Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet 2)

Maybe there really was something to Xenon’s theory. The baby had come down the tube hard and fast after I made it back up the stairs and turned my biosystem back on just long enough to call my Uncle Clyde to come get me.

Thank goodness, I didn’t try to lay back when I felt my son squirming to get out. Remembering what Other Damianos had told me, I pulled a bunch of blankets and pillows from the couch and copped a wide squat in the living room. The baby was so heavy, he and gravity pretty much did the rest. By the time Uncle Clyde and Uncle Kyle came through the kitchen door, they found me holding a baby covered in newborn goo.

“Oh my God, what’s going on?” Kyle demanded upon seeing me. Followed by, “Wait, does that baby have wings?”

The hardest part had been getting my newborn separated from the placenta sack that had fallen out right along with the baby and then getting us both cleaned up. And the most dramatic part had been all the negotiating to get my uncles not only to agree to take the prisoner in the basement home with us but also to keep the fact that they’d found me from my parents and the rest of our family.

Kyle was an easy sell. But Clyde’s been threatening to call the Michigan Three ever since we arrived back at the kingdom house a few days ago.

However, both of them light up when they see Basileios sleeping soundly with his huge golden wings folded into his back.

“Hey, Little Bazzi-Baz, it’s King Poppa and Big Poppa!” Kyle croons as Clyde leans down over the crib to pick him up.

With a dramatic lugging sound, Clyde pulls what looks like a huge, but sexless baby with only scaled skin for a stomach and pelvis out of his crib. And Kyle coos as the baby hybrid sucks the first bottle down like it’s little more than a shot. “Look at that, you were starving. I told your mommy right.”

Then they both laugh when the baby’s face crumples with abject sadness when he realizes the bottle is all gone.

“Don’t worry,” Kyle says, reaching into the King Poppa tote bag he had the fabricator spit out along with a bunch of T-shirts as soon as we reached home with his new grandbaby.

“We got you always, grandson,” Clyde promises.

The baby makes a sound between a baby gurgle, a dragon screech, and a happy wolf growl when Kyle produces a second bottle.

Perhaps realizing his mistake with the first bottle, and not being able to guess that his overindulgent poppas also have three more bottles on hand, the baby goes a little slower on his second liquid meal. And for a few contented moments, we all watch him happily drink.

But Clyde’s expression goes from tender love to anxious when the baby starts fussing and stretching its arms toward me. “Your real grandfathers are going to kill us when they find out what we’re keeping from them,” he says. And he and Kyle exchange worried looks.

I can’t say I don’t understand what brought this topic back to Clyde’s mind. Basileios—or Bazzi as we’ve all been calling him—was only born a week ago, but in terms of development, he seems much older than that. He smiles and coos like a three-month-old. And somehow it feels like no time and months have passed since he arrived.

I bend my knees and take the baby with a slight oof. Bazzi was thirty pounds at last check and is only getting heavier by the day. Luckily, I got plenty of practice lugging around Fensa’s twins for the short few months they were here in the states before we found Xenon and they all went into hiding.

From the dragon I’m currently holding captive down the hall.

“It’s been three months since I disappeared.”

“Got straight snatched,” Uncle Clyde automatically edits

“A few more weeks won’t matter,” I press on, squelching all my uneasy feelings. “And if I manage to get their mortal enemy to stand down, they’ll see why I did it.”

My words are meant to reassure, but Kyle’s and Clyde’s expressions turn even more fretful.

“It don’t sound like he’s going to be agreeing to anything other than burning this house down with all us inside if he manages to get free,” Clyde answers.

Damn our amazing wolf hearing. This would be so much easier if I could lie to Kyle and Clyde and pretend our first conversation had gone anything but terrible. “I know that sounded…” I struggle for an appropriate word but can only come up with… “bad.”

“Understatement,” Kyle shoots back.

“He threatened to kill everybody but you and Baby Clyde.”

I hold up a hand, stopping my uncle right there. Again. “I’m not changing his name to Clyde, so please get that dream out your head.”