Chapter Twelve

Nycto

Having Casimir around wasn't as taxing as I expected it to be. He took to cooking meals and cleaning up after Waj whenever he was around during the weeks of my egg carrying. To be safe, I tossed all the mushies and anything else I assumed wasn't in the diets of the Moonscale dragons out. Then I gave him free reign of the kitchen. He was working to keep himself busy while he waited for his egg to hatch and for his baby mama to grow tired of giving it to her new mate. The latter might take a few lifetimes, but I wasn't about to tell him that.

Casimir was a quiet roommate. When he wasn't cooking or out exploring (I gave him a pass and the council just had to deal with it) he explored my books. He wasn't great at reading the older draconic language, but he was learning. He had to since he had run out of the Earthside books he brought with him. Mostly he read and smelled somewhere between irritated at Melon and her true-mate, Kelp, and smelling like someone stole all the sugar he planned to dump into the pots of coffee he drank every day. I didn't ask about his past but figured he spent a fair bit of time lost to it. Waj got into the habit of tossing apples at him if he looked too sad. Mostly the dotter kept it up because usually Casimir caught them even if it looked like he wasn't paying attention.

Despite having a roommate now, Izora and I still lived as if our lives only revolved around the growing relationship between us. The more I learned about Earthside the less certain I was that I wanted to know anything about Casimir's past. Izora's war stories were more than enough for me. When being inside made us feel too cooped up we went for long flights and I introduced him to the rest of our neighbors. Most of them weren't too interested in him but that was true about most townies. Though, the longer he lived with me, the less of a townie he became. Soon he was running around nearly naked all the time and only dressed when the rest of the crew came for visits, which they did on Mondays, the day before our weekly dinner with my parents. Casimir usually tagged along to those because we thought he needed more socialization than Waj and checking in with Melon about their egg every day. His going back also allowed us to ask him to retrieve the photos from the machine that Izora insisted on taking daily.

A few weeks passed and soon my dragon refused to take control and refused to allow me out of the nest room except to go to the bathroom. He didn't ram at my ribs, but instead used his magical bulk to hold me in place. That's when Casimir's presence became a boon to us because the closer the time grew to lay my egg, the less I wanted Izora out of my sight. Actually, I preferred my mate within touching reach of me at all times. Izora was a doting mate who also wanted me within touching reach.

I didn't feel pregnant. At least not in the ways he and Casimir described some furry shifters looking and feeling. I felt bloated and ravenous. Extra horny too. Too much of Izora wasn't enough. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought I was in a heat cycle instead of carrying an egg. Only one egg. Another one never showed up in the photos Izora took with his doohickey machine.

"One hatchling is a good number to start out with," Izora laughed one afternoon, picking up on my thoughts over our mating link as we lounged in the nest eating mint chocolate chip ice cream that Casimir was kind enough to bring us back from town.

"Probably. I always thought it would be at least two of them!" I laughed. "Mom has so many."

"Well, I've never got to examine a wild dragon, but I'd say there are some genetic differences between shifters and them. Wild dragons grow up quicker than shifter hatchlings."

"True," I conceded even if something felt off about just a singular hatchling.

"Are you ready to let me take a shower now?" Izora teased, pushing himself upright.

"I guess so," I sighed. "But I might finish the ice cream while you're across the room."

"You're eating for two. I can live with that," he kissed my forehead before climbing out of the nest.

I might not have let him go if I knew what was about to happen. He'd been so invested in every stage of our egg's development that I felt guilty that he missed the five boring minutes it took me to lay our egg while he faced the shower head mounted on the wall. Still, egg laying wasn't exactly something I wanted to turn into a spectator sport.I was still waiting for it to harden up when he came back into the nest, wrapped in a towel with water droplets still clinging to his chest.

"Careful," I said before he ever caught sight of it.

"Oh!" Izora said, his eyes growing to saucers inside his head. "Can I come in?"

"It's your egg too," I laughed but still cradled my hands around it while he climbed inside.

"Red like your mom," he pointed out.

"It's starting to harden up," I said, not looking away from the egg. "Then we can polish it."

"It's so tiny. I've seen them before at this point of development, but it's still amazing that they start out so tiny."

"Nature is the real miracle," I nodded. "After we polish the egg up and get it settled will you take another picture? Just to double-check that there isn't another one in there?"

"I will," Izora nodded, a smirk pulling at the corners of his lips.

And he did, but it seemed the red egg that matched my mom's scales was the only one in our clutch this time.

"This just means we can give all our attention to him or her," Izora pointed out and I grinned because he was right.

Our little family was officially started, and that meant Castor felt the need to get everyone together and have a baby shower. If I knew they planned on surprising me with such an event, I'd have asked them to do it before I laid my egg. Casimir took over playing ‘bodyguard' for the nest and not letting any of the guests too close to it or us. His egg still hadn't hatched, but by day three when they came for the baby shower our egg was already up to my hip and shinier than any wild dragon egg I'd ever laid eyes on.

With Casimir handling the logistics of how to get the guests and the gifts into the nesting room, I kept my focus on Izora and our egg. Now that it was larger, we had to polish it a lot more often and stay close to it so that it didn't get cold. Izora wanted to place a sticker temperature tracker on it, but I wouldn't hear of it. There were plenty of things to decorate with stickers. Our egg wasn't one of them. He gave in without much of a fight and used the one that you aimed at the person or object to keep track of our egg's temperature.

Castor and Axlin's wolf pup, Caxlin, howled every time someone brought in another present. He was just big enough to waddle around in his furry form. I'd seen wild wolves before, but never met a wolf shifter. The little guy didn't seem all that different from dragon hatchlings except for the obvious fact he was a wolf pup. He tried to find things to put in his mouth that he shouldn't and barked at Waj before hiding behind his daddies.

After opening the presents – a nice bassinet, a chest carrier, bottles, binkies, clothes, and other things that one would expect to gift to new parents, we ate red velvet cake and the conversation turned to the nameless woman in Izora's vision. They hadn't found any leads yet but some of the dragons who worked at the Star Room were looking into old manuscripts. Marsin had even added a page to the tips website he made previously to ask if anyone knew anything about such an event. So far it seemed we were chasing a ghost. Well, we were sort of chasing a ghost. Apparently, she was dead and nameless and all that was a bit sad. Almost too sad to talk about at a baby shower, but I didn't point that out.

"I bet her name was something like door in some old language or sounded like it and that's why they call them that now," Sunny said.

I arched a brow. His theory made sense but coming from him it was out of the blue. Maybe he wasn't all insults and huffing and puffing after all.

"Dora?" Fred offered up helpfully.

"I bet it wouldn't be that simple," Elio, Fred's mate, laughed.

"Who knows? It's not like dragons get all that creative with names."

"But elves do," Sunny reminded him. "My dad fought enough of them that I'd know. Most of them we can't even wrap our tongues around."

Sunny's dads led the Moonscale Dragon Flight on Earthside.

"Earthside, though?" I arched a brow. "Side of what?"

"On the earth's side of the door," Izora winked at me.

"You're trying to make that funny, but that's why a lot of old shifters called it that," Teddy said. "They came from the Other World. Which probably had another name at some point."

I leaned back on the heels of my hands and tried to imagine a world that connected all worlds in some way or another. Starscale 1 was sort of like that. You could take a shuttle to Starscale 2 or 3. They ran every hour on the hour all day and night in most towns. Only the Other World and the now nameless dead lady didn't use shuttles. They used doors. Magical doors. Portals of sorts.

"Maybe her name was Portal," I mused.

"Did houses have doors before her?" Sunny tossed into the conversation.

"The real question is do they look like doors to everyone?" Casimir chimed in from his watchful spot in the corner. "I mean they look like doors to me and to you guys too, but what if that's just how our brains made sense of one place connecting to another? If I walk out of my bedroom, I pass through a doorway. Maybe Nycto is onto something. Maybe they are portals."

"The Starscales stopped on lots of worlds on the way here to build our own," I said. "I wonder if anyone made a record of someone calling them something else? Maybe we should ask the dragons at the Star Room to look into that too."

"They're going to think we're working them to death," Fred laughed.

"No," Marsin shook his head. "They're probably glad for something to do. There isn't a lot to do around there most of the time."

"Besides, most of them haven't met their mates either," Elio pointed out. "That's something I bet they want to do."

"No luck with any of the magical types back home?" Izora asked.

"No one's heard of them," Sunny shook his head. "My carrier has everyone researching too. His theory is that that group started out so far from where we are the news never traveled all the way to us or if it did, it was so long ago and no one ever bothered to write it down. Ironically, I think if someone did bother to write it down it was probably lost in one of my sire's wars against the elves from the Other World."

"Probably," Fred nodded and flashed Sunny a knowing grin.

"At least we have another thing to look up," Elio sighed. "Let's get back on topic, though. Any thoughts on baby names?"

"Probably something like Ruby or Pepper. My mom's growl name sorta sounds like a mix of those two," I said.

"I like them," Izora shrugged. "Either will probably fit in around here."

"Minter, Caxton, and Pepper or Ruby," Elio said the names of the kids born of the Moonies aloud.

"Pepper sounds better with the group names," I said. "Maybe I'll think about that too."

"Well, either way, the kid will have the stars and the moon," Izora grinned, and I wondered how much wine he'd had from the bottle Castor brought to the shower.

"One glass," Izora said, picking up my thoughts.

"Good. No drunks around my baby," I teased him and leaned over to steal a kiss.

He tasted like wine, and I might have went in for a better, longer kiss but we had guests and kids around. I'd get around to kissing him once they cleared out.