23. Tuft

We had three eggs growing in our bedroom nest. Three eggs. Three! I couldn"t contain my joy and excitement as they continued to absorb slick and increase in size.

The first time I"d visited Axel, his bedroom didn"t have a south-facing window. Soon after the dragon told us we were pregnant, Axel had helped construct the opening with his work crew. Now, all the cabins had them.

When the sun rose the morning after I had laid our eggs, I couldn"t get enough of their glittering shells. They shimmered like soap bubbles, especially with a fresh layer of slick. When they hatched, I would save the shells and make a collage from them.

I couldn"t believe how quickly we"d gone from, "Did you know you"re pregnant?" to, "It"s egg day." I thought I would have a few more weeks to prepare. There was also the question of when the eggs would hatch, too. It had taken upwards of six months in the grotto, but both Grindl and Punky had hatchlings in half that time, maybe less.

Punky and I had been growing closer, but I wished we were better friends. I needed some advice, or maybe a cheer section.

Imagine my surprise when he showed up with breakfast less than an hour after I woke.

"Before you say anything, your team did not lose," he said to Axel. "We won the first two sets and then we played for fun until the end of the hour."

"Thank you." Axel took the goodie bag from him and disappeared beyond my view through the bedroom doorway.

"Can I leave them?" I asked Punky. "Will they be okay?"

"Give them some slick and spell your compression shorts to collect it for you instead of absorbing it. They"ll be fine." Punky grinned.

"We can do that?"

Punky tentatively approached the bedroom doorway. "Yes, and I wish I"d known that with our clutch. We spent months on the floor naked with them. Where do you keep your shorts?"

I pointed to the drawer, and Punky showed me how to change my compression spell to a collection spell. It even transferred the slick to the plastic sheet we kept on the bed.

"We can"t transfer it directly to the shells?" I asked.

"The eggs have magic of their own."

I answered my own question. "It"s too risky."

He jerked his head toward the kitchen. "Let"s eat, and you can ask me all your questions."

Punky wasn"t prepared for the fifteen-minute rapid-fire barrage of questions, everything from, "What do the hatchlings eat?" (the same things we do) to "What"s it like, raising a little girl?" (Pretty much like raising a boy, only Clementine was far more clever than their boys).

Axel had to remind me to eat my eggs before they got cold, but then I launched into another ten minutes of questions. Punky looked absolutely exhausted by the time I finished, but he offered me his cell number so I could text him when I thought of anything else.

"Thank you." I shook his hand far longer than was necessary when he stood to leave. "I can"t even begin to tell you what a relief it is to know you and Lark have already done this. Coz and Grindl, too."

Punky grinned. "I feel guilty for letting you go through the first round on your own."

"No amount of advice would have changed what happened." I was still sad for our little eggs, but I knew what I said was true. My first clutch wasn"t meant to be. "Thanks for stopping by today."

"Any time." His usually grumpy demeanor toward me had softened over the last however long I"d been pelting him with questions, and now he gave me a friendly smile. "I mean it. Call or text me with questions. I promise I"ll answer."

"Promise not to laugh at how ridiculous they are?" I asked. Punky hadn"t laughed once during our conversation, but Axel had covered his mouth with the back of his hand a few times.

"I won"t, but Lark might when I tell him."

He nodded toward Axel, who didn"t restrain himself this time. He laughed and shook Punky"s hand.

When Punky offered his alpha"s number to him, Axel said, "I already have it."

"Why do you have Lark"s number?" I asked once Punky left.

"He gave it to me when we first went to Earth together, when I agreed to babysit for him."

I"d forgotten all about the text Axel had sent Lark to ask if I could come with him. I would have blamed it on the eggs, but I hadn"t been pregnant yet. "He came with me to pick out the baby stuff, too."

"They like us!" I couldn"t help it. My tears spilled over. I"d tried so hard to be popular on Ignitas, to regain what I"d lost on Earth. I thought I"d blown it completely by making fast enemies with Lark, all because I"d accepted Weld"s offer to mate. "Is it dumb to think I"ve finally made it as a kobold because the cool kids like us?"

Axel laughed. "This is what it means to be an adult. We have real friends, not fake ones for show. They"re also our community. There"s no popularity contest." He kissed the top of my head and shoved me toward the bedroom, where our eggs waited. "You already won that, hands down, when you started recruiting for the recreation leagues."

I went back to the nest and smeared the gathered slick over our babies. I considered keeping the shorts on, but Axel pulled them off me and slid into the nest behind me, letting the morning sunlight shine on our eggs.

"Sleep. I"ll give them the next round."

I thought I was too excited to sleep, with all the answers to my questions buzzing around in my head, but the solid warmth at my back and the happy eggs cradled to my chest lulled me to dreams of adorable football-sized lizard children with pointed ears and long tails.

I woke to the gentle swipe of Axel"s fingers over my hole. He was only grabbing slick for the babies, but the sensation made me want more than his fingers. My moan turned into a whine when he instead gave his attention to our hungry eggs.

"Want you," I said.

"Now?"

"Gods, yes. Now. Want your knot. Except maybe not." As much as I wanted it, "I could get pregnant." Most likely, I was already fertile again. Some kobold pairs had children less than a year apart. While Punky had calmed my fears about fatherhood, I wasn"t ready to try again so soon.

"Lark told me about a birth control spell." Axel"s lips brushed against my nape as he spoke, making me shiver.

"Yeah?"

"He said you could use it, too, spell your channel so nothing goes into the birth canal."

"I"ll try anything, if it means you"ll give me your knot." Still, I carefully constructed the spell to contain Axel"s cum and flush it out with my slick once we were done. More nourishment for the eggs.

"You all are about to get a show," Axel said to the eggs.

"No." I shook my head. "That is not allowed. No speaking to the eggs while we"re fucking."

He chuckled. "As you wish. No more talking, after this." He licked the back of my neck and let out a long exhale, making the tiny hairs at my nape stand on end. "I love you."

"What?" I tried to turn, but he held me in place. "No talking, after you drop that?"

"I wanted to say it now, so you know it"s real. I love you, Tuft. You and our babies. I wanted you to know."

"And I love you!" I shouted it because he"d told me I couldn"t talk.

"Did you hear that, eggies? Tuft loves me, too." A spell shimmered over them. "Now they can"t hear anything else, and they can"t see out of their eggs. Happy?"

"So happy."

He nipped at my nape, and my toes curled. "It"s true, you know. I love you."

"I love you, too." My last word was more of a moan as he slid inside me with one thrust. His magic met mine and warmth pooled around him inside me, threatening to push me over the edge before we"d even begun. "Oh, gods, yes, I love you."

"Shh. No more talking, or you"ll wake the eggs."

I let out a snort, and then he moved, stealing the rest of the thoughts from my head.

Days and weeks felt like months. We slept in four-hour shifts, as Punky had recommended. I spent a few hours each day in my compression shorts. Priestess Alma even approved after she saw the slick collection spell in action.

During that time, I hammered out the schedules for the next recreation league sessions. My beta assistants had done a fantastic job of setting them up for me. We had enough teams to schedule eight-week sessions instead of six. The teams would play each other twice and still have one week off.

We expanded our magic nets and magic play-calling to all fields, too. We no longer needed referees or base coaches for the adults, but we kept them for the youth leagues. Our spells were great at enforcing rules, but they couldn"t explain the rules to a child who had never seen a baseball game.

I didn"t venture past our porch to watch the games, though, and only for fifteen minutes at a time. Then, I returned to feeding our eggs.

Axel worked on the house when he wasn"t stuffing me with food and making sure I bathed and slept. With both magic and lumber, he constructed four new rooms for us. One would be my home office for the days I needed to stay home with the kids. The other three would give each child a special place to call their own. I was so excited to meet them.

The eggs had grown so fast. They were already bigger than Priestess Alma"s largest expectations, but the shells were too thick to see through in the sunlight. I wanted to see them, but I could wait. We would meet our little kobolds when it was time.

Our bed was a mess of blankets and stuffed animals. We"d started with bears, but then I found the World Wildlife Federation. We didn"t have access to the Earth website, but one of our betas in IT had mirrored their site on Ignitas. I pointed out the stuffed creatures I wanted, and Axel made special trips to Earth to purchase them for me. We had one for each child, or a set of triplets for one, depending on what our kids liked. Snow leopards, orcas, pikas, and lemurs decorated the headboard, while lions, elephants, and giraffes danced along the footboard. Each animal came with a storybook, so I read to the eggs between feeding times.

I was also getting more emotional, the closer they came to hatching. When I finished reading the story about snow leopards, I started crying. Earth was dying, and while I was grateful to be happy and healthy on Ignitas, I was still sad that my home for twenty-five years would never be the same as it had been when I left.

"Are you all right?" Axel brought me a sandwich he"d snagged from the kitchen. "I heard you sniffling."

"I don"t know why I"m crying," I said. "Everyone I loved on Earth is already gone." I meant my parents, but that reminded me of my high school and college friends, none of whom deserved to die in a fire or flood. "That"s a shitty thing to say. I"m sorry. Your parents are still there."

He sat down beside me and rubbed his fingers down my arms. That small display of affection filled me with desire every time.

"Humans are resourceful," he said. "They"ll find a way to fix Earth, just like Punky found a way to make peace with the dragon."

I was too congested from the tears to snort, so I settled for a strangled, "Hmph. Sure they will."

"Hey. Did you see that?" Axel pointed at the egg closest to my knee.

"See what?" I asked, but then I saw it, too. A tremor. The egg moved.

"Babies!"

My body seemed to understand the stress our babies were under and created even more slick than before. Instead of growing bigger, the eggshells seemed to be getting thinner with each spread of slick. In the sunlight, I could almost see through the shell.

Finally, a tiny crack emerged, and the other two eggs started wiggling.

We were about to be parents!