Chapter Twenty-Five

Fred

The walk back to the Medwin 2 was a lot shorter than the walk to the Star Room. It probably helped that the mistrust and tension between me and Elio had evaporated during our nap. My life was stranger than ever now, but strange I could handle. I opened Glitter Bomb up for the love of Frost's holy balls. I could handle a bit of strange and unusual. On the way back, Elio explained how it wasn't just Teddy who grew the star scales that marked members of the flight. It was the whole crew. I chuckled. At least now, they wouldn't be in a huge hurry to get back to Earthside. They could stick around and help me help these dragons figure out how to contact those damn elves or whatever needed to be done to add at least one of the three Starscale planets to the Other World gateway network.

"I'm hungry again already," Elio said when we were almost back to the ship.

"You missed out on a few days of eating so that might be normal," I said, lacing my fingers through his and giving his hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Might be?" he arched both brows at me.

"Well, it could be something else. It's probably a coin flip."

"There's not a lot of illnesses here, alpha," he hip bumped me as we walked. "None that I've heard of that makes you ravenous."

"I think this one is here," I shrugged.

"Which one?"

"It's a parasite," I said, and Elio stopped in his tracks and dropped my hand.

"Why would I have a parasite? Did you bring me one? What---"

"I might've," I laughed.

"You're a jerk!" he slapped my chest laughing. "If I am carrying your egg, I'm going to tell our baby when they grow up you called them a parasite."

"I call Teddy and them the egg brats. So, that won't hurt my feelings."

"Does it hurt theirs?" Elio asked, taking my hand again, the slightest of pink blushes marking his cheeks at the idea that he might already be carrying my egg.

"Naw," I shook my head. "It's a term of endearment and they know it. It's a private club with only four members. Though, the membership might be open to expanding in the future."

"I hope so," Elio laughed. "Our hatchlings will be younger – a lot younger than their siblings."

"Ah, they'll still be egg brats," I squeezed his hand.

***

Stepping back onto the Medwin 2 was like stepping into a press conference. Everyone had questions about the stars that had popped up on their chests. I let go of Elio's hand to push past Castor and Casimir to get a look at Teddy. His scale was still a bit flesh colored as if it couldn't make up its mind what color to be. I hugged him, ignoring the questions of our crewmates. Sure, I had to let the other three egg brats know the full story about Elio soon, but he was here and I didn't want him to fear for a single second that I was trying to replace his mother. No one on any world could ever replace Lotus Cromwell.

"Dad, I knew he was telling the truth from the moment he came on the family link," Teddy said before I could even start to explain anything. "It's okay."

"Do your siblings understand what's going on? How far did the stars spread on Earthside?" I asked him.

"We're not sure. Duke and his kids have them. Syre too. Not everyone. I don't think we're all that intertwined," Teddy laughed. "It's just sorta following your genes downward I think."

I glanced over my shoulder at Elio explaining once again to Izora and the others what the stars meant. Their expressions were eager. I was sure any second now they might plow through Castor to get off the ship. He might've been the captain of the Medwin 2 but meeting their true-mates outranked even him. Though, he had a star too. I didn't know how he was staying on the ship.

"QUIET!" Castor bellowed and everyone, including Elio, flinched away from him.

"Warn me next time," Elio said, rubbing his ears.

"There are three worlds full of dragons here. They are fully populated worlds. No one is charging out there and acting like cave-dragons! I'll need to inform Clarence and Medwin that we are willfully staying for the foreseeable future. We'll need to talk long term plans and we'll need Elio and some of the other Starscales to help with that. I'm sure the leadership here doesn't want our ship in the landing field forever."

"Meh," Elio shrugged. "It's a big field. Besides, if Uncle Hush hasn't said anything yet, I wouldn't worry about it. I think this would probably be a good time to tell you that you can have your bedroom back. Well, that is if, Fred wants to give it to you."

"Huh?" I asked, we hadn't talked about going anywhere else. As much as I trusted Castor, I wasn't sure I wanted to leave my grown egg brat alone on the ship with the possibility of true-mates looming over everyone's heads.

"Like I said, if you want," Elio said. "I have a place. Not a place I share with Marsin either. It's next door to his house, but that's not the point. There will be housing options for the rest of you too, if you want them, but at the very least, Castor you can have your room back. Thank you for giving it up for our matingmoon."

"You're more than welcome," Castor nodded at Elio. "Without you and your brother sending all those scrolls over I might've never gotten the chance to test out the Medwin 2."

"It's a nice ship," Elio nodded.

"So what about our true-mates?" Sunny asked, his voice big and booming much like his sire's.

"You have more chance to find them now than ever," I cut into the conversation. "Don't start in on the captain. If he didn't build this damn ship, you'd never have known your true-mate wasn't even on Earthside."

Sunny pressed his lips together. I could almost see the gears in his brain turning as he decided which of his parents to act more like. In the end he said nothing but nodded his understanding. He might be the youngest one of the ship, but he was the son of the leaders. No matter what his raging hormones or lonely heart might want, he had to lead by example.

"We will see where we can fit into daily life here. We have enough supplies to survive years on the ship, but I think waiting around here for something to happen will make everyone stir-crazy. Even out there, we stick together. We're Moonscales first and foremost. Until we get our bearing on this world, we check in with each other every day if we don't have each other in our line of sight. Will housing be available close to where you and Fred will be?"

"I'll have to run somethings by Marsin," Elio said. "Our parents have moved to Starscale 3. We have an estate and with some work it could house everyone in their own space. I know, technically you could share a house, but we should plan for when you meet your true-mates."

"And Teddy could stay with us if he wanted to," I said, and Teddy shot me a look like I told him he had a curfew.

"Of course, he's welcome," Elio said. "But he still might want to prepare for the possibility of meeting his own mate too."

"I'm staying with my ship," Castor announced. "I'm willing to park it somewhere more out of the way, but I'm staying with it."

"That will be fine. Give me some time to talk to Marsin and that might be the first thing we can do," Elio said, his scent eager to get away from being the center of attention.

"Actually," I glanced from Elio to Izora.

"Now?" Elio asked.

"We could wait," I shrugged. "Better to know sooner, though, I think."

"Am I going to have another sibling?" Teddy asked.

"Let's talk about this in the clinic, please," Izora said, raising his hand to part the crowd. "Medical privacy is still a thing even if we're not on Earthside."

"Sorry to put you on the spot like that," I said to Elio over our mating link as I took his hand to pull him out of the circle's center.

"It's alright. I don't feel pregnant. I feel ravenous. Though, I've never been pregnant. So maybe that's how I feel while I'm pregnant. They're all so eager to meet their mates. It just seems mean to make them wait while I see a doctor," Elio said, lacing his fingers through mine.

"That's part of being a parent. Everyone else will think you're an asshole when you put your kid first."

"But one of your egg brats is out there."

"He's a grownup and besides, you heard how excited he was," I chuckled.

"He was excited, but there are others."

"Izora is taking us to the clinic and Sunny should be thrilled another Moonscale is being born."

"Starscale," Elio said.

"Moonscale too. None of us are just one thing. I bet if we had some giant DNA test or something that could track and parse out all your genetics, you're more than just a Starscale by blood too."

"Well, the egg is here. This is Starscale Territory."

I opened my mouth and shut it again as the corners of Elio's mouth turned up ever so slightly.

"One day I'll explain how this is a real argument people have on Earthside," I told him.

"Of course, the baby is a Moonscale too. I was only teasing."

"Took me a second to realize that," I squeezed his hand as Izora pushed open the door to the ship's clinic.

The clinic was far larger than any of the shared bedrooms to be found on the Medwin 2. It was also the whitest, brightest, and shiniest of the rooms. Izora, like most doctors and healers, was a neat freak. At least in his clinic.

"What was the last pregnancy test you heard of?" Izora asked before the door even had the chance to slide shut behind us.

"Huh? Why?"

"Because I want to know how much of an education I have to give you, Fred Moonscale," Izora chuckled.

"Umm….. The last time I needed someone to---" I started to say but stopped. I couldn't think back to when the twins were born and put that memory into words.

"I should've ---" Izora started, but I shook my head to stop him.

"It was the green baby one," I said.

"Won't we just do a sonic?" Elio cut in.

"A sonogram?" Izora asked.

"No, a sonic."

"What's a sonic?" Izora asked.

Elio thought hard about how to explain it as he looked around the room for the tool in question. The best as I could make out from his thoughts over our mating link it looked like a little horn-shaped device that sounded like a bat.

"Echo location?" I blinked at Elio.

"Yeah!" Elio pumped his fist in the air, sending his blonde hair twirling around him.

"It's this little thing that you'd aim here," he said, pointing at the spot right above his pelvis. "Then depending on how the sound bounces back, we know what's going on. Mostly, they're only in clinics, but they're working out how to make them more portable and rechargeable at home. Right now, they all need a crystal charging station."

"Well, ours sort of works the same way, but you end up with a sonogram or ‘photo' at the end. Besides, will that work if the egg isn't large enough to bounce the sound around?" Izora asked, his eyes lighting up with interest.

"The egg isn't what bounces the sound back," Elio shook his head. "I'm not sure about how it goes with other shifters. I've only ever met dragons, but in layman's terms it's all to do with the Alpha/omega gene. Where do you think all the magic in omegas goes if not to being giants like you all? It goes to housing the future generations. One of which ways that magic is used is securing the womb. The organ itself is a fist sized stretchy pouch, but the magic is so much more. The magic will bounce the sonic back different when that magic is engaged, and that magic engages way before it shows up on any of the blood or urine tests."

"I gotta tell Dara about this," Izora muttered under his breath about one of his friends. Then to us he said, "The ultrasound works the same way. It uses sound waves to create an image of what's inside you. Though, it almost seems primitive ---"

"You mentioned that before. Like what it believes is inside me or what's actually inside me?" Elio asked.

"What's actually inside you. Outside of pregnancy, it can be used to find tumors and other problems within internal organs."

"Incredible," Elio's eyes lit up. "I wonder if the sonics can do that too? Would those things have different bounce backs?"

"Probably, yes, if I had to guess," Izora nodded, and crossed the room to open a shiny white drawer. "I also have these." He held up a bright orange box.

"Orange just like Elio," my dragon said, and I had to stop him from purring. His attachment to Elio and the dragon inside him came so easily after the claiming vows. He didn't need the grand convincing I did.

"Within three days of conception this little guy can tell you," Izora paused to open the end of the little cardboard box. "Not only if you are pregnant, but if your child/children are carrying an inner beast. Some folks call this one the egg predictor, because the answers aren't just yes or no. They're ‘no,' ‘shifter,' ‘egg,' and ‘other/unspecified.'"

My heart skipped a beat. That damn thing would've been useful decades ago when only an ultrasound could tell you the difference.

"Oh!" Elio's eyes lit up. "That would be needed for a lot of couples on Earthside, huh?"

"Yeah," I nodded, trying not to laugh.

"So, you get to choose between---"

"I know it will probably take longer, but I want the photo!"

"Do they really not have these in the flight here?" Izora asked, motioning for Elio to get on the examination table.

I bit the inside of my cheek waiting for the old primal urge to rip the doctor's limbs off to wash over me. It was sort of there, but I trusted Izora well enough. Maybe I was too old to think about eating the doctor's face for no reason now.

"Not too old," my dragon said, sinking onto his haunches to watch the ordeal. "Izora traveled all the way across the sky with us because he wanted to discover what medicines the Starscales had. Why would he hurt the first egg between our flights born of this reunion? He might be the first baby between our flights since the Sleeping Omega Prince."

Elio reached out for my hand and I crossed the room to comfort him. His fingers trembled against my flesh. His nerves were more to do with if we were pregnant than anything Izora might pull out of the strange-to-him clinic.

"If I'm pregnant, we still have to figure out the Other World gateway thing," he said while Izora prepared the ultrasound machine. Once the machines were huge hulking things. Now it looked like a handheld video game with a wand attached to the side with a curling cord.

"We will."

"We have to. Marsin hasn't found his mate yet and he's already met Castor," Elio said. "We can't be those parents who forget everything they ever promised anyone else."

"We will be – for a while," I chuckled. "It just happens. Not forever, but for a while."

"But the rest of us will still be here," Izora reminded his patient. "I suspect most of our mates will have siblings and friends and the like too. We won't be distracted with trying to figure out the money scheme or getting jobs."

"Everyone has a job," Elio shrugged.

"How does that work here?" I asked.

"From how Marsin explained it, most things are the barter system. The leadership takes care of water and the crystals used for what they call electricity. Their food set up is an interesting one. Anyone can hunt on the hunting grounds on any of the three worlds. No questions asked unless you're leaving the things you kill instead of taking them to be eaten. Other food is measured by draconic weight. Everyone gets so many points based on that to be used at the grocery stores or restaurants. The point cost is calculated by nutritional values for each food."

"More or less," Elio nodded. "Though, if you run out of points by the end of the week – you still eat. They still feed you and report the ‘underage' to the dragons who calculate things like that. Your points might be adjusted, but it's not really to do with how much you can have. It's more a way to calculate how much food we need to grow to sustain the three worlds and possibly build another one in the next couple of centuries."

"So the points mean nothing?" I blinked.

"That's what I asked too," Izora chuckled.

"To the hungry? Nope. To the stores? Nope. They mean nothing but numbers that will be reported to the Food Council," Elio explained.

"How do you spend points, though?" I asked.

"They ask your name at these places," Izora explained. "I guess the ‘cashier' puts it into the computer or something and the computer does the math on how many points you have. Unless you check your flight app you won't ever know if you go over or not."

"You keep points you don't spend. They roll over forever because the council figures you'll be hungrier at some point in the future and make up for the points you didn't eat that week," Elio said.

His fingers trembled again. If we were pregnant like my dragon figured we were, this would be my fifth kid. It was Elio's first. I squeezed his hand and stroked his blonde hair. He was fucking beautiful. I watched him as Izora pressed the wand to his belly.

"What about the gel?" I asked the doctor.

"Gel?" Elio blinked.

"That's out of date now," Izora grinned. "The new wand isn't only smaller and attached to an easy to carry around device. We've also done away with the need for gel. The wand has disposal covers that dissolve in hot water because they're made of a plant material akin to gelatin."

"Nice," I grinned. "They used to spread gel all over carriers."

"Ewwww."

"A lot of my patients felt that way," Izora laughed and pointed to the television mounted on the closest wall.

My heart leapt into my throat the way it always had the first time I laid eyes on one of my kids. There almost lost in static was the tiniest egg. Elio squinted at the monitor. A second later a red circle appeared around the egg on the screen as Izora fiddled around with his handheld device.

"That's our egg?" Elio asked, not looking away from the screen.

"That's your egg," the doctor nodded.

"It's tiny."

"It probably will be for some time. I take it sex and reproductive education is up to par, and I do not need to explain the growth cycle of a dragon egg," Izora said.

"It'll grow as big as my body can reasonably handle while absorbing nutrients from the food I eat. No two eggs are ever the same. It only comes when it's ready, but most folks have at least three moon swirls to prepare the nest."

"Moon swirls?" I asked.

"Yeah," Elio nodded. "You know. Moon swirls. Our one shared moon swirls around in between the worlds and the sun."

"Is that what you all really call it?" I asked.

"What else would we call it?" Elio laughed. "That's what it is."

Izora pulled a little notebook out of his pocket and scribbled something down.

"I'm keeping track of things I might need to remember," Izora shrugged.

"How do we get the photos?" Elio asked, unphased by our amusement and confoundment.

"I'll print them off," Izora said. "You can sit up now if you want to."

The doctor turned away to fiddle on his computer across the room. Elio stayed on his back and ran a soft hand over the flat, lean plain of his stomach. Not all dragons looked pregnant. Some never looked pregnant even while they laid their eggs because the eggs would continue to grow outside of their bodies.

"Are you excited?" Elio asked, not looking up at me.

"Over the moon, mate," I said, leaning down to kiss his forehead.

"We gotta get them settled so we can build our nest. Do you want to request a pack or gather wild?"

"Huh?" I asked, realizing the claiming vows left out some vital information on the caring of dragon eggs here on Starscale 1.

"The flight will provide a package of materials for building a nest upon request. Most dragons add in some of their own things. They don't make you take it, though. You can gather up the things on your own, if you like. The packs are nice, though. I had a summer job as a teenager of putting them together and delivering them out. I always imagined how excited I'd be when I got my first one delivered."

"Then it sounds like you've decided," I squeezed his hand.

"Well, you do get some say in it," he laughed, glancing up at me.

"I think we can work with a pack and then see if it needs more padding."

The way Elio grinned told me I'd chosen correctly. Nests were always personal to each dragon. Different flights, even on Earthside, had their own customs. As long as the nest did its job, I didn't care much about how it looked. Nests were messy things by nature. The sturdiness of a nest was a billion times more important than how aesthetic it was.

"I love you," Elio said, catching me off guard.

"I love you too," I said, feeling that old flutter deep within my stomach. Being close to him stoked the fire burning in my belly. Maybe this was what happiness felt like. Maybe this was the feeling I forgot while I was conked out.