Page 72 of Sapphire Seas

Weren’t we just having a conversation about how you were going to cease referring to yourself in derogatory terms?

Yes, but in this case, it’s warranted.

Why.

Because Torin was the teenage dragon they were speaking of. He attacked them the same way I did, only he used his toxins. He was able to free several of the young dragons too, the way Canyon, Upalo and I decimated that mine. Torin escaped them and they pursued him for decades before finally encountering him again when he was fully grown and attempting to prevent other dragons from experiencing the same fate. He was able to share much of his history with my dragon while trying to persuade us to rescue him. I never put the stories together or I would have tried harder to find him or at least, shared that with you when I arrived. There were times when I convinced myself he was just another dream bordering on the edge of a nightmare. It was better than focusing on all the ways I couldn’t make my powers work the way Upalo and Canyon could.

It’s been sorted out now, mate, and from the sound of it, your dragon and you have gotten the hang of sharing memories.

Yes, he’s filled in quite a few gaps for me already.

Good.

I’d been guiding his hand until that moment, now he guided mine to Trinity’s egg, where tiny snores were broken by what sounded like her blowing raspberries in her sleep.

One. Two. Three.

Then her snores resumed.

It’s going to be amazing watching them grow up.

He moved our hands to Sapphire’s shell and oh my Goddess, our little girl’s snores, if you could call them that, sounded more like whale song.

I already love them with everything I am. Heart and soul aren’t enough. I love them to the marrow of my bones and every single cell in my body. It’s like I was born already loving them.

He brought our hands back to the boys’ egg again and the room grew colder as flurries formed over the nest, gently falling on us as well as their siblings, tiny giggles accompanying the soft, beautiful fluff.

We’d better be on the ball with those diaper changes, I said, snickering at the thought of the carnage that would rip through our home after they hatched. We’d be cold, wet, and exasperated, but we were going to love every moment of it. A few flakes here and there will be absolutely adorable, but take too long to change one, or warm a bottle, or heaven forbid, tell one of them no, and we might have a blizzard on our hands.

No might. They will be Hunter and Kane only without the fireballs.

Thank the Goddess for that.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kes

For weeks, I wrestled with feelings and emotions I’d never expected to be hit with. Never while on patrol, I’d learned the hard way to keep my head on a swivel, given my impaired vision. Before and after were a different story. Being away from the nest sucked. It broke my heart to not be able to reach out and caress their shells whenever I wanted.

By the time Upalo, Canyon and I had fled the village, aka, prison colony we were being kept in, fighting had become second nature. We valued our scales too much to let ourselves fall into the hands of the Gorynych again. Improving our combat skills had been a must, after all, we’d never had proper teachers. Everything we knew we’d either learned from being forced to defend ourselves, or because someone we met in our travels took pity on us and helped us improve.

Unlike Emerson with his books, or Alex, who had a fascination with rock hounding and archeology, I didn’t have interests or even other skills to speak of. Sometimes, okay, to be fair, a great deal of my time lately had been spent wishing I did. Quiet patrols were nice, they truly were. Knowing Mattias was with Caspian while he was still pregnant with our sea dragons was an honest to Goddess relief. There was just a part of me, and a rather big one, too, that wanted to be tucked into the nest with them.

I knew I could remove my name from the patrol list anytime I wanted. Doing it, however, wasn’t a step I was ready for yet. It felt too much like failure. If the Goddess was willing to pass out A pluses for brooding, I’d be set, though that wasn’t what I’d come to the shore to do. It had just happened while I’d been wandering around, searching for…

Yes, this one was a beauty!

And rare. Holy shit. I’d never found a pink piece of sea glass before. I brushed the sand from the surface, carefully turning it over in my hands so I wouldn’t damage it as I cleared a smear of dirt off one side too. The deep rose hue reminded me of quartz, but the oddly twisted shape, coupled with the way it was melted and twisted on one side, was a sign that it had been trapped in intense heat at one point before it had wound up in the ocean. Too bad it couldn’t speak to me. I bet it would have one hell of a story to tell.

“I knew I should have tried the beach first, I don’t know why I bothered looking anywhere else first,” Upalo said, his voice low, like he knew his sudden appearance, and intrusion into my brooding, would startle me if he spoke too loud. “I feel like such a shitty friend for missing so much of your pregnancy. Look at you, man, you’d never be able to tell that you birthed a ginormously stunning egg. Seriously, dude, how, that’s what the fuck I want to know?”

“You’ve had your hands full helping to chase leads all around the world, now that more dragons have started sharing the stories of where they came from and those that chose to remain behind, hidden, because they feared they wouldn’t survive the journey.”

“Doesn’t mean I feel any better about not getting to spend time with you the way we did with Ronan.”

“Please, don’t, I spent the bulk of the time watching cartoons and napping. I swear you didn’t miss anything.”

“How can you stand there and tell me I didn’t miss anything when you just admitted to having a mega cartoon marathon without me?”