His Dragon Warrior

by Jill Haven

  Evan’s belly grew so large that he could barely walk. His due date arrived and passed, but there were no signs of labor. Three days after he was due, I set him up on a divan in the living room and lit a roaring fire to soothe him, then sat behind him as he moaned and clutched to my arms.

  “It should begin soon,” Mason said, but I caught the uncertainty in his voice.

  “Will it be an egg like mine?” Seth asked Mason as night fell.

  “An egg?” Evan’s jaw dropped.

  “No, a baby. Here, you can feel it.” Mason moved Seth’s hand onto Evan’s huge belly. I followed and smiled at my love as I felt our strong baby kick into my palm.

  Mabel arrived soon after and the night wore on with still no signs of labor. Evan dozed on and off, whimpered about the strain on his bladder, and moaned when the nausea took hold. I caught Mason and Mable exchanging glances. I cleared my throat and motioned to the other side of the room, where we met for a hushed conversation.

  “We may have to induce labor,” Mason disclosed.

  “Why?” But the answer was obvious. I watched Evan as he took a sip of ginger ale, made a disgusted face, and passed the glass back to Haiden.

  Mabel sighed. “He’s going to grow weak again if he can’t keep any food down. His body’s already so lithe, and his belly is just getting bigger… The baby is compressing so many of his organs.”

  “And the induction? Is it safe?”

  The glance between them was all I needed to know.

  “No. We can’t.”

  “Well, it might be safe. It’s probably safe… We just don’t know, he’s a unique breed. Divine Omegas might respond differently.”

  “And the baby might respond differently, too,” Mabel added.

  “You mean that it might hurt the baby. That it might hurt Evan. No. We can’t induce.”

  “We might not have a choice at this stage.” Mason grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck while he avoided my eye.

  I snarled and thumped the wall. “He’s been through enough; we can’t put his health in any more risk. I didn’t come all the way back here and claim him to have him end up—”

  Mabel held my arm and begged me with her gaze. “But his health is at risk right now, Bishop. Don’t you understand? If we don’t do anything, if the baby keeps growing, it will kill—”

  “AGH!” Evan cried, and we shot around to find him clutching his belly. “Oh! Oh! It hurts!”

  “Get over here!” Seth yelled and we rushed to Evan’s side, while Carlisle and Haiden ran into the room and crowded around my mate.

  “It hurts, Bishop,” he whimpered, and I took one of his hands and clutched it tightly… and my stomach turned when I felt hot, tacky liquid on his fingers. I kept my face neutral and strong, but Evan saw it in my eyes. He brought his other hand up from his belly and cried out when he saw the blood dribbling down his wrist.

  “Look out.” Mason pushed his way to the front and tugged up Evan’s soaked-through bed shirt. A torrent of blood poured from an opening at the base of his stomach, and the room spun around me, and the floor gave out. I inhaled sharply and clutched his hand, and it took all of my effort to stay awake. Gutting a dragon, beheading a human, hunting my own meat… none of it made me queasy in the slightest, but a glimpse of Evan’s hemorrhaging birth canal made me weak to my core.

  “It hurts!” he yelled, then cried out with a high-pitched whine.

  Mason shouted to Mabel, and the two of them worked on Evan while I stared at my mate’s face, keeping my eyes away from the blood and his birth opening. His lips grew pale, and his chin trembled in fear as he was surrounded in towels, his brow mopped with a cool cloth, and ice smoothed over his lips. He kept his eyes on mine and I tried to push all of my strong, stoic energy into him through my gaze, until he could no longer keep his eyes fixed on anything at all.

  “Good, alright, you can do this, Evan!” Mason encouraged, but sweat poured from his forehead and told just how anxious he was.

  “Push. Time to push.” Mabel shook Evan’s shoulder, but my mate was barely conscious. His head lolled to the side and a spent groan escaped from the back of his throat.

  “Evan. Come on, my love.” I shook him gently and he took a labored breath.

  “I can’t,” he whispered.

  “You can!” I snapped. “Don’t leave me.”

  He rocked his head back and forth, a guttural groan escaping him as his arms fell limp and heavy by his sides.

  “Evan! Don’t you dare leave me now!”

  “I can’t—”

  A piercing cry cut through the room. My breath snagged and Evan’s eyes widened. My heart thundered as I turned and found Mason holding a wailing baby in his arms.

  “It’s a girl!” Mason cried, and a shocked, stunned laugh broke from my chest. Evan tried to raise his head, and I braced the back of his neck as he smiled weakly at the beautiful baby as Mabel cleaned her off.

  “Oh… Oh!” He gasped, but soon lolled his head to the side and sobbed.

  I kissed his cheek and pressed my face against his as relief washed through me, stronger than any I’d ever known before. “You did it, my love. You did it.”

  No sooner was our baby girl in my arms, but Mason and Mabel were fussing around Evan’s belly again.

  “What’s going on? What’s happening?” Seth demanded. Fear rushed through me and I clutched our baby to my chest as shock struck me mute.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood. And he’s losing more,” Mason reported as he pressed firmly against towels piled up against Evan’s opening. The thick wad of them slowly turned red.

  “How much?”

  “A lot, Seth.”

  “Too much?”

  “Almost.”

  “Then do something!”

  “I am!”

  With more pressure applied to his belly, the bleeding slowed and the opening began to close, but not before Evan grew so weak that he could barely hold my eye contact, let alone dote over the sweet little girl in my arms who quietened down as soon as she was pressed to my skin. My heart was torn in two—it swelled with love for the precious life of my newborn, her tiny hands and Evan-like profile, and contracted in fear as I watched my mate teeter on the brink of slipping away.

  Carlisle called Vince to the house, who gasped in panic when he saw his nephew limp and pale by the fireplace. The bleeding had stopped, and the opening was closed—weakly, but closed—but Evan remained moribund.

  “What can we do?” he demanded of Mason.

  “I wish I knew. He needs blood.”

  “Hospital,” Seth insisted.

  “Absolutely not,” Carlisle snapped.

  “He’s dying!”

  “And what will a hospital do? Give him human blood? Do you think that’s worth risking our safety for an intravenous line of weak blood that doesn't match his own?”

  Seth grumbled and fell back, but my mind raced.

  “Can he ingest it?” I asked, my voice hoarse and broken from the stunned silence I’d been in.

  Mason looked to Carlisle, and Mabel raised her eyebrows “Yes…”

  “It might work, if it’s dragon blood,” Mason added.

  “Might isn’t really certain though, is it?” Seth huffed.

  Haiden cleared his throat and we all looked at the young man who had been quiet through the entire birth. “Could it hurt him to try?”

  “Not likely. He’ll vomit if his stomach doesn’t take to it. The iron could cause haemochromatosis in humans, but I’ve never heard of a dragon with too much iron in its blood.”

  “That’s good enough for me.” Before anyone could argue, I handed our newborn baby to Seth, rolled up my sleeve and used the tip of a claw to slice a slit along my wrist. Deep red blood bubbled to the surface and I said a silent prayer to an ancient god that I could save my love this time. I held Evan’s head and gently pressed my wrist to his cracked lips. He groaned as the blood trickled into his mouth, and Mason cleared his throat to say something before Seth s
hushed him.

  “Please, Evan. Don’t leave me,” I whispered. His tongue traced against the cut and I hissed from the sting, but soon he was drinking. The pressure kept the wound at my wrist open, and my blood trickled into my mate.

  Color began to wash back across his cheeks and eyelids, and that spark of hope was relit in my chest. Vince gasped. “It’s working.”

  I sat with my lover in my arms until I felt woozy, and Carlisle willfully took my spot so I could tend to my daughter. All night we switched. Vince, Mason, Carlisle and I bled for Evan and by dawn his lips were rosy pink, the spark returned to his eye, and his birth wound began to properly knit itself back together.

  “My baby…” he whispered as dawn broke through the windows, and the group of us smiled at each other. The swaddled infant was delivered to his side, and I held her in my lap where he could adore her.

  “She’s so beautiful,” he sighed.

  Vince knelt down and smoothed Evan’s hair back from his face. “I’m so proud of you, nephew.”

  Evan smiled up at his uncle and took his hand. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Uncle. I may be weak now, but I’ve never been happier.”

  Vince bit back a sob and laughed off his emotion, but gave Evan a small, genuine smile before caressing our baby girl’s cheeks. “And what is her name?”

  “Mm. A name…” I frowned.

  Evan sighed. “We’ll find one later. I’m so awfully tired.”

  We chuckled, and I kissed his forehead. “Rest, my love.”

  I lowered him back onto the divan where he slept through the day while I sat by his side and adored him. His strength and resilience were incredible; greater than any I had ever possessed. I found myself with tears in my eyes as I considered all of the pain, fear, and trials that he had been through to give me what I had always wanted but had never admitted.

  A family.

  20

  Evan

  Where Seth’s typing sounded like a soft downpour of rain, mine was more like a dripping faucet. I struck each key with a single finger, but I still felt impressive and smart with how much information I could pull up on the machine. Seth had taught me the ‘basics’ of hacking, after I’d gotten over the shock of how easy it was to simply search for something, and now I was able to navigate more complex databases and location systems.

  I loved everything about the modern world, and I was thrilled by how much more there was to learn. But nothing was as impressive as our little girl.

  I glanced down at her in her little baby bouncy chair, where she was fast asleep with the motor rocking her. We were locked up safe in a hotel room where I could help by delivering mission intel without being in the line of fire, while Bishop “worked the streets”, as he said.

  “You’re certain that this is the address?” he asked through the radio system.

  I double-checked his GPS location, and compared it to the location of the intel we’d picked up from a Southwest clan about a group of humans who had been snooping around their lands. “Yes, that’s the address. Do you see a blue building opposite the path?”

  “The path?”

  “The, oh, you know what I mean! The street.”

  He chuckled, then cleared his throat and responded formally. “Affirmative.”

  “Then you’re in the right place.”

  “Damn. It’s a bust. They’ve flown out of here already.”

  “Then get back here quickly and kiss me.”

  “Hey, other people are on this line you know,” Ace groaned. Ten had stayed behind in Charleston for this part of the mission, so Ace was our only company and it was possible that our persistent canoodling was getting on his nerves.

  “Sorry, Ace. You should get back here too. Stormy misses her uncle.”

  The baby girl made an approximation of a smile in her sleep and I leaned to touch her soft, downy hair. We’d been on the road in the Southwest region for several months, and she had grown more adorable with every passing day. A perfect blend of Bishop and I, with light blonde hair and what I imagined his stubby nose had looked like before he’d had it broken too many times. Stormy and I were the perfect intel machine—no clan leader could resist having us over for dinner, showering her in affection, and telling me at least some of their clan secrets. Some resisted disclosing the details of the suspicious deaths that had happened, but they always gave me at least a little something scandalous or useful to report back to Bishop.

  Being together with my family made me feel whole; most of all, it made me feel like a man. Bishop and Ace treated me like an equal on the team, and I was on my own for many hours each day, taking care of Stormy and tending to my needs. I got to know myself more; what I liked, what I didn’t; what I was good at—computers—and what needed far more practice—food preparation.

  Bishop arrived at the hotel with the kisses that I’d requested, and Ace rushed over to pick up his niece who had started gurgling happily as soon as he came in.

  “Dinner with the local clan tonight, right?” Bishop asked, and I nodded.

  “I’ll take her out for a stroll and let you two get ready.” Ace hoisted her into the carrier he’d had specially fitted for himself and hurried out before we could say no. I smiled at Bishop and he kissed me again, just to distract me so he could reach over and switch off one of the three screens.

  “Hey! I wanted to show you a trick that I learned—” I wrestled his arm, but he switched off another.

  “No more work.”

  “Just five more minutes!” I shoved him backward but he didn’t budge, and soon the screens were all blank. I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest, making him chuckle.

  “I want you all to myself.”

  “We have to get ready.” We’d abandoned the Northeastern leg of the mission and traveled down to the Southwest on instruction from the Council, with no further explanation on their end. It had been wise—we had arrived shortly after a string of odd deaths, and rumors of dragons circulating through the human townsfolk. Tonight’s dinner promised to be a drunken affair which would certainly eke out more talk about what had really happened in the weeks leading to our arrival. We could not be late.

  “Just… one… quick… kiss.” He grinned down at me, and I wet my lips—though I knew that he didn’t want my mouth on his. He wanted it somewhere else. The zipper on his pants eased down and I felt the bulge beneath my hand, hot and already so firm. Eager to obey, I dropped to my knees and Bishop moaned in appreciation. I freed his beautiful erection from his clothes and took him straight into my mouth. The taste thrilled me, all salt and musk, and I sucked on it hungrily while I kept my gaze locked on his. He preened my hair with his fingers in adoration and shifted his hips so that more of his swollen rod pressed between my lips. I bobbed back and forth, working him how he loved most; I wanted so badly so give him the pleasure he deserved.

  With a sudden thrust, he pressed deep and hard, and I struggled to hold him in my mouth. His hardness slipped out just as quickly as it had thrust in. I grinned up at him with his tip pressed against my lips and he caressed my cheek with the back of his knuckle. I felt loved and adored; warm all over and throbbing with pleasure. Blinking slowly into his gaze, I planted playful kisses all over the head of his erection.

  “Oh, you’re wonderful.” He growled so pleasurably that it sounded more like a purr, and eased his length back into my mouth. My heart swelled as I felt it throb, and I knew that he wasn’t far off. I’d truly learned so much while we’d been on the road, including how to bring my mate to orgasm faster than ever.

  I let his hardness slip out of my mouth with an audible pop off my bottom lip, and I sank back on my heels to tongue at his big, low-hanging balls.

  “Oh, fuck!” He gasped and grabbed at my hair, and took his erection into his own hand. All of my attention was devoted to his testicles, which I mouthed and lapped at, sucked and slobbered over.

  “Close,” he whispered, and I leaned back to look up at him so that he could slide hi
s spit-slicked erection over my face. He caressed my cheeks with the head, adoringly and lovingly, like he had with his knuckle, and I felt truly beautiful. I smiled up at him and wallowed in the ecstasy on his face. My heart raced and my whole body tingled. I loved making him feel good.

  With a simple parting of my lips and a gentle protrusion of my tongue, he gasped and pointed the tip of his hardness straight into my mouth. I lapped at it gently, hungry for the taste of his fluids, and I did not have to wait. A burst of cum filled my mouth and I greedily wrapped my lips around its source and sucked it, milked it, and swallowed every last drop as shot after shot emptied into me.

  Spent and satisfied, Bishop collapsed into my chair and caught his breath while I clambered up and sat in his lap. He spun me around so that I was facing away from him and made quick work of the buttons of my trousers to free my aching erection.

  I grabbed his hands and leaned back. “Do we have enough time?”

  He chuckled. “You think you’ll take long?”

  I scowled, but he was right. With a single stroke from his hot, strong hand, I was fully erect, and my toes were already curling. I gasped and braced myself with a firm grip on the arms of the chair. Bishop pulled me back against him and held me by my belly, which was already flat again after the birth. A true miracle of dragon healing power that I’d adopted since the bite. He worked me with precision, and I felt completely in his control. My erection responded to his touch without any intervention from me; pleasure shot from my balls when I least expected it, and suddenly I was quaking in his lap.

  “That’s it, let go. Come for me, my love.”

  I gasped for air and grabbed at his arm. He jerked me harder and faster, and the orgasm burst out of seemingly nowhere.

  “Yes!” I cried out and arched my back as pleasure bombarded my spine. Bishop knew from experience not to relent when my first spurt spilled into his fist, and instead picked up his pace. I squirmed and writhed in his grip and rode shot after shot of more ecstasy. He pressed his lips against the back of my neck and moaned in appreciation as I came for him, sending an extra thrill through my body.