Dragon Eggs Under the Tree (Starscale Mates #4)

Chapter Twenty-One

Stellan

January came in with another blizzard. Winters were always icy and cold on the Starscale worlds. Thankfully, we made it home before we were snowed in. I loved Oliver and Brender’s house – it was big and had a huge yard, but it wasn’t home. All of the things that Saer loved and needed most days were already there. Being snowed in with my mate and baby wasn’t the worst sentence for an extended winter break. I wasn’t technically on egg leave from the library yet but the library went down to a skeleton staff and drone deliveries to ensure everyone had something to read.

While we did our best to keep Saer inside, Brender and I took turns going out for walks or flights while the other stayed home with the baby. Saer wasn’t fond of the system, fearing that we might get lost at ‘snow sea,’ but after a few days he accepted that we’d always make our way home.

I’d just stepped out of the sauna-warm shower when my dragon reared his head and bellowed about getting to the nest. I froze in place, my toes gripping the fuzzy blue bathroom mat. I sniffed the air, searching out the threat or the problem. Then it hit me. It me the same way it had hit my dragon. It was egg time. One hundred and fifty percent egg time. I left the bathroom calmly, wrapped in a towel and yanking on Brender’s tail over our mating link to let him know to clear the nest room. Saer could be there when the egg hatched to meet his new sibling, but egg laying had never been a spectator sport.

Brender took it a step further and bundled up Saer and took him outside to look for more wild dragon footprints. I wasn’t sure what he thought they might find but appreciated having the house to myself in such a precarious situation. This egg might not have been my first child, but it was my first time laying an egg. It didn’t take nearly as long as I guessed it would. One moment I was climbing into the nest and the next I was waiting for the air to harden the egg’s soft lavender shell. I had time for a nap and to clean up me, the egg, and the nest once everything was said and done. I was out cold again by the time the guys came home. Saer hadn’t found any more wild dragon footprints, but he did manage to find some bright yellow rocks on the edge of the woods. Brender promised to dig out his old rock tumbler the next time he visited his other house.

“The egg is here?” Saer asked, standing with his hands on his hips while Brender tried to ‘unlayer’ him. “You didn’t tell me.” His little brows furrowed together.

“I didn’t know until we got back,” Brender laughed.

“You head talk,” he shook his head at him.

“Yes, but I didn’t know for sure. Daddy was asleep and though sometimes he talks in his sleep it doesn’t make any sense.”

He eyed Brender suspiciously but eventually dropped his arms to let Brender take off his coats. Then he lifted the baby into the nest and I grabbed him before he could waddle over too close to the egg. I trusted Saer to be careful but accidents happened and our egg hadn’t grown all that much since I laid it. Sometimes dragon eggs shot up overnight and other times they took months or years to reach their full size before they hatched.

“Small,” Saer observed as I pulled him into my lap.

“You were that small when you first came here too,” I said as Brender climbed into the nest with us. He sat on the side closest to the door.

“No way!” he shook his head. “I wouldn’t fit!”

“You did, though,” I laughed.

“More eggs in your tummy?” he asked.

“No,” I shook my head. “No more eggs in my tummy. That was the only one.”

“Good. Too many babies might be loud.”

“Probably, buddy,” Brender laughed, his eyes still on our little egg.

We didn’t know it then, but it’d be almost another year before we met our baby face-to-face. While Saer took only a few weeks to hatch from his egg, this baby wasn’t in any hurry to crash out of there and meet us all. We’d have to take turns taking egg leave not to leave the library and school hard up but we’d figure out how to make it work.