Chapter Thirteen

Casimir

Three days later and I was ready for a break from Melon and Kelp. Four people attempting to cohabitate in a single nest was too much. We all needed our space and time alone with our partners. Tritus had been a good sport about it but he was ready to go home. I didn’t want to leave without Baby Casalona but I had to. I couldn’t be the dad she deserved while so many things hung over my head like daggers. Still, the words wouldn’t come off my tongue any time I tried to tell Tritus and the others what happened.

Before I left, I found Castor outside on the top deck of the ship. We’d spent nearly forty years aboard the Medwin 2 living together alongside the rest of the crew. He was the only person on any Starscale world who knew the whole truth of what happened to send Ren running for the wild. I almost asked him to tell Tritus for me but that wouldn’t work either.

“Don’t ask me. I haven’t told mine either,” he sighed, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Seriously. I always say it’s someone else’s story but I guess it’s mine too. Maybe not mine as much as it’s yours or Ren’s. I don’t know anymore. Maybe it really belongs to Zayton. He’s not here to tell it, though.”

“Neither is Ren. She keeps staring at my star scale but I’m not even sure she knows who we are anymore.”

“She knows. She’s just gone wild,” Castor shrugged. “So the knowledge means something different now. It means you’re someone who won’t hurt her and that you’re not food or a threat to her territory.”

I wanted my---

The thought stopped short. I couldn’t even think it anymore.

Hell, I wanted both of them back.

There I was – a grown ass dragon wishing to hold the moon between his talons.

“I can’t tell him. The words won’t come out.”

“You’re just going to have to trust that he can handle it during the claiming vows, cousin,” Castor frowned. “He has to know something’s there. Just let the magic do it’s thing.”

“But it didn’t show Axlin,” I pointed out.

“Tritus isn’t Axlin. They’re family but--- I don’t know. You and Ren were always closer than I was to her.”

“She loved you. She loved Zayton too. Too much probably.”

“Eh, this is your mating moon,” he said, poking me in the shin with his bare toe. “Seriously. You’ve met your baby. I won’t let Kelp eat her. Go back with him and claim him before he eats Kelp and Melon and maybe the rest of us too for good measure.”

“Thanks, Castor.”

“Casimir?” he called my name as I started to leave.

“Yeah?”

“It’s gonna work out. You know that, right? I don’t mean what’s going on with Ren on her side of things. You can’t make that any different. I mean with you. You’re going to be alright. Tritus and Casalona too.”

“Thanks, cousin.”

“I mean it,” he said as I climbed back down inside the ship.

***

After we flew back to Tritus’s, my mate dragged me into the shower and scrubbed at me with his sponge as if trying to scrub the scent of the nest from my skin. I let him get on with it. I owed him that much after everything I already dragged him through since we met.

“Do I stink?” I asked. “I did shower on the ship.”

“No,” he shook his head and bit his lip.

“Are you sure?”

“You smell like them and it’s driving my dragon crazy. Not the baby. You don’t smell like Casalona. She smells like you.”

“You know Melon and I are over, right?”

“I do. My dragon should but nothing makes sense right now,” he paused and sniffed my nipple. “I want you all to myself. I’ll share with Casalona though. You belong more to her than me. I want ---” he stopped again and let out a long, slow breath.

“Are you going into heat, mate?” I asked.

He sniffed himself and shook his head. Then I leaned over and sniffed the crook of his neck too for good measure. He wasn’t going into heat or at least he didn’t smell as if he was. I put my hands on his shoulders until he stopped scrubbing my stomach and looked up at me.

Why couldn’t I just tell him?

“Trauma,” my dragon said. “That’s what the crazy therapist said anyway.”

The therapist was crazy and not very helpful. Though, that was more than fifty years ago. Maybe he’d be helpful now. Hell, he probably didn’t even remember me now. He wanted me to journal out what happened. Fuck that. Might as well have admitted to ---

“It’s going to be okay,” I told Tritus, pushing my thoughts away.

“Is it?” he asked. “You’re smelling like you did before you stormed out of the kitchen the other morning. I don’t want a repeat of that. I won’t ask about your family again. I wasn’t trying to pry. I was only trying to get to know you. It would be sorta nice to know something about the dragon I can’t stop thinking about. You’re always on my mind and it makes me feel a bit crazy sometimes. It’s only been a few days, but it feels both like a blink of an eye and like fucking forever, Casimir. Fucking forever! Not being right next to you makes me miss you. Someone else touching you makes me want to snap their fingers apart like twigs and scatter the pieces all over the mushie forest. Hell, Kelp even looking at your baby made me want to dismember him.”

“Mate,” I frowned.

“I’m sorry but---”

“It’s my fault. I can keep my thoughts to myself. I can keep myself off the flight link, but you still have a nose. It’s nothing personal against Kelp. I’m sure he’s a great guy. I’m sure he loves Casalona as much as you do even. It’s just complicated. And not because I have feelings for Melon. I don’t. Melon was fun. She was company on a strange world, and I was strange on a world she knew all too well. I’ve--- We’ve--- The baby—”

“Have you lost a child?” Tritus asked.

“Not directly,” I said, letting the word roll off my tongue.

“That’s why you’re so indecisive about everything. That’s why you smelled like you wanted to dismember everyone who came near the nest. It makes sense that you’d worry about something bad happening to your first if something happened to a child you were close with,” Tritus said, turning off the shower and stepping out of the tub.

He hadn’t exactly hit the head on the nail. It all ran so much deeper than that like a river carving its way through my every waking moment.

“You don’t have to talk about it, of course,” he said, handing me a towel. “I shouldn’t have pushed for you to talk about your family. I know not everyone has a great family and not everyone has a living family either. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed at all. I’m a guide I know better than that.”

“You’re also a mate now. A true-mate. A lot of magic comes with that. A lot of magic that you’ve never experienced firsthand this time, Tritus. Don’t beat yourself up about it. I don’t think you should have to know. Sometimes when I think about it really hard, I think you deserve better than me and that’s not fair to say because I can’t even tell you what happened. Literally can’t say it.”

“Let’s have dinner,” Tritus said. “I’m not trying to change the subject, but everything is easier on a full stomach. We’ll have dinner and we’ll see where tonight goes.”

“Thanks.”

“We’re mates. You don’t have to thank me.”

“Everyone should know when they’re appreciated,” I stole a kiss before we left the bathroom.