The tongue cap is back, but Damianos doesn’t offer up much more conversation. Frankly, I’m too weirded out by the sight of my two-week-old eating to offer much conversation myself.
But eventually, during the main course, I tear my eyes away from the sight of Bazzi demolishing the lamb chunks Damianos cut up for him. “So what did you do all day before you started teaching our kid how to be a kick-ass dragon.”
“My days were filled mostly monitoring my vast array of holdings. There were also occasional meetings for deals only I could handle.”
“Sounds boring,” I say.
“It was very boring,” he answers. “But not so much as of late.”
A joke? A compliment? I have no idea. The only thing coming from his side of the mate bond is a whole bunch of numb. Real talk 100, I’m not sure how to feel as we finish our mostly silent dinner.
He’s trying and I’m trying. Our relationship is so civil now, and technically drama-free. Just like I thought I used to want. But it feels like Damianos is drifting further away from me. So far away, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to reach him.
“Basileios and I have some more training to do, then I will put him down in his nursery,” Damianos says later during the dessert course as if to prove my point.
Then he stands up from the table and takes Bazzi out of his seat, even though I’m not even done with my baklava. “Good night, Ola.”
It’s just more father and son time, but it feels like he’s slipping away from me.
Maybe that’s why I jump up and call after him with my mouth full of flaky deliciousness. “Wait, Damianos!”
He could have kept walking, but he immediately comes to a stop and turns around.
“You said you’re not him, well, you should know I’m not her either.”
“Her?” Damianos repeats, his face twisting into a frown.
“Yeah, I’m not her. I’m not the drakki you would have mated if your planet hadn’t been destroyed.”
I take a step toward him and Bazzi. “You don’t want to revere me like you would a drakki? Well, I don’t want you to parent without me like a male drakkon would. I meant what I said. Every word I said. You plus me. And I want to do this parenting stuff together.”
The frown has fallen away, but the blank granite face he’s wearing now isn’t much better. He gives me nothing over our mate bond or with his expression, so I can’t tell how he’s responding to any of this. And that makes me feel all the awkward emoji faces float up from my stomach.
But I’m still Leroy Greenwolf’s great-granddaughter. Not afraid of anything or anyone. At least on the outside.
So I close the distance between us. I raise a hand to cup his face before looking up into the golden eyes of my beautiful monster.
And I say, “Wherever you’re going right now with our son, take me with you.”
Chapter Eighteen
DAMIANOS
I cannot deny Ola her request.
As we walk down to the beach together, I tell myself I am only doing what I would have done regardless of whether she’d lived or died. Training our son to be a true drakkon is an essential duty of fatherhood. If Ola wishes to be present while I do so, fine.
It changes nothing, I assure myself as I take Basileios out of his suit. This temporary peace between us will still end in much death and repudiation.
“You may stand of there. Quietly.” I tell Ola, handing her our hatchling’s clothes and pointing toward a collection of rocks along the shoreline.
“Thumbs up emoji face,” she answers. Only to stay right where she is and ask, “So what are we doing out here anyway?”
“Tonight I will teach Basileios to unshell as my father taught me,” I answer as I outfit our hatchling in a pair of training pants.
“Unshell…that means shift into a dragon, right?”
“We drakkon do not shift. While you wolf mutations are humans who reconfigure your cells into wolves, our human appearance is merely a shell.”
“But Bazzi’s a hybrid. Something else. Like you said, right? So maybe he’s really shifting.”
I throw her a consternated look. Then I take Basileios by the scruff of his neck. “You will unshell now,” I command before drawing my arm back and launching him out toward the sea.
Beside me, Ola lets out an earsplitting scream as he flies through the air before landing with a splashy plop in the dark water beyond.
“WTF emoji! You just threw our baby into the ocean!” she yells at me before running toward the sea.
But just as she reaches the shoreline, Basileios breaks the water’s surface, bursting into the air before zooming back to hover above us.
“Oh, thank the Fenrir wolf you’re alright!” Ola cries out.
However, I merely frown. Basileios has flown back to meet me, but save for his wings, he remains shelled.