by Wolf Specter
“What the fuck? Wes, what happened to you?” Ty was staring at my stomach in horror. I knew that it looked, well, pregnant… except for the fact that men didn’t get pregnant, so it must have looked— huh. My mind flashed to that Alien movie again.
“Um, I’m pregnant. And Dane is the father. Well, the other father, I mean.”
Ty reached a hand out but stopped a few inches shy of my belly. After giving it a hard stare, he turned around and walked into the kitchen, only to come back a minute later with three open beers.
“Come sit down,” he said, leading us into the living room. He tried to hand us each a bottle but I pushed mine away.
“Thanks, but — pregnant. Remember?”
Ty set my untouched bottle down on the coffee table without a word and then chugged his. He looked a little pale. Eventually, he put down the empty bottle and grabbed the one he’d intended for me. “Holy fuck, Dub. This is some messed up shit. Come on, tell me what’s really going on. Is that real?” He gestured vaguely at my distended stomach. “Are you sick? Because you really do kind of look like shit, bro, and that does not look healthy.”
“Byrne, look at me.”
Ty did, and it wasn’t pretty. My brother was still not happy with the man. Before he could say anything, though, my lover leaned toward him with dragon fire in his eyes and did that weird echo-y voice thing.
“I’m a dragon. Your brother is my mate. He’s pregnant, and I need you to take care of him until I get back.”
Ty blinked, his eyes looking a little glazed. “Sure, Bennett,” he said.
I smacked Dane’s shoulder. “Ty is family, love. Stop trying to compel him. He can handle the truth without your dragon voodoo.”
“Just trying to make things easier, my treasure,” Dane said, looking disgruntled.
I rolled my eyes, then poked my brother in the arm. Hard. “Tee, snap out of it.”
“What? What’s going on, Dub?” he asked, shaking his head.
“I know it’s weird, Ty, but really — I’m pregnant. Dane isn’t, um, exactly human…”
Tyler’s gaze snapped to Dane. “You just said you’re… a dragon? Did you just say that to me? Dude, this is fucked up. What kind of sick head games are you playing with my brother?”
“Byrne, do you remember when we were doing that training exercise in Wenatchee? And my weapon backfired?”
“Don’t change the subject, asshole,” Tyler said. Then he nodded, still frowning. “But yeah. I still can’t believe you didn’t lose a hand, Bennett. Or worse.”
“I heal too quickly for that,” Dane said with a sigh. He looked around the room for a second, then grabbed Ty’s keychain off the coffee table. It had a folding utility knife attached to it, and he flicked it open and thrust it into his forearm.
“Fuck, Bennett!” Ty jumped off the couch, knocking his half-empty beer bottle over with a wet slosh.
I flinched, too, and my own heart raced at the unexpected violence — but I wasn’t surprised to see the blood slow almost immediately.
“Come here, Byrne,” Dane said. I had to look away. The little knife was still sticking out of his arm. Gross. “I want you to see that it’s not a trick. My arm is going to heal around it.”
Ty had gone pale, but he gamely walked over and poked a little at the already healed skin. Okay, I had to peek. Dane pulled the knife out, causing a little more blood to flow before the rest of the cut sealed itself over. Wow. The healing thing was much faster for him than it had been for me. Like, almost instant.
He handed the keychain to my brother and walked down the hall to rinse off the blood pooled on his arm. When he came back, Ty was examining the still-bloody blade, and then he had to inspect Dane’s arm. There was no sign that he’d ever been hurt.
“What the fuck was that, Bennett?”
I’d never heard Ty’s voice go quite that high before. I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
“It’s just a side effect of what I am. A dragon shifter. And it’s the reason I didn’t lose my hand in Wenatchee.”
I could tell Ty wanted to freak out, especially when his eyes fell on my distended stomach again. He closed his eyes and took a breath, then opened them up and glared at Dane again.
“So you knocked my brother up? Is this for real? Because if so, I should probably kick your ass.”
“Tee, it’s real, and I’m happy about it,” I said, pulling his attention back to me. “But Dane has to go away for a few days, and I haven’t been feeling so well. Are you off this weekend? Can I stay with you?”
“Yeah, I don’t have to work until Monday, and you know you don’t even have to ask, bro. You’re family,” he said. “Which reminds me, you should probably call Mom and Dad. They’ve been bugging me about not hearing from you.”
Dane’s lips tightened, and even though I wasn’t supposed to be able to read his mind through this bond I knew exactly what he was thinking. “I’ll just call them, love. I won’t visit until after the baby’s born.”
“That will be fun to explain,” Ty said, cracking up. Then he cocked his head to the side, thinking. “So, Bennett, that thing you did with your arm. Is that how you helped Riley?”
I remembered my brother telling me about the time that one of his fellow soldiers had been hurt. He’d said that Dane had used his heat to help him.
“Sort of, yeah.”
“Bennett, seriously dude, come on. That’s all you’re going to say?”
“I can’t heal other people, Byrne,” Dane said, his eyes flicking to me for an instance. But that was different. “I do have the power to compel them, though. In Riley’s case, I made him speed up his body’s natural healing ability. That’s all I could do, but thankfully it was enough to slow the bleeding until the medic arrived.”
To my surprise, Ty’s eyes narrowed. “‘Compel’ people? Is that what you just tried to do to me? When you told me you were a dragon? It felt… weird. Like I had to believe you and couldn’t question it, and then like I’d almost forgotten what you’d said until Wes reminded me.”
“Jesus, Tee,” I said irritably. “He just told you how he saved your friend.”
“Fuck, sorry,” he said, looking a little sheepish. “That was pretty fucking cool of you, Bennett. No wonder our unit was always so lucky.”
Dane’s lip twitched. “Yeah, there were a few times I helped. And yes, I did try to compel you earlier. Sorry about that. You seem to have some immunity to it, anyway. More than most humans. It’s probably because your mind is connected to my mate’s.”
“Connected…? You mean the twin thing Wes is always talking about?” And then Ty started laughing. “Wait a minute— your ‘mate?’ Fuck, dude, this sounds like one of Wes’ role playing games. Seriously?”
Dane just shrugged, smiling. “Except this is real life. Wesley is mine, Ty, and I will do anything to protect him.”
Ty sobered. “Do you love him?”
“More than life.”
“Uh — okay. That’s kind of intense, Bennett, but good answer.” Ty seemed to notice the beer he’d spilled for the first time. He started cleaning it up, and then groaned. “Fuck, it’s not even light out and I’ve had two beers already. You guys are killing me.”
“It’s not every day you find out your brother is pregnant, Tee,” I said, laughing. “I’ll make some coffee.”
They both trailed me into the kitchen, like two little ducklings. I started the coffee and grabbed a travel mug from Ty’s cupboard, knowing Dane had to get going. I hated the idea of being apart from him, especially since I didn’t know how long it would take.
He put a hand on my hip, kissing my neck from behind. “I’ll be as quick as I can, treasure.”
I nodded, ignoring my brother’s muttered PDA comment.
“Wesley will have to stay inside while I’m gone, Byrne,” Dane said to him. “No one can see—”
“Bennett, what the fuck am I? Stupid? Just go do what you gotta do.” I handed him a mug and watched him spoon an obscene amo
unt of sugar into it before he went on. “When you get back, though, I’ve totally got to see this dragon thing. Unless you two are fucking with me.” He looked skeptical for a minute, and I raised an eyebrow, pointing to my stomach. “Right,” he said, laughing. Then he turned to Dane. “Wait, can you show me now?”
“What, my dragon?”
Ty nodded, grinning like a little boy on Christmas morning. I stifled a laugh at the expression on Dane’s face.
“Uh, no,” he said. “Sorry, Byrne, it’s pretty big.”
“Fine. Later then,” he said, looking a little disappointed. Then he laughed again. “Dude, this is all fucking crazy… although the weirdest part? Now I’m going to be an uncle. I don’t know a damn thing about kids.”
18
~ Dane ~
I hadn’t loved the idea of leaving my mate with his brother, but it had gone better than I’d expected. “He’s family,” Wesley had insisted, as if that meant something. But apparently, for him at least, it did.
Even though I hadn’t thought it was a good idea — I’d much rather have left him with Maks — it was hard to deny my treasure anything he wanted. I’d figured that I could always compel Byrne to forget we’d ever been there if things had gone badly, but after he got over the shock he’d accepted everything much more easily than I would have believed.
“You know he’s going to want to ride your dragon, love,” Wesley had whispered to me before I left.
I felt my lip twitching as I drove north. There was no way I was going to take Byrne flying, and I could already picture the disappointed look that Wesley would give me when I said no to his brother. The twitch became a grin. Of course, I couldn’t say no if my treasure asked me to.
I pressed my foot down on the gas, suddenly impatient. I’d just left, and I already wanted to get back to him.
There was a time that I could have flown over much of this land without worry about detection, but the modern world had changed a lot of things. I’d have to make do with wheels instead of wings until it got dark. I was just thankful that my dragon hide was black, making it easier to fly at night without having to compel a bunch of people to forget what they’d seen.
And I could cover a lot of ground in the long hours of northern winter nights.
I parked the truck at a deserted rest stop and shifted as soon as it got dark enough. My other self was just as eager as I was, and I was able to cross into Anik’s territory before dawn. By the time it got too bright to fly without detection I was somewhere over northern Saskatchewan.
Rather than waste time searching, I landed near the bank of an icy river and shifted into my less threatening human form. The northern dragons would sense my intrusion on their territory and find me, and a couple of hours after the sun rose I felt them approach. The subtle pressure in my mind was different than the bond with my mate, but unmistakable.
Dragons were coming.
My heart started to race a little as I worked to calm my beast. Other than Maksim, the few encounters I’d had with my own kind over the years had all been distinctly unpleasant. I reminded myself that Maks considered these two good people.
More importantly, I had to find out if there was a way to save my mate.
Eventually, I saw two dark shapes moving against the gray sky. My dragon was pushing me to shift, but I knew it would be a mistake. As they got closer, I could see that both dragons had reddish-hued hides. The larger one was a bright red, like fire, and the smaller one was more of a rust color. The bright one flamed a warning at me, melting some of the snow off the tall evergreen trees he was flying over, and then both dragons landed on the far bank. The larger one stayed dragon, but the rust-colored one shifted into his human form, becoming a dark skinned, black-haired man that a human would have assumed was in his early thirties.
I knew better, though. The dragon had to be at least a thousand years old for his human shape to have aged that much. This must be Anik.
“What brings you to our territory, youngling?” he asked in a calm voice that easily carried over the space between us. He was much more relaxed than the red dragon behind him, but even with the other beast’s restlessness, I sensed curiosity from both of them rather than the blood lust I’d always felt around the territorial European dragons I’d encountered in my youth.
“I have questions,” I told him, then hesitated. I’d been so focused on getting here that I hadn’t really thought through what I would say. Would he really want to help me, even if he did have answers? Dragons weren’t known for their generosity. Good people, I reminded myself, and plunged ahead with the truth. I really had no other choice. “My dragon has recently found a mate. My friend Maksim tells me that you were mated once. I… don’t know who else to ask.”
“Mated once is mated forever,” he answered with an easy smile. “If you can keep your dragon in check, I would be happy to invite you to our home and answer your questions.”
I nodded, suspicious of the kindness he extended so readily. Strangers, and particularly dragons, didn’t tend to treat each other so generously, in my experience. I didn’t trust easily, but if I wanted to save my mate I had no choice but to rely on their goodwill.
I shifted after Anik did and leapt into the sky to follow the two red dragons deeper into their territory. As I flew over the frozen landscape, I pushed aside memories of the vicious cruelty and cunning manipulation I’d encountered with other dragons in the past.
For Wesley’s sake, I really hoped Maks was right about these two.
We flew for a couple of hours before landing in front of a cluster of warmly lit cabins near another frozen lake. Anik shifted first, his son moving to subtly block my access to their home until I’d returned to my human form.
“You are a friend of Maksim? The dragon with territory in the south?” Anik asked.
“Yes, I’m Dane. My territory is also to the south, but in the west.”
“Who is your sire?”
I frowned. I wasn’t proud of my lineage. “Marcel.”
Anik nodded, matching my frown. “I met him once, in my youth. He held the Bordeaux region, but it changed hands centuries ago.”
“Yes. After— I held it for a time, and now it’s part of Maksim’s sire’s territory.”
He looked like he wanted to press me for details, but before he could say anything else his son interrupted.
“You will need to take care around my father,” he said to me. “I won’t allow anything to threaten him.”
I raised my eyebrows, nodding. I hadn’t planned on challenging the old dragon, but I could see that my presence made the younger one nervous.
“Calm, Ben,” Anik said to him, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder. “You know I won’t let any harm come to your father. This one isn’t a threat,” he added, with a nod in my direction.
Now I was confused. Maks had told me that Ben was Anik’s son. Who were they referring to?
The door of the cabin behind them opened, and a pale human with gorgeous nordic cheekbones poked his head out. “Did you find him, min elskede?” he asked. Then, catching sight of me, he tsked and waived us all in. “Out of the cold! Come in and put some clothes on. This is no way to treat our guest.”
I followed the two dragons inside, staring at the blond man with a suspicion that I didn’t want to let myself believe. Anik cupped the man’s chin as he passed, brushing a light kiss across his lips before he and his son disappeared into other rooms. When they came back they were both dressed, and the younger dragon tossed me a pair of pants which I pulled on without paying any attention to what I was doing. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. I couldn’t take my eyes off the human.
“Who are you?” I finally asked the blond man as he directed us all to sit and then handed us each steaming cups of a warm drink. I clamped down on the hope in my chest as I waited for his answer, not wanting to be disappointed.
“Mikkel,” he answered me calmly. “I am Anik’s mate, and you must be the dragon he sensed this morni
ng. What brings you here?”
Mikkel seemed totally relaxed, but I felt tongue tied. I couldn’t make sense of it.
Anik had said that mated once was mated forever, but humans had such short lives… there was no way this man could be Ben’s father. Even if there was a way for a human to survive birthing a hatchling — and I was desperately hopeful that there was — Maks had told me that he’d met the northern dragons shortly after we came to this land.
But that had been over two hundred years ago.
“You said you had questions, Dane,” Anik said. “It couldn’t have been easy to bring your other self into our territory uninvited.” He held up a hand when I started to bristle. “No, you are welcome as long as you come in friendship, but I know the instincts of the dragons within us. Especially in one as young as you. I’m just pointing out that you must have had some urgency to come here. What is it you want to ask me?”
“I’ve found my mate,” I answered, still staring at Mikkel. “He’s pregnant and… I don’t want him to die.”
“Of course not.” Anik looked confused. “I don’t understand.”
I took a calming breath, dragging my gaze away from the human. “The pregnancy is already taking a toll on Wesley, my mate. His body is suffering, and I don’t know how to save him, but my dragon keeps pushing me to… breathe fire into him. I’ve resisted—”
“What? You haven’t completed the bond?” Anik cut me off, incredulously.
“Your mate is pregnant without your fire?” Mikkel asked at the same time, shaking his head. “That poor man.”
“So, it’s safe?” I finally asked, looking between the two. “I’ve seen what our fire does against frail human bodies. When I felt the instinct, I thought it would kill him.”
Anik hissed, pushing away from the table and pacing the floor in agitation. Mikkel reached out and covered my hand. “Your fire will save him, min ven. He cannot survive carrying your child without it. He needs you to complete the bond so that he has access to your dragon’s regeneration.”
