief. The tension that had coiled his muscles and squared his shoulders released marginally.
As if he knew the alpha wouldn’t want to talk further on the matter, Arin immediately continued on with his report.
“We’ve also called Perrine. She’s going to bring a few supplies from her shop to get this place cleaned up.”
“Good. I’ll wait here for her. Join Larson and Corwin. If you can, bring one of the blood enraged wolves back to me alive. It is best to make sure they just couldn’t handle the change and that there isn’t something bigger going on here,” Desmond ordered.
Arin bowed his head respectfully, then turned to sprint out the broken back door. Before he’d made it ten steps up the alley, his skin rippled, his head elongated and fur sprouted in patches across his skin.
Desmond turned away only when a fully shifted, smoke colored wolf let out a low, drawn out howl and turned the corner onto the main street, tongue lolling as he padded away. Only Arin could get away with running through the middle of town as a wolf without getting an earful from him.
He turned away from the back door with a shake of his head, itching to run with his pack mates, but the strange pull to something in the cabaret kept him there.
Chapter Two
Within moments of Arin leaving, the sound of a pistol being cocked behind him alerted him to the presence of another living creature seconds before an achingly familiar scent hit his nose. The pull that kept him so enthralled, attached and unable to forget, swelled overpoweringly until his entire ribcage seemed to vibrate with the sensation. She was here. Marceline.
“You take one step and I fire. These bullets are silver, you hear?” a distinct, creole accented voice of a female called out to him. His beast surged through him in response to the threat to the point it was hard to contain it.
“Turn around, right now. Go on.”
Desmond did as he was told though his skin had begun to ripple and his eyes shone with the silver of his wolf instead of the blue they should have been.
“I didn’t think you’d forget me so much that you wouldn’t recognize me from behind,” he said, voice low and gravely. As he turned around, his eyes immediately sought out the curvy form of his ex, and his heart all but shattered in his chest at the pain and anger that raged rampant in her dark eyes.
The pull he’d tried so desperately to ignore for years drew him to her and his entire frame flooded with the heat of desire. One look at her dark, satin skin and thick, exposed thighs and his beast spirit went from challenging to aroused. Sparks of longing shot straight to his groin as his mind flooded with the images of passionate nights of making love to the very woman he stared at.
Mine.
Only, she wasn’t his. Not anymore. She’d made that very clear when she stormed from his house, straight out of his life. A full body shudder rolled down his spine and he clenched his eyes shut with a nearly imperceptible whine.
“I’m not taking your crap, Desmond. You’re redhanded in my territory. I knew you were petty and vengeful, but I didn’t think even you would destroy everything I had left to care about!” she snapped, as she lowered her gun at the sight of him and the faintest traces of grief and longing colored her dark eyes. Her dark, beautiful eyes. They still captivated his very soul even after all this time.
She felt it, too. He could see it in the way her hostile stance softened. The pull. Imprinting. He’d thought it’d only been legend and myth, but that was before they’d met. Everything between them was fiery and rough, hot and heavy, full of a passion he hadn’t been able to find with anyone else he’d tried to mate. None of them were as good as her.
“I didn’t do this. Use your nose, sweetheart,” he whispered.
Desmond had to force himself not to move as she moved closer to him and further into the destroyed cabaret. The way her thighs trembled with each step she took was maddening, not to mention her breasts. He wanted to bury his face in them. They were just as perfect as he remembered. She was just as perfect as he remembered.
“You lost your right to call me that, Papa Dog.” Marceline snapped. The causticness of her previous words had faded away significantly, instead being replaced with sadness. “But, you’re right at least. They smell like Ramson and his wolves.”
The other alpha’s name hit him like a freight train.
“You’ve been talking to him?” he growled out, stalking forward with a furious gaze until he stood mere inches from her. The very scent that rolled from her body, spicy, dominant and all too feminine, only fueled his anger that she even knew the other alpha’s name. She was his! She belonged to him and him alone.
A lesser wolf would have backed down from the display of aggression, but she held her ground and met his gaze evenly, not as a lesser, but as an equal. Just serving another reminder of how much he had loved her once. How much he still loved her.
“I belong to no pack. Ramson agreed to leave me alone so long as I provided his wolves with... entertainers here. I don’t give up my freedom for anyone anymore and I wasn’t about to ask for your pack to protect me after I went rogue.”
A low growl rose in Desmond’s throat. She belonged to him no matter what she claimed about her freedom or rogue status. Neither he nor his beast spirit wanted to let her go. And yet, that was the exact attitude and mindset that had driven her away.
Sighing, he deflated his dominant stance and bowed his head, a look of pain scrunching his face together.
“Desmond. I’m happy this way, can’t you see?” Marceline asked. She was so close, he could feel her breath brush against his skin as she spoke and he had to swallow hard to keep himself from pressing their lips together. As it was, he rested a possessive hand against her hip, the touch electrifying every nerve ending in his body.
“We were happy together, too,” he reminded softly.
“We were, I’ll give you that, but Desmond,” she shook her head and rested her hand on top of his. “I couldn’t just lay down and be your bitch. I couldn’t give up my own free will to be the mate of an alpha. I can see the feral look in your eyes and smell your arousal, even now, and I know you still think of me as belonging to you. But I am my own person and I can’t be that as your mate.”
Desmond had to swallow hard to quell the whine that tried to rise in his throat. “Marceline, please... I know I was stifling and that the pack treated you as something fragile and weak instead of as an equal. But sweetheart, we could have fixed it! We can still fix it!”
“Desmond...” Marceline sighed, pain flashing in her dark eyes as she slowly pushed his hand away. “You still haven’t changed... I don’t think you can change and that isn’t a bad thing. If you can seriously change the entire pack’s mind on me being your equal, I might consider, but do you truly believe you can do that?” she asked. Her eyes met his, searchingly as if she thought a
ll the answers might be revealed in his gaze. Apparently she didn’t find what she was looking for though because she sighed and stepped away from him.
“Marceline, I—“
“Get out of my cabaret. I’ve got another alpha to deal with and he isn’t going to be happy that you’ve been here.”
Desmond hesitated. His pain was hardening over into anger at the thought that she’d rather deal with whatever had angered Ramson enough to destroy her home, rather than deal with him. Shuddering, he towered over her, his eyes blazing with a pain-fueled anger and a bestial snarl resonating through his chest. He’d half a mind to put her in her place for trying to get rid of him.
“Don’t be stupid. If Ramson did this to your cabaret, what do you think he’s going to do to you when he finds you?”
Marceline’s dark eyes stared at him evenly, unperturbed by the alpha. She reached out for him, gently stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. He all but melted under her touch and the pull that drew him to her thrummed achingly in both his groin and his heart until his head swam with emotion.
“Come with me,” he ordered, voice pitched low from her intoxicating touch. “I will not leave you here to deal with Ramson. You’re not to speak to him. Ever. You’re mine, Marceline.”
How had Marceline so entwined herself with his heart? Desmond didn’t know, but such was the way of imprinting. It physically pained him to consider separating from Marceline, knowing Ramson would likely return for her.
“Hey now, Papa Dog,” Marceline hummed. For the first time since he’d seen her, a trace of affection colored her voice. Slowly, she moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, until they stood embracing each other, in the center of the destroyed strip club.
