Page 23 of Hoarded By the Dragon

“Of course it’s Smith,” Ben mutters, and my lips twitch.

“Find out what you can.” I straighten as a memory surfaces. “But first, can you get an order from Maria’s? She’ll need food when she wakes up.”

Ben raises a brow. “Sure thing, boss. Are you sure you don’t want me for anything else?”

I press my lips together. “I should be able to handle one woman, pregnant or not.”

“She seemed a little angry with you.”

I shrug as if I don’t know why she’d possibly be angry with me. My heat has caused a pregnancy, and I had not been kind to her when we parted. There’d been a hopeful look in her eyes that I’d wanted to snuff out. I hadn’t wanted her to have any hope because there is none when it comes to me.

She will not find someone who can care for her heart here.

That she, a criminal who no doubt regularly risks her life, would end up pregnant with the only dragon conceived in the last century against all odds sounds like a joke meant to torture me.

The Fates must be laughing.

8

KATARINA

The warmth isthe first thing I notice when I wake. I want to moan and press my face into the sensation. The cold plaguing me for the past week has been relentless. I can only fill the tub with so much hot water before running out, and when it goes cold within minutes of me submerging myself, it feels like a Sisyphean task.

The heated blankets that Stella brought had been smart, but really only warmed me enough to make me shiver only every few minutes instead of constantly. I can’t walk around for the rest of this pregnancy swathed in blankets needing outlets.

Continuing like this without answers is untenable. I need help, so I went back to the dragon and now I’mwarm.

“Are you awake?” a delicious voice asks.

I sigh. My eyes blink open and I freeze. I’m pressing my face into the fabric of Kalos’s dress shirt. Kalos the dick. Kalos the dragon who accused me of lying about being pregnant with his child.

I push away, but he doesn’t let me fall out of his lap where I’m curled.

“Take a minute to reorient yourself. How do you feel?” The sneering man from before is gone, but I know this game now. This concern he’s showing me won’t last.

“I feel fine,” I say, and he lets me pull away completely. We’re on a couch in his office. I’m in my tank top, but have a blanket wrapped around me. Kalos’s jacket rests on the couch arm, the snow white of his crisp shirt pulls across his powerful-looking body and contrasts with the black scales that frame his face. It’s odd to see him in clothing.

I’ll blame my newfound warmth for why my cheeks are hot.

“Better than before?” Kalos asks.

“The cold is gone. Wait, does that mean—” My hand drops to my stomach.

“They are fine.”

“They?” My face drains of blood at the thought of there being more than one in there.

“The dragon you carry. I don’t know the sex yet.”

The dragon I carry. As if he doesn’t want to call it a baby.

“You believe me then?” I ask, annoyed.

Kalos looks away. If a man on top of the world could look embarrassed, it would be what his face looks like now. “I was rash in accusing you of lying. I can sense the truth.”

I wait, expectant.

Kalos frowns and grits his teeth before giving me what I want. “I’m sorry.”

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