Dragos Takes a Holiday (Elder Races #6.5)(5)

She gathered him up in her arms. He tucked his snout into the crook of her neck, and it was so good, almost everything he wanted, except…

He was so hungry.

He fussed and whined, and she sat on the floor and rocked him, while she dug her cell phone out of her pocket and moved her thumb rapidly over the keypad. “Dragos, you have to come home right now.”

Daddy’s sharp voice came over the phone. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong exactly, but Liam has changed and he’s upset.”

“What do you mean, he’s changed?”

The pace of Mommy’s rocking picked up, but she spoke softly. “I mean he’s in his dragon form, and I can’t tell you how beautiful he is. He’s also upset for some reason. Maybe it scared him? And you’re missing all of it. You need to come see this.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Mommy set the phone aside as Liam whined and plucked at her shirt. “Are you hungry?” she asked gently. He nodded. “I can’t nurse you when you’re like this, sweetheart, not with all of those razor-sharp teeth.”

That was the saddest thing he had ever heard in his whole life. He lifted his head and looked at her, grief stricken.

“Oh, Peanut, I’m so sorry. Please don’t look at me that way.” They considered each other desperately. Mommy’s expression turned firm. He folded his wings back and clung to her as she rolled to her feet and carried him to the kitchen.

She opened the fridge door and pulled out a pan that had the something he was craving. It smelled oh so good. His stomach rumbled and he arched toward it, reaching with both front paws.

“Hold on—let me get the plastic wrap off first.”

As she slid to the floor, he struggled to get to the appetizing smell. She snatched off the plastic wrap, set the pan on the kitchen tile, and he fell on the leftover sirloin roast. Eyes closed, his whole body tense, he focused on gorging on the meat.

Running footsteps sounded in the background, but it was only Daddy, so he ignored it. A moment later, Daddy said in a quiet voice, “Well, damn. Look at that. Hello, little man.”

A large, gentle hand came down on Liam’s back, between his wings, and contentment filled him.

“I didn’t know what else to do.” She gestured to the pan. “He acted like he was starving, and he has all those teeth. Then I remembered what you said about how he was going to need a lot of meat.”

“He gave you clues about what he needed, and you followed your instincts,” said Daddy. “You did exactly what you should have done.”

Liam finished off the roast. The hungriness had gone away, and his belly felt comfortably stretched and full. Sleepiness descended. Eyes drooping, he looked over his shoulder. Daddy and Mommy knelt on either side of him, both smiling.

He scooted backward toward Mommy. When she gathered him up, he turned to climb up her body until he lay draped along her shoulders.

“I’m telling you, this is just like my dreams.” Mommy reached up to stroke his leg. He stopped listening to their conversation, tucked his snout in the neckline of her shirt and fell fast asleep.

***

Relief had turned her leg muscles into noodles, so Pia shifted to sit on the floor, and Dragos joined her. He leaned back against the fridge while she sat forward with her spine straight. She didn’t want to disturb Liam while he was resting on her.

She angled her head and looked at Dragos. “What are we going to do if he doesn’t change back into his human form, and he keeps growing at this rate?”

He stretched his legs out, loosened his tie and scratched his jaw. Even though it was just midday, a new growth of beard shadowed his lean cheeks. He kept his inky-black hair cut uncompromisingly short, and the formality of his dark suit highlighted the richness of his copper skin and intelligent, gold eyes.

In the last year, Pia had gone from living at the edge of Wyr society to being catapulted directly to the top. She had met any number of Powerful creatures in the different Elder Races from all over the world, but none of them, to her mind, had Dragos’s sheer physicality. Standing just under seven feet tall and weighing close to three hundred pounds, he towered over the largest of his sentinels, and his dragon form was the size of a Cessna jet.

His handsomeness had a brutality that never failed to cause her breath to catch at the back of her throat. Not even tiredness could dim the Power and energy that boiled from him. He was as strong as the earth, and whenever she laid eyes on him she felt her soul winging out of her body, arrowing straight toward him.

He sighed. “I should be able to coax him back into his human form, but I don’t think he’ll be able to stay that way. His human form has no capacity to eat meat. If he follows the pattern of other Wyr children with large animal forms, he’ll need to shift back periodically to his dragon form in order to feed.”

“We’re going to need a bigger skyscraper.” She rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “Part of me can’t believe I just said that.”

Dragos’s cell phone buzzed. His gold gaze flashed with irritation. Without glancing at the screen, he thumbed the phone on and said into it, “No.” After he hung up, he looked at her, his expression turning rueful. “I think it’s time we talk again about moving up north.”

Resigned, she nodded. Dragos owned a country estate just outside of Carthage, in northern New York. Well technically, since they were married now and nobody had breathed a word to her about a prenup, she supposed she was part owner, too. The mansion had fifty rooms, a separate house for an estate manager, and it was surrounded by two hundred and fifty acres of rolling, forested hills.