She picks up the steamer and tucks it under her arm. “We’ll try this again tomorrow.”
And with those words, she departs the room. Leaving me chained up with the mess I’ve created on my stomach.
Chapter Three
OLA
I exit the room where we’re keeping Real Damianos on a sad-but-righteous note. But stop short after closing the door behind me. Uncle Kyle and Uncle Clyde are standing in the hallway, and they’ve both got their arms crossed.
“Did we just hear you giving that boy a handjob?” Uncle Clyde whispers. He grabs me by the arm and pulls me further down the hallway to stand in front of my bedroom.
“Like two minutes after he woke up?” Uncle Kyle adds. His hand is clutching at his chest like he just wishes he had some pearls to hold on to.
Usually, I enjoy the hell out of my uncles’ Thug Beta-Dainty King routine. But after my first super disappointing interaction with my now awake mate, I’m way too tired and sad to have this conversation with them.
“I can’t believe you were listening in on my private conversation!” I answer, hoping my offended tone will make them back off.
But I should have known taking offense wouldn’t have worked.
“Really, you don’t though?” Uncle Clyde asks, screwing up his face. “So you figured you were just going to swear us to secrecy about you being back—”
“And squeezing out a half-dragon baby!” Kyle adds.
“And chaining up a huge fucking dragon shifter in our master bedroom,” Clyde continues on. “And you thought when we walked past the door and heard you two talking, we’d just be like…”
“Oh, let’s not listen in!” Kyle says, waving both hands.
“Wouldn’t want to deprive our insane niece of her fucking privacy!” Clyde finishes with a roll of his eyes and snap of his fingers.
“It’s like you don’t know us at all!” Kyle says with a dramatic huff. But then he resets with an eager grin. “Also, we thought we heard our new grandbaby calling for his poppas!” he says in a singsong voice, holding up the custom King Poppa tote bag he’d had made, like two-seconds after Bazzi and I arrived at the kingdom house.
“No, you didn’t,” I answer, folding my arms. It’s so nice to catch them in one lie I can actually clapback on. “The baby can’t even talk. How is he going to be calling for his great-uncles.”
Kyle gasps, his head drawing all the way back.
And Clyde says, “Oh, no you didn’t.” He takes a step toward me, one hand fisted at his gun side like he’s regretting agreeing not to carry the Mossberg when he’s visiting with the baby.
“We are his poppas!” Kyle reminds me, barring an arm across Uncle Clyde’s chest to hold him back. “Big Poppa and King Poppa—that’s what you promised when we agreed to help you keep this secret.”
“I should call both your daddies right now,” Clyde threatens.
At least I think it’s a threat until he shifts his eyes to the side in the universal sign for accessing his biosystem.
“Don’t!” I say, holding up both hands. “Please don’t! Lesson learned, I promise. I’ll only be calling you both Poppa from now on.”
Clyde tentatively unshifts his eyes. “You promise?”
“Yes, I promise.” I reach out and pat his shoulder. “And you’re right, Big Poppa, we should go check on the baby. It’s his feeding time.”
I walk into my room where I’m keeping the baby’s crib, hoping that’s enough to throw them off the subject of calling my parents. And to my relief, Kyle and Clyde follow.
“See, I told you he needed us,” Kyle says to Clyde behind me. “It’s that King Poppa intuition.”
I roll my eyes. You know you two just wanted a baby hit.
It takes everything I have not to call bullshit on them coming up here after they promised to stay in the kingdom house’s first-floor guest suite, where it’s way safer.
I think about how calling people out on their BS had been one of the things I’d been surprised to discover Other Damianos and I had in common. He derived great joy out of countering the “facts” documentary historians put forth. And I derived even more joy out of hearing why so many of them were full of shit, or as Other Damianos put it, “Guessers who err on the sides of the upright primates who look the most like them.”
A sad wave of bittersweet remembrance washes over me as we walk into the room. Luckily, it’s erased by the sight of the baby, still fast asleep in the crib where I left him. Large and pale brown with copper-colored hair, he lies curled up in a tight child’s pose, with his huge golden wings folded up tightly against his back.
My heart swells with a love, unlike anything I’ve ever known before. Along with gratitude that pushing this kid out of my hoo-hah had been all kinds of dramatic, but surprisingly not at all painful.